Please stand for the reading of God's Word. The Scripture reading comes from the Gospel of Mark in the New Testament. It's Mark chapter 12 verses 41 through 44 and chapter 14 verses 43 through 52. That's Mark chapter 12 verses 41 through 44 and chapter 14 verses 43 through 52. The passage is also printed in your order of worship. Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury. Many reached people through in large amounts, but a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins worth only a fraction of a penny. Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, I tell you the truth. This poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They gave out of their wealth, but she, out of her poverty, put in everything. All she had to live on. Just as he was speaking, Judas, one of the twelve appeared. With him was a crowd of arm, it was a crowd arm with swords and clubs, sent from the chief priest, the teachers of the law and the elders. Now, the prayer had arranged a signal with them. The one I kiss is the man, arrest him and lead him away under guard. Going at once to Jesus, Judas said, Rabbi and kissed him. The men seized Jesus and arrested him. Then one of those standing near drew his sword and struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his ear. Am I leading a rebellion, said Jesus, that you have come out with swords and clubs to capture me? Every day I was with you teaching in the temple courts and you did not arrest me, but the scriptures must be fulfilled. Then everyone deserted him and fled. A young man wearing nothing but a lemon garment was following Jesus. When they seized him, he fled naked, leaving his garment behind. This is the word of the Lord. Please be seated. Please join me in prayer. Our Father, we come before you now as our great teacher, our Rabbi. We ask you by the power of your Holy Spirit to teach us, to remind us of the things of Jesus and to challenge us and move us and persuade us. Father, to ultimately, he can form to more and more into the likeness of Christ. So we prayed this in a strong name of Jesus. Amen. It's a phrase that we've heard and spoken many, many times throughout our lives that I wonder if you've ever thought about its origin, the kiss of death. You ever thought about where it came from? Well, as I was approaching this passage, the second one that was read just now, I had a hunch, and so I did a little research, and sure enough, at least the research that I found points exclusively to this account. It speaks of the kiss that Judas gave to his Rabbi, Jesus, that led to the rest immediately and eventually to his crucifixion, the kiss of death. Well, Judas is one of the most pitiful figures in all of the Bible, maybe in all of history. And yet it's appropriate, I think, that we pause and focus a little bit upon his life. And I want to do so briefly contrasting him with the widow that was mentioned in the first Scripture that was read. Judas is one of the twelve apostles, of course. Each time the apostles are listed in the Gospels, Judas is listed last in sort of a dramatic fashion and Judas is scarier, though the one who betrayed Jesus. That brand upon his name. It's scary, we're not really sure exactly what that means. It probably is referring to the region, the land that he came from, Karyak, which was near Moab, just across the Jordan River. Not much is given in the Scriptures about Judas. Some of us had our first exposure to this individual through Andrew Lloyd Webber's play or movie Jesus Christ Superstar that came out in the early 70s. And if you look back at that, really Judas is a central figure, and hid the saga of him being a very complex individual interplays throughout the musical against the life of Christ. But in the Gospels, it's really not that way. That type of emphasis is not given to Judas. He's mentioned. And yet when we come to preach and learn from the kiss of death, we've got to be very careful because the Scriptures don't draw too many clear conclusions about what led him to do this and what were to learn from it. And yet it's there for us, and I think there are some things that we can imagine. Just looking at his life, looking at what he did, this kiss of death, one of the most grotesque signs of evil. And yet the irony of it, that it would come from the symbol of a kiss that pictures just the opposite love and affection and devotion pictures the trail, the trail of the grossest form of evil. There was a cover article in Newsweek magazine about 10 days ago. I wonder if you ran across that talking about evil. And they were using the debacle by the FBI and the Timothy McVey case with those lost files to raise the subject about evil and evil in each one of us. It was a curious article written by a woman named Sharon Beggley. And she basically says that when we look at Timothy McVey, we want to see him as the personification of evil, Satan himself. And we want to put him in a class by himself. And she said there's a very good reason why we want to do that. She said we want to do that so that it allows us to place him in a category labeled evil with a capital E, but also more importantly, one labeled not us. And she goes on to say the enormity of Beggley's act and the yawning hole in his soul where human compassion should lie. We need to assure ourselves that him worlds apart from us. But she goes on to question that. Interestingly, in a secular article, I don't know where she's coming from, but she questions that and really begins to ask if indeed there isn't a little bit of the same root of evil, of Timothy McVey and us. And maybe we could add to that of Judas in each one of us. She quotes Robert Simon as a psychiatrist and a professor at