VN520423 10-25-2015 We Are Given Free Will

Luke 9:1-6. “Then he,” Jesus, “called his twelve disciples together, and gave them power and authority over all devils,” that word is demons, “and to cure diseases. And he sent them to preach the gospel of God, and to heal the sick. And he said unto them, Take nothing for your journey.” (singing) So, the whole idea here is they’re not to take anything with them. Did Judas Iscariot make it into heaven? Did he have a proper relationship with God because he is one of the 12. Was he properly related to Jesus Christ because he was one of those 12 and it was given him to throw out demons, and to heal the sick, and to know that he was going to be blessed. He didn’t have to take money with him. Everything was going to be okay. Therefore, did he have saving faith and then he dropped from it? No, because it’s not required that he has that kind of saving relationship with Jesus Christ anymore than Balaam’s donkey has to have a saving relationship in order to be used of God. That donkey spoke, spoke the Word of God and, therefore, it prophesied. Does that make it a prophetic donkey? He gave a prophetic message because prophecy is speaking the Word of God. Therefore, yes it spoke, but it does not mean that, I’m sorry if it was that guy’s pet donkey, it doesn’t mean that that donkey is saved and will go to heaven. It just means that donkey was used.

Just because Judas Iscariot could have went around and healed people because he was given that authority, doesn’t mean that he had to have a right relationship. It’s not required for God to use somebody or to give them a talent to do something. It’s just what they did. Then you get the whole point of that and then we go to Matthew 26:24 and this is what is written. “The Son of man goeth as it is written of him: but woe unto that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! It had been good for that man if he had not been born.” Prophecy speaking. It would have been better if Judas had never been born is all He is saying. No, he is not going to make it and he knows it. He said the one that betrayed me, it would be better for him had he not been born, but in that verse 24 it is also pointed out that the Son of Man goeth as it is written of Him. Predetermined prophecy says that the Christ was going to come and that He was going to die, be buried and that He would resurrect. God had predetermined this. He was the Lamb of God who was slain before the foundations of the earth just like it was real. It had happened as far as God is concerned and, therefore, that was predetermined.

While God came up with this plan and said this is the termination that it will take to save these people whom I have created and I care about and I love, Jesus is a person also and a man and He had free will. Jesus chose, and He says that. I choose to lay My life down and I will pick it back up again. So, He had free will and yet He went with a determined will of God on His part. He chose to lay His life down. He could have chosen just to say “Ain’t no way I’m going through this God, just forget it”, or He could have even used His divine nature and just called down those 10,000 angels and took Him off the cross and said “Forget this, it’s over with. I want nothing to do with this anymore”. He could have done that very same thing, but He chose not to so He exercised free will, but it had already been prophesized and since He had preexisted He and the Father had already discussed it and they had determined that this is the way it is going to go and yet He got there and He says “If it’s possible, let this cup pass from me, but if not that’s okay, I will go through with it.”

He had the free will at that time to do something, but woe unto the betrayer. Woe unto him for it would be better if he had not been born. That He did make the statement and yet it’s the free will of Judas Iscariot to play into his part. It wasn’t forced upon Judas Iscariot to do it, and Judas would have been standing right there when he heard that being said, woe to the one who betrays Me. Woe to that person, it would be better if he had not been born. “Then Judas, which betrayed him, answered and said, Master, is it I? He said unto him, Thou hast said.” That guy could have still said I don’t think so because it would have been better if I had not been born and since I’m already here the afterlife isn’t looking too good for me, so I think I’m going to stay out of it and step back from it. So, he had the free will and he got up and went ahead and did it anyway. Judas Iscariot knew about what was going to happen to that Christ. He knew what was going to happen. He knew the death, burial and resurrection.

Galatians 4:4, and here’s the point. “But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.” But the importance is at the fullness of time God sent forth His Son. God is standing there or sitting, I don’t know, probably sitting, God is sitting there. If I was made in the image of God therefore He was sitting because I sit all the time. Every chance I get I’ll sit. Therefore, He was sitting there and He was going over in His mind. He knows, this is the omniscience of God, everybody says He knows what is going to happen. He also knows all of the potential alternatives of everything that could have happened, if you had chosen to go right instead of left, if you had decided to sit down instead of stand up, if that butterfly had not gotten eaten by that bird then He could tell you how that would affect the history of the world, and it might take millions of years because the bird ate the butterfly, the bird choked to death, the bird died, the hunter didn’t have a chance to eat the bird and, therefore, the hunter dies, and you were never born because that was your great great great great great great great great great grandfather and so you were never born because that lousy butterfly got ate by that bird.

He would know all the different possibilities so in the fulness of time He said okay, here are all the possibilities. At the fulness of time Christ is dropped right into the mix, right at the very perfect instant so that history would play out the way that it was supposed to play out. The best thing I can see to illustrate this is, I’ve seen it done on TV, I’ve never seen it in real life, but they lay the billiard balls on the table and the guy takes the cue ball and the stick and he goes click and it rolls and it hits one ball and then you see all these other balls start hitting each other and they all go clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk, and all over the table all the balls hit just right. God saw in His all-knowing, all-seeing of all possibilities that if Christ entered into the world at exactly that time that all of the people that would be needed, and all the events, and all the birds, and all the bugs, and all the pets, everything that would be required for Christ to play out that predetermined role that He had agreed to before the creation of the earth would play out. Boom, this has got to be it. He’s got to drop in now.

