Dear Friends,

M. Scott Peck began his book “The Road Less Traveled” with the words, “Life is difficult.” It is. It is sometimes so difficult that a person may consider copying Judas by committing suicide. Today’s devotional explains why that is never a good idea! God bless you.

Because of Calvary,

John Janney

• Matthew 27:1-10

  Matthew 27:1-10    English Standard Version (ESV)
  Jesus Delivered to Pilate
  27 When morning came, all the chief priests and the elders of the people took counsel against Jesus to put him to death. 2 And they bound him and led him away and delivered him over to Pilate the governor.

  Judas Hangs Himself
  3 Then when Judas, his betrayer, saw that Jesus[a] was condemned, he changed his mind and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders, 4 saying, “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.” They said, “What is that to us? See to it yourself.” 5 And throwing down the pieces of silver into the temple, he departed, and he went and hanged himself. 6 But the chief priests, taking the pieces of silver, said, “It is not lawful to put them into the treasury, since it is blood money.” 7 So they took counsel and bought with them the potter’s field as a burial place for strangers. 8 Therefore that field has been called the Field of Blood to this day. 9 Then was fulfilled what had been spoken by the prophet Jeremiah, saying, “And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him on whom a price had been set by some of the sons of Israel, 10 and they gave them for the potter’s field, as the Lord directed me.”

  Footnotes:

“…The awful terrors of God may produce a despairing repentance. This is deep enough, but then it lacks the element of bringing glory to God. It has in it no trace of submission, no touch of faith, no breath of love. There is nothing evangelical about it: it is legal all through, and therefore worthless for salvation. It is a kind of anticipation of the endless judgment and the wrath to come; but it is not a deliverance therefrom. Take Judas as a specimen. ‘I have sinned,’ says he. He flings down the accursed gold for which he had sold his Master and his own soul, but he goes out to hang himself. What an awful thing it is when the law of God and the terrors of God work upon the conscience, and arouse all a man’s fears, and yet he will not fly to Christ! The man is so overcome with horror at the prospect of the world to come that, like a fool, he rushes upon his fate, even as the moth dashes into the flame of the candle. To escape from death, he flies to death. To escape from the wrath of God he puts an end to his last hope of mercy, and rushes into the presence of an angry God uncalled. This is a dreadful repentance, from which I pray God to save you.”
[Charles Haddon Spurgeon, The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit XXXIV, (London: Passmore and Alabaster, 1888), p. 641]