Ep. 23| Are You More Like Judas or Peter? (The Answer Will Surprise You)

What if everything you thought you knew about Judas and Peter was wrong?

What if Judas wasn't just greedy—and Peter wasn't just a coward?

What if they were both guilty of the exact same sin—and what if you're guilty of it too?

In this episode, Josiah Ryan breaks down one of the most misunderstood stories in Scripture: the betrayal and denial of Jesus by Judas and Peter. But this isn't the Sunday school version. This is the deep theological context most people miss—and it has everything to do with how you're running your business right now.

Judas didn't betray Jesus just for money. He was trying to force God's hand. He thought Jesus was moving too slow. He thought if he could just put Jesus in a position where He had to prove He was the Messiah, the kingdom would finally kick off. So he took God's plan into his own hands—and it ended in destruction.

Peter didn't deny Jesus three times because he was a coward. He was inside the complex trying to come up with a plan. He was trying to do something—anything—to fix the situation. But in doing so, he was taking God's timing into his own hands. And Jesus told him exactly what would happen.

Both Judas and Peter made the same mistake: they didn't accept God's will. They didn't trust God's timing. They tried to force things instead of surrendering.

And if you're honest, you're probably doing the same thing in your business right now.

What you'll learn in this episode:

Why Judas wasn't just greedy—he was trying to force God to be the earthly Messiah he expected The historical and theological context behind Judas's betrayal that most people miss Why Peter wasn't a coward—he was inside the enemy's complex trying to come up with a plan What it means that "it was determined the Son of Man must die, but woe to the one who betrays Him" (Luke 22:22) The difference between God's sovereign will and human choice—and why both are true How trying to force God's hand in your business leads to destruction What it means to "accept your lot in life" (Ecclesiastes 5) and why that's the key to peace Why you can't force God to do things on your timeline—even if your plan looks better How to stop taking God's plans into your own hands and start trusting His timing

This is deep, challenging, theological content that will make you rethink everything you thought you knew about betrayal, denial, and surrender.

If you've been trying to force God to move faster, open doors that are closed, or build the business you want instead of the one He's calling you to—this episode will set you free.

God's plans are not our own. God's timing is not our own. And if we're trying to force God to fit into places He's not going, we're going to end up exactly where we're not supposed to be.

Subscribe to The Christian Business Podcast with Josiah Ryan and join a community of entrepreneurs who are surrendering control and trusting God's will over their own.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:15

