that we would also take time to consider your word. We have been rejoicing this morning with many hymns and many words that have warmed our hearts. We pray that you would guide what it said this morning in Jesus' name. Good morning, everyone, it's good to be with you.
It's still a bit of echo. There's a tremendous amount of buttons and sliders to boggle the mind in the sound booth. I don't need a lot of amplification really. How are we doing?
Okay, we're going to keep going. I've been told to proceed. If anyone wants anything pertaining to the presentation, you can email me. I'm retired.
I like getting emails. I used to get a lot from human beings. Now most of my emails are not coming from human beings. I am definitely pressing the advanced button.
Oh, I know what's going on. There is an off-on switch. There. It's nice to know it wasn't me.
I sent to my grandson yesterday. For most of my life, cell phones did not exist. He said, what? Boggles the mind.
This morning I want for us to consider three biblical characters. And they are Judas, Peter and John. I don't know the last time you may have ever heard a sermon on Judas. Judas is a character who perhaps makes us shudder.
We do know that Peter denied the Lord. Perhaps that gives us pause. They perhaps that shakes us up a little to think about someone who loved the Lord. I'm sure from his heart Peter loved the Lord and he denied the Lord that perhaps shakes us a bit.
But perhaps we would rather not think about Judas at all. Perhaps he makes us shudder and we move on. If I had to add some words underneath those three names, I might have this. Will you have dealings with Jesus?
Will you? These three men have dealings with Jesus. Would you have dealings with Jesus? That very thought shall give you pause.
You have had and you have many relationships in your lives. You have superficial relationships. You have acquaintances. All the way up to the most intimate relationship.
Many of you have a spouse, my wife and I married 42 years. She can finish my sentences and I can finish her sentences. We are very dear to each other. I'm incredibly grateful for that fact in my life and for that person in my life who is very, very dear to my heart.
What is your relationship to the Christ? When you deal with the Christ, what characterizes that? These three men, I believe, have lessons all unto themselves, each to his own for us. If you're going to have dealings with Jesus Christ, you need to think very carefully about what sort of interaction you want to have with him.
You need to think very carefully about how honest you are going to be with him. You're going to learn very quickly if you're not married, that if you've been married even a short time, that is one of the most basic, basic things. Honesty, honesty, honesty in a relationship is very, very basic and fundamental. Without it, there is no trust and without trust, I don't know what relationship there is.
When we think of love and when we think of being in a love relationship, we often, I think, again too, perhaps Hollywood contributes to this, think of love as something that is full of very positive emotions and so it can be. But I want to try to point out to you this morning that if you want to have dealings with Jesus, who loves you more than you know, who loves you more than your spouse, who gave his life to redeem you and wants you to enjoy the presence of God in your heart, Jesus wants to be in fellowship with you. If you want to have dealings with that person, the honesty that is required is frightening. The love that he has is so profound and so deep that it will not put up with anything false, anything.
He will not have it. It is a very powerful and courageous love. One of my own children who doesn't live in the city was saying that there is a topic that he doesn't want to talk about with his wife. He finds that it is too touchy having to do with her parents but anyway, whatever it is.
And it is sort of a, you know, here you have two people who deeply love each other and yet there is a topic that my son goes, I am not here. I can't talk about that with you. And so there is an element of tragedy in that I suppose, an element of sadness. But perhaps you can relate to it.
Perhaps you know that there are tough topics that really you would rather not tread on and if you do tread on them or walk in that realm, you tip toes through the tulips as we used to say. Well, I think that the nature of a true relationship, a meaningful relationship with a Christ, is such that there are no such tulips, there is no such place. He will not be tiptoeing through the tulips with you and you dare not hide from him. You can't do it.
You might think you can do it, but you can't do it. We read of a man named Judas Iscariot. That means that he was from Hyriot, which was about 30 kilometers south of Hebron and he amongst the disciples was the other Judean, Jesus, having been born in Bethlehem, 30 kilometers north of Hebron. All the others were Galileans when I was in high school in Newfoundland.
I moved to Newfoundland in the fifth grade. There were kind of two kinds of people. I think Bob Harvey will get a kick out of this. There were the townies in the Baman and there was kind of an unspoken rule.
We knew who the Baman were, but you dare not call the Baman a Baman. He made a coming from the bus from St. Phillips. You don't dare say to him, from your accent, you're a Baman, aren't you?
Unless you wanted your nose flattened. The Galileans had their own accent and that was 11 of the disciples. Judas was from Hyriot. Hence Iscariot in the vernacular.
He's identified in Matthew 10 and John and Luke 6 and so on as one of the 12, but Matthew adds and he was the traitor. He was the one who betrayed Jesus. It is an idea of giving someone over in the original Greek parrot, Didamai, the idea of handing someone over. That's what he did.
