Today on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. The picture of salvation is you were floating face down, already dead in the water, and Jesus picked you up, put you in the life raft, and brought you back to life. It is entirely by grace the gift of God, not of works, so that nobody can boast. You see, we're not saved because of how committed we were to Jesus.
Nope, all of us were Judas. We're saved because of how committed Jesus was to us. Welcome to Summit Life with Pastor J.D. Greer. As always, I'm your host, Molly Vitovich.
Let me ask you a question. What's your most prized possession? Is it a car, assigned to baseball, maybe a piece of jewelry? Could you put a price tag on it?
Well, for Judas, we knew money itself was his prized possession. And the price tag? 30 pieces of silver. But Jesus actually told the disciples that they would all have a price tag for their faithfulness and all would fall away, sending a message that all of us, even at our very best, still fall short and need a Savior.
So let's rejoin Pastor J.D. Greer as he teaches on the free gift of grace in a message titled, Betrayed for Me.
Sometimes when I hear the stories of people who've really messed up their lives.
Some of them ended up in prison. And then I hear them talk about the pain and the dysfunction and sometimes abuse that they went through growing up. I always find myself wondering that had I grown up in similar conditions, if I wouldn't have made the exact same decisions. God put so many graces and privileges in my life that I had absolutely nothing to do with and cannot take any credit for. I had parents who loved me.
I had good examples of character lived out before me. I never faced the kind of poverty or discrimination that pushes some people to extreme action. I was taught the word of God from my childhood. These were all gifts of grace to me for which I cannot take one iota of credit. Yet, Yahweh, even with all of these graces, even with all of those, I still had a price whereby I sold Jesus.
Betrayal and a willingness to sell him out for a price was in my heart, just like it was in Judas's. At the end of the day, our salvation, the Bible teaches us, is solely by grace, Paul says, by grace, which means unmerited favor, nothing about you. Goodness in God's heart, not goodness in yours. You've been saved through faith. Faith means trust in what God has done to accomplish your salvation, not on what you will do.
And not even that is from yourself. By the way, in Greek, that word that right there. Is written in a way that it points to the entire phrase, which means that even the faith. To trust in Jesus is a gift of God. It's something that God puts in your heart.
It's the gift of God, not of works. None of it's of works, so that nobody has any reason to boast at all. Your salvation from start to finish belonged to God. I've told you sometimes we get this idea of salvation, like, you know, we're drowning in our sea of sin and death, and we look off into the distance, and there's Jesus in a lifeboat, and we think that's my Savior there. And so we swim over to him, and we're like, Jesus, save me.
And he throws us a life raft and he pulls us in the boat, and hallelujah, Jesus was saved. That's not the right picture of salvation. The better picture of salvation is you were floating face down, already dead, in the water, and Jesus picked you up, put you in the life raft, and brought you back to life. That's what Paul's saying in Ephesians 2: it is entirely by grace. Every single bit of it was a gift of God, not of works, so that nobody can boast.
You see, we're not saved because of how committed we were to Jesus. Nope, all of us were Judas. We're saved because of how committed Jesus was to us. Hallelujah. Thank God.
Okay? That's your first question. Judas is us. Number two. Why did Judas betray Jesus?
Why did he betray Jesus? Short answer: he was disappointed with him. Judas had expectations about the Messiah. that Jesus didn't meet.
Now, again, I want you to see. Judas is not alone in this. All the disciples had problems with Jesus. They all doubted him in this way. Peter.
You know, Peter got angry with Jesus. I'm like, Jesus, you're confused. I don't know what you're doing. Jesus, why aren't you doing this? In fact, got so kind of virulent in his arguing with Jesus that Jesus finally calls him Satan.
I mean, I don't know in Jesus' list of insults, that's got to be one of the highest ones, right? You know, when he calls you Satan, that's like as bad as it gets. That's Peter, John the Baptist, whom Jesus thought of as the greatest preacher ever to live. John the Baptist, Luke chapter 7, goes through a time after he baptizes Jesus where he says, Jesus, are you really the Messiah? Because all these expectations I had about what you were going to do, you're not doing.
