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The Trial of Judas Iscariot by Dr. Bruce W. Thielman, Part 3, The Judgment Our scripture reading for the evening is taken from the book of the Acts of the Apostles, the first chapter. Now this is the scene in which Peter is leading the disciples in selecting a replacement for Judas. Peter begins his discussion by quoting from the Old Testament, "Let another

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take over his charge." And then beginning the reading at the 21st verse, the leader of the Apostles continues as follows, "Therefore, one of those who bore us company all the while we had the Lord Jesus with us, coming and going from John's ministry of baptism until the day when he was taken up from us, one of those must now join us as a witness to his resurrection." Two names were

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put forward, Joseph, who was known as Barthas, and bore the added name of Justice, and Matthias. Then they prayed and said, "Thou, Lord, who knowest the hearts of all men, declare which of these two thou hast chosen to receive this office of ministry and apostleship, which Judas abandoned to go to his own place." And they drew lots, and the lot fell on Matthias, who was then assigned

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a place among the twelve apostles. And may God bless to us and to our understanding this reading from his word. Let us pray. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you have heard the evidence. The prosecuting attorney appeared before you two weeks ago and pictured Judas as the arch-hypocrite, the prince of

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traitors. He left in him no honor at all. And then, last week, the defense attorney occupied this place and tried to explain to us how Judas was, in fact, that disciple who most tried to serve the Lord, a man with a mistaken understanding of the Master, a man who took Jesus to be some kind of military Messiah and tried to create not an act of betrayal, but a confrontation between the Jews

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and Jesus, which Jesus would win, and using this as the springboard for his victory over the whole world, go out to honor God and to lift Judaism as God's chosen people. Both of these attorneys, the attorney for the prosecution and the attorney for the defense, have used the same evidence. One showed us the thirty pieces of silver and said they were testimony to greed. The other said they

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were only part of the plot used to confuse and delude the Jews. One said the sop of honor was the expression of Christ's love and the hideousness of Judas' betrayal. The other, the defense attorney, said that Judas misunderstood the sop of honor, thinking that it was Christ saying to him, "This plot you have cooked up, this plan which is yours, is a wise one. Continue with it." One

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showed us a broken fern from Gethsemane and accused Judas of rupturing the peace of believers. The other showed us the same fern and said this was all part of Judas' strategy. He was trying to get the Jews to battle Jesus in a place which Jesus knew very well, and there was no place in or about Jerusalem that could be a more perfect battlefield from the perspective of Judas and the disciples

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than the garden of Gethsemane. In leading them there, he led the Jews to a trap. The prosecuting attorney said that Judas' kiss was the most perfidious act of treason ever perpetrated, and the defense attorney said it was Judas saying to his Lord, "Master, I have accomplished the mission you wanted me to accomplish." And then the defense attorney did add one additional piece of

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evidence. He showed us the noose and said that it was the visual expression of the remorse of Judas and used it to justify, as best he could, the sorrow which was in this man when he had discovered the error which was his. So you have heard the arguments of both sides, and tonight we come to the verdict. There is always a verdict at the end of a trial, always a final word of judgment,

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there's always a last page. Well, almost always a last page. I remember some years ago when I was given a book, a detective story. I was in a place where books were not available, and this person happened to have a gothic thriller set in the plains of Suffolk in England, and I picked it up being a great lover of mystery stories and plunged into it, and I shall never forget when, knee-deep

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at English gore, I came to the end of the story. The bottom of the page I read, "Mrs. Frothingham looked out the window. She saw him coming through the darkness. In a moment, the moonlight would touch his face and the identity of the murderer would be revealed." And I turned, and somebody had removed the last page. To this very day, I don't know who the murderer was. So sometimes the

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last page is missing. If you press the figure a little, you might even go so far as to say that in our relationships with other people, the last page is always missing. I mean, we come to a place in our relationships with others where we understand a great deal about them, but isn't it true that we never understand everything about them? Or we might say of another person, "She's

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an open book to me." But the fact of the matter is, we don't really understand all the motives, all the inner desires and dreams, all those things that lead people to think the thoughts that they think and the words that they utter and the deeds that they do. We don't understand all of those things. They're on a kind of last page which is missing, and that last page is never revealed to

