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00:41 Amen. Glory to God. Thank you for joining me.
00:46 We’re so blessed to have you here today listening to KJV Café. Hope you have your Bible. Maybe you have a hot cup of coffee or tea.
00:51 I’ve got some herbal tea here. That’s fantastic. Cranberry apple.
00:56 It’s like fall almost, so we’re so excited for the fall season. I’m excited. I can’t figure out, I think my body can figure out whether it’s hot or cold outside, but I’m ready for the fall.
01:03 We’re so excited for that. And again, thank you so much for joining us. And here we are today in God’s Word on a sobering note, talking about why Jesus chose Judas Iscariot.
01:14 We see in the Bible that Jesus actually chose Judas Iscariot. He chose his betrayer. You think about that.
01:25 If God knows the hearts of everyone, why would he choose someone with a heart to betray him? Not just choose him, put him in the inner circle, make him the treasurer.
01:35 I mean, think about that. Why would you do that? If you knew somebody was bad, would you put them in charge of the money of the purse? I doubt it.
01:42 Who else could take a wicked man and have him centrally involved in a salvation plan for all mankind, yet not leave him to go unpunished? That’s only Jesus. And we have John 6:70-71 is our text verse. Jesus answered them, have not I chosen you 12, and one of you is a devil.
02:08 He spake of Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon, for it was that should betray him being one of the 12. And so we see here in verse 70 of John 6, Jesus Himself is saying, I chose you 12, the 12 disciples. We often will read about or you’re preaching on or talk about Jesus choosing Peter or choosing John or choosing James, these other people, the sons of Zebedee.
02:35 We don’t hear a lot of talk of him choosing Judas, but he did choose him. And if you look at John 6, what was going on there? We see here that Jesus was healing and creating food for people to eat, massive amounts of food for people to eat. He was healing people.
02:56 And then he said, look, you want to follow me? Okay, here’s what you have to do. You have to believe on me, right? And it’s hard for people to truly believe because many of them didn’t. Amen.
03:10 Jesus therefore answered and said unto them, murmur not among yourselves. No man can come to me except the father, which hath sent me draw him. And I will raise him up the last day.
03:20 So this has got to be very difficult for people to hear this idea of being predestined to come to the Lord. The idea of being resurrected, which we understand is at the time of the rapture. It is written in the prophets and they shall be all taught of God.
03:34 Every man therefore that hath heard and have learned of the father cometh unto me. Not that any man hath seen the father, save he, which is of God, he has seen the father. Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that believeth on me hath everlasting life.
03:47 I am that bread of life. Your fathers did eat man in the wilderness and are dead. This is the bread, which cometh down from heaven that a man may eat thereof and not die.
03:55 So we see here in verse 50 of John 6, Jesus has given them some tough ideas here that he is from God, the Messiah. And that even that bread that came from God in the wilderness, that wasn’t the bread of life. Amen.
04:08 That wasn’t the living water. Amen. That they died, right? The rebellious Israelites in the wilderness died.
04:15 They all died off before they go in the promised land. Jesus Christ is saying, when you eat of this bread, you’ll never die. And so people are having trouble with this.
04:23 I could go on and on. I could preach many messages on this, but let’s get to the point. A lot of people walked away because they had trouble understanding or wanting to follow Jesus, knowing how difficult it would be.
04:34 And then Jesus asked the disciples, are you going to leave too? And they said, where are we going to go? Verse 68, 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 Christ, the son of the living God. Jesus answered them, have not I chosen you 12 and one of you is a devil? And so when Simon Peter says, look, I believe we believe you are God.
05:01 You have the words of eternal life. You have eternal life. We want that.
05:06 You’re the son of the living God. You’re the Christ. And Jesus says, well, I’ve chosen you because I can see earlier.
05:11 He’s saying you don’t come to him, but by the will of the Lord. Amen. And so he says, I’ve chose you.
05:16 I found you. I’ve chose you. That’s a whole other thing too, that we can understand that the Lord, we don’t find the Lord.
