Luke 22:1-6 - You Know Best - March 1, 2023

America in 2023 has no shortage of problems. Nor does it have any shortage of people willing to offer their own explanations for those problems. Racism. Sexism. Inequality. Inflation. Recession. Climate Change. Russian aggression. Chinese balloons. Derailed trains. Republicans. Democrats. You know them. You’ve heard them. But the truth is that the real reason our world faces the problems it does is none of those reasons; it’s for one reason: lies. At creation, God gave truth to the world – along with every other perfect gift the human heart could ever desire. But when Adam and Eve fell for the devil’s first lie: you certainly will not die (Genesis 3:4) – doubt, death, destruction, depression – and yes, racism, sexism, poverty and natural and man-made disasters – but more importantly, damnation enveloped God’s perfect creation in darkness. Since that moment, the world has been filled with lies. Big ones, small ones, white ones and black ones. Lies that are told with good intentions and lies that have no purpose, rhyme or reason. The 19th century chancellor of Germany, Otto von Bismarck, once stated that “if you want to fool the world, tell the truth.” [1] We know this – we know that lies permeate virtually every aspect of life in this world. We know that when every toothpaste claims to give you the best breath and the whitest teeth and every politician guarantees to lower your taxes and raise your standard of living and every pharmaceutical company promises that their latest drug will cure whatever ails you – we know that they can’t all be true, we know that somebody is must be lying.

Jesus knew this too. That’s why Jesus didn’t mince words when he described the devil’s agenda in John 8: whenever he lies, he speaks from what is his, because he is a liar and the father of lying (John 8:44). Throughout this Lenten season – we will see how the devil’s lies permeate Jesus’ Passion and how he’s still telling the same lies today. What’s surprising tonight is that the devil was able to convince a man who had been hand-picked by Jesus, who – for three years – had been an eyewitness to Jesus’ amazing miracles, compassionate healing and powerful preaching. Tonight, we see how the devil corrupted Judas’ heart with lies to the extent that he proactively went far out of his way to betray Jesus to his enemies.

The big question is: why? Why would Judas do such a thing? Some have suggested that Judas was predestined – like a programmed robot – and that he had no choice in the matter. They point to Acts 1, where Peter said the Scripture had to be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit spoke long ago through the mouth of David about Judas, who became a guide for those who arrested Jesus…and that Judas turned away to go to his own place (Acts 1:16, 25). Is that possible – that Judas was hard-wired by God to sell Jesus for 30 pieces of silver? No. God our Savior…wants all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth (1 Timothy 2:4) – and that included Judas. Others theorize that Judas was an anarchist and revolutionary – and that this betrayal would somehow “force Jesus’ hand” – in that now he would be forced to use his divine power to finally overthrow the hated Romans – even though Jesus made it clear over and over again that he was not here to lead a political revolution (John 6:15; Luke 17:20-21; John 18:33-37). Scripture itself suggests some other possible motives for Judas’ betrayal. John identified him as a thief who, as the apostles’ treasurer, used to steal what was put into the money box (John 12:6). Or perhaps Judas was out for vengeance after Jesus had embarrassed him by rebuking him for suggesting that the expensive perfume Mary had poured on Jesus’ feet could have been put to better use by being sold and given to the poor (John 12:1-8).

In the end, no one can know with certainty what Judas’ human motivation was. We can’t look into his heart. But we do know that Satan entered Judas and that Judas fell for his lie. It’s a lie we know all too well: “I know best. Better even than the God who created me.” And yet, while Judas may be the most infamous person to fall for this lie – he’s far from the only one. History is littered with the ruins of those who figured that they knew better than God. After the Flood, God commanded Noah’s descendants to fill the earth (Genesis 8:17). They thought, “Nah, we’ll just stay here and build a tower to our own glory” (Genesis 11:1-9). We are still dealing with the consequences of the Tower of Babel today. The people of Sodom and Gomorrah preferred their new, more enlightened view of sexuality to God’s will regarding sex and marriage (Genesis 19:1-29) – and the scorched remnants of those cities shows how well that worked out. In the days of the judges, every man did whatever was right in his own eyes (Judges 17:6) instead of God’s – and so they spent decades suffering under foreign tyrants. Peter rebuked Jesus for saying that it was his mission to go to Jerusalem to be betrayed, arrested, convicted and finally murdered – and he found himself on the receiving end of some of the harshest words Jesus ever spoke Get behind me, Satan! (Matthew 16:22-23) Ananias and Sapphira figured they could hide their greed from God – both dropped dead as a result (Acts 5:1-11). We could go on.

