In the book of John, John 13, Now,
before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus
knew that his hour was come, that he
should depart out of this world unto the
Father, having loved his own which were in
the world, he loved them unto the end,
and suffer being ended, the devil having now
put into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon's
son, to betray him, Jesus knowing that the
Father had given all things into his hand
and that he was come from God and
went to God, riseth from supper, and laid
aside his garment and took a towel and
girded himself.
Now, this is all too full for any
one treatment, but I want to pick out
this phrase, it's here, Judas Iscariot, Simon's son.
Judas Iscariot, Simon's son.
Now, you were brought up in the church
and you know that the most dishonored name
in history is probably the name of Judas
Iscariot.
There were many men whose names excite loathing
in the human breast.
Caligula and Nero were two emperors.
There was Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, Bluebeard.
In later times we have Hitler.
These men earned for themselves odium and abhorrence
to the point of nausea.
And even though we're all sinners by nature,
yet the basest sinner in the world shrinks
in horror from the name Judas.
Judas Iscariot, Simon's son.
Now, there's not too much known about it,
and so I can't be too dogmatic here,
but I suppose that Simon is in some
way responsible for Judas.
The Lord was not willing to say, Judas
Iscariot did it.
He said, Judas Iscariot, Simon's son did it.
And he links this dishonored name, this name
of odium, he links it with Simon, who
beget Judas.
And I say, I suppose that in some
way Simon is responsible for Judas, because all
down through history the two names were linked.
And even in hell Judas is known as
Simon's son.
I will not be wise above what is
written, and I don't know how far Simon
is accountable for his boy Judas, who sunk
the human race lower than it had ever
been before and almost created another fall upon
another fall.
And I don't know how far we're accountable
for that which flows from us and which
proceeds from our lives.
I know that for our personal needs we
are responsible.
The Bible is very clear about that, and
that's common Christian teaching.
But there was a sense in which Simon
was not responsible for Judas quite in that
way.
And yet it was Judas, it was Simon
who gave life to Judas.
And so the Lord is not willing that
Judas should stand alone, but says, Judas, Simon's
son.
Now that leads me to wonder what kind
of a man Simon was, and what kind
of life little Judas had lived, and what
kind of home he had grown up in,
and what little Judas had seen in his
home.
The mother is not mentioned here, only Simon
the father.
There must have been a wife and a
mother.
We do not know whether she lived to
see her boy grow to manhood, or whether
she died when he was only a little
lad.
We wonder what was present in Simon's home
that gave to Judas this terrible twist in
his nature.
We wonder what was absent in Simon's home
that gave this twist to the nature of
Judas.
Now, I wonder also what Judas' mother was
like.
Now, he had a mother, and I don't
know whether mother died when Judas was a
little boy, or whether, I say, she lived
to see him grow to manhood, and whether
she ever believed all that other people knew
about the boy Judas.
All this I do not know.
But I wonder what kind of a home
it was, and I wonder what kind of
example Judas had.
Now, I do not go along with this
modern teaching that you find in This Week
magazine and all the psychologists are yelling about.
I do not go along with this that
if a young teenager goes out and raises
hell, you ought to put his father in
jail.
You couldn't think of anything more completely asinine
than that.
You ought to put a donkey's hide on
a psychologist who would talk like that and
make him bray for his dinner, because he
has no right to speak ordinary human language.
But while that is not so, that if
the child sins, the father is responsible and
ought to be put in jail, it is
true that a father's example has a great
deal to do with which way the boy
will go, finally.
And then I wonder what kind of teaching
the boy Judas had.
And all these are questions that can't quite
be answered, and yet we have it here.
Judas's chariot, Simon's son.
Now, Judas must answer to God for Judas,
as John must answer to God for John,
and Mary must answer to God for Mary.
And you must answer to God for you,
and I must answer to God for me.
But I wonder how many contributed to Judas's
delinquency.
How many failed Judas?
How many there might have been that let
Judas down?
I wonder if Judas had a believing friend
that he trusted in when he was a
lad, and that friend blew up in his
face, let him down tragically, terribly, and this
sensitive boy lost his faith as a result.
That could be.
That happens sometimes.
Young people take a hero.