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us. Sometimes people do very surprising things, and we say when seeing this thing, "Why, I never knew he had it in him." And we didn't know it because you see that last page, that inner page, that page which is at the very center of things, is never really known by us. Only God knows it. Only God who knows the plot from the beginning to the end. Only God understands all of those

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threads that have gone together at the very center of ourselves, all of the influences from the moment of our birth until the moment of our death, all of the pressures, all of the uplifting things and the downgrading things. Only God understands all of this. So in the end, we can say only God knows the last page. The book of Revelation tells us that he sits upon a great white throne of

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judgment. That is a throne where he will sit and we will never sit. We will one day, however, stand before it with our heads bowed, and I would suggest to you at that moment what we will hear him say is what is on the last page. And it will come as a great surprise to many of us, for those who are first will oft times be last, and those who are last will many times be first. We see

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through a glass darkly, but he sees face to face. And when the book described in the book of Revelation is opened, when the book of judgment is cracked so that all can see, then and only then will the last page be revealed. And the only one who will be able to utter what is written upon it is the God who understands it all. He and only he can pronounce the verdict. And what we must

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remember about that verdict is that it will be absolutely true. You know, there are times when we overhear people talking about us. They don't know we're listening in, but we are. And we hear them say certain things. And when we hear these things, well, sometimes they bring great, great sweetness to our heart. They're words of encouragement and words that support. And sometimes the

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things we overhear are not pleasant at all. They're words of criticism, words that put us down. And we find ourselves unhappy because of those words. In either instance, whether the words uttered are complimentary or derogatory, whichever, we have the option of arriving at an assessment with regard to the person who's saying the things that are said. For example, we might hope that any person

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who is critical of us is really a stupid oath whose opinion isn't important anyway. And whether he is or not, we might arrive at the conclusion that he is such in order to avoid the criticism which was his. Or on the other hand, someone who speaks well of us, well, we might decide they are surely the most brilliant and understanding of all human beings. And they may not be that at all, but it

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makes us feel better to understand those words of compliment to have come from one so wide. So any person that we hear speak of ourselves, any judgment uttered by another man, we can run through the sieve of our own opinion and make it worthwhile or worthless, whichever suits us. But when God reads the last page, we won't be able to do that because his judgment is infallible. We won't be

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able to say he is a stupid oath because no one will believe us. We won't be able to carp or criticize or attempt significantly to wash away one word that he utters. It will be the truth. It will be the whole truth. It will be nothing but the truth. And all creation will hear it. Our ancestors will hear it. Our parents will hear it. Our friends will hear it. Our children will hear

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it. Everyone will hear it. And they will all know that it is true. And we will know that it is true. That's the way it will be when God reads the last page. I saw a cartoon in the New Yorker of a man walking down the street and he meets one of these fellows holding a plaque which says, "Prepare to meet thy God." So in the next picture you see him straightening his tie and combing his hair. Well,

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it won't really be that simple. God won't look at our neckties and our hair. He'll look at the last page and he'll read it out loud where everybody can hear. So you see, we can't really render a verdict or a judgment with regard to Judas. That prerogative belongs only to God. Were we to judge Judas? Well, at best we could talk about his necktie and his hair and a few

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other very obvious things, but we can't see the last page in Judas' life. And not only that, we cannot judge him because the sins which belong to Judas also belong to us. And if there's a modicum of honesty in us, we'll admit that. We're greedy as he was greedy. We mistakenly try to make Jesus fit our theology as he tried to make Jesus fit his. We're hypocritical as he was hypocritical.

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We are oft times cruel with tongue as he was stumbling tongue wounded people. We will either have the tendency to be very hard on him, thus trying to make ourselves look better, or very easy on him, thus trying to make ourselves look better. In either instance, our judgment and our verdict would not be worth the wind we take to utter it. Let the one of us who is without sin

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cast the first stone at Judas. We had better, I think, adopt, well adopt the understanding of Peter. Peter is the last one to speak of Judas in scripture. I read his words just a moment ago, and you will notice that in those words there are no severe words of criticism, no words of attack. He makes no attempt to brand Judas in any way whatever. He simply takes farewell of him with

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these words, "Judas went to his own place." And in the end, isn't that the most that any of us can say of anyone? He will go to his own place. Now let's admit the fact that in life a lot of people don't go to their own place. I mean, you know people as I know people who are very highly gifted, but they never get to the place in life which they really ought to have. I think of a man like Saul,

