The Price of Weak Faith

This is the Shekel of Tyre.  It is believed to be the same silver coin that Judas received for his betrayal of our Lord Jesus Christ. These shekels weigh approx 14.85 grams each and Judas received 30 for a total weight of 445 grams or 15.71 ounces of silver. At today's market of $12.85 an ounce, that's a total value of $201.87. It was approximately the cost of a slave or a month's wages back then and certainly not a lot of money. You'll recall that the perfume the woman from Bethany poured on Christ was worth a whole year's wages. It's not so much that Jesus was betrayed for those 30 pieces of silver. The silver was merely a catalyst, a tool used to pry open the weak heart and faith of Judas Iscariot who listened more to the crowds, to the Pharisees, and to the weight of his purse, than to the Word of God from Christ Jesus Himself. How much more could he have had, had he instead rendered his heart and his purse as did the widow with her two mites?

"Judas is neither a master of evil nor the figure of a demoniacal power of darkness but rather a syncophant who bows down before the anonymous power of changing moods and current fashion. But it is precisely this anonymous power that crucified Jesus, for it was anonymous voices that cried, "Away with him! Crucify him!" - Pope Benedict XVI

There is nothing anonymous about that power to many of us, he most certainly has a name. Judas wasn't evil himself but merely too weak in faith and mired in things of the world so as to become used as a mere tool of that same "anonymous"evil. So it is today with those who through their own selfish desires follow these same changing moods and current fashion, forsaking the voices of our ancestors crying out to us from beyond the grave at the atrocities we are committing today in the name of change, lifestyle, new age ideology, choice, abortion or progressivism, even forsaking God Himself in the process. The question we each need to ask is how many times have we ourselves betrayed Jesus Christ and joined in the cry of "Crucify Him" for far less than 30 pieces of silver?

God's Blessings, Bob