Judas: The Fighter for Social Justice Gone Awry Kelly Durant
Matthew 10:4 Simon the Cananite, and Judas Iscariot, who also betrayed Him.
2. Do you really understand how anger, pride, politics, and misinformation damages people? It will damage a person to the point of betraying Jesus and others who are good people and even those of their own family! All of us must take a serious look at what sets up a person to become a betrayer.
Judas was a betrayer to Jesus, and when I first found out about that as a child, I thought, oh no, how could anyone be that horrible? A disciple hurting Jesus?! How is it that family will betray family? There are a few answers to be found. Here is a Biblical commentary on how we know Judas was a Jewish political radical.
“His (Judas) resume may also have included identification as a Zealot, an attribute held by only one other disciple, Simon the Zealot. How do we know that Judas was probably a Zealot? By his surname, Iscariot. Researchers believe this is a form of the title sicarii, meaning "dagger-men," a group of ultra-Zealots who carried a knife with them at all times to be prepared to assassinate traitors and capitulators. In English, we could call him Judas Daggerman.”https://www.bibletools.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/Topical.show/RTD/CGG/ID/654/Judas-Iscariot.htm
3. The zealots in Jesus’ day were the political activists, they were Jewish social justice radicals who despised the Roman governmental authority to the point they would attack any one of them they could verbally and/or physically. They were the violent protesters back then who were never happy because they wanted the power. Due to the hypocrisy and disobedience God was not blessing Israel. It seems history repeats itself as discontented ones, protesters, betrayers, and murderers have always been everywhere yelling and demanding that things be how they want them without getting right with God to be worthy.
And personally, I do not blame Simon (not Peter) and Judas for hating the Romans; both of them being zealots. The Romans were perverted, murderous, wasteful partiers getting rich off the heavy taxes they imposed on those conquered. They murdered, enslaved, and exploited all races, not just the Jews. Resistors to their dominance suffered extreme cruelty. Their oppressive system is still in place today but now it is not identified as Roman rule but rather is observed in dictatorship and communist systems. Notice all of these are run by cruel military rule which does not allow the citizens to be armed.
4. Only Jesus return will topple these Satanic usurpers who think they own God’s world and resources, and they exploit the people God created to be free! Sadly, people are still considered as property around the world for false religious purposes, for gangs, for politics, and for sexual and labor trafficking and much more!
The dream of Judas, and of the zealots, was to have the Jews rise to power and conquer the Romans and become the new world leaders. The coming Messiah they knew about in the prophecies was supposed to help them accomplish this goal. They expected Jesus to be a political spiritual figure with absolute power to rule all the world forever. As Christians we know Jesus first had to come as the lamb of God, but He will return with all power and authority with the holy angels to reign forever. But this will happen in God’s time only; only He knows the hour!
5. When we all look at history since the beginning of time, we observe that those in power have almost always had to carry out acts that are repulse to most of us. They have had to spy on friends and betray them, get certain enemies murdered, go to war causing hundreds of thousands of young men to lose their lives, and witness that they abuse their position to make their selves ultra-rich and despotic.
What has always disturbed me is how Satan temped Jesus and he told Him that he would give him the cities of the world if he would bow down to worship him. This reveals that Satan is the ultimate politician running all the world; but it’s only for now until Jesus return! Satan is the head of the ‘shadow governments’! He is the one behind the scenes pushing for population reductions, wars, divisions over race and wealth, exploitations, freedom for criminals, drug use (legal and not), and perversions that include desecrating and defiling the human body God created.
Few altruistic, loving, caring, serving, tender-hearted Christians want anything to do with politics because of all the evil involved in it. Christians do want social justice, as “Jesus says we are blessed if we “hunger and thirst for righteous” The factor we have to deal with is this, “For evil men to succeed, we only need that good men do nothing!” It seems this is what has happened, few good men have confronted and fought for more true justice exposing the evil, corruption, and horrific abuses of the powerful ones in high places.
6. So, we see Judas was a character who was patient and deceptive in his ambition for power. He wanted to use Jesus as the leader to accomplish his political agenda and followed Him for over 3 years. Jesus was here to fulfil God’s will and pressuring Him did not work with the betrayal of Him, so this practice makes you wonder, how many men have fallen giving into the temptations of Satan?
Satan can only control a person who has a weakness. With Jesus, he tempted Him with trying to get Him to use His power for showing off His supernatural abilities (making bread from stones, or falling for angels to catch Him). Spiritual pride is one of the worst sins and we see too many Christians fall into that trap! They see God use them for a miracle then they think they are the ones with the power, but that is self-worship, not ‘glory only to God’ worship; and “Him only shall you serve and worship!”
And the riches and power that come with dominating cities and nations, how intoxicating that is! We see it in the lives of politicians, they lie, they cheat, they even murder to climb to the top because they are obsessed with gaining total control over others. How Satanic these people are and Judas fell for it due to his involvement with the wrong ambitious political zealot gang.
7. Romans 12:19 Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord. It is of God to despise evil and the evil deeds of the wicked, but never succumb to evil as Judas did. We can expose evil, we can help those suffering, we may rescue a few from injustices, but pray Romans 12:21
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. Amen!