Georgetown University's Medical School. He says this. He says there is a continuum of evil, of course, ranging from trivial evils like cutting someone off in traffic, to greater evils like acts of prejudice, to massive evils, like those perpetuated by serial sexual killers. But within all of us, there are the same roots of evil. It's interesting, isn't it? I wonder if you have thought of your own life that way. That while you're not a Timothy McVey and you're not a Judas, isn't it tempting to place people like that in a category very, very distant from us? Categorically different from us. And yet the Bible, I think, very consistently says it all springs from the same found. It all comes back to the same root, all the way back to the Garden of Eden, to the root of rebellion. And the Bible, therefore, holds up Judas as a warning signal to us. It's like you're approaching a very busy intersection and there's the flashing red lights. The Bible is holding up Judas to us and saying, look, watch, pay keen, understand this individual. Don't get absorbed with them, but understand him enough so that you will not follow the path of Judas. That you'll avoid that way of evil that leads ultimately to death. For Judas's kids of death, yes, led to the death of Christ. But Jesus was raised. Sadly, it led to Judas's death eternally. And we need to learn from that negative example. And look at positive examples. Little nuggets in the scripture like the widow who gave all she had as a positive example of the way that we should pursue. So let's look at that for just a minute. First of all, how is it that we avoid the path of evil? Or the path of Judas? And secondly, how is it that we cultivate the path of Christ? The one that just in a little slight way has shown to us in the woman who gave her all to the Lord. We do that in several ways. First of all, how do we avoid the path of Judas? The first thing that shouts at us, I think, is the hypocrisy of Judas. And so we avoid the path of Judas by being hypersensitive to hypocrisy in our own lives. Remember, hypocrisy is coming from the Greek word which is talking about a mask and a play actor. Someone who is pretending on the outside to be something that are not really internally. And so the Bible through and through is begging us to be real, to be authentic, to not just allow our lips to speak the truth but our life. And yet there's probably no better picture in all the Bible than Judas to shout at us that red flashing light. Be very, very sensitive, hypersensitive to hypocrisy. Because when you look at Judas, you say, it's remarkable. This was someone who was very close, shockingly close to Jesus. And he was a religious individual, and yet he missed it. Carl Bart, who was a leading theologian back in the earlier part of the 20th century, took up the issue of whether or not the Jews killed Jesus. And he said, you know, this is really an unfortunate way of putting it. Because individuals like those who were leaders of Nazi Germany used this in a negative way to stereotype the entire Jewish race. And he says, look, it's not fair to say the Jews in general killed Jesus. Jesus himself was a Jew, and his friends were Jews. Yes, Jewish people led to Jesus's death, but not all of them. So who was it? It was a subset of the Jewish people. It was Jewish leaders, and one of them being one of his very own Judas. Therefore, it ought to be an incredibly sobering example to any of us who's been around church for a long time. It ought to be comforting to any of you who are new and feel like goodness. They're talking about a whole other language that I don't understand. They're flipping in their Bibles real quickly. They know exactly where to go. These people have their lives together, and I'm the one that's a mess. And the great danger of being around the church and around the scriptures for a long time is that we miss Jesus in our religiosity, in our rules, in our self-righteousness. Take heed and be very, very sensitive. Well, how do you do that? Well, I think it's by guarding our hearts, understanding that the real me, the deepest part of me is the inner part of me, my soul. And so we guard against, we're very sensitive to hypocrisy in our life, by guarding our hearts. And Judas would have been wise to do this as well. Again, there's an irony in the symbol that he used to betray his Lord, the kiss. Because what do we think of when we think of a kiss? We think of affection, we think of love, we think of intimacy. And yet, at the root of his heart, where his love existed, where his desires took root, where his affections bore fruit, there wasn't the love for Jesus. There was a love for other things. Remember just one example that the Bible highlights that we talked about a couple of weeks ago, where a woman, Mark, doesn't tell us who, but the Apostle John does. It was Mary, who was the sister of Martha and Lazarus. Mary took a very expensive jar of ointment that was perfumed and broke it and anointed Jesus with it. And the disciples grumbled about it, the Apostle John highlights that it was Judas that was grumbling. And they say, look, what a waste. That's worth a year's wage to the average worker. That's a lot of money. You're just throwing away. It could have been sold and given to the poor. But John tells us a little editorial note. He says in John 12.6, he didn't say this because he cared for the poor, but because he was a thief. As keeper of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it. And so at his root, the place in Judas is being where love and affections and passions were cultivated, there was this love, at least one of them that were aware of, for money. A love to have, a greediness that I need more. This