Thomas, you know, obviously, was like that. Or here's one of my favorite examples of this that shows you all the disciples are in this category. Matthew 28. Asteris Jesus had resurrected from the dead. And spent 40 days with the disciples, eating, talking, walking, showing them his nail scars and his hands and his feet.
He says he brings them out to the mount where he's going to ascend. He stands on the mountain. And he begins to ascend. This is Matthew 28:16. He begins to ascend.
Matthew 28, 17. And when they saw him ascending, some worshipped. But others doubted. I'm like, guys, he's floating in the air. And they're like, ah, I don't know.
How could you doubt at that moment when he's floating in the air? Here's why. It is because What Jesus was leaving undone on earth was so confusing to them, they still couldn't get their minds around it. Why were the Romans still in charge? Why was evil Rome still oppressing the Jew?
Why was there still injustice? If he's really the Messiah, why is the world such a mess? You see, those questions are legitimate questions. And they're questions that all of the disciples of Jesus had. Like most Jews, Judas had assumed a couple of things about the Messiah.
Number one, Judas wanted a Messiah who would punish evil and reward the righteous. Jewish people were waiting for a Messiah that would deliver them from the oppression of Rome and punish the wicked, and there's nothing wrong with that. We are right to cry out to God for deliverance from oppression and injustice, but Jesus shows up with a different agenda. The first time Jesus announces his Messiahship. You know what it is?
Luke chapter 4. Luke chapter 4, Jesus is 30 years old and he's in a. He's in a, let's see, a church service, a synagogue service at his local synagogue. And there was a point in the service at which they allowed people that just have something on their heart to come up and talk to everybody. And so Jesus stands up and walks forward and says, I've got a word.
And they're like, okay, you know. And he walks up and he takes the Isaiah scroll and he opens it up to Isaiah 61. And he reads this: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me. Because he's anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives, to set liberty to those who are oppressed, and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.
And all the Jews said, Amen. That's us. We're the oppressed, we're the discriminated against. And one day Messiah is going to come, and he's going to. Whoop honey, or whatever.
They all spoke well of him. They all patted him on the back and they're like, Man, you're gonna make a great preacher one day, and we really love to hear you preach because you just make us feel good and uplifted. All right, so far so good. But then he goes on in his sermon, his sermon Luke says, goes on like this: In the days of Elijah, when the heavens were shut up three years and six months, and a great famine came over all the land, Elijah was sent to none of them, none of the Israelites, only to Zarephath in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a. Widow.
In other words, there were lots of people who were hungry during that time period, but God only sent Elijah to do a miracle in the home of a Gentile woman who was not even a Jew. He goes on. There were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed, but only Naiman the Syrian. Lots of people had leprosy during the time of Elisha, but Elisha only healed one of them. And it was the head of the enemy army.
Well, they weren't expecting this turn in Jesus' sermon, so All of a sudden, Jesus starts making the point that instead of showing up to punish evil and reward the insiders, Jesus came preaching grace to outsiders, and that made everybody mad. Because when you think you're a rule follower, nothing makes you matter than when God rewards those who don't follow the rules as well as you think you do. And so the crowd listening to the sermon that morning went from patting Jesus on the back to. They rose up and drove him out of the town and brought him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built so that they could throw him down off of the cliff.
Now, I've gotten some bad reactions from sermons that I've preached before. I've never had that happen. I mean, I've got a few nasty emails, but nobody's ever tried to throw me off a cliff. Oh, then comes my, I have no idea what to do with this verse, verse 30. But passing through their midst, he went away.
I don't even know what that means. I mean, is that like a Jedi mind trick? He was like, I'm not the droid you were looking for. I don't know what it means, but he just walked through their midst and said, This is not the time for me to die. Jesus' message was that all of us, at our very best, fall.
Far sure to need a savior. We are all alike wicked before God, both oppressor and oppressed. Both of them have sinful hearts that need to be redeemed. We're all outsiders who need to be rescued. Thank God He extends grace to outsiders because that's the only kind of people that there are.
