Matthew 27:1-10 When the morning was come, all the chief priests and elders of the people took counsel against Jesus to put him to death:… The history of Judas was written for our admonition, and is full of instruction to all. 1. How totally unprepared he seems to have been for the terrible results of his treachery. The condemnation of Jesus was an event on which he had not calculated. He was horror-struck and confounded with the unforeseen consequences of his villainy. No man, when consenting to temptation, can possibly tell how much evil may be involved in the sinful act which he contemplates, or determine the results in which it shall issue. 2. To what excesses of wickedness a man may be hurried, who is yet far from being hardened in iniquity. It was not any malignant or revengeful feeling which he entertained against our Lord, but the promptings of avarice only, that determined Judas to the perpetration of his immoral crime. The ungovernable grief and horror that seized him manifests that he was not hardened in iniquity. The sense of virtue and shame was far from being extinct. But there was the wretched greed of lucre in his soul. Constantly assailed by this temptation, he gradually yielded. Hence the danger of encouraging a disposition to covetousness, and of listening to temptation of whatever kind. 3. The tranciency of sinful pleasures. It was night when he received the reward of iniquity, but when morning came then came repentance too. How many such extreme cases are there l 4. How dearly the pleasures of sin are purchased. 5. The sort of sympathy a man may expect from his accomplices in iniquity. 6. How the sense of guilt may operate. He was brought to repentance, but it was a very different kind of repentance from that which he purposed coming to. The sense of guilt may take either of two very different forms — "godly sorrow" or the "sorrow of the world." Look at Judas, and beware! Precisely the same purposes as many are entertaining beguiled him onwards, until at length it surprised him with the repentance of despair. Conclusion: Make repentance a voluntary act. Repent now! (W. H. Smith.) Parallel Verses KJV: When the morning was come, all the chief priests and elders of the people took counsel against Jesus to put him to death: |
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