As you may remember, he betrayed Jesus with a kiss and he arranged for that meeting at night in that place. And Jesus said to him, would you betray the son of man with a kiss? Would you betray me with a kiss? There was no answer.
No answer that's recorded anyway. How did that happen? You know, people talk about tipping points, turning points, watershed points in one's life. And you think of Judas who's joining the 12 and throwing in his lot with them.
And yet quite early on John indicates in John 6 that this one was different to this Judas and Scariot. In John 6 we read these profound words that the spirit who gives life to flesh counts for nothing. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life. But there are some of you who do not believe, who do not believe that.
As a result, many of the disciples you might put in single quotes disciples left and would no longer walk with him. And Jesus said, would you leave me also? And Peter said, but you have the words of eternal life. There's a sense in which being a hanger on is a, you know, that's kind of an open question, isn't it?
You have the group of people who heard such things that this kingdom that Jesus is talking about has nothing to do with the flesh. It is not material. It is spiritual. And some of the people listening to that go, I'm out.
Whatever I'm out. I'm not sure what that meant, but it doesn't sound good for my pocketbook. I don't, I'm not with that. I'm not on that page.
And they no longer followed him. The word disciple, the theta, just means a learner. It's a word that one might connect to the word student, except student tends to have kind of a structure associated with it. So a learner, people can learn from all kinds of things these days.
And these people were walking along and perhaps learning something from what Jesus was teaching. And at this point in John 6, we find that they, some of them didn't walk with him anymore. Whatever it was that they heard or whatever happened in their hearts, they were not with it. I'm tempted to say, at least they were honest because Judas kept going.
I don't believe that he was on board anymore than the people who walked away, but he hung on, hangers on. You know, we would know examples of people who are Christians, one spouse is a Christian. My mother trying to get the family, eight kids to church and my father says, yeah, whatever, not important, not important. Sometimes going, usually not, some feedback.
But you know, there's my dad for all of those years as a bit of a hanger on. Make a decision. Where do you stand? Are you hanging on?
Why are you hanging on? Are you playing some kind of game? Do you think God is satisfied with the appearances that you are putting out? If you understand anything about God at all, you would say, well, God sees right through that.
God knows that you're just going to church because of your wife. And you have absolutely no interest in these things. You are interested in the material, the material. How many miracles did you see 30, 40 more?
Isn't that something that a man could see all of these things? But you know, that is the nature of man. Tomorrow morning, he can get up and say, well, what's for breakfast? And how am I going to make a dollar?
And I think I should trade the car in. And so on and so on. What did you see yesterday? What did God do in your life yesterday?
What did God do in front of the disciples? Something amazing, something that cannot be explained and you get up the next morning and you go on with your life, which is oriented the mind, the heart, around the material, the material. I think one young lady who is a believer now, who lives and comes back, who was in a study and she was sitting in the living room and she said, Jenny said, well, you know, what will happen to me if I become a Christian? I'm concerned about this.
I'm concerned that my material situation may deteriorate. She put it in so many words. And I bluntly said to her, it may well do. Your life may get more difficult after you become a Christian.
So think carefully. I praise the Lord. She did become a Christian and contrary to her parents wishes, she married a Christian instead of the man that they had in mind for her. They were very displeased with her.
Now that she's had a couple of kids, I think the parents are happy enough perhaps, but it was very interesting in telling to me that someone would ask that question. Perhaps that question doesn't get asked often enough. The question, what's in it for me? Nothing less than nothing from a point from a material point of view.
Promise you nothing. Salvation. What's that worth? What's the salvation of your soul worth?
Infinite. Remember the Lord said, what shall it profit a man if he gained the whole world and lose his own soul? It seems to me either you believe that or you don't. It's self-evident, it's self-evidently true.
Unless you don't believe it. Unless you're like what are called dialectical materialists. That is the philosophic grounding of communism. Communism is an officially atheistic political system, sociological system.
There is no God. There is only the material and millions of people have signed up for that. What has it got them? More people have died as a result of dialectical materialism than pretty well anything other than the major plagues like the Black Death of the Middle Ages.
It doesn't work. One philosopher said the problem with pragmatism is that it doesn't work. That's a good one. It's interesting to think about Judas's, shall I say, psychology?
What did I do? I had the temerity to bring a book. Abnormal psychology. Psychologists would say Judas, you have psychological problems.
You know what's not in this book? The word sin. It's not in the index. It's not in the book.
The word God is not in the index. It's not in the book. Judas, I'm afraid that you have much bigger problems than your psychology. The Greek word psyche.
We have numa. We have a psyche. We have a personality and a mind and we have a body. Say the study of the psyche.