Thank God he saves really bad people because there are no other kind of people. But Judas didn't want to see this about himself. Judas preferred to see himself as somebody who was better than other people, somebody worthy of respect, somebody who was in the upper crust of morality and worthy to be rewarded, so he missed the message of a crucified Messiah altogether. You know who did get this? You know who did understand it?
The woman who came in to anoint Jesus. She was so overwhelmed with love and gratefulness to him that she washed his feet with her tears. In a similar situation with another woman, Jesus explained. The reason that people like her love me so much is that they realize how much they've been forgiven of. What he meant was not that she actually had been forgiven of more than the disciples, but she realized she had been forgiven of a lot, and that made her love Jesus.
You know what that means? The reason some of you are so apathetic when it comes to love for Jesus, the reason your love for Jesus is so weak is you have such little awareness of how desperate your condition was when Jesus saved you.
So number one, Judas wanted a Messiah who would punish evil and reward the righteous. The woman understood the Messiah came to bestow grace because there were none righteous. This is Summit Life with Pastor JD Greer. We'll get back to today's message in just a moment. But first, I want to tell you about a foundational resource we've made available this month to all of our faithful supporters.
We've all heard phrases like, ask. Jesus into your heart or give your life to Jesus. And while they're well-meaning, they can often leave people confused about what salvation really is. In his book, Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart, Pastor J.D. Greer gently clears up some of that confusion and helps us find real clarity and confidence in our relationship with God.
Walk through the big questions like, am I really saved? And what exactly is faith? And see how salvation isn't a one-time prayer or an emotional moment, but an ongoing posture of trust in Jesus. If you've ever wrestled with doubts about your standing with God or just wanna help others who do, this book is honest, clear, and rooted in the good news that Jesus really did all the work. You'll walk away not just knowing the truth, but resting in it.
We'll send Stop Asking Jesus into your heart as our thanks for your gift to the ministry right now.
So give us a call at 866-335-5220 or check it out at jdgreer.com.
Now let's return to our teaching. Once again, here's Pastor J.E. Number two. Judas wanted a Messiah who would bestow power and riches. He was looking for the Messiah to give him the good life.
The woman understood that knowing Jesus. Was the good life. Judas's reaction to the woman anointing Jesus is very revealing. He thinks that the perfume poured out on Jesus was wasted. And in one sense, y'all, in one sense, he was right.
Puritan theologian Jonathan Edwards said that the thing. That is so shocking about Mary's act was its total uselessness. I mean, think about it. It was useless to Jesus. He didn't need that expensive of an anointing.
It smelled good, what, for a few hours? And then it was totally gone, $10,000 down the drain. For just a smell for a while. It was useless to Jesus. It was useless to Meredith.
Mary did not need to earn favor from Jesus. You know how we know that? Mary was the sister of Lazarus, who Jesus raised from the dead. And John 11 makes very clear that Jesus loved that family and was very committed to them and had promised them that he would be with them forever and they would spend forever in heaven with him.
So they've already got that promise.
So it's not like she's doing this that she can get in better with Jesus. She's already got his favor. No, that act only served one purpose, and that was for her to declare her love for Jesus and to put his worth to her on display so that she could say as loudly as she could, you are worthy. And you're worth 10 billion bottles of these kinds of perfume. Y'all see, and therein you see the difference between Mary and Judas.
For Judas, Jesus was just a means to an end. He's thinking if I follow Jesus, then he will give me power and riches. But for Mary, Jesus was the end. Knowing him was the riches. Judas served Jesus to get things.
Mary gave up anything in order to know more of Jesus. Judas says, You know what? If Jesus is not going to get me riches and power and health and wealth, then what good is he? Mary says, Were the whole realm of nature mine, that were a present far too small. Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.
See, Judas thought of Jesus as useful. Mary thought of him as beautiful.
Something that is useful, you use as a helpful tool to obtain something else you really want.
So, Jesus is useful to you, then he's useful as means to heaven. A good marriage. Health, career success. But something that's beautiful to you, you love in and for itself. Right?