A young boy will take an older man
as a spiritual hero, and he will look
to him and trust him and see him
only when he is in his good moods
and when he is in a church humor.
And then he will come upon him sometime
when he is not in a good mood,
and the young fellow's faith will be blown
sky-high because he found that his idol
had feet of clay.
I wonder if something like that happened to
Judas.
I don't know.
I'm only guessing, and I'm not making any
positive statements.
But there's some reason that Judas became Judas's
chariot and betrayed his Lord.
Then it says the devil put it into
the heart of Judas to betray Jesus.
And you know something else that I hope
I don't know about this.
Someday we may know.
I don't know whether God will fill us
in on all the history or not.
But you know what I hope?
I hope both Simon and his wife were
asleep in the long, quiet sleep of the
grave before their boy died that death of
shame.
I mentioned over the radio to the few
of you who may have been listening about
what I saw in the newspaper, and you
no doubt saw it too, a rather good
-looking, attractive-looking woman, thirty-two years of
age, the mother of two children who had
taken part in a murder.
And here she was in an automobile moving
toward the death chamber, toward the prison where
the death chamber was.
It said it was her last Friday.
Friday she died.
Died a gasping, twisting death in the gas
chamber.
I wonder where her parents were.
And wouldn't you join me in wishing quietly
before God that her parents might not have
lived to see this and to know about
it, to look at that picture?
Don't you sort of hope maybe that her
father and mother may have been sleeping when
this young lady, good-looking, attractive young lady
went out to die the death of shame?
I don't know much about Simon.
It doesn't mention him, only it says that
he was, Judas was Simon's son.
But before Judas died that disgraceful death, I
hope Simon was asleep and didn't know it.
And I hope Judas' mother, Simon's wife, also
slept by his side in some quiet Jewish
cemetery.
And that God Almighty in his kindness spared
this old couple the disgrace, the shock, the
horror of knowing that their boy had died
this way.
I hope so.
Because the devil, it says, had put it
into the heart of Judas to betray Jesus.
He put it into the heart of Judas,
the heart of Judas.
Oh, what's that, Judas?
The heart of Judas.
We thought Judas didn't have a heart.
Oh, yes, he had a heart as big
as yours and mine.
He had a heart as big as the
Fort Knox vault where they keep all the
gold.
He had a human heart.
God had given it to him.
And he had a heart, too, Judas had,
because there had to be a heart there
to put this thing into.
This great treasure chest of the human heart,
Judas had it.
When you think what the human heart can
contain, when you think how the human heart
is a great vault that can contain all
the gold of love, when you think all
the silver of joy, when you think all
the peace and long-suffering that can come
into the human heart and all the gentleness
that can dwell there like doves perched on
a tree, when you think of all the
goodness that can be in the human heart,
when you think of all the faith that
can be there like diamonds and rubies and
pearls, when you think of all the meekness
and temperance and hope and mercy and kindness
and virtue and charity, you think of all
that can be in the human heart.
And Judas had a heart, too.
Don't think he didn't.
Judas has a heart as big as yours
and mine, as big as Peter's and Paul's.
We say his heart's little, but we're using
language carelessly.
Potentially it was as big as any man's.
Judas had a big heart, too.
Think of the sweet memories that say were
in the heart of Paul when he died.
You think Paul went skulking out into the
death chamber to die?
No, there was no death of shame there.
Judas' death was a death of shame, and
it left behind it a stench that filled
the whole human history with an evil smell.
But when Paul went out to die, he
went out to die with his head up
and his eyes on the glory, knowing that
he was soon going to be with the
Lord whom he loved and had not seen
in the flesh.
But when he went out, don't you think
that that walk to the sword was sweetened
by memories, all the memories there that Paul
had, the sweet, long memories from the time
he was stricken blind on Damascus Road through
all the long, tortuous, twisted way, and yet
a way that for him was as straight
as a highway as he walked on his
way to God, blessing men and women by
the side of the road all the way
along?
Don't you think that those sweet memories came
flooding around the man Paul, and he never
saw the sword and never felt it at
all when his head rolled away because his
heart was so big that his poor little
head, when it fell off, he didn't miss
it because he had that great, big human
heart of his all filled with all sweet
memories.