Judas, I'm afraid you are psyche and your soul have very serious problems that go way beyond anything that that book might be able to help you with. Occasionally, a clinical psychologist comes up for squash, not as much as he used to. He's one of the top players in the province and he came by, I think I told you the story before. And I said, Farley, in between games, does anybody ever come to you with guilt feelings?
He looked at me like, are you an idiot? I'm a clinical psychologist. People coming in and out of my office all the day long. You think none of them ever say, I feel guilty about something?
Too many of them come to him with guilt feelings. Why? What is the solution? Drugs?
That's a very common solution. Psychotherapy, as one person pointed out, he said, if you know the name John Lennox, a retired professor of mathematics and philosophy of science, a wonderful believer, a debater. He says, when you analyze sin because you feel miserable, you know what you get out of that? More and more reasons to feel miserable.
Analysis is not what's needed. Redemption is what's needed. Salvation is what's needed. They say that one of the things that was striking about Adolf Hitler, they would marvel at how much he loved to bounce a child on his knee.
They marveled at how he could be so friendly with a dog and kind of bond with a dog. I love dogs. I've had multiple dogs that I kind of bond to and kind of have that man-dog relationship. I really enjoy those.
Hitler was no different. He could establish that connection. He could laugh with a child. And he could send six million Jews to the ovens.
They say that he was a personality that when he was in the room, he had to dominate the room. He had to be in control of the room. A big personality. But, but he could never form a real attachment to anybody.
That's interesting. You think of Judas, this hanger on. You think of him being a good actor. That is what this book says is one of the characteristics of what they call psychopaths.
Psychopaths are very good actors. And here you have Judas, that hanger on. What's in the back of his mind? What's in this for me?
What's in this for me? He handed over the Lord Jesus by treachery. He made a deal for 30 pieces of silver as per Zechariah 11. He had the bang and did the money for the disciples in Jesus for three years.
Do you ever read in your Bible that one cent was missing? He wouldn't be so foolish. He wouldn't be so foolish to pill for something like that. He has bigger thoughts in mind.
It would perhaps reveal him what he was really like and who he really was. But as things got toward the end, maybe he's starting to think there is nothing in this for me. And he said, well, maybe I can salvage this by giving over this person to the authorities. And that 30 pieces of silver was what he got out of it.
And during supper the devil having already put what? There's no word there. We're having been put, if you're thinking of the devil, which actually is in 27 as an individual, as a person, as a being, into the heart of Judas' scariot, the son of Simon to betray him. And Satan, having entered in Jesus said to him, what are you doing?
What you are going to do? Do it quickly. Matthew has it this way that when Jesus said one of you is going to betray me, they were grieved. They were grieved.
Judas was not grieved. And they began to say, surely not I, surely not I. If you are Judas at that table, are you going to stay silent? Everybody else is saying, surely not I, surely not I.
Are you going to sit there and give yourself away? It is I. But what does he do? He makes a decision, a decision to be dishonest.
And he says, surely not I, Lord. How could he say that? How could he say that? It's the Lord Jesus, for the sake of chiming in, for the sake of being like the others.
What did the Lord Jesus look to him in the eye and said, what you're about to do? Do it quickly. I know what you're about. Of course the Lord Jesus knew what he was about.
And then in the next chapter, 27, 4, he says, I have betrayed innocent blood. He said, what's that to us? And he threw down those coins in the temple. You can hear them jingling with Judas is wailing.
And it's too late. It's too late. Those jingling silver coins on that stone floor as he threw them in frustration. And it was too late.
Don't be a hanger on. If you're going to say things to the Lord Jesus, be prepared that he sees through you and he sees through me and he demands complete honesty. You all know as we move on to Peter, the one whom we often remember is the one who denied him as a very memorable thing in Peter's life. And I bet Peter in heaven to this day, he looks back on that and shakes his head.
But he knows that he's been forgiven. You know when they said, when he said, one of you was going to deny me, they all said, no, no, no, no, no. And Peter, you're going to deny me three times. I would die.
I would die before I would deny you. But you know when it comes to the crunch and when we're faced with the prospect of suffering, personal suffering, do we walk away from the Lord in an instant? That girl by the fire said, I know you're accent. I know you're Galilean accent.
I don't know the man and he added some swear words for good measure. The same one who had said, I would die before I deny you. But you know, there you have the statement by the Lord that Peter would do that. And through the window, he said, I'm not going to deny you.
He said, Lord, that Peter would do that. And through the window, they met eyes and he went out and he cried just as much as Judas cried, maybe more, he remembered. And then we come to after the resurrection. And this is something that I find very profound, very pulling on my heart and on my Christian life as to how I should operate.
