How easy it is for us to turn our backs on our Creator! Even Peter, one of the OG apostles, was susceptible to denying Him! What makes this even more interesting is, not only did Jesus predict Peter would deny Him three times earlier that day, but that Peter was known to stumble and struggle with his faith even though he literally hung out with the Lord Jesus Christ! (Remember Peter was the one, in Matthew 14: 22-33, who started to sink when Jesus told home to walk on water with Him and his faith started to fade.) What jumped out at me, as our pastor taught on the last third of Mark 14, was both the similarities and differences of Peter and Judas, and how we all emulate each of them! 

As mentioned, Peter had his struggles. So did Judas. Judas struggled with greed. He was put in charge of the group’s finances which afforded him access to funds that didn’t belong to him. So what we expect Judas might do, he did. But ‘dipping his hand in the till’ wasn’t, by our standards, his biggest fumble. Judas is, of course, most infamously known as the man who betrayed Jesus (Mark 14:43-50). Both men were in need of the same Savior, Jesus Christ, but they chose much different paths. Judas betrayed the Son of God and immediately regretted it. Ultimately he hung himself. Peter, on the other hand, despite stumbling while literally following God, never left! He never gave up. He never gave in. 

All of us can identify with these men and their faults. We all stumble. We all fail to recognize the magnitude of our need for the Savior. And, like Peter and Judas, we all have the choice of which path to follow. One way leads to our sternal destruction while the other leads to eternal, joyous living with our Creator. So the question is obvious: which way will you go?