05:22 The Lord go ahead and gets us. Amen. He knows our hearts and our minds, and he allows us to be saved.
05:28 I mean, I can preach all day long in salvation, but the Lord has to do the saving. Amen. I plant the seed.
05:33 He does the saving. And yet he’s saying here, one is the devil. One clearly wasn’t saved.
05:38 And that one was Judas Iscariot. He was one of the 12 disciples. Again, he was in charge of the treasury.
05:42 As far as we understand, he followed Jesus for those three years of ministry. There were other important men named Judas in the Bible, Jesus’ half-brother, another disciple. So that’s why he’s called the son of Simon.
05:55 He was paid 30 coins to betray Jesus. That’s Matthew 26:13-15. He was not saved.
06:02 That’s John 13:10-11. He was empowered by Satan. That’s John 13:27.
06:09 He betrayed Jesus with a kiss. He did not repent, but was remorseful, giving back the silver, and he hung himself, Matthew 27:3-5. And through Judas’ actions, he fulfilled prophecy, as we spoke about last time. Very specific prophecy about the potter’s field, about one that ate of the bread of Jesus that betrayed him.
06:27 All of Old Testament prophecy being fulfilled here through what Judas did by betraying Jesus Christ. But why would Jesus pick this betrayer? Again, he’s a devil. He’s also an unbeliever, John 6:64.
06:43 But there are some of you that believe not for Jesus did from the beginning, whom they were that believed not, and who should betray him. And so we realize that he didn’t believe. And some people may kind of pass by that verse, John 6:64, same chapter as our text verses a little earlier.
07:01 But the idea of believing is so important. We can’t be justified by anything we do, Amen. If I go out and I give all my possessions to the Salvation Army, that makes me no better in the eyes of God, in terms of my sin nature.
07:16 If I go help people cross the street all day long, if I go to Africa and I’m living in Africa and trying to help those that are in a village somewhere that maybe need help, that doesn’t make me right in the eyes of God.
07:32 It’s impossible to please God without faith, Hebrews 11:6 tells us. And it also tells us that he’s a rewarder of them that diligently seek him, that believe on him. And we see that all the way back to the time of Abraham, Abraham was justified by faith.
07:45 Abraham was far from perfect, Amen. Father Abraham, one of the great men in the Bible, was far from perfect, but he was justified by faith. We are justified by faith. We can do something to please God, and that is have faith.
07:59 And we believe it pleases the Lord. When we simply take this supernatural, incredible, hard-to-understand-or-digest true gospel message, when we take that, as written in 1 Corinthians15: 1-4, when we take that gospel message, we say, yes, Lord, I believe. When we believe, it pleases the Lord.
08:20 When we believe, we are saved. And Judas did not believe, John 6:64. But there are some of you that believed not, for Jesus knew from the beginning who they were that believed not and who should betray him.
08:34 Now, let me stop right here. Maybe you’re listening today and you’re wondering, my faith is a little bit shaky. How can I improve it? You know, the Bible addresses this issue so clearly.
08:45 The Bible says that faith cometh by hearing and hearing the word of God. Now, if you want to improve your faith, if you want to enrich your faith, if you want to have a stronger faith, there are two parts to that.
08:58 Number one, pray to God that he will help improve your faith and give you discernment over his word and that he’ll apply it to your heart and your mind.
09:08 And then number two, get in God’s word and study it. Now, for the unbeliever, you’ll do this so that you can understand who the Lord is. And I pray and hope that through that, you’ll be saved.
09:21 Amen. That you’ll understand God’s plan of salvation, which can be seen through the Roman’s road, understanding our sin nature, understanding our need for the Savior and believing on Christ as your Savior.
09:34 And then once you’re saved, you have the Holy Spirit indwelling within you and that Holy Spirit will give you discernment and help you understand the will of God for your life.
09:43 Amen. And as you go through God’s word, and as you study it, your faith will improve. Your faith will increase.
09:49 We see Judas didn’t have faith. He was an unbeliever. Amen.
09:55 And that unbelief turned deadly for him. Amen. Because think about it.
