Was Judas Predestined to Betray Jesus?

Tom:

We are going through the gospel of John, and Dave, I know I say this most every time, but this is the book that we recommend that people read who have never read the Bible before because you have to start somewhere.  And, our encouragement is to read the Gospel of John, for a couple of reasons.  Number One:  It has the gospel of salvation spelled out plainly, clearly and a number of times.

Dave:

And then they should go on to the Book of Acts and the Book of Romans, which follows right after.  But Tom, we’ve made some headway; we are towards the end of chapter 6.  I don’t remember how long it has taken us, a year or—?

Tom:

No, we won’t speak of that, Dave; it’s just a good trip.

Dave:

Okay, very good.

Tom:

It’s exciting—each time it’s a blessing to me and I hope, also, to our listeners.  Right now we are in chapter 6, we are going to pick up with verse 68, which we talked about last week, but as I mentioned last week, I love this verse:  “Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go?  thou hast the words of eternal life.  And we believe and are sure that thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God.”  Dave, the reason I love this verse is, I’m sure I am like anyone else out thee who is a believer in Christ, but there are times when I think maybe the Lord has kind of let me down, or I am reading something that puzzles me and I don’t feel like wrestling through it and—you know what I am talking about.  There are times when this verse comes right back to me.  “Then where should I go? To whom should I turn? Because he has the words of eternal life.”

Dave:

You could look at it another way as well, Tom.  If Jesus is not who he claimed to be, if he is not the Christ, then who is?  [Are] you going to look to Buddha, Confucius, Muhammad, Joseph Smith?  No, Jesus is the one.  Jesus rode into Jerusalem on that donkey, the day we celebrate as Palm Sunday, precisely the day, 483 years to the day from the command to restore and rebuild Jerusalem that was given by Artaxerxes Longimanus 445 BC.  Now if Jesus is not the Messiah, I’m speaking to Jewish people now—or to anyone—the Messiah was supposed to come riding in on a donkey into Jerusalem and would be hailed as Messiah, then he would be killed 4 days later.  Jesus did it on the exact day.  If he is not the Messiah, who is the Messiah?  There is no Messiah because no one else rode into Jerusalem on a donkey fulfilling that prophecy in Daniel 9, and the other prophecies in Zechariah.  And so, if Jesus is not the Savior, who died for our sins?  Buddha didn’t—Buddha said, “Don’t come to me with your sins, I’ve got my own to worry about.” Buddha said, “Don’t follow me, I don’t know the way.”  Jesus said, “I am the way.”  Jesus came to die for our sins.  He rose from the dead.  Who else rose from the dead?  The graves of Buddha and Confucius and Muhammad and so forth, are all occupied.  You can go to Medina if you are a Muslim today and look at the grave where Mohammed’s remains are under the ground there somewhere, what may be left of his physical body.  The grave of Jesus is empty.  So, I like to think of Peter’s statement in that way.  “Lord, where are we going to go if you are not the Messiah?  If you’re not the Savior of sinners, if you didn’t come and pay the penalty for man’s sins so that God could forgive us on a righteous basis, I mean, what hope do we have?”

Tom:

We have no hope, we are dead in our trespasses and sins.

Dave:

Absolutely.

Tom:

Dave, picking up with verse 70:  “Jesus answered them, Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil?”  And, he spake of Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon, for he it was that should betray him, being one of the twelve.”  This seems—I mean, after my joy of the verse before—except that Peter was sort of backpedaling.  Jesus had just said, previous to that, “Are you all going to go away?”  So, there was a time of reckoning for all of them but Jesus points this out about Judas Iscariot.

