Practical Observations.

1. The love of money is the root of all evil. If a man surrenders to a sordid desire for wealth he will be prepared for any deed. 216

2. The only way to deal with temptation is to say, “Get behind me, Satan!” If we cherish the thought of wrong doing, the desire will grow upon us until “Satan enters into us.” “Resist the devil and he will flee from you.”

3. Beware of the beginnings of evil. The seed may be small as a grain of mustard, but if nourished it becomes a great tree that overshadows a life. When Judas began to pilfer from the bag, he had no thought that he would ever sell his Master. When Nero first ascended the Roman throne, a tender youth, he mourned that he had learned to write, he shuddered so to sign a death warrant. He lived to become the bloodiest tyrant of the earth by the gradual growth of the evil within that he did not seek to repress.

4. Wouldest thou sell Jesus? Dost thou not? Dost thou forsake him for the sake of making money? or for pleasure? or for friends? Then for these things dost thou betray the Master. You sell him and your birthright for a mess of pottage.

5. Before the cock crow. Before three o'clock in the morning. Three crowings of the cock were distinguished,—the first between midnight and one o'clock, the second about three, the third between five and six. The mention of those two crowings, the first of which should have already been a warning to Peter, perhaps makes the gravity of his sin the more conspicuous.216