I have said to you that, you know, if you're going to meet eyes with the Lord Jesus Christ, it better be with complete honesty. And when you see Peter here saying over and over, Lord, you know the passage, you know that I love you. You know, Peter, the Lord knows everything. The Lord knows that you love him, Clyde and Kevin and the Lord and you know that the Lord loves you, you know.
But you failed him. I failed him. What are you going to do about it? Are you going to say, you know, it's okay, you know, God knows.
Yeah, God knows. But you better have dealings with the Lord Jesus. You better get it right, you better get it straightened out. The Lord Jesus was not going to let Peter just go on and have that history just sort of casually swept under the rug.
God is not the way with Jesus Christ. I have failed him. You have failed him. Maybe we shouldn't be so confident like Peter was so overconfident.
Do we really know ourselves? We may fail him, but there's something here. If you fail him, talk to him. He wants you to talk it out with him.
The Lord Jesus reinstated Peter. I wonder whether Peter was kind of going, what does he say? Feed my sheep. That's ministry.
Feed my sheep. That's really ministry. Feed my lambs. Yes.
That's ministry. I have ministry for you. You read that sermon in the beginning of the book of Acts, which covers the entire Bible. About 3,000 people were saved on the spot.
Jesus had ministry for Peter. And so, eye to eye, it was dealt with. With the voice, I recommend that when you're on your knees, you pray verbally. Talk to Jesus.
Talk to God. Speak out loud. Form the words. Lord I love you.
Form the words. Talk to God. Make it right. Get it straight.
If we confess our sins, first John 1, 9, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. That's what we need. If it's what we are going to need. I'm afraid of myself.
Next week I could do something that I would be totally ashamed of. Am I capable of that? I am so capable of that. That's the reality of me.
And I think maybe of you. But if it happens, I mean it's not into temptation, it's what the Lord teaches us to pray. But if it happens, let us go to him. As it were, make eye contact.
Talk to him. Get it right. This love of Christ is not sort of a warm feeling, you know, and all that kind of pleasant emotions as a way of defining the love of God, the love of Christ. It's a searching love, it's a powerful love, it's a dynamic love, it's a courageous love.
If you're going to be loved by Christ, you need to be courageous back to him. To admit to him, to have the courage, to have the moral fiber, to come clean. That's the only way. That's the only way.
And now in the closing minute or so, I want to say a few words about John, the Apostle John, the disciple John. Judas might make you shudder. Peter's experience might shake you up a bit. Good.
What about John? You have to love these statements. He didn't want to identify himself so prominently through the book. So what did he do?
The man who Jesus loved, the disciple who Jesus loved, the disciple who Jesus loved over and over, the disciple who Jesus loved. In the second to last verse of the book, he says, it was me. I'm the one that I was talking about. In Ephesians 5, 2 Paul says, walk in love.
In the Gospel of John, you have this man who unlike Judas had a consciousness of the love of Christ. That was his consciousness. And you can well imagine perhaps how powerful that was in his life. That is what we need.
We need the consciousness, the awareness of the fact of the reality of the love of Christ. Jane the lady who Jesus loved, yes, every day. Christian, the man who Jesus loved, yes, every day. Through up and down.
He had that consciousness. I love the way it keeps surfacing. We find him at the end that he says this. And then the last verse goes, if I were to write a book about all the things that happened, it would never be enough.
I just finished one. I could fill the libraries of the world in so many words. I could fill the university libraries and the public libraries. I could fill every piece of bookshelf in the world with the things that Jesus said and did and the wonder of them.
And through all of that, you know what I was more aware of than all of that stuff as amazing as it was? He loved me every day. That's what I remember most. What a marvelous thing.
What a marvelous thing it is to walk in love decades later. John the Apostle would write the letter of 1 John, this man who was so conscious day to day of the love of the Lord Jesus. And no doubt was greatly strengthened by that. He wrote this 1 John 4, 7, let us love one another.
For love is from God and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God for God is love. For this is the love of God manifested in us that God has sent his only begotten son into the world that we might live through him. In this love, not that we love God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation of our sins.
Beloved if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another. Ephesians 5 to walk in love. Be like John. It's fantastically, it is powerfully strengthening in ways and in words that the words cannot express the love of Christ to walk in the love of Christ and know the love of Christ.
And no doubt it will keep us on the narrow path. The Lord Jesus said, few will find it. Many go other ways, a thousand different other ways. That is the reality of this world.
Be amongst the few that find the way, that way of walking in the love of Christ shall be prayed. Father, we're conscious that we are weak, but at least help us Lord to be honest. We pray that your spirit would enable that we would learn to walk in love, that we would love one another, and that the Lord Jesus, the one who loves each of us more than we know, may he be honored and worshiped. In his name we pray, amen.
I pick to him with a very.