Study of Judas: acknowledging God
We don’t hear a lot about Judas, and never read a first-hand account from him. But we know that the experience of being one of Jesus’ disciples wasn’t always rainbows, fame and butterflies. It was often difficult and grueling.
And yet, despite not really loving God, he stayed. We know he was charged with managing the money and frequently skimmed from the top in secret. Did he stay for fame or the money?
Not to imply that he only served Jesus for those goals. Rather, his love of material gains became his idol. He loved something more than Jesus and he had other heart motivations to serve Him. Underneath the surface of his servitude, something else was pulling his heart-strings. Something else was more important than God to him.
We’re in the second week of our new Lukewarm Church series. Today, we’ll see how Judas acknowledged Jesus as God, just not over his life.
With more knowledge about Jesus and time spent with Him than most Christians have today, there was a disconnect with what he cognitively knew and what he wholeheartedly believed.
He reveled in Jesus’ power. He marveled at His teachings. He received Jesus’ love. At the very least, he knew who Jesus was.
But when those same crowds eventually turned on Him, so did Judas. In fact, it’s possible that his love of money and man’s approval intertwined together as what ultimately led him to betray Jesus. He had a choice: choose his idols or choose Jesus.
And he chose 30 silver pieces.
One could wonder why he made this choice. From an outside perspective, it appeared rash and shortsighted in comparison to his 3-year-long investment into Jesus’ ministry.
But, isn’t that what we do when we choose idols above God?
As Judas, some in the lukewarm church acknowledge God’s existence but are unwilling to be fully committed to Him. They know of God, but they don’t know His heart.
“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.’ - Matthew 7:21-23
Like Jesus preached in Matthew, many will call after Him ‘Lord, Lord’. He knew of them too. But He never had a relationship with them.
Lukewarmers have knowledge of His existence; however, the life change of being fully devoted to Him requires too many sacrifices to their deserved way of life. While they appear to worship God at church, they go home and worship comfort, approval of others or success. Or anything that is more important to them than God.
The reality is, the Christian life requires sacrificial devotions to God that are often mundane, boring, uncomfortable and unattractive. Cherry picking the parts of the Christian life that seem doable, they will only give up the parts of their life to God that feel comfortable and safe. It’s easier to leave all of the unpleasant tasks of a Christian and save it for the “super Christian people”.
Only giving parts of yourself to God isn’t enough, He requires you to give Him your whole life.
Does that make you uncomfortable to hear? It has for me too.
God transforms our whole life and not part of it because He knows He’s the only One who can satisfy you. He created you to be loved by Him, to be fully satisfied by Him. He made you to glorify Him. When we seek other things to our satisfaction, it will always come up short. We’ll always be grasping for more, feeling hungry but never satiated. He wants to give you more. He wants to give you Himself.
The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. - John 10:10
It’s this abundant life that God is offering you in exchange for the temporal joys we often chose. Captured by the beautiful gifts God gives us, we look to them to give us our full satisfaction. And this can happen very, very subtly.
We can be doing all the Christianly things and yet be living a spiritually complacent life.
Stagnant spiritual life
We may believe that we’ve done enough to get by. That we’re “Christian enough”. We repent enough. We tithe enough. We’re kind enough. We go to church enough. We read the Bible enough. We love others enough.
Just because you aren’t moving forward in your spiritual life doesn’t mean you go nowhere. We’re all moving somewhere in life - either towards God or away from Him. Living apathetically affects you in many ways:
How you view God. You’ve minimized God to the point where He’s not a God worth sacrificing much for. You’re not moved by the gift of Salvation given by Jesus dying for your sins. His sacrifice isn’t life changing enough for you. It doesn’t compel you to live differently.
It can also bring about boredom in your relationship with God. You don’t understand when people talk about delighting in the Lord. You may be too disinterested enough to not even try to find out.
If you’re honest with yourself, you might not care all that much about knowing who God is at all. “Why bother?” you may think. You’ll be up in Heaven and figure out more details later. You have life to live now.
How you work. You don’t go to work to glorify God. You may have heard of the phrase “glorify God in everything” and understand the sentiment. But on Monday morning, you’re back on the grind and switch to auto-pilot. Unmoved by God. He doesn’t change your decision making, your thoughts, dreams and plans.
How you value other things. You look to other things to give you satisfaction in life because God doesn’t bring you satisfaction. You’re confident that you can get along well enough by following what you feel is best to do.
Blinds you to the affects of your complacency. The danger of complacency is that it can hide behind the lie that consistency in your spiritual life is enough. Which can lead to glazing over your Bible reading and mindlessly reciting prayer language. And slowly, knowing God becomes checking off a to-do list.
Worst of all, it deadens you. You may feel convicted of your sin but then you don’t care to change your life and do anything about it. Judas very likely believed he was a Christian, but his complacent walk led him to never identify what was keeping Him from a truly joyful relationship with God.
Is there something keeping you from enjoying God? I would argue that there is nothing else more important than figuring out what that might be.
Complacency hides in the corners of the church, masked behind faithful church goers. It looks and feels familiar. While it quietly creeps into your life, it gradually muffels God and cuts you off from your life-source.
Although unaware, it will slowly deplete you. God so deeply desires to give you life in Him. To wake you up and have you seek Him above all else. Because only He can satisfy what our hearts long for.
Have you become too comfortable? I encourage you to reflect on ways in which complacency has stolen your joy.
