A Hard Heart

Intro

Do you remember what it was like when you were picking your kids’ names before they were born?

For every parent who is choosing their child’s name, whether it was an easy or challenging process, there are certain rules that one tends to follow.

For instance, one must consider the last name when choosing the first name. If my last name was Monk, I probably wouldn’t name my son Chip.

Then again, if my last name was Monk, Katelyn would have wanted me to take her last name.

Another rule that people tend to follow is that you don’t pick a name that has a notorious history associated with it.

For instance you probably wouldn’t choose the name Adolf for obvious reasons. That name is associated with evil and genocide.

But one of the least popular baby names ever, is the name Judas.

Think about it. How many Judases do you know? No one chooses that name.

Who would want to be associated with the person who betrayed Jesus and led the authorities to arrest and eventually crucify the Messiah?

Even people who aren’t followers of Jesus don’t choose that name because more than any other name in history, Judas is associated with betrayal.

If you are just joining us today we began a series last week titled The Great Betrayal where we are looking at those who denied, betrayed, and abandoned Jesus in his hour of need.

This is taking us to Easter Sunday where we will see what Jesus’ response was to the betrayal he experienced by those whom you would think he could trust the most.

Last week we looked at Peter’s denial and this morning we are looking at probably one of the most, if not the most famous story of betrayal ever, the betrayal of Judas.

Power in the text

Judas was one of the main disciples, the original twelve. Judas would have seen the miracles of Jesus, have helped feed the five thousand, and have served with the other disciples.

Unfortunately, Judas is best known for the end of his life and not much that came before it, but he walked and served with Jesus.

What if he started out fully devoted to Jesus but became less interested over time? Peter’s denial happened in a vulnerable moment, Judas’ was premeditated and happened over the span of a few years.

We start to see some of Judas’s struggle in the scene of the woman and the alabaster jar who anointed Jesus at Bethany.

Judas condemned the woman for wasting an expensive perfume and objected that the money could have been used to feed the poor.

John 12:3–5 NLT 3 Then Mary took a twelve-ounce jar of expensive perfume made from essence of nard, and she anointed Jesus’ feet with it, wiping his feet with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance. 4 But Judas Iscariot, the disciple who would soon betray him, said, 5 “That perfume was worth a year’s wages. It should have been sold and the money given to the poor.”

This sounded noble. However, Judas was the treasurer and was also stealing from the gifts given to Jesus’s ministry.

John 12:6 NLT 6 Not that he cared for the poor—he was a thief, and since he was in charge of the disciples’ money, he often stole some for himself.

Sometimes I think we forget that Judas’ betrayal was planned out. It wasn’t a moment of weakness. The religious leaders didn’t seek him out and play on his emotions and manipulate or convince him to betray Jesus.

Judas eventually goes to them to offer to betray Jesus—for a price of thirty pieces of silver.

Matthew 26:14–16 NLT 14 Then Judas Iscariot, one of the twelve disciples, went to the leading priests 15 and asked, “How much will you pay me to betray Jesus to you?” And they gave him thirty pieces of silver. 16 From that time on, Judas began looking for an opportunity to betray Jesus.

Now, we can speculate about Judas’s motives. For a good Jewish disciple to turn in a teacher that was claiming to be God was a good thing to do in the mindset of the faith at that time.

However, to betray someone for money shows a good amount of animosity. It is premeditated. Judas was greedy and had something against Jesus.

Was Judas fearful, angry that his Messiah wasn’t properly following the law as he understood it? We will never know. But Judas’s betrayal shows us that even the closest of followers can turn away over time.

History is full of stories of betrayal. The movie Braveheart highlights and embellishes one such story.

In the movie, Scottish warrior William Wallace joins forces with the Scottish Lord Robert the Bruce in a battle against the British, as Scotland fought for independence from British rule.

But unbeknownst to Wallace, Robert the Bruce had aligned himself with Britain and Wallace barely escaped the battle with his life.

In a later scene in the movie between Robert the Bruce and his father you see the guilt and frustration he was feeling for betraying his people, and namely Willam Wallace. In the scene one line stands out when he says “all men betray, all lose heart”.

Big Idea

Now that is a fairly bleak outlook on life isn’t it? That in the end, people will always betray, and that no one can stay committed but will lose heart over time.

While I don’t share that same bleak outlook I do recognize the nature of the human heart in that failure to deal with the hard questions can lead to a hard heart.

