Experience TRUTH - #33

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Share it. But most of all, thank you for listening to the Truth Podcast Network. This is the Truth Network. The sinister plot to kill Jesus is well underway. But the religious leaders can't seem to catch him alone, away from the large Passover crowds that are clamoring to hear the Master. Their luck has changed as they've found an inside source, one of his very own disciples, to betray him. Enter Judas Iscariot, and welcome to Experience Truth. I'm Stu Epperson, and with me this week to go through the Word of God with you is my friend, long-time mentor and man of God, talk show host himself, the Christian car guy, Robbie Doolmore. Robbie, we're going to the dark side today to see the the pawn of Satan at work, Judas Iscariot himself. Not many kids out there named Judas Iscariot that I know of. How about you? Never met one.

Neither one. So here we go. We're dealing with one this week, and let's read the passage in Luke 22, 1-13. As Christ is bringing his whole earthly ministry in for a landing, the cross is right ahead of him. It's Passover week, and Judas has hatched a plan to betray him, and we all know this is all part of God's plan to begin with, but let's get into the passage.

Then we'll ask these great questions. Now the feast of unleavened bread drew near, which is called Passover, and the chief priests and the scribes sought how they might kill him, for they feared the people. Then Satan entered Judas, surnamed Iscariot, who was numbered among the twelve. So he went his way and conferred with the chief priests and captains how he might betray him to them, and they were glad and agreed to give him money.

So he promised and sought opportunity to betray him to them in the absence of the multitude. Then came the day of unleavened bread, when the Passover must be killed, and he sent Peter and John saying, go and prepare the Passover for us that we may eat. So they said to him, where do you want us to prepare? And he said to them, behold, when you've entered the city, a man will meet you carrying a pitcher of water. Follow him into the house he enters. Then you shall say to the master of the house, the teacher says to you, where is the guest room where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?

Then he will show you a large furnished upper room there to make ready. So they went and they found it just as he had said to them, and they prepared the Passover. Hit us with this first question, Robin. So why did the religious leaders want to kill Jesus, and what prevented them? So we're finding ourselves at this massive impasse, this massive crossroads, this epic battle that's so much bigger than just these people that we're reading about. This is the bigger plan, the battle between good and evil, between the serpent, Satan, and Jesus, the serpent crusher, as foretold in Genesis 3.15, the very first prophecy that was thousands of years earlier. It's all leading up to this moment. It all comes to a clashing impasse right here in Luke 22, 1-13.

There's two main things. If you break this passage up, Robbie, you've got verses 1-6 is the plan, the plot to kill Jesus. And then verses 7-13 is his final meal, the Last Supper. And we're going to get into that some next time. When we're titling that, you are what you eat.

It's really cool. As they prepare for the supper, then they go in there. So there is an ongoing effort to destroy, subterfuge, undercut, entrap, and then ultimately kill Jesus. And the luck in the mind of the Pharisees, the scribes, religious leaders has suddenly turned in their favor. Their luck has changed. They've gotten a good inside. And that's interesting how so often it's from the inside. When a church dies, it's always from the inside. When a church is persecuted from the outside, guess what happens? It gets stronger. But it always happens, the attacks on the early church and in Acts.

Everything is going great. We all want to cut Acts chapter 5 out of our Bibles, right? Because there's all this pressure and arrest and attacks on the church, but then from the inside there's an Ananias and Sapphira who lied to God, and God struck them dead. And you'll see how radical sin is dealt with in the early church.

It may be said of our churches today that someone will get some courage and do church discipline in a biblical, gracious, godly way like they did in Acts 5, maybe not to the death of someone. But here you have Judas inside betraying Christ. You have tears sewn in with the wheat. You have the chaff with the corn and the wheat right there growing together. And here he's outed very subtly, very covertly by the Pharisees.

That's a beautiful thing. And when you think about it, it's happening right here with a feast of unleavened bread. And unleavened means that nobody's puffed up, right? But the reason they want to murder him is because they are puffed up. And Jesus said, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees.

And what was that from the inside, right? So you got Judas. Here comes the leaven, the puffed up one.

He thinks he's got a better plan than God. And so, oh my goodness, it's fixing to come on. And you know about, I want you to talk about the leaven in your recent study you told me before the show of the Passover. Because ask this next question, and then I'm going to... this is a tee up for you because you have been deep in this early this morning. So what's the significance about the Passover feast and its preparation? Now I'm going to comment, and then you're going to take off on the significance of leaven and unleavened as you just did eloquently.

My comment is this. This is supposed to be a festive time of preparing for a just a massive national worship of Almighty God. Here the Son of God and God the Son, Jesus Christ, the heir to the throne, is there. And he is the Passover lamb. He's leading the Passover service, and he's dispatched these two disciples, we'll read later this passage, to go find a place for them to have this wonderful feast. So it's a time of celebration and it's a time of feasting, but you have this dark, nefarious, evil, I mean, hellish, demonic plot during this great feast to worship God, to absolutely destroy God, Robbie.

So you can't... you'll never see two more contrasting pictures of evil and good, light and darkness, colliding than you see it right here in Luke 22. And it's never contrasted more than by the leaven. You know, Paul said, hey, a little bit of leaven, leaven's the whole lump.