The human heart, I say, is a treasure
chest, and when you think that it could
contain, and in some cases does contain God
himself, Christ in you, the hope of glory,
let's never underestimate the human heart.
Judas had a human heart.
The devil put it into the heart of
Judas, and Judas did have a heart after
all.
And when you think of that human heart
and what it can contain, how much of
jealousy, how the flatworms of pride and the
filthy buzzards of bad thoughts and the dirty,
evil birds of hatred and resentment and malice
can fill the heart, and the toads and
serpents of strife and low desires and lust
and covetousness, all these can fill the human
heart.
And when you think of all the foul
-smelling beasts of dishonesty and lying and anger
and all the roosting place for unclean birds,
and then when you think the devil himself
can get in there, ah, what a treasure
is the human heart and what a treasure
chest and how it should be guarded.
Keep thy heart with all diligence, said the
Holy Ghost, for out of it are the
issues of life.
If you gave as much care to your
heart as you do to your body, you'd
be a wiser and a better man.
You're careful to have insurance on your body.
You go every so often and get a
checkup if you feel something a bit abnormal
going on inside of you.
We're always careful of our body, but God
said, not take care of thy body, though
he supposed we would have sense enough to
do that too.
But he said, keep thy heart with all
diligence, because it's not the body that can
contain love and peace and longsuffering and gentleness
and goodness and faith and meekness and temperance
and mercy and kindness and virtue and charity
and God himself.
It is the soul that contains these things,
the heart of the man.
And it's not the body that can be
filled with jealousy nor pride nor filthy thoughts
nor resentment nor malice or dishonesty or lying
or anger.
That's not the body.
And yet we take such good care of
the body, and we ought to really.
We ought to look after our bodies.
There, the temple, it's the old Francis of
Assisi always referred to it as the donkey
upon which he rode, his human body.
And he took good care of it because
he said, I've got to ride it around.
You walk down the street, you're riding that
horse, that donkey, God gave you to ride
around on.
It's all right, take care of it, but
it's not that body that is the treasure
house of all these things, or the snake
pit where it is contained all the horrors
of sin.
It's the heart.
Now, the devil put it into the heart
of Judas.
He was big enough for the devil to
get into this heart of Judas.
How did the devil get into the heart
of Judas?
Well, Judas was a Jew and Judas was
brought up with the scriptures.
He heard the Old Testament scriptures read every
Sabbath day in the synagogue.
And he knew the law and was forced
to memorize them when he was a boy,
or memorize the different items of the law
when he was a boy.
And he knew the prophets and no doubt
could have quoted from Isaiah.
And he did sing many times from David,
as you have sung sweet songs here tonight.
And Judas was, he was not a pagan.
He was not a boy delinquent on the
street.
He came from a Jewish home.
Jesus picked him out as one of his
disciples and picked him from a Jewish home
that no doubt had some connection with the
temple and the synagogue.
So he was a Jew and he'd heard
the Psalms of David.
And he may have been moved by the
Psalms of David when he heard them sung
in the synagogue or the temple or chanted.
There is a service or rather a program
on Sunday afternoons and if I can get
to hear it, I always turn it on,
lie down, rest, and listen to it.
It's called the Jewish Hour.
It starts out with that rousing march, Hebrew
march, and then there's always something in it
about the Jew.
There's usually a chant or two from a
famous cantor from the old Hebrew worship temple
service.
I like to hear it.
Judas must have heard that kind of thing
or something very like it lots of times.
In addition to all that, Judas had been
three years with Jesus.
And he had seen the wonderful miracles of
Jesus, and yet the devil put it into
his heart to betray Jesus.
He had heard the heavenly word, such words
as never had been spoken before, never had
been spoken since except in repetition.
And more than that, he had been with
God, for Jesus was God.
He had felt the warmth of his breath.
He had heard the words from his lips
so strong that they had created the heaven
and the earth centuries before.
He had been close to him, and Jesus
had breathed on him.
And the breath that had given life to
Adam in the garden, when God breathed the
breath of life into him and he became
a living soul, Judas had many times felt
that breath on his cheek as he talked
close with Jesus sometime under a tree or
in a synagogue or beside the highway.