Dave:

And Peter, of course, was going to deny his Lord with oaths and cursings and so forth to save his own skin.  Well, this is very instructive about Judas.  First of all, Jesus knew who he was, he knew what he was going to do, [and] he was inspired of Satan.  Now, some people think that Satan is omniscient, you know, that Satan knows everything.  First of all, he is not omnipresent.  These people that rebuke Satan—he probably isn’t even within in earshot.  He doesn’t even know what they are saying, but they are binding Satan and so forth, all over the world.  Satan is confined to one place and one time.  Furthermore, Satan, I believe, is a self-deluded egomaniac, he is confused.  I think he really thinks he is going to win.  You remember, he inspires Peter to say—this is Matthew 16—“You’re not going to be crucified—Oh Lord, you don’t have to go to the cross.”  So, here we have Peter, whom the Catholics say is the first Pope and Jesus has just said, “On this rock I will build my church.”  It could hardly be Peter because the next words out of Peter’s mouth, he’s denying the gospel, denying the very heart of it that Jesus would go to the cross.  So, on the one hand—

Tom:

Jesus has to say, “Get thee behind me, Satan.”

Dave:

Satan, yes.  So, Peter was inspired of Satan to say that, but now Judas is going to be inspired of Satan to get Jesus on the cross.  So, there’s a conflict there, Satan is confused, he’s changed his mind, he doesn’t know what he is going to do.  In fact, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2, If the princes of this world—and you can include in that the powers of darkness, if they had known, they wouldn’t have crucified Christ.  So, now he is saying, “I know one of you is a devil, I’ve chosen you twelve.”  He doesn’t name him at this time—at the Last Supper he said, “To the one to whom I give the sop,” and so forth, he says to Judas—“Whatever you do, do quickly, go out and so forth.”  Now, we have another interesting lesson to learn from this.  He was chosen!  Whoa, wait a minute?  Everyone who is chosen?  Do they become Christians?  I don’t think that this indicates that Judas was once a true believer and lost his salvation.  I don’t believe you can lose your salvation.  And yet, Christ clearly says he chose him.  So, a person can be chosen by God, by Christ, to do something for service or whatever and they can disqualify themselves for that.  That’s an important lesson to learn.  I deal with it, actually, in the book on Calvinism, which, by God’s grace, I hope will be out very soon.

Tom:

Dave, along that line, there is no indication here that Judas was fore ordained for this or it was determined that—God didn’t say, “Okay, well I need a devil here or I need somebody who is going to do this.”

Dave:

I am going to make you a Judas, be a devil—No, Jesus, on the contrary said, I chose you, Judas, I chose you to a ministry.  So, choosing is to a ministry, it’s not to salvation.  Now that’s something that we learned from this verse and, in fact, this is something Jesus wanted for Judas, apparently.  He calls him friend, when he comes.  You betray me with a kiss, friend?

Tom:

Now Dave, that brings up an interesting point about—earlier we were talking about anthropomorphisms, God knowing things yet doing things.  The only way I understand that is to relate to us.  It’s not that he reduces himself to our level—of course, Christ became a man but I am talking about God—but he uses terminology.  He says things in certain ways that I think we’re going to be held accountable for.  For example, Jesus saying to Judas, “friend.”  Well, Jesus was his friend.  He did all these things right there in Judas’ presence.  Yet Jesus knew the end thereof, but it didn’t change his relationship with him.  In other words, he wasn’t less loving or less kind or—

Dave:

You get a lesson in a microcosm, you could say here.  People sometimes say, well, if God knew that man would sin, if he knew all the evil that would come into this world, why did he create us?  God is not the cause of the evil.  He did not ordain this evil, but human beings have a choice to make, otherwise we couldn’t love God, we couldn’t respond to the offer of salvation, we would be just like puppets on a string with God pulling the string and Judas is very clear, Jesus chose him.  He gave him the opportunity to be a disciple.  He apparently wanted him, he wanted that for Judas, and Judas turned away because he wanted money more than he wanted to please God.  And, that’s something that can get in the way of all of us.  Beware of the desire to please man or to gain money, to gain power, to gain popularity.  We had better please only God and live our lives in the way that we will be happiest the last 30 seconds of our life or when we meet him.