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who was big, physically powerful, good-looking, intelligent, popular with his peers, anointed by God to be the first king of Israel. If anyone was destined for high places, it was Saul. But he so misused and abused himself that he ended a wretched suicide. He never reached the place that could have been his. We don't have to go 3,000 years ago. I can think of an artist in California,

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a man marvelously gifted with paints and canvas, who became so caught up in love with other bodies, so lusting after them that he would purchase them, and then going beyond that, began to sell his own body until caught up in an orgy of self-indulgence and lustfulness and what can only be described as the most gross, Spock-an-alien kind of living. He lost all the talent which was his, and indeed,

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in the end, his very life. He never got to the place which was supposed to be his. And as David mourned over Saul, so I can mourn over that artist and mourn over all those people who had been gifted by God, treasure put inside of them, and they never discover that treasure, or discovering that they treat it cheaply and never use it to become everything that God wants them to become.

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They forget that some portion of the divine has been hidden in them. They forget that they have a soul, and that that soul is eternal, and that it will go to be with God, and that they can make of that thing something even more glorious than they can begin to imagine. Sad thing, when people never get to their place because they forget the soul which was theirs. There was a parable that

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came out of Civil War times. It was often told by black preachers from that day. According to the parable, Adam, when he left the Garden of Eden, fell asleep, and the four elements, the four spirits of the elements, earth, air, fire, and water, came upon him, and while he slept, they stole his soul. And earth said, "I will take his soul, and I will bury it down deep within myself,

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and he will never find it." But water said, "Oh no, eventually man will learn how to dig deep, and he will find his soul. I will instead take the soul of man, and I will take it to my deepest, most unsund waters, where no thing can live, and I will put his soul there, and he will never come upon it." But air said, "Oh yes, eventually man will learn how to plumb the depths, and when he

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does, he will find his soul. Let me take man's soul, and I will carry it out into space, and I will put it somewhere beyond the most distant star, and he will never venture there, and so he will never find his soul again." And fire said, "No, the time will come when man will learn to travel through space, and in that moment, he will acquire his soul again. Let me take his soul, and

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put it in the midst of flame, and so surround it with flame, that he will never be able to get to it." And they decided that is what they would do, and so they put the soul of man into the center of flame, but eventually the soul moved out of the flame, and it was not burned at all. So grasping this soul, they went to Satan, and they said, "All our plans have gone awry. We wish to hide the soul

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of man that we have stolen, but we cannot decide where to hide it." And Satan looking at them sneered and said, "Fools, you cannot hide the soul of man in earth, in water, in air, or in fire. There is but one place where you can put the soul of man that he will never think to look. I shall place the soul of man deep down inside of man himself." So a lot of people forget their souls, hidden away

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inside, and never in this life reach the place that God would have them know. And let's face it, there are a lot of people in life who get to very high places that we know don't really deserve those places. I mean, if there are some who never make the place which ought to be theirs, there are others who make a place which really they have no right to. You know, these are the kind of people

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who say, "It's not what you know, it's who you know. It's not push that counts in life, it's pull. I've got friends at City Hall," and all the rest of it. There's a kind of cynicism abroad in our time which encourages that kind of thinking. I had a terrible shock two weeks ago. I found a cheater in my real fill class. I really didn't think there were any. I'd heard a lot about

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cheating on the campus but never really took it seriously. And I was naive enough to believe that it didn't occur in any class I taught. And then there it was, and the evidence was incontrovertible, it could not be denied. And so I confronted him, and he, very casually and without any apparent disturbance at all, admitted it. And he not only admitted it, but he went on to tell me that there

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was a lot of cheating in my class, and that I had simply been too blind to see it all. And that was upsetting, but the thing that bothered me the most, I think, was the fact that admitting himself to be a cheater didn't seem to affect him at all. I mean, he's intelligent enough to know that if everyone within the society cheated, the whole society would collapse about us. In a matter of days, it would

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all be over. The whole warp and woof of our time would be broken. No thread could be depended upon if there was no honor and no fidelity to truth. Yet he, very casually, sat there and acknowledged his cheating. A kind of leech, a kind of social parasite, a kind of crude antinomian, an ethical anarchist, who simply depended upon a society to go its way while he lived off of it. Oh, it's not