What's going on, guys? Welcome to another episode of the Christian Business Podcast. I'm your host, Josiah Ryan. Today's episode is going to be really, really fun. All right. We're going to be asking you, are you guys more like Judas or are you more like Peter? And most of you are probably thinking, well, probably neither. Well, this is kind of a trick question. I think we're going to have some fun with the episode today. And I can't wait to jump into it. So, with that being said, you guys, this is a newer podcast. Okay, we've been doing this for about six months. We're really, really starting to pick up right now. Um, if you have any friends, any family members who you think could benefit from this, we'd love to invite them to the show. I think today's episode in particular is gonna be a banger, and uh I'm really excited to share it with you. So here's what we're gonna do, okay? I'm gonna kind of recap the crucifixion story. We all know what happened with the crucifixion, and if we don't, we're gonna learn today. Um, this particular uh story comes from Matthew 26 and also in Matthew 27, if I'm not mistaken. So you can go ahead, you can read the full kind of story of Jesus' crucifixion and the things that led up to that um in those chapters. But in the meantime, let's go ahead. I'm gonna start us off with a quick prayer and we'll get started. So, Father God, just thank you so much for this day. Lord, I just ask this that you bless this episode, Lord, be a part of this episode and put it in the hands of any single person who you think can benefit. I love you, Lord. I thank you for this moment. I thank you for the opportunity to be doing this. Love you so much, Jesus, in your name, amen. All right, guys. So let's talk about this. Are you guys operating more like Judas or Peter? Well, let's go ahead and uh let's uh, like I said, let's talk about this a little bit. So the fact is, is that both Judas and Peter were involved with Jesus' crucifixion. What do I mean by that? Well, they both were around, you know, the the moments that led up to it and during, right? And so let's start with Judas. All right. Here's Judas's thing. All right. So Judas essentially betrayed Jesus for 30 pieces of silver. And then what we find is that when Jesus got uh crucified on the cross, Judas felt so guilty that he returned the money uh to the people who he betrayed Jesus into the hands of. They were the Pharisees and Sadducees, they were the religious leaders of the time. I want to repeat this. They were the religious leaders of the time. The Pharisees were people who added way more to, you know, God's commandments than what God commanded. And they weighed the people down with all these religious burdens. The Sadducees were a bunch of people who removed context from Jesus, removed it from God's commandments, and uh, you know, they didn't believe in the resurrection of the dead and stuff. They really only believed in like five bucks. And um, you know, there's some interesting stuff about that. But basically, the Sadducees were guilty of removing context from God. You see, if we try to add things to Jesus, you guys, we're gonna weigh people down and we're gonna come up with man-made rules and religion. If we're trying to take away things from Jesus, we're gonna end up with man-made rules and a man-made religion. All right, it's Jesus plus nothing. That's the that is the formula for growing closer to God, for having peace in your life, for having joy, all these types of things, being filled up by the fruits of the Spirit, by being filled up with the Holy Spirit. You guys, that's what it's all about. And so the religious leaders of the time were the people who crucified Jesus because Judas betrayed Jesus into uh their hands. All right. Now, an interesting thing happens because if Judas was just a greedy guy, which he was stealing from the burst, you know, the Bible tells us that. But if Judas was simply only a greedy guy and it was all about the greed and it was all about the money, you'd think he'd be pretty happy if he got his 30 pieces of silver. All right. In fact, the way to look at it today is that it was basically, you know, the price of a modern car. Uh, believe it or not, the religious leaders kind of screwed Judas in that process. And it's kind of an interesting thing with that. Um, but anyhow, you know, if he was just purely all about the money, I mean, still, if somebody gave me a new car, I'd be pretty happy, right? And so it wasn't a little bit of money, and by not by any, you know, stretch. Um, but it also wasn't like a million dollars or $10 million or something like that either. But long story short, Judas, an interesting thing happens. If it was all simply about the greed, Judas does this interesting thing where he feels guilty after he betrays Jesus. And what does he do? He goes and he kills himself. So Judas betrayed Jesus, he betrayed Jesus and he did it for money. He got paid, and then an interesting thing happened where now all of a sudden he felt guilty and he went and he killed himself. Well, if we know anything about Jewish context at the time that Jesus came, all of the people were expecting a king, an earthly king who's going to set God's people free. He was the Messiah. This is what he came to do, set people free. All right. And, you know, the way that everybody expected Christ to be, and the way that honestly modern Jewish people believe this today, is that Christ is going to be an earthly king who comes back and he sets all of his people free. He's, you know, obviously spiritual king. He's he is the son of God. Um, but they were expecting somebody who is going to, you know, take things into his own hands. They expected a guy who's going to raise up swords, they were going to