You got a little sin in your camp, and he came down hard in that church in 1 Corinthians, much like Peter did in Acts 5 on Ananias and Sapphira, where God killed him. And people were being killed by God for abusing the Lord's Supper, the feast that showcased and contrasted leaven versus unleaven. Right, so when you know about the Passover, and I love to do Passover satyrs, they're absolutely amazing. The Jews, one of the things that they do for the entire week before the Passover is they go hunting what they call the hametz, which is leaven, right?

They got to find it in every little corner and they got to clean and they got to do all this stuff, you know, and they'll even tell you that hametz puffs up, right? And that's what Paul was speaking of when, you know, he was talking about being puffed up. But what's fascinating when you really study it, you're going to see that that word, hametz, starts with a letter that's called het in Hebrew, but the word matzah and the word hametz similarly have almost exactly the same letters with one difference. The word matzah, which means unleavened bread, which is Passover, which is what they're talking about here, starts with an emem, which means essentially the Messiah, and then it has ezadik, which means somebody who's going to make something right, somebody's going to make something righteous, but then it ends with what's called a hei. And this letter, according to the Jews, and they teach this, has an opening that is meant for repentance, so that the air is let out the puffy, you know, out of the airbag, you know? So, but it starts out with essentially the Messiah is going to make things right through repentance. Now, when you look at the word hametz, it starts with what's called a hei, excuse me, it starts with what's called the het, that's c-h-e-t, and that letter looks just exactly like the hei, except one thing.

It doesn't have the opening, the air can't come out. Now, the word actually, the letter kind of means life, but then it has the same mem, meaning the Messiah, and the same zadik, which would be righteousness. But the point is, is it self-righteousness versus, you see? And so, when you look at the two words, now, the end of Elijah's name ends with that letter, which means repentance. And so, what they are looking for, remember, the spirit of John the Baptist was going to cause the sons to look for their fathers, the fathers to look for their sons.

Why? It's because the air had been let out of their bag. John the Baptist was telling them, you can't meet God's standards on your own. Your air's out of your bag, you've got to come to repentance. Unfortunately, the Pharisees were just getting more and more and more puffed up. They had to be their own Savior. They had to displace God, and that's why you get this. This right here at Passover, just this beautiful picture of this leaven just ready to explode, versus Jesus, who couldn't be any more the true righteous one. Wow, that's fascinating.

And we're going to get more deeper. Promise me you'll help me drill deeper on this, Robbie, when we get into the feast and the Lord's Supper next time, because we forget the Passover, how it's fulfilled by Christ, but the importance of why they had leavened bread on the night of the Passover in Egypt, way back in Exodus. I think it's chapter maybe 12, 13, and 14. So I want to get into that next time, because that's part of that passage, but this is a real important setup, because you see the notion of leaven, you see the spiritualization of it lived out in the contrast with Jesus, who is our Passover, and the self-righteous pomposity of the Pharisees, the scribes, and even Judas, who was inflated with his self-righteous and traitorous spirit.

Now, this is really good. Now look at verse one. So the feast of the Passover leavened bread drew near was called Passover, and the chief priest scribes sought how they might kill him. They feared the people. Then Satan entered Judas, surnamed Iscariot, which a name is connected to where he was from, it's simply a geographical designation, who was numbered among the 12. So he was one of the 12. And so verse four, he went his way and conferred with the chief priests and captains how he might betray them. So he betrayed him to them. So he literally is hatching a plan and conferring, and verse five it says, and they were glad. By the way, it's the only time in the whole Bible we see the Pharisees glad, isn't that interesting? They were glad. In that something, they weren't glad that they were at this celebration feast. They weren't glad that their fellow countrymen had come in from all tribes and nations, Hellenistic Jews from Cyprus and Egyptian Jews and Jews from Africa and all over. They weren't glad about the fact they were there to worship God and celebrate His deliverance from Egypt and from sin, and then the Messiah is here. They were glad that they were going to kill God. They were glad that they finally found a guy who they could turn, and that Satan had already turned to destroy Jesus. That's why they were glad.

Isn't that amazing? And look, it's very clear about that right here. They agreed to give him money. It's interesting how money is always involved, isn't it? There's always going to be a money. The love of money is at the root of all evil.

Well, it's at the root right here. And so this is really fascinating. So they agreed to give him money. Verse six, so he promised and sought opportunity to betray him to them in the absence of the multitude. Now, we're going to get to the rest of this passage next time because we are totally out of time, Robbie, but Jesus is going to send Peter and John off on an expedition to prepare this Passover feast.

It was a big deal. They had a good-sized little group there, 12 or so, with Jesus 13 and maybe some others, and so he wanted to dispatch them to do that. I want you to ask this question right here, which would be the third question, and I want that to linger over our wonderful audience and all of our affiliates listening to this program.

So glad you're here and so many folks that listen to this teaching. Robbie, read that question and let's let it just kind of sink in. How could Judas, who walked with him all that time, become a traitor? And what does it mean that Satan entered him? Yeah, so that's a heavy question, and that's a question we're going to wrap up with.

Thanks for being with us. Please share the truth. Read the truth. Study the truth. The truth, of course, is God's Word. The truth, John 832, will set you free. God bless you. We'll be back next time right here on Experience Truth. This is the Truth Network.