10:07 I’ve heard a Bible teacher say this. I think it was Les Feldick, who I really enjoy watching online. He said, if you don’t have faith, what are you doing? You’re calling God a liar, are you not? Because if you don’t have faith in His word and his word says it’s true, it’s everlasting, prophecy backs it up, nature testifies to God, all these things.
10:19 And you go through all that and you say, well, I don’t believe. Well, what are you doing? You’re saying that God’s a liar and you know better. And that infuriates God, I believe.
10:27 And so having faith pleases God and it’s important beyond anything else we can do to believe. And not having faith is awful. And you go through the disputes with the Pharisees in the New Testament, oftentimes it was they didn’t believe.
10:42 They were literally looking the God himself, God in the flesh, Jesus Christ in the eyes and saying, we don’t believe you. How can you say you’re older than Abraham? How can you say you’re the son of God? And they didn’t believe. And now some people may say, well, you know, it’s hard to believe.
10:59 Well, maybe, maybe it is hard. I’ll give you that. But then Jesus was saying things that they’ve never heard before, teaching in ways that they’ve never seen, healing in ways that they cannot explain, uh, doing miracles.
11:12 And the Bible says that if it was written, all the things that Jesus did in this time, there wouldn’t be enough books in the world to keep it. I believe that. Amen.
11:19 We only know a tiny minuscule amount that God has allowed us to read in his word about what Christ did, but what Christ did in front of them wasn’t enough. That means that they had hard hearts. That means that they had willful ignorance that they didn’t want to believe.
11:32 There’s a great scripture there where there were some people that want to talk to Jesus and he didn’t give himself to them. Jesus says, and I think it’s the book of John because he knew their heart. He knew their heart and he knew what was in them.
11:44 And I believe that that that’s how God is. You know, he’s not going to reveal Himself to those wicked people that want to take advantage of situation and do bad and sin and rebel against God. Amen.
11:55 I believe that he will reveal himself to those that seek him earnestly, that desire to know God. And that once they’re saved, they continue to seek him for the rest of their lives. Amen.
12:03 And so what can we take away from this? Again, why did Jesus choose Judas? He did it for so many reasons. One being an example to us of sinful man and how we can even, we can look the part of, of knowing the Lord and not know the Lord and also to allow His plan of salvation to come to fruition. And He was, He was mocked and ridiculed by many.
12:26 And He was, you know, I guess physically crucified by the Roman soldiers. The Jews were the one insisting that he’d be crucified here. He has one of his own inner circle betraying Him.
12:41 The idea is all of this is poetically fulfilled that sinful man put God himself on the cross thinking that they were going to kill God, but God in his poetic, beautiful way said, you’re not going to kill me, but you’re going to give yourself an opportunity to receive everlasting life.
12:57 When you realize what you’ve done, when you realize your need, when you realize that you cannot do it on your own and that God is real. There’s scripture on there.
13:06 I think I have it later in my outline about he made a show of them openly. And so He gave, He gave people a plan, ability to be saved. Amen.
13:15 And at the same time said, look how foolish you are. You thought you’re so clever, you know, who indwells Judas as he betrays Jesus, the devil, because the devil wanted Jesus dead. Amen.
13:27 Thought, Hey, I get him dead. I’m good. You know, this is going to be my world.
13:31 And God’s God’s the one that gets the last, last laugh. Amen. Because Christ is raised from the dead after three days seen by over 500 walk the earth 40 days and 40 nights ascended up to heaven is currently alive and at the right hand of the father.
13:42 Amen. Oh, it’s so exciting. And it all happened because of man’s unbelief and betrayal.
13:50 And God said, okay, man, you have this sin problem and you don’t want to believe it. I’ve given you the law and you don’t, you don’t want to believe you can’t live up to the law. Okay.
13:59 Here’s an, here’s this plan of salvation, which he had known from the beginning of time would exist. And so I thank you very much for listening today. Tune in next time.
14:07 As we get to another point here on why Jesus chose Judas as a disciple, take care until next time. We’ll see you soon. God bless and amen.