take out the Romans, the Jewish people were going to get their nation back, and everything was going to go great. Well, obviously that didn't happen. And Jesus taught us in his teachings, he says, that you know, his kingdom isn't of this world. So that's kind of the context for all this stuff. Now, when we read more throughout the gospels, when we learn more about Judas, and when we really look into the stuff, Judas was one of the older, if not the oldest, disciple. Um, he was older than Jesus. And it's really interesting because, you know, all throughout the ministry, there's these little signs that Judas believed that Jesus was going to be the earthly Messiah, not only was going to be, Judas believed that Jesus was the Messiah. He thought, and this is where it gets so interesting, man. But Judas really thought that, hey, this is the Messiah. This guy's going too slow. Someone needs to do something so that Jesus is in a position where he has to prove to the world what Judas knew and all the disciples knew that Jesus is the Son of God. That's how Judas was thinking. It's a really interesting context, all right? Now, here's what I'll say. This is what I believe. All right, I've gone through this rabbit hole. I have really, I've I've spent like a long, long time really looking at this, really deep diving all the text throughout the Bible and all that stuff. I'm not going to ask you to accept this position. Um, I'm going to encourage you to look into this yourself and see if you come up to the same conclusion. And maybe you think you've researched it, and maybe you did, you know, 5, 10, 15, 20 years ago, whatever that looks like. Um, well, guess what? You got another opportunity to do it again because we're living in a time where the spirit is making paths straight. All right. The spirit, we we live in the age of the internet. We can't just hide behind what somebody else said anymore. We have to look at the truth and we have to learn context and we have to really look at things with an open mind and really come to, you know, valid conclusions that are rooted in logic. All right. So I would encourage you guys to look into this first and foremost if you disagree. That's perfectly fine. And we can disagree. Hey, leave it in the comments. I'd love to talk about it, okay? Um all that being said, now, Judas was a guy who thought to himself, this is what I believe. Judas is a guy who thought to himself, man, if I can just put Jesus in a position where he is forced to prove to the world that he's the son of God, well, then we're finally going to kick this thing off. And that's what Jesus is waiting for. This is Judas's mind. That's what Jesus is waiting for. He's just waiting for an opportunity where he gets to prove that he's the son of God and he's going to be the Messiah who, you know, sets us free from the Romans and all this chunk. And so I really look at Judas as a guy who thought he was taking God's will into his hands, basically. Um, I think that he was trying to force God's hand to be the God that we all know him to be today. And I think what ended up happening is in this position, Judas essentially betrayed Jesus into the hands of the religious leaders. And I think it went horribly south. And when it went horribly south, uh, if I remember correctly, he returned the money to the religious leaders once he realized that the jig was up and that Jesus was actually going to be crucified, and that Jesus willingly laid down his power. You guys have to remember when the horde of people, all right, a horde, what is a horde? This is a very interesting concept as well. Well, it would be one-tenth of a Roman legion. A Roman legion was around 6,000 soldiers. So, you know, this whole 10 guys showed up to arrest Jesus situation. Well, we can, you know, we can infer from the actual ancient text that it was actually probably a lot more than just 10. And what happened when the entire horde of people showed up, you know, like the village people with their clubs and sticks and pitchforks and all this kind of stuff, right? What happens when they showed up? Well, Jesus stood up, basically, and um knocked them all back. That's what it says. So he knocked them all back and they all fell to their feet. So Jesus proved that he was the son of God. He he absolutely had the power. He could have taken himself off that cross, he could have never even gone to it and all this kind of stuff. But Jesus, what did he pray the night before when he was sledding blood? And actually the day of, he prayed to God and he said, Not my will, Father, but yours. And so that was, you know, this is all ordained and it was set up to be this way. This was God's will. Anyhow, so as soon as Judas realized that the jig was up, Judas went and uh he returned the money and he immediately went and he killed himself. He realized that it wasn't gonna go down this way. He realized that, oh my gosh, I betrayed the son of man. Holy crap. Uh, this is pretty much the worst thing that I possibly could have done. And he went and he killed himself. And that's what happened. Interesting, sad story. Okay, that's one way to look at it. I'm gonna, if you don't see it that way right now, I'm gonna challenge you to look into it and do your own research and come to your own conclusion. If we don't agree, that's perfectly fine. It was absolutely God's plan that Jesus would be betrayed, that Jesus would be um essentially handed over. Okay. But Judas also made the choice to be the guy who did it. And that's the part that I'm really trying to hammer home on. Um, the fact is, is Luke 22, 21 through 22 tells us, but here at this table, sitting among us as a friend, is the man who will betray me. This is what Jesus said. For it has been determined that the Son