In our own time, we can see what happens when the entire world buys into the devil’s lie that “we know best.” We are living in the age of experts – in that we’ve been told to trust the “experts” because they know best. Well, just the other day the “experts” at the CDC released a report called the “Youth Risk Behavior Survey” – which reviews how well all their “expert” advice has worked out. Allow me to cherry pick a few of their findings. In 2021, 30% of high school students reported having had sex. 16% of high school students reported having used marijuana in the past 30 days and 12% admitted to misusing prescription opioids. 42% of high school students felt so sad or hopeless every day for at least two weeks straight that they stopped doing their usual activities. Horrifyingly, 10% of high school students had attempted suicide one or more times in the past year (that’s 1 in 10 of all high school students!). [2] Again, this was just in 2021 – the peak of the era of “trust us, we’re the experts. We know best.” Like Judas, people today think they know what is best. Today’s “experts” have led the charge on banishing God and his truth from public schools and public discourse – and now our children are reaping the lies they’ve sown – as the very experts who instituted the policies have now had to admit.

But it’s not just out there, is it? The devil’s lie that we know best has penetrated these walls and these hearts too. It shows up in our priorities: when we make getting our children into the best sports and other extracurricular programs more important than raising them up in the training and instruction of the Lord (Ephesians 6:4); when we can spend hours each week scrolling on our phones or watching TV but can’t find even a few minutes to read the Bible; when our budgets prove that we think we know better than God how to use and spend the wealth he has given us to manage. When we gather for holidays or other celebrations with family members who are living openly rebellious and ungodly lives or are holding to unbiblical and heretical beliefs or have made a habit of neglecting the means of grace – and pretend that everything is just fine, and don’t say anything – we are listening to the devil’s lie that momentary happiness in this life is more important than the joy of eternal life in heaven – for you and for the people you love. Do you worry? What’s worry other than doubting that God knows what he doing? In general, each and every time we sin, we are falling for the devil’s lie that we know better than God how we are to think, talk and act in a way that is best for us and those around us. And, just as we could see in the case of Judas, just as we could see in the statistics regarding the world out there, we only have to look at our own families, marriages and hearts to know that the results of listening to this lie are absolutely disastrous. 

There’s only one ramp off of this highway of lies which always leads to destruction – it’s call repentance. One of the most important parts of repentance is identifying the devil’s lies, confessing the times we have fallen for them, and then turning (or returning) to God’s truth. And as we gather tonight in repentance and worship tonight, we give thanks that the Holy Spirit has led us to find and follow the Savior, who is the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6). And this isn’t just a slogan – he proved that unlike Adam and Eve, unlike Judas, unlike the generation out there and unlike this generation in here, he held firm to the truth of God’s plan of salvation and never gave into the devil’s lie that he knew better, even if the lie was easier, more logical, more popular or felt better than the truth.

As we saw last Sunday, Jesus rejected the devil’s lies in the wilderness when any one of us would have been quickly seduced by the devil’s false promises (Luke 4:1-13). Jesus rejected the satanic calls from the crowds (John 6:15) and even his own disciples (Mark 10:37) to assume earthly power and political rule because he trusted the truth: that he hadn’t come to defeat Herod or the Romans but sin, death and the devil. Jesus stood firm in the truth of God’s plan when he allowed Judas to betray him with a kiss, a mob to haul him off to endure an illegal and illegitimate trial, the leaders of the church to cruelly mock and beat him, Pontius Pilate to torture and condemn him, Roman soldiers to nail his hands and feet to a tree and God, his Father, to abandon him to the horrors of hell. The only reason he did all that was because he never fell for the devil’s lie – that everyone from the beginning of time has at one time or another fallen for – that we know better than God; that we don’t really need a Savior – that we can save ourselves. Jesus listened only to the truth – that only his blood, the precious blood of the Son of God (1 Peter 1:19), could redeem this world of damned sinners. It’s been said that many people will die because they believe a lie – but that only a fool would die for something he knew to be a lie. Jesus didn’t die for a lie; he died because he knew the awful, gruesome – and yet wonderful and beautiful truth – that only by his death could we have life. If that doesn’t prove that he – not we – know what’s best for our lives here and now, nothing will.

Maybe Otto von Bismarck was right – maybe you really can fool the world by simply telling the truth. Jesus and his church have been proclaiming the truth of the Gospel for 2000 years and yet Judas was fooled, millions of people have been fooled, you and I have been fooled – fooled into listening to the devil’s lie that we know better than the God who created and redeemed us. Praise be to the God who loved us so much that he not only sent his Son to live, suffer, die and rise for us – but that he has led us tonight to confess and believe the truth: “No, Lord, I don’t know best. You do – and you proved it by sending your Son to bleed and die to save me from the devil’s lies.” Amen.

[1] https://quoteinvestigator.com/2019/06/25/fool-tell/

[2] https://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/data/yrbs/pdf/YRBS_Data-Summary-Trends_Report2023_508.pdf