The Word This Week

Mark 14:10…

One of the most difficult experiences anyone can or will go through in this life is betrayal.

If you’ve ever been betrayed, you can know Jesus knows exactly how you feel. It’s terrible, and it’s tragic.

The betrayal of the Lord Jesus Christ – God in flesh, God incarnate - is almost beyond imagining. Yet, we know it happened. The great unresolved question for us is why it happened?

To walk with Jesus for most if not all of His earthly ministry is something we dream about – and wish we could have been with Him as one of His chosen apostles. To hear Him speak, to know His personality, to glean from His wisdom, to know His gait, to see His miracles, to hear His prayers, to know His smile, to hear His rebukes, and to have a sense of the majesty of this ‘man,’ would have been the greatest honor ever bestowed on mankind. To be one of those men would have been incredibly wonderful.

What could ever turn one His chosen men against Jesus?

Had they all not realized by now He was God in flesh?

Religious tradition has taken a large toll on mankind. Religious tradition has probably been more responsible for sending people to hell than any other single factor. Certainly more than sex, drugs, and rock and roll…

Their religious tradition taught them when Messiah came, he would be a man. A great man, but a man, nonetheless. Even seeing Jesus close up, they all seemed to hold true this traditional teaching of the Jews. When Messiah came, he would be a great leader, a conquering king, and he would set Israel free from all its enemies.

It never occurred to them their greatest enemy was sin. After all, they were Jews.

The Bible clearly depicts Messiah as both a conquering king and as a suffering servant. But their religious tradition failed to teach them the part about Messiah being a suffering servant because they thought they needed a conquering king. A conquering king was all the Jews desired. The suffering servant part was set aside – and unknown by all because their religious tradition wouldn’t allow it.

How interesting it is to realize God employed the failure of religious tradition to thereby bring about the betrayal of Christ by Judas Iscariot. Jesus said it would have been better for that man if he had never been born.

Pastor Bill