Running After Judas

The unsaved world is racing headlong into whatever seems to bring them satisfaction.

The world, however, glories in their shame. They flaunt their sensuality, their sexuality. They defy their God-given gender. They move from bed to bed.

They abort their inconvenient degrees. They race after ambition. They openly pursue pleasure. It's like they're running after Judas who chases 30 sparkling pieces of silver. Many people in our culture are doing precisely what Stephen just described.

They are running after whatever they think will give them a little satisfaction or pleasure. Judas was willing to betray Jesus for whatever pleasure 40 pieces of silver could buy him. That's why Stephen's calling today's lesson, Running After Judas. In today's lesson, we're looking at some of the characteristics of people who are running after their own desires instead of running after Jesus Christ. You probably know people like that, and this lesson will help you as you seek to influence them for Christ.

This lesson also serves as a warning for us to remain faithful. Here's Stephen Davey with today's Bible lesson. If you take your New Testament and return to Paul's letter to the Philippians, and notice how Paul describes in his opening statement the world. Look at verse 18.

This is where we left off last Lord's Day. For many walk, there it is again, for many walk of whom I often told you and now tell you even weeping, they are enemies of the cross of Christ. Now there are two statements in that text that might surprise you. First, that Paul would call unbelievers enemies of the cross. If you went out on the street and you ask people, Hey, are you an enemy of God? They would say, No, I'm not an enemy of God. And I'm certainly not one of his, nor he is one of mine. They would say, I don't feel like I'm an enemy of God. I've never thought about it like that, but I certainly don't feel that way. I mean, what are you talking about? An enemy of God. The truth is we are no more capable of judging our own relationship with God apart from his word and what his word reveals any more than a patient who sits before a doctor who says the results of the tests have come in and you now have inoperable cancer. And that patient says, I don't feel like I do. I feel fine.

I don't feel like I've got cancer. What are you talking about? To reject the cross of Christ is more than rejecting a wooden symbol of death. It is to reject the priceless gift of the life and bloodshed of God's own son. It is to defy the purpose of the creator. It is to ignore the terms of peace and reconciliation between God and man. It is to reject the gospel and to reject the gospel means you become an opponent of Christ, whether you feel it or not. James writes in his, in his letter, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. James, chapter four, verse four. It doesn't matter who you are. It doesn't matter what your resume says about you.

It doesn't matter what you think about yourself or what other people say about you. As long as you reject the gospel, you are listen to this horrifying thought. You are in a state of enmity. You are the enemy of God.

This is the present status of an unbelieving world. Paul writes, they are enemies of the cross of Christ. Now, the second statement that might surprise you is that Paul writes here with great emotion and he says this, I now tell you even weeping. As Paul will begin to describe the unbeliever, then you need to see him with tears trickling down his cheeks. We know that Paul wept, evidently a stalwart, courageous man, and yet very, very tender and emotional. He wept as he warned the Ephesian elders and the flock of the coming wolves false teachers, Acts chapter 20. He wept over the influence of those false teachers, Romans nine. He wept as he expressed his deep concern for the wayward church in Corinth, second Corinthians chapter two. But here in Philippians chapter three, this is the only place in the New Testament where Paul speaks of crying in the present tense.

And I say that so that when you read what he has to say about the world, you need to see these lines spotted. You need to see the ink running a bit as it mixes with the tears of the apostle. Paul is worthy of imitation in so many respects and beloved, he is worthy of imitating in this respect as well. Paul wept over unbelievers like Jesus Christ wept over unbelieving Jerusalem, Luke 1941. There's absolutely no hint here of Paul, you know, thinking or feeling, well, you know, those unbelievers are going to go to hell and good riddance.

And didn't they deserve it? No Christian should entertain that kind of spirit toward the lost. In fact, the more you know about the coming judgment and all its horror revealed in scripture, the more you are moved to compassion and urgency and prayer and outreach. Charles Spurgeon, the famous pastor in the 1800s wrote, if sinners are going to be damned, at least let them leap into hell over our dead bodies. If they are to perish, let them perish with our arms wrapped around their knees, begging them to stay.

If hell is to be filled, let no one go there unprayed for and unwarned. I remember as a boy, even into my middle school and high school years, reading those little booklets my father used to give sailors on the streets of Norfolk, Virginia as they would pour out of the base there in Norfolk and off their ships off duty and come downtown Norfolk in those old days to revel. I can still remember though it's been 50 years, prostitutes standing in the open doorways of their parlors calling out to these men.

I can still see some of those drunken sailors going into the alley right next to the serviceman's center and throwing up. And in one of those little booklets I remember the artist showing a broad highway packed with people walking on it and you could see ahead where the artist showed the highway suddenly ending as a precipice and people simply plunging over it and into the flames of hell. That marked me. First, I didn't want to be one of them. Second, I wanted to warn people that that was coming. When we see people walking through life self-destructing, when we watch our world running like Judas toward their own ambition in life, it should provoke in us great pity and passion and compassion to do everything we can to warn them and rescue them by the gospel and the grace and providence of God. I want you to know this paragraph has worked all over me.

