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Printer Friendly VersionJesus is
alive! The resurrection has occurred. Death has been defeated. Sin has been
conquered. Hell has been subdued. Jesus has appeared to His disciples. He
will be with them for a further 40 days. He will instruct them. He will restore
them. He will prepare them. He will have some very interesting encounters
with individuals in these 40 days. Today I want to look at an encounter that
never happened.
He was a
beautiful baby, his mother’s darling son, his father’s pride and
joy. His parents had great hopes for him. In those days parents named their
children according to what they hoped they would become. The literal translation
of his name is ‘Praise’. He was born in a village called Kerioth,
a small town in southern Judah. The area was well known for its fruit farms.
His father probably was a fruit farmer, and like so many men he probably wanted
better for his son. So they called him Praise. Maybe they wanted him to be
known as the Praise of Kerioth. As he grew, his parents could see his potential.
He was good with numbers. Maybe he would be an accountant. Better than the
backbreaking work of fruit farming.
One day a
young preacher passed through their village and Praise told his parents he
was going to follow this prophet. He became a follower of Jesus. Then one
morning Jesus came to Praise and said, ‘I have been praying all night
and I would like you to be one of my twelve disciples.’ Maybe he would
fulfill his name in a way no one could have ever imagined. He was chosen to
be a trusted friend of Jesus. He was selected to learn from Jesus, to pray
like Jesus, to share in His spiritual mission. In Praise, all the hopes of
his parents were being fulfilled.
But his life
carries several warnings.
Close contact
with holy things is no guarantee of personal salvation. The Praise of Kerioth,
one of the twelve, spent three years with Jesus. He heard the greatest preacher
that ever lived. He witnessed lives being changed through Jesus’ preaching.
He observed empty religion exposed, and heard on a regular basis that men
and women could have a personal relationship with God, the Father. He beheld
some of the greatest miracles ever recorded in Scripture. Not only that, but
Jesus gave the twelve authority and sent them out in twos to preach and teach,
to heal and to release. He came back with the others full of excitement, when
they reported how the demons were subject to the authority Jesus had given
to them. But he also heard Jesus say, “Do not rejoice that the spirits
submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven" (Luke
10:20). Unfortunately, the Praise of Kerioth never had his name entered in
the Lamb’s Book of Life.
May I stop
and ask you a direct question? Are you a born again Christian? I know a question
like that can be very abrupt and some people do not like such direct questions.
But some people here have been coming to church for years. You have been in
close contact with holy things for some time. You have had the privilege of
hearing the gospel preached every time you have come to the sanctuary. You
have witnessed the difference between empty religion and genuine faith. You
know people here who have a personal relationship with God through Jesus.
You have heard some testify to answers to prayer and seen lives transformed
by the power of Christ. You have been close to holy things but you know your
name is not recorded in the Lamb’s Book of Life.
G. Hudson
Taylor, the great missionary to China, said it was unfair for some people
to hear the gospel twice when others have not even heard it once. How many
times have you heard the Gospel of Good News and as yet you have never responded?
You can be
present in body and absent in mind. Think of the events of the night Jesus
was betrayed. In John 13 Jesus was with the disciples in the Upper Room. Before
the meal Jesus wrapped a towel around himself and took a basin of water and
washed the feet of each one in the room. Some objected; some felt uncomfortable
that the Master would take the role of a servant. But He did it nonetheless.
He did it to show them how much He loved them. He demonstrated His love for
them in a way He had never done before. The Praise of Kerioth had his feet
washed by Jesus. More was to follow. How proud his parents would have been
had they seen what happened at the supper. There was Praise sitting in the
seat of honour, right beside the Master. He was in the place of a trusted
friend, as one who had the confidence of Jesus. He was also the one who held
the money for the group. The Praise of Kerioth was Judas Iscariot. There he
sat in the Upper Room. Jesus had just opened His heart and had demonstrated
His love for all of them. What was Judas thinking about? What was on his mind?