What had Judas done?
What had he done to open his heart
to the devil?
What had Judas done?
What had got him in that state?
What had weakened his resistance to temptation?
Was it when he was in his teens
that something happened and broke in there and
he never got back on his feet again?
What was his weakness?
Love of money, you suppose?
He did love money.
We learned that.
But do you think that was enough?
He loved money.
Judas Simon's son did.
But was it love of money?
I don't know for sure.
Was it irreverence?
He certainly stood in the presence of God
and didn't know it.
And the ability to be in God's presence
and be dead to it, that's basic irreverence.
That was Saul's great sin.
That was the great sin of the apostate
Saul.
David was so reverent that he would not
lay his hand on a man.
Even though that man were his military enemy,
he would not lay his hand on that
man if that man ever had God's hand
laid on him.
Oh, said the reverent David, I couldn't touch
him.
He's God's anointed.
I wouldn't touch him.
I'd let him kill me first.
There was reverence.
David, with all his faults, had one thing,
basic reverence, the sense of trembling fear in
the presence of the overarching mystery we call
God.
Judas may not have had that, probably didn't.
For he could stand in the presence of
Jesus and argue with him.
He was a hypocrite, Judas was, because he
claimed that he didn't want them to use
that spikenard.
He said it was such a very valuable
thing that it might have been sold and
the proceeds given to the poor and the
Holy Ghost wrote underneath it in small print.
This he said, not that he cared for
the poor, but being a thief, he took
what was put in the bag.
He was one of the first church traders
who became a thief.
And this was Judas.
So there must have been a basic irreverence
there and basic hypocrisy, but how did he
get there?
He wasn't always that way.
He was as innocent as any 15-year
-old wants or any 14 or 13 or
10-year-old.
He was as innocent as any strapping young
chap just turning 20.
How did he get this way?
Did money, love of money, self-love maybe.
Maybe he loved himself until the Holy Ghost
deserted his heart.
Self-love maybe he did.
It could be there was self-love.
You're listening to me and you wonder why
I'm talking about a man long dead.
Because in one sense Judas isn't dead at
all.
He committed suicide and hanged himself and the
rope broke and he fell and lived on
a jagged rock and tore his abdomen open
and all his bowels gushed out.
And you say that should have killed him.
He should have been dead and he did
die.
But he isn't quite dead.
He still is around.
He's in Chicago and he's in the churches
and he's around and you'll find him or
those descendants of his, the moral descendants of
Judas, not the lineal descendants from his body,
but the moral descendants of Judas are found
here and there.
People that were brought up in Christian homes
and have Bibles lying at home and red
-backed testaments and blue-backed testaments with the
Sunday School superintendent's name in them, pastor's name
below it, and a scripture text appended.
They haven't opened it for nobody knows when.
They haven't prayed for nobody knows when.
Brought up in church but they are not
going with God.
Something has happened.
I don't know what always it is.
What is it that weakens the resistance to
temptation and brings down people to the depths?
I wonder if Judas knew that he was
being played for a sucker by the devil.
The devil having put it into the heart
of Judas Iscariot.
Judas was doing blindly as though he were
hypnotized.
He was doing what the devil had suggested
that he do.
And if you had gone up to him
and said, Judas, do you know that you
are being played for a sucker by the
devil?
He would have given you fourteen reasons why
he was an independent fellow and believed in
having his own way and not surrendering to
the narrow religionists.
And you hear it.
You hear these young fellows who have a
will of their own.
Oh, indeed, they're the brazen boys.
They're the cocky fellows.
They know the answer all the way around.
They're not going to follow in their father's
footsteps nor meekly and weakly follow in imitation
of their mothers.
They're too smart that they don't know they're
being played for suckers and that their arguments
were fed into their minds by the devil
who put it into the heart of Judas
Iscariot, Simon's son, and who is now busy
putting it into the heart of other people,
not Judas Iscariot, but people living here in
Chicago, putting it into their hearts.
Did he know it?
You see, the devil is a smooth destroyer,
and right under the shadow of the cross
he brainwashes people.
And there are people that are being brainwashed,
and you want me to know what's busy
brainwashing people?
I'll tell you what's brainwashing them.