The Wise Men show up. King Herod gets mad. They go to Egypt. Herod is a mean guy. He dies. Yes, his son is in. Angel comes and gets Him and brings Him back. John the Baptist is born. He knows He is going to walk down the road and he will run into Peter, and He will run into John and Andrew and all these people. It’s all just sitting there and it’s like that billiard ball. He dropped Him in and just boom, all this stuff starts rolling. Judas Iscariot is called and he went by free choice. He could have said no because they say oh no, no, no, He called him and, therefore, he could not resist him, but remember that other guy walked up and said what does it take for me to get eternal life and He said oh, do this and he goes I’ve already done that. Then sell everything you’ve got and follow Me and the guy walked away. That guy exercised his free will. Christ gave him the call and he turned it down. He called Judas Iscariot and said you come with Me. Judas said yeah buddy. I’m right there for You, and he spoke those words in front of Christ, or Christ spoke those words in front of Judas Iscariot about the betrayal. He was right there and like we have said he was given the gift to heal people. Now we do not know if he actually did it, but we know that he was one of the 12 and, therefore, he would have been paired up with somebody and he would have seen the other guy doing it. Even if he chose not to hea,l he saw the healing realities of Christ. He saw the feeding of the 5000 and the 4000, all these other people being raised from the dead and the son of Nain, the widow of Nain.

He saw it all and yet he did not come to a place where he valued it. He just saw, he hitched his wagon to something that was going to promote him and make him filthy rich and everything was going along, and Judas sold Him out for the cash and well, okay, you can’t blame Christ for what happened. He had full awareness. Three years of hanging out with Jesus and the man still did not pick up on that. Matthew 27 is where we’re going. And the man did not pick up on what was going to happen. This is where the free will of man plays out. Judas did what he chose to do with full knowledge and seeing all the things that had happened, pre-inspired fulfillment of prophecy. God also predetermined that Jesus was going to die and Jesus had decided that He would do that before He ever showed up. So, we have the absolute sovereignty of God and Him knowing exactly sovereignly went to draw Christ into the whole mix that that could be done, and He played into it by His free choice without God putting a gun to His head. He said this is what’s going to happen and Christ has got to go right now because that man is alive and his (warped) nature is going to carry out that which he would have been better had he not been born, but he is here and he will do it by his own free will.

God sovereignly causes all of our salvation to come about. Christ laid His life down. He is led as a lamb to the slaughter. On and on and on, and boom, He dies. Matthew 27, “Then Judas, which had betrayed him, when he saw that he was condemned,” Jesus was condemned, “repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, saying, I have sinned,” I have failed, “in that I have betrayed the innocent blood.” Not for anything else. He just betrayed innocent blood. “And they said, What is that to us? See thou to it.” You deal with it. “And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself.” Now the question that always gets asked is it says that he repented, and if I can find the word it’s metanoeo. Metanoeo means to change your mind, but it has this idea of as an afterthought, you change your mind. Judas is running along, he sees Him. He goes oh, this was a bad idea. I think I’ll change my mind and I don’t want to have responsibility.

Therefore, according to some of the laws that I have heard about, when he walked in and he cast the money into the temple, and it doesn’t mean actually in the holy of holies, it just means he went into the courtyard and he threw it into the courtyard, threw the money down and walked away from it, that’s their way of saying I break this contract. It’s over with. Let God take the contract, take the money, and everything is said and done. They said that’s not our problem, that’s your problem, and they took the money and said we can’t use it at the temple because it’s blood money and they bought the field and he went out and hung himself. Yes he had in some of your translations done a good job because it doesn’t use the word repent, it uses the word remorse. He had remorse over what he did, saying ”This was bad”, but he didn’t repent as in what we talk about as salvation repentance, and here is the key to salvation, repentance, that we usually don’t bring up and I don’t think about it because we’re always saying repent, repent, change your mind. That’s what sin is, is repenting. You turn from your sins, repent, repent. Salvation repentance is to say afterwards, remorse, oh, I was so wrong about the life I’ve lived and the things that I’ve done. Remorse. We have repented there, as an afterthought. I have not chosen to follow God. I choose to follow God.

Salvation repentance is turning away from and turning to, and preachers like myself and most other people we emphasize the turning from the sin but we don’t emphasize the fact that they’ve got to turn to God. What he did is he said this was wrong and he turns here. He doesn’t do the repentance and turn all the way to God. Had he Christ died for all the sins of all the world, He paid for that also, had that man came around and said I was totally wrong and I repent and now he turns to God and says forgive me of my sin, I have failed You. I have failed. Christ paid for the sin. I don’t like to play what ifs and maybes, but had he according to our understanding, had he made a perfect repentance, when I say perfect I mean complete, turning from the sin to God he would have made it into heaven. Instead he said I have remorse and he turns away from that but he doesn’t turn to God. He goes out and hangs himself instead. Once again it’s his free will what he chose to do and yes, it would have been better had that man not been born. Just like Christ had said had he not been born he would have been better off in the long run. Ten minutes to spare and since we’re going along and it was 10 minutes over so I stopped ten minutes early.