What Satisfies Your Spiritual Hunger?

What Satisfies Your Spiritual Hunger?

Read the text: John 13:21-30

Jesus does not name Judas as the betrayer. Jesus said:
“Very truly I tell you, one of you is going to betray me.” ---John 13:21
All the disciples, as well as us, are left asking: “Who betrayed Jesus?”

We need to explore the reasons Judas would betray Jesus. The video shows an imagined scene from The Chosen series where Judas and Jesus debate the role of the Messiah. Scholars have pondered this issue for centuries, and they’ve come up with no shortage of answers.
Suggestions:

• Judas was trying to force Jesus’ hand at kickstarting a political revolution.
• Judas was consumed with anger over how Jesus was carrying out his ministry.
• Judas was simply fated for such a role.
• Judas was possessed by evil.
  
  

Which one do you choose?
But there’s one I have not mentioned that I believe is staring us right in the face, and it’s the one I want to explore in this devotion. To do that we need to move to another meal that is recorded in John 6:1-13 – The Feeding of the 5,000. This event would have taken the people of Jesus’ time back to the wilderness wandering of their ancestors when God fed them in the wilderness journey. It is very possible the people of the 5,000 began to see in Jesus someone to fill their stomachs. Which causes Jesus to remind them repeatedly they need far more than bread – they need him (vv. 27-40). Repeatedly, the crowd, either directly or indirectly asks for more bread.

We all have a deep hunger for the bread of this world, don’t we? The things and the stuff of this world?
Let me quickly stress two things right off the bat:

1. These are not all bad things.
2. These are things we need to pursue (food, clothing, etc.)
   
   

The issue is we want more than we’ve been given. Then we want it repeatedly. We begin to only think about our “stomachs”. When we only think of our stomachs two things happen:

1. We lose our bearings altogether on what is needed and what is superfluous,
2. We grow cold toward God, either because we have what we want and we don’t need Jesus, or we have not gotten what we feel we need, so we don’t want Jesus.

John records in verses 66-71: From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him. “You do not want to leave too, do you?” Jesus asked the Twelve. Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and to know that you have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God.” Then Jesus replied, “Have I not chosen you, the Twelve? Yet one of you is a devil!” (He meant Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, who, though one of the Twelve, was later to betray him.)

Our question: Why would Judas betray Jesus?
Here’s the answer in part – he thought only with his “stomach” and he wanted only the bread of this world.
How about you?