A tire iron is useful to me. It's useful to me because of what it can do for me in a moment that I need it. Right? And if it breaks, I throw it away. My wife and my children are beautiful to me.
I don't keep them in my life because of what they can do for me. I'm not like, I'm gonna keep you around as long as you hold out the promise that one day you'll be able to earn me, you know, several million dollars. I keep them around because they are beautiful to me. Judases find Jesus to be useful. Mary's.
find him beautiful. That means that you can tell whether you are a Judas or a Mary. by how you respond when life disappoints you. When life disappoints you, if you say, God, This may not be my preference. And this hurts like crazy.
And I don't want this, but God. If you can use this to help me know you more. And if you can use this for your glory to help others know you more and others see your worth, I'll gladly take it. Because knowing you is a better treasure than an easy life. If that's what you say in the midst of suffering, then you are a Mary.
In fact, maybe write it down this way: how you respond to suffering and pain is the measure of your understanding and your embrace of the gospel. You see, if you get angry with God when you go through a time where life disappoints you and you say, God, you're not keeping up, you're into the deal. God, if you don't start giving me what I want, health, a boyfriend, a raise, whatever, then Jesus, maybe you're not really worth following. If that's the attitude of your heart, you're probably Judas. Jesus is only a means to an end for you.
See, I've got a feeling that there's a number of you listening to me right now that you're at a crossroads in your life. Lots of things are going wrong in your life, and times are hard. And you've asked God to help you out, but things are not resolving yet. And you're like, God, are you even there? You feel confused.
You even feel angry at God. God, why is this happening to my parents? God, why is this happening to me? And you're asking, Jesus, are you even really worth following? And I want to tell you, with Mary, he is.
But not because of the things he can do for you tomorrow. He's worthy because of who he is that you will possess for all of eternity. I got a letter from a summit member who was telling me that this year she was unexpectedly diagnosed with a very serious type of cancer that caused her whole life to change, and she had to go through a number of chemo treatments. And she said, at first, I struggled with anger to God because why was He letting this happen? And I had so many things I wanted to accomplish.
She said, but you know what happened? She said, I realize that God answered a lot of prayers I've been praying over the years for Him to give me joy. Because when he had finally rattled some of my foundations, he let me learn to have joy in him. And I've been praying for a lot of people in my life to come to know Jesus, and I wasn't getting anywhere with them. But all of a sudden, through this cancer, I've had a chance to talk to a bunch of them at a whole different level about who Jesus is.
And she says, I even led one of them to Christ on my porch just the other day. And then she concluded her note to me by saying this: She says, Hard does not equal bad, hard is hard. I wouldn't choose hard for anything, but it was a good thing because it changed my heart in good ways. And knowing Jesus is worth going through all these hard things in the world, that is the heart of a Mary. Knowing Jesus is worth all going through all these hard things.
and I would take him over everything. Y'all, in summation, Judas represents a religious approach to God. I serve God to get things from God, and I expect to be rewarded for my behavior. Mary is the person who understands the gospel. I deserve nothing.
But God has given me everything in Christ, and Christ is a treasure worth losing everything else for. Y'all the praise. that Jesus gives to Mary is incredible. Her sacrifice meant so much to him that he said that her story is going to be a permanent fixture in the gospel story that shows us what a gospel response actually looks like. In fact, I like to think of when Jesus left.
That dinner and went to the garden of Gethsemane, and then went on into the trial that night, and then was beaten and then ultimately crucified. That the scent of that perfume from his hair and his feet was still probably filling his nostrils. Right, that sweet smell. Still bringing joy to his heart. In fact, I wonder if that's what the writer of Hebrews is referring to when he says that for the joy set before him, he endured the cross.
The joy of redeeming Mary, the joy of being in love with people like Mary was what brought joy to his heart. It was so meaningful to him that his praise for it was the highest he gives to anybody in the Bible. The praise for her is incredible, but the verdict on Judas is devastating. It still sends a chill through my body. It'd have been better for him had he not even been born.