Was he thinking about 30 pieces of silver? What he could buy with his blood
money? We know what was on his mind, for Jesus, the One who knows what is
in us, turned to him and said, "What you are about to do, do quickly."
Judas was separate from all that was happening; present in body only.
Can I ask
you, where you have been since church started today? You sit with that interested
expression on your face but in your mind you have been miles away. Some married
men have developed the art of looking intensely interested in what their wives
are saying, while in their mind they are somewhere else. Some people practice
the art in church. Where have you been since the service began? You have been
into next week, wondering how you can manage to fit everything that needs
to be done into five working days. You have laid plans for the alterations
that need to be done to the house. You have been working out how you afford
the monthly payments on that new car you want. You have been away on a mental
holiday. We have sung some of the most wonderful words today and they have
slipped off your tongue with no thought. We have read Scripture together and
prayed to God but you have not been with us.
Close proximity
to holy things is no guarantee of conversion. Some people come to church faithfully
every week. Sometimes they are more faithful than some church members. They
sit through some of the most inspirational times of spiritual worship and
they go out unchanged. They do not belong to Christ. Their lives are rooted
in time and they give no thought to eternity.
The door
to heaven is next to the door of hell. Verse 30 tells us Judas went out and
it was night. How expressive that verse is. It tells us of the darkness of
the night; the darkness of his soul; the darkness of his intention. Judas
had heard Jesus preach. He had heard it was possible to leave this scene of
time and end up in a place called outer darkness. But he chose to go into
the darkness alone. After Judas left the room, the others sang a hymn, then
they went out through the same door, passed over the Kidron Valley, and went
to the Garden of Gethsemane. They went out the same door, but they went with
Jesus and not without Him. What a contrast. They went out with the One known
as the Light of the World. Judas left without Him, and went out into the darkness.
The tragedy
was that when he got his payment for betraying Jesus, his 30 pieces of silver
brought him no satisfaction. So much so, that he went and hanged himself.
They took the 30 pieces of silver and purchased a field where they buried
Judas. Scattered throughout Scripture are a number of epitaphs that could
be ascribed to the Praise of Kerioth. But there is one in Matthew 24:26, where
Jesus said it would have been better if he had not been born. It would have
been much better for his parents to have remained childless than to give birth
to one who would betray the Son of God. But the bigger tragedy was that Judas
missed the resurrection. He missed an encounter with the Risen Christ. He
was no longer around with the disciples when the Risen Christ said, “Peace,
be still.” He did not know how the story ended. There could have been
restoration for Judas the same as there was for Peter. Judas never had that
walk along the seaside. He never heard the forgiving voice of the One with
whom he had been in close contact for three years. Judas missed the resurrection!
As I think
about the Praise of Kerioth and all of the hopes his parents had for him,
I cannot but think of his tragic end. I sat with an elderly man in hospital
yesterday. He was talking about going to heaven. I asked him how long he had
been a Christian. “For 45 years,” he replied. Then he told me
how he had sat through revival meetings almost every night for one month and
heard the gospel. “It went in one ear and out the other,” he continued.
On the final Thursday night one of the evangelists sang a song and through
one line of that song God really spoke to him. I asked, “What were the
words?” He recited them with all the strength that his weak frame could
muster, “When you pass the last milestone on earth, where will your
soul be?” That night he stayed back and asked Jesus to forgive him and
to come into his life. He’s nearing the last milestone but he knows
where his soul will be when he ends his journey here.
It is possible to be in close contact with holy things and have no guarantee of personal salvation. It is possible to be present in body and absent in mind when you are in church. The door to heaven is next to the door of hell. We do not want anyone who has contact with this church to miss the final resurrection. We do not want anyone to miss that great reunion when the trumpet sounds. We want everyone to be there. In a few moments we will all leave church. When you leave through the door will you go with Jesus or will you leave without Him? There is too much to miss if you go without Him. Better to talk to Him now and make sure that it is well with your soul.