Satan tricked Judas, and made him his base tool. Because Judas thought Christ would deliver Himself, Judas presumed to deliver Christ over to the priests and rulers after getting paid thirty pieces of silver for his treachery. Greed had overcome him. One sin, persistently cherished, is enough to neutralize all the power of the gospel! Let us cry out to Jesus to be kept from the deceitfulness of sin!!
Judas did not, however, believe that Christ would permit Himself to be arrested. In betraying Him, it was his purpose to teach Him a lesson. He intended to play a part that would make the Saviour careful thenceforth to treat him with due respect. But Judas knew not that he was giving Christ up to death. How often, as the Saviour taught in parables, the scribes and Pharisees had been carried away with His striking illustrations! How often they had pronounced judgment against themselves! Often when the truth was brought home to their hearts, they had been filled with rage, and had taken up stones to cast at Him; but again and again He had made His escape. Since He had escaped so many snares, thought Judas, He certainly would not now allow Himself to be taken.
And so deception is at the heart of sin. Satan had deceived a third of the angels in heaven to think that "do as thou wilt" and "we are free to do as we please" was really true happiness and freedom apart from the law of God and the sovereignty of Christ, but it has turned out to be bondage and slavery to a being (Satan himself, the author of sin) whose only motive is to steal, kill and destroy. After causing such misery in heaven, he moved his warfare to this earth. In the garden of Eden, Satan deceived and hypnotized Adam and Eve, leading them into sin, and God mercifully made a way for them to be pardoned through Christ. But now that Christ was on the earth, Judas, a professed disciple of Jesus, was so deceived by Satan that he thought he could teach Jesus a lesson and presumed to think Christ would not allow Himself to be taken if betrayed. Such lies lead to such sin! Oh, turn resolutely from any deviation from the clear, plain word of God and allow God to perform the greatest miracle of all--a converted life that is yielded fully to Christ! When we do yield to Him the WHOLE heart, He can then work in us to will and to do of His good pleasure, filling us with all of the fruits of the Spirit without one missing as we can gladly obey God's law--all Ten Commandments in the depth of their spirituality--from the heart! Love in the heart from Christ through the word of God is the only true protection from the deceitfulness of sin!