Why it Matters

What do I mean by that? Well, I think that unfortunately and often unintentionally, we have reduced what it means to be a Christian to mean…

Say this prayer

Go to Church

Give your money

Try to live a better life

The problem here is that this is such a shallow, surface level kind of Christianity that really lacks any depth. If you are measuring your spiritual maturity based solely on Church attendance and giving, then you are going to find that when hard things happen or when you are faced with hard questions in life you won’t have the foundation needed to make it through them.

Being a follower of Jesus is so much more than a prayer and attending a service once or twice a week. Being a follower of Jesus means that you have chosen to…

Die to self

Take yourself off the throne and put Jesus on it

To acknowledge and adopt a completely new way of seeing the world and thus living in it.

It literally transforms everything about who you are, what you say, what you do, and even how you think.

It has to go deep into who you are. Being a Christian can’t be a surface level kind of decision, it has to be a life changing, soul transforming, future altering kind of decision.

Because, eventually when the shine wears off, and the emotions settle, and the newness of knowing Jesus isn’t as new anymore, you are still going to have to face a number of challenges and hard questions in life.

And if your relationship with Jesus is only surface level, you won’t be able to deal with those hard questions and given enough time, like Judas, develop a hard heart towards Jesus.

And you are probably thinking, I would never do that, well I doubt Judas planned to either.

Application

I think there are a few big issues that Judas did not address. And these same issues in our own lives need to be dealt with if we don’t want our hearts to become hard toward Jesus.

Doubt

In Christians and Church circles there are a lot of things we can talk about and share with each other in the hopes of having others hold us up in prayer, counsel us, or provide guidance.

But one thing I think we struggle with opening up about and sharing with other believers are our doubts.

Because the Bible says a lot about the necessity and importance of faith. The Bible says it is impossible to please God without faith. And so knowing this, I think that when our faith is challenged and we experience doubt, even at a small level we keep that to ourselves as to not be exposed as a fraud or a fake.

But, the truth is, doubt is a normal experience for believers. We have such a limited perspective and understanding of not just what God does, but the motivation behind why he does it.

And it is this lack of understanding that often leads to doubt because what God is doing, or not doing leaves us with more questions than answers.

Judas didn’t understand why Jesus was doing things the way he was, and so this led him to doubt Jesus. And that doubt led to betrayal.

Instead of going to him and being honest with him about his doubts, he hid them until they destroyed him.

Doubt is not sin, but it can become sin when our doubt is left undealt with and it turns to disbelief.

Frustration from unmet expectations

One of the other hard questions that often comes with doubt is how do we process being let down by God. We don’t want to think that, let alone admit to it out loud.

But if we are honest with ourselves, there are moments in our lives where we have felt let down by God.

Healing that never came

Direction that wasn’t clear

Victory that resulted in failure

Reconciliation that ended in a broken relationship

Blessing that resulted in tragedy

When these things happen it causes us to get frustrated at the fact that what we read about and what we hear about God doesn’t seem to be true in our circumstances. Father son analogy.

God is big enough to handle your frustration, because the alternative is to bottle it up and never deal with it.

Judas was clearly frustrated with what he saw and heard Jesus doing and this led to him growing bitter and cold toward Jesus. It led to a hardening of his heart, which led to his betrayal.

Pursuit of “stuff”

We know that Judas was the treasurer of the group. He managed the money. When they would travel from place to place he was the one keeping track of what money came in and what money went out and what it was being spent on.

We also learn that Judas was skimming a little off the top for himself.

What we don’t often realize is how powerful our desire and pursuit of stuff has over our relationship with Jesus.

Judas may have been a follower, but at the end of the day, Jesus was not his ultimate master and Lord, money was. This was the very reason that he was willing to betray Jesus for money.

You may be thinking “I could never do what Judas did”, but depending on where your heart is when it comes to stuff, you might be surprised what you are willing to do and not do.

We need to chase after the right things or risk developing a heard heart.

Closing

We like it when the villain gets what they deserve. For Judas, he died a horrible death (Matthew 27:5). But we must ask ourselves if we have grown cold to Jesus over the years. If we let our doubts, frustrations with God, and the pursuit of stuff to cloud our judgment, or we too could begin to deny the reality of who Jesus is.

Judas’ disbelief that led to his betrayal didn’t happen overnight. It happened as a result of a failure on his part to deal with the hard questions and issues he was facing. let it not be said of us they we too allowed our hearts to grow bitter, cold, and hard towards Jesus. We don’t have to make the same mistakes he made, but at the end of they day, that choice is up to you.