An Uneven Trade

Intro

Most traditional game shows are built on the premise that you can risk a little to make a lot! However, some of us aren’t risk-takers.

We would bet zero dollars on our final Jeopardy answer. We would stop while we were ahead. Others are willing to keep pressing their luck with the potential to win big dangling in front of them.

This is what gambling institutions are banking on. That if you are winning, if you are ahead, that you will keep pressing your luck thinking that you’ve already won this much and you can probably win more.

The problem is that it doesn’t typically work out this way or else casinos would go out of business and lose money. No, most of the time people end up losing what they did gain because they didn’t know enough to get out while they were ahead.

Do you remember the game show Deal or No Deal with Howie Mandel? In Deal or No Deal, a contestant is presented with twenty-six cases that include dollar amounts ranging from one penny to one million dollars.

The contestant chooses one case, hoping it’s the million-dollar case, and then eliminates the remaining cases by opening them one by one.

As the game progresses, a “banker” offers the contestant a deal: stop now and take home a reasonable sum, or press your luck and possibly end up taking home less (or more) than what they offered.

Now what would cause someone who is offered let’s say $75,000 by the banker to keep going even though the odds are against them and while they may get to the $1,000,000 dollar case, chances are high they will leave with less than the offer?

Why would someone do that? Because at the end of the day what motivates most people is the desire for more or at least what they think will be more.

Today we are going to look at the story of Judas as we begin a 4 part series titled Thirty Pieces of Silver.

And what we are going to see is someone who had to decide on whether the “deal” of 30 pieces of silver would be better than whatever Jesus was offering him.

Power in the Text

If you want to follow along in your Bibles we are going to be in Matthew 26. But before we get to Judas there is another person that we read about just before our main text.

And I want to read about both situations to show the two contrasting attitudes.

Matthew 26:6-13 NLT 6 Meanwhile, Jesus was in Bethany at the home of Simon, a man who had previously had leprosy. 7 While he was eating, a woman came in with a beautiful alabaster jar of expensive perfume and poured it over his head.

8 The disciples were indignant when they saw this. “What a waste!” they said. 9 “It could have been sold for a high price and the money given to the poor.”

10 But Jesus, aware of this, replied, “Why criticize this woman for doing such a good thing to me? 11 You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me. 12 She has poured this perfume on me to prepare my body for burial. 13 I tell you the truth, wherever the Good News is preached throughout the world, this woman’s deed will be remembered and discussed.”

Okay so we see this event where this woman pours out this very expensive perfume on Jesus’ head. In a parallel telling of this event in the gospel of John we learn that this perfume was worth approximately an entire year’s wage.

We also learn in John’s retelling of this event a little more about the disciples’ response, specifically Judas’.

John 12:4-6 NLT 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.” 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.

Judas was the treasurer if you will. Jesus had given him the responsibility of managing their money as they travelled and ministered.

We also see that Judas was not honest in his management of those funds and so this makes his comment to the woman all the more hypocritical.

Now, let’s go back to Matthew and see the next scene recorded after this perfume anointing.

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.

Here we see Judas who just criticized this woman for wasting a year’s wages by pouring it on Jesus head is now willing to trade Jesus for 30 pieces of silver.

This amount was worth far less than the perfume. In fact it would have been worth roughly 4 months wages.

But more interesting than that to me, is that this was the exact amount outlined in the law of moses that a person had to pay restitution for if his ox mauled another person’s slave.

In other words Judas payment was for that of the death of a slave. that in Judas’ eyes, Jesus held the value of a common slave.

In this passage there is a juxtaposition.

First, a woman makes a scene by anointing Jesus’s head. The disciples are upset because it was both exorbitant and excessive and an expression reserved for the dead.

In a relatable moment, we see that the disciples are not getting the point. Jesus was on his way to his death. Jesus alludes to this and tells the disciples that they should leave the woman alone—in fact, they should honor her, because she has done a good thing. While the poor will always be with them, he will not.

Comparatively, we see that Judas is ready to make a deal and trade Jesus for thirty pieces of silver.

Though it would be easy to make the parallel between the good and extravagant gift of honoring Jesus from the woman who understands his purposes and the pathetic exchange of what would amount to a relatively small profit for Judas in exchange for Jesus, we might be missing a larger and more applicable point.