of Man must die. But what sorrow awaits the one who betrays him? Well, geez, this is like one of the this is very deep theological stuff, guys. But here's the thing there's two differences, okay? One, it was absolutely God's will to that Jesus would be betrayed. We know that because it went down that way and it was perfect timing, and it was exactly how it had to happen. It really was. But Judas was the guy who made the choice to do it, and woe to the one who made that choice. All right. I don't know. It's the truth. This is one of these difficult concepts to you know accept in just accept as humans. You know, God's ways are above our ways. And if God is really who he claims to be, bigger than all of us, the creator of the entire universe, we have to expect that, you know what? It there's gonna be things that we just don't understand about God. You know, I kind of look at it this way: we're dogs, right? What does a dog do? Well, a dog sits inside and then you go to work, and then you have a super stressful day and you're working on 5,000 things, and you gotta get the kids, you know, shuttled to and from school in the middle of all of it and all this kind of stuff, right? Well, our dogs do not know that. Our dogs sit at home and they wait for us to come home. They don't understand anything about the complexity of jobs or any of this kind of stuff. Basically, when we come home, they get food and they're really happy and they love us. That's that's the whole thing. We as human beings, you guys, we are dogs. We will not understand the complexities of how big God is. You know, here's the other thing is science is coming out right now, which is absolutely fascinating. But as science is coming out, you know, the past, the present, and the future all exist on the same plane. I know that's a concept that is nearly impossible for us to understand, but God knows the future. He knows exactly how things are going to go down. He uses, you know, I believe in a concept called open and relational God, where basically He um He always puts us in the best position based on the choices that we make. We don't always make the best choices, but he always puts us in the best situation to either get out of the mess that we've created or to learn the lessons of the mess that we're in. All right. So it's like a giant freaking chess game, basically. Um, he gave us free will. We get to make choices. He's always going to put us in the best position to make the best choices, but at the end of the day, we're the one that makes the choices. Okay. That is exactly what was going on with Judas. That's what I absolutely believe as it pertains to that. So um, again, it's God's will that Jesus was betrayed, but Judas was the one who made the choice. All right, so that's an important caveat that I just want to add to that. Peter, here's another one. All right, and this might break a lot of your brains too, because I'm gonna say something else that's a little bit not traditional. You know, everybody talks about how cowardly Peter was when he denied Jesus three times. Everyone's like, oh, you know, Peter's such a coward, you know, he denied Jesus three times. I would never do that. I I don't know if uh anybody says that. If you say that, you're missing the point. You're totally missing the point. And I'm gonna bring it home in just a moment here. So Peter, on the other hand, you know, he denied Jesus three times during the crucifixion. That's what the Bible tells us. Now, we have a couple ways to look at this. First off, we know that Peter was an impulse, uh, you know, he was an impulsive guy. He um, you know, he was an action first, think second kind of a person, which I think us as entrepreneurs and uh business owners and all that kind of stuff, I think we can really, really relate to that. I know I can, right? Um, but we know that Peter's personality was the type of guy who who did things first and thought second. We also know that Peter was a courageous guy, and of all the apostles and disciples and all that, you know, Peter was the guy who had the courage, and he was the one who usually was the, you know, almost always was the first one to take action on things. So this is where it gets fascinating, is because the night before, you know, is the during the final dinner for the final supper, all that, Jesus told Peter that he would deny him three times. And if I'm not mistaken, this is uh around the time that he was washing Peter's feet, um, which is a fascinating thing in and of itself, too. But anyhow, so Peter, uh, you know, he was told that he was going to deny Christ three times, and Peter's like, No way, I'll die before that happens. And then Peter, you know, Jesus says to Peter, he says, Um, you know, assuredly as the russer crows, you will have denied me three times. And Peter's like, yeah, right, it's never gonna happen. Well, sure enough, now the whole thing goes down. Now, here's the amazing part, and this is what I love so much about this story, okay? So, first off, he had Judas, he was trying to essentially take God's plans and purposes into his own hand. And really, if Judas was right, and if Judas would have become the son of God, or you know, if he would have, if Jesus would have um, you know, been this earthly king that, you know, Judas was hoping for and all this kind of stuff, and he was gonna be this, you know, physical leader and all of that, Judas would have been, he was probably looking at this as like, I'm gonna be the king's advisor, this is gonna be awesome, you know, I'm a little bit older, I'm gonna be like this really cool high-up guy in this kingdom, and we're gonna make this thing happen. That was his motivation. So don't get me wrong, there's definitely some greed behind all of