They're being brainwashed through various media.
That media is the daily newspaper, the fiction
that is being printed now, political speeches, television,
radio, magazines like Life and Time and the
other common, popular magazines of the day.
Now, don't go out and say, Tozer says
that's all bad.
I don't say anything of the sort.
If it was all bad, nobody would like
it.
Nobody would give it a show.
If it was all bad, it would have
to be sold under the counter along with
a pornography down here in the dark room
somewhere.
But it's because it's only partly bad.
Because there's so much good in it, it's
brainwashing so many people.
You people listening to me, your whole philosophy
of life I think is partly taken.
I'd say 50% taken from the Bible
and the rest you've gathered from these other
sources.
And so a young fellow or a young
girl is tempted to deceive.
She says or he says, Well, I'll deceive
the old folks after all they're too strict
with me and I think I should not
be held down.
All right, honey, but you're being played for
a sucker by a cynical murderer whose name
is Apollyon and who lives to kill and
destroy and rob.
And you think you're being independent when all
that's happened to you, you're breaking away from
God and listening to the devil.
It's not independence.
It is simply a shift of bosses.
When you were little and you spanked and
made to do what you were to do,
you did it and said nothing.
Old Eve and Uncle Adam standing up in
you and believing you and me you're going
to have your way.
All right, honey, have your way, but you're
being brainwashed by the one who put it
into the heart of Judas Iscariot.
You say, Oh, but Judas Iscariot, he was
the son of perdition.
He wasn't always the son of perdition.
He was the son of Simon once.
And in a way, he still is the
son of Simon.
And don't forget, the son of Simon became
the son of perdition.
And don't forget, the son of the synagogue
became the son of hell.
And don't forget, the son of the law
who was circumcised the eighth day and made
to memorize the Psalms of David in the
Decalogue and chant the Hebrew hymns.
Don't forget, he became the son of perdition
and went to his own place of suicide.
That first time, you're tempted to deceive your
parents.
That first time, you think it's not much
and you giggle about it to your schoolmates.
I wonder if that's where Judas started.
He and a couple of other boys went
to learn how to read the Hebrew characters
at the feet of the rabbi.
And one day, they decided not to go,
go out fishing.
The next day, the rabbi asked in a
stern tone, Where were you yesterday?
And they said, We were ill.
Then they giggled on their way home and
said, Didn't we take him?
Maybe that was how Judas got his start.
I don't know.
He lied.
Then he went home and lied to his
parents about it.
Maybe that first dishonesty with money.
That time his parents said, Go down and
buy some this or that.
And he went and brought back the wrong
change.
I don't know.
But somewhere it had to start.
Maybe this is where it started.
An act of disobedience, an act of dishonesty,
an act of deceit, an act of lying.
For Satan, I say, is a smooth destroyer.
He brainwashes people.
In their overweening pride, they think they are
independent.
When they are not independent, they are the
slaves of him who put it into the
heart of Judas, Simon's son, to betray Jesus.
Now we don't know the inner temptations and
struggles that changed Judas into the son of
perdition.
I don't think he went unhindered like water
flowing over a bridge or over a dam,
I mean, under a bridge and over a
dam.
I don't think so.
I think Judas' conscience gave him many a
night of misery.
I know it, in fact.
I know it because even after he had
committed the irrevocable lack, his conscience lashed him.
He came back with the money.
He spent horrible hours, horrible hours, lashing his
own heart and calling himself cursed names.
And in one last awful desire to try,
effort to try to undo what he had
done, he brought back the money and threw
it at the feet of the priests and
said, take it, take it, it's cursed.
He got it out of his hands, but
he couldn't get it out of his heart.
And he never got it out of his
heart.
He'd been played for a fool.
Now the devil disappeared and let him run
alone.
But he had to struggle of it.
Nobody ever goes to hell easy and laughing
on their way.
I know a man who has sinned against
his God and is living a backslidden sinful
life.
And I met a man recently who had
met him recently and I said, how so
-and-so?
And he said, oh, he's happy.
No, no, I said, not happy.
He's not happy, he knows too much.
You know, you can know enough that you
can never quite be happy in sin and
yet be so tricked by the devil that
you can never quite be happy doing right.
