In my message two weeks ago regarding prayer for our country following the election, I asked you to consider making the following prayer:
Pray for those who may hate you that they find peace in their hearts ……… pray for your haters!
I must admit that this is one of the hardest things for me to do, and I suspect for some others as well. However, one of my recent daily devotionals in my Grace For The Moment book written by Max Lucado offered the following devotional on October 11 titled Finding Good in the Bad. The message begins with the following scripture:
Romans 12:14 – Wish good for those who harm you; wish them well and do not curse them.
This scripture tells us that we should treat our enemies just like our friends. Max then states It would be hard to find someone worse than Judas. Some say he was a good man with a backfired strategy. I don’t buy that. The Bible says in John 12:6 Judas … was a thief. The man was a crook. Somehow he was able to live in the presence of God and experience the miracles of Christ and remain unchanged. In the end he decided he’d rather have money than a friend, so he sold Jesus for 30 pieces of silver …. Judas was a scoundrel, a cheat, and a bum. How could anyone see him any other way?
I don’t know, but Jesus did. Only inches from the face of his betrayer, Jesus looked at him and said in Matthew 26:50 – “Friend, do what you came to do”. What Jesus saw in Judas as worthy of being called a friend, I can’t imagine. But I do know that Jesus doesn’t lie, and in that moment he saw something good in a very bad man. He can help us do the same with those who hurt us.
The Bible has well documented the betrayal of Jesus by Judas. The very next morning after his betrayal, Judas felt some remorse, but it was not a legitimate feeling which led him to then hang himself which is also well documented in God’s Word.
Matthew 27:3-8 – Then when Judas, who had betrayed Him, saw that He had been condemned, he felt remorse and returned the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, 4 saying, “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.” But they said, “What is that to us? You shall see to it yourself!” 5 And he threw the pieces of silver into the temple sanctuary and left; and he went away and hanged himself. 6 The chief priests took the pieces of silver and said, “It is not lawful to put them in the temple treasury, since it is money paid for blood.” 7 And they conferred together and with the money bought the Potter’s Field as a burial place for strangers. 8 For this reason that field has been called the Field of Blood to this day.
As one of our favorite Covenant songs that our Ensemble sings from time to time suggests, can we be a little bit more like Jesus and refer to an enemy as our Friend???