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only students. Don't think I'm coming down on you. I know ministers who have used their pulpits to influence old ladies to leave them large inheritances. I know teachers who never read a book and therefore, not exercising their own minds, have no right to exercise the minds of others. And in the world of politics, well, turnpike commissioners and state senators and national

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senators and members of the House of Representatives and chiefs of the FBI and vice presidents of the United States and presidents of the United States have proven quite conclusively in our time that they occupy places that they do not deserve. And don't you feel like I do sometimes when you go into the polling place that what you really want to write when you see the ballot is "no"? And

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doctors, men who have sworn on their sacred honor to heal the bodies and souls of men, now sometimes give themselves to robbing Medicare and cheating the very patients they're pledged to save. Oh, there are a lot of people in places they don't deserve. I'm not much of a sports fan, but you know, I do understand enough about sports to recognize that a rainy day always helps the

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underdog. I mean, if Grove City College Wolverines were playing the Pittsburgh Steelers, the best thing that the Wolverines could do was to pray for the rain to end all rains. The more the football field could become like a swamp, the more the difference between the two teams would be neutralized. Mediocrity would be brought closer to excellence in the midst of that kind of

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situation. A swamp does that on a football field. And you see, we're kind of caught up in a swamp of cynicism now, where mediocrity is brought close to excellence by people who say, "Don't bother to study. You can get it with a crib sheet. Don't bother to be self-disciplined. There are easier ways. Don't turn to things like loyalty and integrity and dependability. I mean, there are

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other ways to the top." Jesus says of these people, "They have their reward, and what shall it profit a man if he gained the whole world the top place and lose his own soul?" So in life, we don't all get to our own place. Some forget their souls and so never climb as high as they might. Some forget their God and go higher than they ought. But it will not be so in eternity. What Peter said about

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Judas can be said about any man. In eternity, we will all go to our own place. We may flee God down the arches of the years and try to conceal ourselves from Him in the midst of tears or drown out the sound of His voice with running laughter. But there will come a time when we face Him. I cannot tell you about that any more than a child in the womb can tell you about life, so I cannot

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tell you about that judgment. Or I can say that it is certain because Jesus says it is certain, and I have never found Him to fail in the fulfillment of His Word. It is sure and it will be just. There is no doubt of that, but there is little more than I can say. If you ask me what I think, then I would say that I think the God who never violates our freedom will not violate it

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there. He will simply read the last page and then say, "You may go to your own place." And we will go. And if we love God, then our place will be with Him. And if there is something we love more than God, then our place will be with that, whatever it is, for all eternity. We won't be any different then from what we are now. Just as an acid rolling down a copper plate etches it

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forever, so the way we live now is molding our forevers. We are in the process of building our eternity. And someday we will come before God and He will simply say, "You may have your heart's desire." And if our heart is not focused on Him, then at that moment we will turn away from Him. And if our heart is aimed totally at Him, then we will go to be with Him. Please turn your cassette

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to the other side. C.S. Lewis has a little book called The Great Divorce. A group of people in hell get in a bus and ride up to heaven. And they have the opportunity, each one, to enter into heaven. But strange to say, each one of them refuses the opportunity. For example, there's a big businessman who comes and discovers a man who used to work for him is now in heaven. And this

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man who used to work for him committed a murder and was executed for his crime. And he finds him in heaven. "What are you doing here?" "I'm here by the grace of God." "Well, I really think our roles are reversed. I mean, you, a murderer there, and me, well, the kind of man I was down there. I mean, after all, don't you think that's a little bit unfair?" "Oh, it's not a matter of fairness.

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It's all a matter of the grace of God." "Well, I'm not saying that my life was perfect. I mean, I wasn't altogether religious or anything of that kind, but I've got my rights. I mean, I know what is right and what is wrong. And I've got some rights in this, and I don't understand why you should be here and I should be there. I'm just asking to come in on the basis of my rights.