was a gifted guy. He was made treasure of the disciples. And yet that gift led to his peril to cultivating this unhealthy desire. And ultimately, he betrayed his Lord for 30 pieces of silver. It was money. And yet not money in particular, it was the problem, but the love of money. It's one of the most incorrectly quoted verses in the Bible from 1 Timothy chapter 6. Sometimes we hear it this way that money is the root of all sorts of evil. But really what the Apostle Paul said is that it's the love of money, that's the root of all sorts of evil. And I think for many of us, particularly in our culture, in 21st century America, living where many of us live in central Houston, this allure of wealth, accumulation of more and more resources, of hoarding, is very, very powerful. And we need to be careful about it. But that's just one possibility. It was one that was highlighted for Judas. The question for you is, what do you love? Because that becomes a barometer. It becomes a temperature gauge to show how hot your affections are for Christ. Another thing that I think would be very helpful in terms of avoiding the path of Judas is to keep in mind the destructive and empty way of evil. Judas is a great picture of this. It looks very tempting to have Judas' power that he could gain power and authority, and certainly more money by betraying Christ. But what happens? Well, Judas' life ends quickly. He gains the 30 coins of silver from the religious leaders. But his passions are quelled very quickly. And they're meaningless. Matthew records in Matthew 27, when Judas, who had betrayed him, saw that Jesus was condemned. He was seized with remorse and returned the 30 silver coins. To the chief priest and the elders. I have sinned, he said, drive the trade innocent blood. What's that to us? They replied. That's your responsibility. So Judas threw the money into the temple and left. And then he went away and hanged himself. What a tragic end, and yet that's the picture of evil. It's an extreme picture, but that's the way of evil. That's the path of Judas for any of us. It looks so alluring, and the promise is satisfaction is behind door number three. But when we open up that door, there's nothing there. There's emptiness and disillusionment. And Judas' life ended in death. The real kiss of death was the path of Judas for himself that he was utterly estranged from his Savior. Well, I think there's an issue for all of us that we need to keep in mind that what we coddle in our heart as true love is what we give our life to. And what we give our life to will either lead to joy and satisfaction if it's given to the glory of God, for the sake of Christ and his kingdom, or lead to disillusionment, emptiness into vanity as the author of the book of Ecclesiastes put it. When you look in contrast to Judas who spilled his 30 coins of silver on the floor of the temple, when you contrast that with the widow who came and knelt and gave all she had her two coins into the coffer in the temple, you see the dramatic contrast. Judas who wanted to just get, get, get to elevate himself and to build the passions within him, he got nothing in the end, but the woman who denied herself, imagine having no certainty humanly speaking of the next meal or where she would sleep, she sacrificed it for Christ and his kingdom. And she was commended if a striking and beautiful picture to contemplate this woman. So let's turn the corner briefly and consider how do we pursue this path. How do we give our lives more and more to the path that the widow pursued for which she was commended, the path of Christ, the narrow road that Jesus caused in the sermon on the mountain, avoiding the path of Judas. First, giving yourself to knowing who Jesus really is, discovering who he is. Now Judas was around for a long time and frankly is a lot of speculation as to what Judas believed about Jesus. But if there's any indication in the way that he brought the armed guards to Jesus to arrest him, then there might be something instructive for us because when they came, they came armed and arrested him, as though he were a common criminal. And Jesus said, am I leading a rebellion that you've got to come with swords and clubs to capture me? He said, every day I was with you teaching in the temple and you didn't arrest me. What's one of the points here? Many people viewed the Messiah as being this great political revolutionary. And it's perhaps the case that Judas saw Jesus to be this great political revolutionary. And when it became evident that he wasn't going to be that one, he became disillusioned. Certainly many people felt that way. Jesus, and knowing who he is, is the singular most important thing about us. For all of us, we need to give ourselves to knowing who he is, more and more, to sitting at his feet. When Judas came to him and kissed him, he called him rabbi, which means teacher. And yet that's exactly what he wouldn't allow Jesus to be for him because what's a teacher? A teacher is one who says sit and listen, receive instruction. And in the Jewish mindset, it was even more than we think of as a teacher. It's more of a mentor. It's someone that you followed. It's one that became a master to you in the eastern sense of the word. So that the teaching of Christ should have conformed Judas' life and behavior in radical ways. So you need to give your life, first of all, to learning who Jesus really is. But together with that, secondly, we need to sit at his feet as the rabbi, as the master, and allow his teaching, found in his word to conform us more and more to himself. The apostle John said, this is the verdict. Light has come into the world. But men love darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. And