Holy Wednesday was a different kind of day. Yeshua continued his teaching in the Temple, continuing to place himself at risk and challenge the religious leaders who already sought an opportunity to have him arrested and killed for trumped up charges of a conspiracy against the state. Little did those leaders know that such an opportunity would come to them.
The incident which prompted the resulting chain of events likely happened earlier in the week when Yeshua was accepting the hospitality of a man called Simon the Leper. While Yeshua was at Simon’s house, a woman came to him and anointed him with very expensive perfume. Yeshua’s chosen band of followers, especially Judas, were indignant that the money spent on that perfume was wasted rather than selling it and giving the money to the poor.
Yeshua, however, had a much different view. In his view, as he approached his inevitable death at the hands of the Jewish leaders, this woman had anointed him for his impending burial. This was something that Yeshua’s followers could not accept because they could not yet accept who Yeshua was or what he was about to endure on the behalf of them and all mankind.
Judas was obviously bothered the most, as this act caused him to go to the Jewish leaders and offer to betray his teacher in return for money. Some people speculate that Judas did so because he was the keeper of Yeshua and his follower’s finances and because they were broke. Some speculate that Judas believed that, if Yeshua simply talked directly to those leaders, they would be convinced of his message and his mission.
This conviction was important to Judas because he was a Zealot, a Jew who believe the Messiah would come to restore Judah and Israel to their glory days of King David and King Solomon. Judas might have believed that Yeshua was his messiah, but he never conceived that Yeshua was the Messiah. So in his zealousness to see Israel restored and the hated Romans expelled, Judas betrayed his teacher to his teacher’s enemies.
We know, however, that Yeshua was the Messiah, not just some powerful teacher or prophet sent to establish some temporal claim over the Jews. This Yeshua, Jesus Christ, was the one prophesied about throughout the Law and the Prophets, and His mission was clear: to save all mankind by making the atonement sacrifice for all sin that no other man could ever make.
We also know who Judas was because the Prophets spoke of him as well. He was the one into whom the devil entered simply because his belief was based on worldly want rather than faithful need. Judas wanted earthly power and the immediate end to those he perceived to be enemies, not the eternal salvation of his soul. That his teacher Jesus came to accomplish the latter never entered his mind.
We know something else about these events of Holy Wednesday, and that knowledge is that our God foresaw these things and used them to His good and holy purpose. Because Jesus was betrayed by Judas to the Jewish leaders, Jesus eventually arrived at the cross, and by His death on that cross, we receive the righteousness of God through the forgiveness of our sins by grace through faith.
As horrible as these events may seem, it was our God’s ordained way to end the eternal separation sin had driven between Him and us. Without Judas’s betrayal and Jesus’ death, there would be no atonement, no forgiveness. Because these things happened, we now have the hope of our forgiveness and the promise of eternity through Jesus’ resurrection. Praise be to God that this is so!
Jesus is anointed and Judas’s betrayal