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That's all. I just want my rights." "No, no one gets into heaven on the basis of their rights." "Well, don't tell me that I'm going to have to rely on some bleeding charity." "Yes, that's it. Bleeding charity. That's it. I don't want charity. I've never taken charity. I don't need charity. All I want are my rights. And I don't need to have someone like you, a murderer, telling me

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that I can't have my rights." "Look, the life you lived was not that exemplary. The kind of rules that you placed upon those of us who worked for you, the treatment you gave to your wife, the words you directed at your children, I mean, that's enough out of you. I don't have to listen to that kind of impudence from you. Those kind of things are private matters. Don't you understand

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that in the judgment of God, nothing is a private matter?" "All I want is my rights." And saying that, he turns and walks away and never enters. His heart, so pursuing what he wanted most, he could not yield himself to what God wanted most. That's the way it will be. Sin will run into God and God will not move. So sin will bounce off and it will continue going its

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own way forever and forever and forever. I think judgment will be the one time when God looks right at us and says, "Thy will be done." The thing to remember is that what God wants the most is for us to take our place with him. The hope that burns forever in the heart of God is that we will all choose to be with him forever. That's what Jesus meant when he says in John 14, "In my Father's

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house are many mansions. If it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go, I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am, ye may be also. And whither I go, you know, and the way you know, for I am the way and the truth and the life." The whole reason for the Son's coming, you see, was to enable us through him to take our place.

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Christianity has had great prophets, Elijah and Ezekiel and Jeremiah, and it has had great thinkers like Paul and Augustine and Aquinas, and great dreamers like Meister Eckhart and Berme and Kierkegaard. And it's had marvelous theologians like Calvin and Luther and Barth, and it's produced distinguished statesmen and great administrators and poets and musicians and artists and architects,

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and it's built great temples of praise, and it's filled them with magnificent liturgies, and it's sent missionaries to all the corners of the earth. But that which has caused Christianity to grow in the world, to move from country to country and from century to century, until it claims the hearts of more men than any other allegiance in history, that which has led

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Christianity to hold up always the banner of the cross, the Christ who gives a man the opportunity to take his place with God, that which has been behind the eloquence of the prophets and the theologians and the dreamers, that which has given the light even in the midst of the obscurities of the mystics and the greatest thinkers, that which has inflamed and illumined

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the greatest liturgies and filled places of worship with that which moved the hearts of men, that which claims men even when they leave it unclaimed, that is the constant and abiding desire in the heart of God for each of us to take our place with Him. "I love you," He says, "with an everlasting love. You may wander, you may sin, you may disobey, you may strive,

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you may be afraid, but I want you with me. Here is your place." When I did graduate work in Scotland, in St. Andrews, a little town on the edge of the North Sea, I learned of a woman, an old, old woman, whose son, a ne'er-do-well, had run away some forty years before. And every night, every night for forty years, she lighted a lamp in her window for her boy. And I would walk down

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to the end of High Street, around the ruins of the old castle, and you could see her cottage on the hill. And every night the light was in the window. And then, while I was there, she died, and the word spread throughout the town. And that night, drawn I don't know by what, I left my flat and walked down High Street, across North Castle, around the corner of the ruins of the old castle,

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and found myself suddenly standing in the company of at least a hundred fifty people, all standing and looking up at the window, where the light at long last had gone out. The tragedy is that Judas thought the light in God's window had gone out. And having done what he did, for whatever reason, he went out and howled over the grave of God. But God was not dead. Judas followed his soul

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into a deeper and deeper night, and all about him was the scream of storm, and the sound of lashed dark waters, and a flood of fury and death, and the turmoil spilled to his very feet. "Judas, look up. Don't look at the water. Look up." But his spirit was filled with the dark waters, and he searched out over them, hoping that he might see Jesus walking upon those waters as he'd seen

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them once before. And there was a moment of quiet and calm, and he looked, and there in the midst of the quiet and calm, lying on the waters, not walking on the waters, but lying on the waters, was a crucified Christ with a bleeding brow, and a bleeding side, and wounded arms and feet. And Judas, seeing that, searched again across the waters. "Judas, don't look at yourself. Judas,

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don't look at the waters. Go to that Christ. Judas, look up. Judas, keep looking up." But he doesn't look up. Instead, he lets all the insane wind fill his soul, and in one last wild plunge, he hurls himself into the depths, and the waters swirled over him, and he was gone. And the rest is silence. "But, oh, Judas, if you can hear me tonight, look up. No matter how intense the storm,

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or how wild the wind, look up. Sky is filled with stars. Judas, whoever you are, wherever you are, whenever you are, look up. There's always a light in God's window." Amen and amen. Amen. Amen.

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