that's the way with Judas. It's the way with so many of us in this world. We live in this dark world and the easy thing is to allow the affections of darkness to drive us. But God has given to us a love letter, the Holy Scriptures. And he's given to us as he taught in John 16 the Holy Spirit to remind us of all the things that Jesus has taught us to be that counselor, that rabbi with us that can actually live in you when you come to Christ by faith to teach you and transform your life more and more. But the sad truth is that we are weak as individuals. We want to be more like the widow, but if I give all that I've got, what am I going to rely on? And the powers of evil are so powerful. Well, this passage takes into account that we are weak individuals. On both ends of this story, you see the weakness of the disciples. In fact, did you know what was happening right when Judas arrived with the bands of soldiers to arrest him? Jesus had been praying in the Garden of Gethsemane and he'd asked his disciples to watch and pray for him. And he came back three times, only to find them what? A sleep. And so it says, right before Judas arrived, verse 41, are you still sleeping and resting enough? The hour has come. Look, the Son of Man has betrayed into the hands of sinners, rise. Let us go. Here comes my betrayer. Highlighting the weakness of the disciples. And then you see at the very end of this, it says in verse 50, then everyone deserted him and fled. And it even talks about a young man, probably the author of the gospel marked himself wearing nothing but a linen garment, which following Jesus. But when they seized him, he fled naked, leaving his garment behind. So you see on both ends the weakness of the disciples, but people who have been with him for three years. If they're weak, what about you and me? But that's why God has given to us the Holy Spirit. And that's why Jesus had to receive the kiss of death from Judas. That he might go to the cross and on the cross bear for us the burdens of our inequity. Or to put it differently, Jesus received the kiss of death, even from the Father that you and I who come to him might receive the kiss of life in Jesus Christ. Think about it that way, the gospel, the good news, that though you and I are weak, and oh so much weaker than we ever wanted to admit in Christ, we are loved and accepted because of his strength. Because Jesus, at his moment of terror and fear, he didn't flee like the apostles. And though Mark probably or whoever he was even dropped his garment in his haste in flood naked, Jesus was stripped there and nailed to the cross in humility and nakedness for you. So that the Father, by pouring out his judgment upon the Son, might kiss you and me who receive him by faith. There's a song, Psalm 85, that has a beautiful song that speaks of the salvation of the Lord. And there's one little friend that says, righteousness and peace, kiss each other. You see, that's what happens in the gospel. That's what happens because Jesus had to receive the kiss of death. That all that has kept you and me from God, that estrangement from our Father. That has been, that gulf has been bridged and there has been peace and righteousness, the Father's standard of expectation and peace, kiss at the foot of the cross. When you and I come to communion as we'll do here in a minute, it's for those who have received the kiss of the Father, that is they have trusted in Jesus Christ alone for their salvation. And yet when we come to receive communion, it's our admission that we come as weak individuals and we need that kiss afresh. Some of you need that for the first time today and that's why we say, stay right where you are and receive by prayer, the gift, the kiss of life through faith and Christ. My children and I watched a movie this last week, it's one of my favorite, called The Princess Bride. It's a comedy by Rob Reiner, some of you have seen. And a lot of it revolves around, well the whole story revolves around this grandfather, Peter Falk, who is telling a fairy tale story to his little grandson who's sick. And the grandson loves to hear about the wild adventures that take place in this far off land, but he doesn't want to know about things like when princes kiss princesses and things like that. He gets sort of grossed out. And then the income, after all has happened and the great prince, so to speak, has conquered the villain and has won the princess for himself, the princess bride. Peter Falk, the grandfather, says, well, just finish it there because you wouldn't like to hear this. This is just a kiss. And the grandson says, well, no, that's okay. I don't mind too much. Go ahead. And so he tells him, he says, now there have been four kisses that have been noted that four greatest kisses of all time, but none of them compared to this kiss, the kiss of true love. Friends, you and I are thirsting throughout our lives for that true love. The love that in this dark world, we can never find any individual or any other thing. But in Jesus Christ, God the Father who created us has come to us and kissed us with the kiss of life by giving to his son the kiss of death. Would you receive that today, either for the first time or a fresh, as you revel in the true love of the conquering prince, Jesus Christ. That's pray. Thank you. Thank you that you have shown us in startling and sobering fashion, the way of darkness through the life of Judas, grant that we might turn away from the things in our life, Lord, that lead us even subtly down that path. And may we give all as the widow gave to you that we might enjoy the wonder of our Lord Christ in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.