You know, the only way that statement is true is if he's talking about Judas going to hell forever. If Judas was just annihilated, if he just ceased to exist, then that statement wouldn't make any sense. Because if you know at the end of our lives, if we're not Christians, if we just stop existing, you'd say, well, at least you got to experience life one time. At least you got to experience some good things in life. I'm sure Judas had some good things that he experienced, but the only way that statement is true is if Judas went to hell forever and he's still there.
What a terrible thing for the Lord Jesus Christ to say about your life. Yet, that is God's verdict on every Judas. That is, every person who does not surrender fully to Jesus without condition. That is his verdict on those who do not consider him the ultimate treasure, on those who will not give up everything to follow him. It's like Puritan Jeremy Taylor always said.
He said, you know, God threatens terrible things. for those who refuse to be insanely happy in him. Is this you? What a terrible thing to say about you. It'd be better for you, for you never to have even been born.
After Judas left, they To the Lord's table, and I'm going to show you that. The Lord's table actually represented the last offer. that Jesus gave to Judas. to turn from what he was doing and sue. embrace Jesus and to receive him.
I listen. What's interesting about this Is that Judas was not present for this part? Jesus waited until after Judas left and one of the things that shows us Is that this is a celebration only for believers? That's what Paul says in 1 Corinthians: only believers should take of the bread and the cup. But here's what's amazing.
Jesus did offer to Judas, we saw it. a portion of the Passover bread. You see, right before Judas left, they were at a point in the Passover called the Korek. And the Korek was where they took this piece of bread and they dipped it in the bitter herbs, which represented captivity to sin. And you would dip it, and it represented, like most things in the Passover, God's deliverance from the bitterness of sin.
Here's the kicker: listen. The Jewish tradition was that the host of the Passover would offer this. Piece of bread that had been dipped in the bitter herb, he would offer it to somebody who was very close to him, very special to him, usually a child. And what you were saying to them when you offered this one piece of bread to them is, you are very special to me. You're very special to me and God's salvation is for you.
Jesus, of all the disciples, he could have given it to, he offered that piece of bread that said, You're special, and I love you. He offered that to Judas. And what he was saying is, Judas, you don't have to do this. Judas, you're special to me. Judas, I'm going to die for you.
If you will receive me and Judas. Stood up. rejected Jesus' offer and walked out. You see, if you're not a believer, Jesus is actually offering the same thing to you. He is offering the same thing to you.
He is holding out the offer of salvation to you if you'll just receive it. Yes, he is. Our mission here at Summit Life is simple. To dive deeper into the life-saving message of the gospel and to help others do the same.
Okay, so JD, I've mentioned this a few times this month, but there is one question we're asked here at Summit Life more than any other, and it's this: How can someone know for sure that they're saved?
Well, I'll give you a short answer and then give you an invitation to a resource that I think can help you.
Okay. The short answer is when you trust in Christ and Christ alone. as your salvation. You're not? Thinking about what you've done to earn heaven, but you're trusting in what His finished work has accomplished on your behalf.
And the flip side of that, when you have recognized that He's the Lord, this is what repentance is: turned in submission to Him. When you do that, That is salvation. That's conversion. I always compare it to sitting down in a chair. There's only one of two positions you can be in in relation to the chair.
You're either standing beside the chair. Or you've transferred, literally, physically, you've transferred the weight of your body onto the chair. That's right. Same thing, you'll only be in one of two relationships to Jesus Christ. You're either standing.
I am gonna be good enough to earn heaven and I'm in charge of my own life, or you transferred your hope to what he did and you've surrendered to him. And so, what stop asking Jesus into your heart shows you is it shows you why, well, A, that's what the Bible teaches about salvation. Right. And B, here's how you can know. That's a good illustration.
Oh, thank you. That's really good. I should turn it into a book. Oh, we have. Oh, it's available for everybody right now.
Give us a call at 866-335-5220. That's 866-335-5220 or get a copy when you donate online at jdgreer.com. I'm Molly Bidovich. I hope you'll join us next week when Pastor J.D. continues our new teaching series and shows us how necessary it was for Jesus to be abandoned for me and for you.
Join us next time for Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.
