Choose Your Reward: Judas Iscariot
Pastor Rollan Fisher
Focus: Your relationship with God must be seen as priceless - as reflected by the cross of Jesus Christ.
What is the Value of Your Relationship with God?
What’s Your Price?
The Price of the Cross
What is the Value of Your Relationship with God?
Jesus is worth all that we have - worth every act of devotion.
Matthew 26:6-16 ESV
”Now when Jesus was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, a woman came up to him with an alabaster flask of very expensive ointment, and she poured it on his head as he reclined at table. And when the disciples saw it, they were indignant, saying, "Why this waste? For this could have been sold for a large sum and given to the poor." But Jesus, aware of this, said to them, "Why do you trouble the woman? For she has done a beautiful thing to me. For you always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me. In pouring this ointment on my body, she has done it to prepare me for burial. Truly, I say to you, wherever this gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will also be told in memory of her." Then one of the twelve, whose name was Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests and said, "What will you give me if I deliver him over to you?" And they paid him thirty pieces of silver. And from that moment he sought an opportunity to betray him.“
What is your devotion to Jesus worth to you?
Everything is a trade off and you are always sacrificing one thing for another - whether it be your time, use of your talent, relationships or treasure.
What’s Your Price?
If there is a price on our love for Jesus, we will eventually sell out.
John 12:6 ESV
”He said this, not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief, and having charge of the moneybag he used to help himself to what was put into it.“
Judas was up close and personal with the one who held all good things in his hands.
Yet it wasn’t enough for him.
Judas was focusing on what he didn’t have rather than what he did.
That discontent led him into sin.
How has God been good to you?
A good rule of thumb in life is be about God’s business and he’ll be about yours.
The question we all need to eventually ask ourselves to deepen our love and expression of that love for God:
What can I do without for the sake of and advancement of God’s Kingdom?
This becomes the essence of living a life of sacrifice.
I Samuel 2:30 NIV
“Therefore the Lord, the God of Israel, declares: ‘I promised that members of your family would minister before me forever.’ But now the Lord declares: ‘Far be it from me! Those who honor me I will honor, but those who despise me will be disdained.”
How are you trying to profit from Jesus rather than simply being blessed by following him?
How are you using Jesus for your own selfish ends?
This is serving Jesus according to your own whims and desires.
If you are doing this you are positioning yourself to eventually sell Jesus out.
The Price of the Cross
Jesus demonstrated the greatest form of love by laying down his life to reconcile repentant sinners to God.
Matthew 27:1-10 ESV
”When morning came, all the chief priests and the elders of the people took counsel against Jesus to put him to death. And they bound him and led him away and delivered him over to Pilate the governor. Then when Judas, his betrayer, saw that Jesus was condemned, he changed his mind and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders, saying, "I have sinned by betraying innocent blood." They said, "What is that to us? See to it yourself." And throwing down the pieces of silver into the temple, he departed, and he went and hanged himself. But the chief priests, taking the pieces of silver, said, "It is not lawful to put them into the treasury, since it is blood money." So they took counsel and bought with them the potter's field as a burial place for strangers. Therefore that field has been called the Field of Blood to this day. Then was fulfilled what had been spoken by the prophet Jeremiah, saying, "And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him on whom a price had been set by some of the sons of Israel, and they gave them for the potter's field, as the Lord directed me."“
Who or what is more valuable to you than Jesus?
For what would you trade your relationship with God?
For what or whom can you be bought?
Ultimately, for what are you willing to die and spend an eternity in hell?
John 15:12-15 ESV
”"This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.“
Why is it all worth it?
“It is a matter of glimpsing that in God's new creation, of which Jesus's resurrection is the start, all that was good in the original creation is reaffirmed. All that has corrupted and defaced it--including many things which are woven so tightly in to the fabric of the world as we know it that we can't imagine being without them--will be done away. Learning to live as a Christian is learning to live as a renewed human being, anticipating the eventual new creation in and with a world which is still longing and groaning for that final redemption.”
Second City Church - Pastor Rollan Fisher