And so caught in between the nether and
the upper millstone, caught on the horns of
the broad dilemma, we slowly grow wrong and
evil and Simon's son becomes son of perdition.
I say, we don't know all these temptations
and inner struggles.
We are aware that if Judas had been
living now and this history had been written
now, he could have gone to fourteen psychiatrists
and a thousand men and women studying up
on child psychology.
But this was happening to Judas right there.
It was happening.
They'd have read a book and they'd have
given his terrible degeneration some learned names, but
Judas was still going, it was still happening.
And it's written here for you and me.
Why was it written here?
That I can't answer.
I've raised a good many questions I couldn't
answer, only speculate about, but I can answer
this one.
These things were written for our admonition.
And this was written here for our admonition.
And if Judas could talk to us now,
Judas might even want to help us.
You say, how do you get such a
grotesque notion as that?
Not so grotesque, not so far-fetched.
There was a certain rich man who fed
sumptuously every day.
And one day he died.
And in hell he lifted up his eyes
and he said, Father Abraham, go tell my
brethren, lest they come here.
He cared even in hell.
He had a heart even in hell.
Judas had a heart enough that he committed
suicide in self-accusation and hatred of his
own sinful self.
Yet he's a son of perdition in hell.
So Judas, I think if he could talk,
would have something to say to us.
I don't know whether he'd give us his
history or not or add anything to what's
written, but I think I do know what
he would say.
He would say, The day if you would
hear his voice, harden not your hearts, as
in the day of the provocation.
Behold, now is the day of salvation.
Behold, this is the accepted time.
And today if you would hear his voice,
harden not.
If you say, Now you can't scare me,
Mr. Tozer.
I wasn't born yesterday.
The history of churches, the history of this
church over the last 30 years, shows that
even our young people reared in our fellowship
who list their first little words in our
kindergarten, the beginner's department, who grew up through
our church.
They were not all brought to God.
Like Judas who sang the Psalms of David
as a boy and walked with holy men
as a young man, opened his heart one
sad moment to the devil, wide open, and
the devil put it in his heart.
Scattered all over the world there are godly
people who found their Savior in this church,
but scattered all over the world also there
are hard, heavy-browed, sulky, grim men and
women who would not obey God.
They would not.
They were stubborn, self-loving.
Sure they were right.
And they're just waiting now for Satan to
call in the men.
Just waiting for the day when Satan will
put the fence down and call them all
into his hell.
I'm horrified when I think that the sound
of my voice has fallen on the ears
of men now in hell.
The sound of my voice in prayer, the
sound of your singing is echoing now through
the ears of some who are in hell.
Christianity isn't a soft, smooth bouquet of religious
flowers.
It's a glorious but solemn, terrible and wonderful
thing.
Today if you will hear his voice, harden
not your heart.
In Christ's name tonight I appeal to you.
Don't be a sucker.
Don't be fooled by the devil, you teenagers.
And I love every one of you.
Every one of you to the point where
I could take you if I had a
house big enough and keep you around and
love you.
Even though I am old and battered, I
love all of you.
But I love you so much that I
don't want to see hell get its hand
on you.
I don't want to see you play into
the hand of Satan and open the door
enough that he can stick his dirty, foul
head in and begin to breathe his hypnotizing
suggestions into your young heart.
Judas, Simon's son.
No wonder Jesus said better that he'd never
been born.
Better never been born.
Better if he should have been born dead.
The neighbor said, did you hear about Simon's
wife?
She had a baby stillborn.
They never even named him, but carried him
in his cold lifelessness to his baby grave
and put him away.
Better, said Jesus, he'd never been born.
If you will hear his voice, harden not
your hearts.
But the shepherd of Israel, the shepherd of
willing hearts, the shepherd of the book of
John, from which I preach, that shepherd calls
you to himself.
He calls you to come and believe on
him and trust him and follow him and
love him and be his and put away
deception and pride and stubbornness and nastiness and
disobedience and put it all away and follow
him.
He calls you this very night.
And if you hear his voice, harden not
your hearts.
A hard heart is a heart all right
for Satan's filthy brain.
Do you hear his voice this evening?
God bless you.