I spent a lot more time in it than we're going to spend together. Do I weep for my world and do you? There are tears streaming down his face and Paul now begins after telling us that here's the world and he's going to describe the world four different ways and I'll outline it for you. Number one, he says first, their condemnation is settled. Their condemnation is settled, verse 19. He begins his description, whose end is destruction.

This is their end. Paul is playing on words here in the original language. Earlier, he used the form of the same word to refer, in fact, it's translated perfection or completion or maturity and we talked about the principle that Paul is saying I'm not perfect and I will be in Christ one day but I am being perfected. I am evidencing these marks of maturity.

This is the end toward which I'm working. Now Paul uses that same word here to refer to the unbeliever whose end is not perfection, their end is destruction. Other passages refer to it often as death. In fact, the word death, thanatos, doesn't mean to cease to exist.

It means to be separated. At death, the material part of you is separated from the immaterial part of you, which either goes to Hades as an unbeliever waiting for the judgment to come or to the very presence of God in the Father's house. So when you die, the shell of your physical body is separated from whom you truly are.

In fact, your body dies, your soul is just beginning to see and sense its eternal destination. The Bible actually talks about two deaths, a physical death and a second death. In fact, according to how scripture explains it, if you are only born once, that is physically, you are going to experience two deaths, two separations.

One, a separation between the shell of your body and your immaterial part. And secondly, a spiritual death that lasts forever, which is separation from God. That's exactly how the apostle John speaks of it in Revelation 2014, where he writes, and this is the second death, the lake of fire. So the second death is not a cessation of a life to exist, it is eternal separation from God. Now let me quickly add this, if you have been born twice, once physically, and then born again by faith in Jesus Christ, if you have been born twice, you'll only die once physically. You will not face the second death of eternal separation from God. So let me kind of summarize it this way, if you have been born only once, you die twice.

If you have been born twice, you die once. But then, if the rapture occurs this afternoon, none of us die. We go immediately like Enoch and Elijah transported upward to meet the Lord in the air, 1 Thessalonians 4.17, that's another sermon or two or seven or ten, we can't get down there, okay. But while I'm on the subject, and I wanted to address it because of the text, and I get asked this question, by the way, probably more than any other question, is hell forever? One of the verses, in fact, the key proof text for those who don't believe it's forever, is where Jesus is preaching, and Matthew at least once records it, he says this to his audience, do not fear those who kill the body, but are unable to kill the soul.

You must fear him who is able to destroy both body and soul in hell. Matthew 10, 28, now that sounds like both the body and the soul of unbelievers eventually cease to exist, that God is going to destroy both. However, the word used by Jesus for destroy is significant, it's a word that simply means to deliver up. In fact, Jesus uses the word often in his messages, and it's never meant to pass out of existence, he means it to point to the fact that you will be delivered up to misery. So Jesus is effectively saying, you'd better fear him who is able to deliver up both your body and soul in hell. And this is the terrifying future existence of the unbeliever without Christ and it's described throughout the New Testament as eternal hopelessness or not only a wasted life, but everlasting torment or irredeemable lostness or never ending darkness or eternal despair or banishment from the presence of God forever. And Paul is so overwhelmed by the gravity of such an eternal, unremitting, never ending sentence. In fact, Dante described it well in his medieval poem, where he imagined written above the gates of hell, the words abandon all hope ye who enter here. See the question is not does a person cease to exist, the question is where will you exist forever?

That's the question. And that question posed to an unbelieving world, brought tears down the face of Paul. Apart from Jesus Christ, their condemnation is settled. Secondly, he goes further, their cravings are sensual. Their cravings are sensual. He writes further in verse 19, whose God is their appetite. Whose God is their appetite. The word appetite translates kwiliya, which refers to the colon or the abdomen, and in particular the stomach. And Paul uses it and others often metaphorically to refer to the unrestrained, physical, forbidden, sensual desires.

Out of bounds. One author wrote that Paul is effectively saying that the unbeliever lives with no higher authority than the dictates of their body. Their body governs everything.

How they feel, what they want, what they pursue, what they love, that dictates everything. By the way, would you notice that Paul doesn't specifically point out any one appetite. He doesn't elaborate, he doesn't refer specifically to fornication or drug addiction or gluttony or gossip, the unbridled use of the tongue.

It doesn't really matter to his point. The point Paul is making, J.A. Matya writes perceptively, is that whatever the appetite is, it has lordship over them and they worship it. That's true, isn't it? Anything someone is pursuing in defiance of God is their God. Is it really that serious? I mean, what's wrong with the desire someone acts upon? I mean, how can it be wrong to quote a famous song from a generation ago when it feels so right? Can what a person desires really be a warning?

Not that they are to pursue it, but that it is drawing them further away from God, ultimately bringing judgment and death. Steve Farrar wrote in his book, standing tall about a family had taken shelter in the basement of their home, a severe storm was passing through the news. Reports said tornadoes had been sighted and so they waited in the basement until the storm passed by them and after it was gone, the family went upstairs and the father opened the front door to look outside at all the damage and a downed power line was in the street right in front of their home and it was spraying a shower of sparks as it just moved back and forth. Before the father realized what was happening, his five year old daughter had run near the edge of the lawn heading for that sparkling wire in the street and he yelled, Lori, stop. Lori kept going. Lori, stop right now, he yelled and Lori kept running for that enticing sparkler.