that. Um, but it's also he was trying to, you know, force God's hand into something that wasn't God's plan at that time. That's all it is. Wasn't God's plan at that time, but Judas was trying to force it. Anywho, keep going. So Peter now was told that he was going to deny Jesus three times before the rooster crowed. Well, here's how I see Peter. Okay, Peter was a courageous guy. He got inside the complex. All the other disciples, you know, besides John, uh, Peter, you know, what went inside the courtyard, you know, very after he chopped off the slave's ear. Remember the slaves, you know, the servant to the high priest, right? Chopped off his ear. Peter went inside the complex and uh he was there. You know what that says to me? Peter wasn't trying to save his own life. That says to me that Peter was trying to come up with a plan and he was trying to make something happen. This is a bad situation. Jesus is in trouble, Jesus is arrested. I gotta do something. All right, think about that. That was Peter's mindset. I gotta do something. And so Peter jumps in and he's in the complex, and sure enough, you know, uh, he denies Jesus first time. And yes, you can imagine, hey, if you were going undercover and you were trying to come up with a plan, anything, just trying to do something because this is so bad. Of course, you're going to deny, you know, like you're basically a spy in that situation. Of course, you're gonna, you know, deny whatever the situation is because you're trying to come up with a plan. And he doesn't just deny Jesus once. You know, a lot of people make the argument, oh, he was such a coward, he denied him three times. Well, you know, he's such a coward, he only wanted to save his own neck. He was only trying to save his own life. Well, if that's the case, number one, why was he even there in the first place? That's the first question. And number two, if that was the case, how come he didn't leave immediately after denying him once? No, there was a motivation for Peter to stick around in that complex. And basically what ended up happening is, you know, Peter denied Jesus the first time. He denies him a second time, and then he denies him a third time, and then the rooster crows, and then Peter is reminded oh no, this is exactly what Jesus said would happen. And then at that point, you know, Jesus goes on to be crucified. You know, Peter probably feels like the biggest piece of crap who ever lived. And uh he's sitting there just remorseful and remorseful, and then sure enough, Jesus shows up three days later after the resurrection inside the room where all the disciples were at that time. Very amazing stuff, very fascinating stuff. But basically, Peter was guilty of the same thing that Judas was, taking God's plans and taking God's time into his own, instead of God just letting, instead of just letting God do his thing on his timing. And here's what I've come to find over the years, guys. If we have not accepted our lot in life the way that Ecclesiastes 5 teaches us to, the way that God tells us to. If we do not accept our lot in life, if we just don't simply accept things for what they are today, whatever that looks like, whatever God's will is, the father's will, not my will, if we don't accept that, we end up in trouble. Judas didn't want to accept the father's will. The father's will was, you know, to basically have this thing go down, you know, at this time. But Judas was trying to force God's hand, and that's an issue. The next thing is that Peter was trying to force God's timing into his hands as well, and as a result, both of them ended up in a really, really bad place. So, guys, this is what I'm gonna encourage you to do with this, all right? I want you to pray about this. I want you to research these things, first off. I want you to pray and I want you to ask God about this. And really, I want to ask you guys like in your business, have you accepted God's will over your own? Have you simply accepted that his perfect plan is better than the plan that you have? And if you have, well, dude, that's wonderful. Then you're living free and you know what it's like to not give a flying crap about anything. You're probably one of the most powerful people listening to the show right now because you're not controlled by anything. But let me tell you something. If you want that bigger house, if you want that boat, if you want this, you know, if you desire this, that, the other thing, you guys, you really haven't accepted your lot in life. Um, God's plans are not our own. God doesn't see life the way that we see life. And if we're trying to force God to do things and fit places where he's not going, we're going to end up in places where we are wrong. So, with all that being said, I love you guys. If this was a helpful episode, I want you to share this with somebody. Like I said, we do this totally for free. God put this on my heart like two years ago. I really, really enjoy it. Um, I've started this like six months ago of really, really uh getting consistent with the posting and all that kind of stuff, and we're starting to blow up in listens and views and all that kind of stuff. So I really love it. You guys, and I appreciate you all. These are some hard concepts that I realize are not going to be very popular, but you know what they are? They're concepts that are good to at least think about. Um, are we at a minimum? Have we accepted God's will for our lives, or are we trying to force things? Trying to force God to do things for us because it's more comfortable that way. If you're trying to force God to do things, it ain't gonna work out long term. That's the point of this entire episode. So I love you guys. I hope you're having a wonderful day. God bless. Talk soon. Bye-bye.