#3 The Birth of the Church: Get Out of the Way!

Focusing on the first chapter of the book of Acts. The church, the body of Christ was transferred from his physical body and the church was transferred to us and we become the church. In this teaching we will discuss the betrayal of Judas. Many of us have our own theory of Judas, maybe when we were younger we formed this opinion based on a lot of the artistic renderings of him with the scowl and so forth.

However, maybe Judas was the politician of the group, pretty savvy, pretty smart. Probably better educated than the rest of the group. After all, he was in charge of the money for the group. He was a fairly popular and charismatic member of the group.

There are several theories of why Judas did this.  As we grew up we basically thought he was just the bad apple of the bunch but at the same time we have probably realized he did not do anything worse than things we have done in our lives. Did Judas see all this coming and turn states evidence? Did he see all this coming and jump to the other side real quick and maybe they would take it easier on him.  Did he do it for the money? Probably not, 30 pieces of silver wouldn’t have gone very far, I am sure he had access to the whole treasury and that had a 100x more in it.

Did he feel like he had a hatred for Jesus and Jesus could read his mind and he was somehow an evil person? We like to point our finger at the other guy and say at least I dont do that.. But the thumb is pointing back to us as a reminder.

Maybe the betrayal of Jesus was done because it was Judas’ own way of bringing this whole thing to a head.  He honestly thought Jesus was the Messiah and he was going to an earthly ruler and he was going to help make it happen.  He was going to jump ahead of God and instead of getting involved in what God was doing, he was going to ask God to get involved in what he was doing.  He was going to go out first and get his blessing later.  This is our best guess as to what happened.

Don't  you think that at the last supper when Jesus says, go ahead and do what you must do Judas took that as confirmation that he knew what he needed to do. The fact is that he did indeed betray Jesus and he immediately felt a horrible sorrow when Jesus did not become the earthly king and therefore he hung himself.  

But now that leave 11, not 12 and they had to find a suitable replacement.  We know him to be Mathias.