“If all Judas wanted out of life was a little cash, why would he follow Jesus at all?”

Big Idea/Why it Matters

What happens when Jesus doesn’t live up to our expectations of him?

We don’t know for sure why Judas betrayed Jesus. It is all speculation. However what we do know is that Judas was greedy and in a lot of ways was a slave to money.

Judas’s selling out may have been a case of unmet expectations. Maybe Judas hoped following Jesus would pay off in the end.

He was banking on everything Jesus said actually coming true, that he and the other disciples would eventually sit on thrones, and receive a hundred times more in the kingdom to come.

Yet once they got to Jerusalem everything changed. Jesus started acting like he had a death wish. A dead King would hardly be able to deliver on the promise of his kingdom coming to earth. So perhaps that’s why Judas bailed.

If this was the case, Judas would be one of the first in the New Testament to be deceived by the prosperity gospel.

The false notion that following Jesus means we will get what we want right now. It says if we are good Christians, we will be blessed. But not blessed with the fruit of the Spirit, or wisdom, or greater obedience, or love for our neighbor.

No, this false gospel says being blessed means we will be healthy and wealthy.

But when Jesus’s work in our lives doesn’t give us the big house, nice car, or six weeks of paid vacation and a condo in Maui, it can be disappointing, especially if that was your motivation for following him all along.

When the premise or motivation of our faith is wrong, we will eventually be disappointed with God.

Following Jesus was not going to get Judas what he wanted.

Whether we follow Jesus to get what we want or trade our love for Jesus to get what we want, both are dead ends.

Application

As followers of Jesus we may be tempted to think… selling out for such a meager amount, Judas? C’mon! We would never do that!

But the joke’s on us—of course we do that! We try to trade Jesus to get what we want all the time.

Maybe Jesus couldn’t provide Judas with a throne, so why not at least get something out of the deal?

Wealth is a great tempter, and while Judas didn’t get rich off thirty pieces of silver, it was apparently enough for him. This is an especially bold picture after seeing the generosity of the woman who anointed him at dinner.

Today we harm Jesus’s influence in our lives by letting money, combined with shallow faith, win out in our everyday lives.

We cut out church, prayer, family time, serving our community, or other ways we meet with or honor God so we can do other things that seem more valuable—things such as business projects, kids’ sports, or even sleeping in or watching football.

None of those things is inherently bad, but if we are regularly trading them for communing with or following Jesus, then perhaps we’ve lost our way, as Judas did.

In fact, it is worse because unlike Judas, if you are a believer you have the indwelling Holy Spirit living in you and through you.

And let’s face it. The things we trade Jesus for are most of the time worth less than Judas’ 4 months of wages.

Most of the things we trade Jesus for are more or less about our convenience and comfort than anything else.

There was a time in American Church culture where Christians’ lives were built around Church and their commitment to serving in their local place of Worship.

Church wasn’t just something you went to on Sunday when there wasn’t anything else we would rather do going on.

You were there week in and week out. Multiple days a week and often multiple times in the same day.

This didn’t mean you couldn’t go on vacation and travel and do things that might have meant missing a few services a year. But it did mean making intentional decisions about what we were going to say yes to and what we were going to say no to.

The problem today is that it has flip flopped and what we should being saying yes to, we say no. And what we should be saying no to, we say yes.

Sunday School...

We read that “from that moment” Judas was ready to betray Jesus. He was just waiting for the right opportunity.

Closing

We all think we aren’t like Judas, but when opportunity arises, we suddenly see Judas looking back at us in the mirror. And like Judas, if we ever had hope in Christ in the first place, we know the sorrow of regret.

Judas, seeing that Jesus was going to the cross, took the money back to the priests and killed himself. His story ended tragically. Judas was gone before he could see the resurrection of Christ and understand the path to forgiveness and restoration through Jesus.

Maybe we have made an idol out of wealth, power, control, or comfort—some of these which we’ll explore in later weeks—but the way of the cross means we can change course and repent.

Unlike Judas, we live after the cross and resurrection, and that means we don’t have to be crushed by our sin and shame.

Reflecting on the things that we are tempted to trade for Jesus in our own lives can help us deepen our understanding of our Judas tendencies and rejoice in the overwhelming gift of God’s redemptive grace in our lives through his death and resurrection.

Our story doesn’t have to end in a field; it can end in glory with our risen Savior.