Stop, Lori, he screamed as he jumped off the porch and ran toward her. Lori reached it first, grabbed it and was instantly killed. To her little mind it sparkled. It looked entertaining. It looked worthy of holding. It didn't look deadly.

It looked like something you would want to experience. See, the world is racing after the sparkling gods of their own satisfaction and they will discover, apart from Christ too late, that they had chosen unsatisfying, deadly, sparkling gods in the meantime of wasting their lives. As Paul considers the self-destructing, empty lives of the unbeliever, he weeps as he writes, effectively their condemnation is settled, their cravings are sensual, thirdly their commendations are shameful. Paul writes in verse 19, whose end is destruction, whose God is their appetite, and whose glory is their shame.

What does he mean? Paul is saying with that phrase that the world finds its greatest glory in that which is shameful. You don't really hear that language much anymore, do you? That something is shameful.

What you hear is, well, does somebody want to do it? Not, it's shameful or shame on you. You know, we're really down on shame as a culture. And Paul says that they then glory, they exalt that which ought to bring them shame. Shame is actually a wonderful God-given gift. When you find yourself blushing, when you find yourself thinking, I probably shouldn't do that or say that or think that, that's a gift from the Lord to say it's shameful.

The world, however, glories in their shame. They flaunt their sensuality, their sexuality, they defy their God-given gender, they move from bed to bed, they abort their inconvenient babies, they race after ambition, they openly pursue a pleasure, whatever it is that brings them pleasure. It's like they're running after Judas who chases 30 sparkling pieces of silver. Paul writes, they exalt, they glory in practices and habits and desires of which should bring them shame.

But it doesn't really stop there because of what he says. Paul is actually saying that they arrive at the most extreme form of wickedness. They're not only proud of their worst perversions, they applaud the same in others.

They exalt it to others. This of course takes you back to Isaiah the prophet who recorded of his own generation. And by the way, this isn't new to our generation. This is the generation of man. This is the heart of man apart from the gospel.

Isaiah recorded of his generation. They call evil good and good evil. They exchange darkness for light and light for darkness.

They exchange bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. In other words, it isn't evil. It's good. It isn't darkness. It's light. It isn't bitter. Taste it.

It's sweet. Paul describes this final step of defiance and unbelief as he wrote to the Roman church, although the world intuitively knows the ordinances of God, that those who practice such things that he's already listed in that chapter, that they are worthy of death, that is eternal separation from God. They not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them. They're cheering one another on, on that broad path that's leading to the precipice.

And the world would respond to the gospel, this can't be out of bounds. I mean, look at how many people are doing it. This is commendable. Come on, don't be on the wrong side of history.

D.K. Chesterton famously wrote a century ago, fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions. They're still tragic diversions from the truth. They're still shameful. They're still unwholesome. They're still self-destructing practices that heap one penalty upon another on poor, lost people who are driven then to justify their shame.

Their commendations are shameful. And with that, Paul delivers the fourth descriptive phrase, their captivations are short-sighted. Notice one more in verse 19. They set their minds on earthly things. They are earth-bound, Paul says. They are earth-dwellers. They are earth-oriented. They are earth-lovers. They are earth-worshippers.

How tragically short-sighted is that? I see Paul with tears streaming down his cheeks, effectively informing the church in Philippi that for these unbelievers, earth will effectively be the closest they ever get to heaven. While there's life and breath in your lungs, there's still time. Christ is the only hope. The gospel of faith in Christ alone is your only salvation. My question to you is, will you give up earth for him before it is too late?

For those of you who believe, I want you to think of a face or a name, a person. You know they need Christ and you're in their life in some way, shape, or form. Ask God to give you a spirit of the apostle Paul and of Christ himself. Ask him to give you a burden for them. A burden can weigh you down.

Ask him for a burden for that lost one. Let's commit to praying that God will give us a burden for those who need to hear the truth of the gospel. And friend, as Stephen was talking today, it might be that you are the one who needs to respond in faith to the gospel of Jesus Christ. If you need to understand the gospel for yourself, or if you want to influence others toward the gospel, we have a resource that can help you. We have a pamphlet called God's Wisdom for Your Heart.

It explains the message of salvation that God has offered to all who call on him in faith. There are three ways you can access this resource. We have printed copies available, and we provide those because it makes it easy for you to share them and give them away.

You can get a supply in our online store, or you can call us today at 866-48-BIBLE and we can help you over the phone. If you don't need printed copies, you'll find the content on our website under the info tab. There's also a button that says gospel on the landing page of our app. If you install our app, you would always have that resource available, and you could walk people through this presentation of the gospel message. There's much more available on that app as well, but the presentation, God's Wisdom for Your Heart, is especially helpful. You'll find our app in the iTunes and the Google Play stores, and our website is wisdomonline.org. And I hope you'll join us again tomorrow for more wisdom for the heart.