The Disciples at their Worst

Mark 14:27-52; 66-72

Opening : Can you remember a time when you were spiritually at your worst? I’m referring to after you were saved.

Lost your temper

Lost your testimony

Told a lie

You were quiet about something when you should have spoken up?

Maybe it was a moment

Maybe it was a season

The sins of my preconversion days don’t bother me nearly as badly as the sins of my post conversion. I remember my failures after I was saved more vividly. They hurt. I knew better. I had no excuse.

This morning we see the disciples at their absolute worst.  I’m going to show you three things they did that led to their greatest failure. My prayer is that we will learn from their mistakes.

1. They ignored the warnings of Scripture (27-31).

A. Jesus quotes Zechariah 13: 7 to them. These words were written over 500 years earlier.

“I will strike the Shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.”

“I will strike”- The penal substitutionary death

“the sheep will be scattered” The Apostles will run

Jesus encourages them:

“After I am raised” – the resurrection

“I will go before you into Galilee”- The Shepherd will take His place at the head of the sheep again. He will gather them back together.

Summarize:

Jesus will be killed

The disciples will desert Jesus

Jesus will rise from the dead and gather them back together

B. Peter tells Jesus he doesn’t believe the Bible (29-31).

Notice his pride:

“Even though they all fall away” Peter is throwing the other guys under the bus. Calling them all a bunch of softies.

Emphatic- “I will not!”

Jesus- “Yes you will!”

Jesus tells him he won’t make it til daylight. 

We see in verses 66-72 that Peter denies that he knows who Jesus is three times before the rooster crows twice.

Have you ever wondered why it was Peter who denied the Lord? I think one reason is to show us that even the strongest fall.

Walked on water

Made the great confession “Thou art the Christ!”

Nicknamed the rock

Look how pitiful this strong man looks:

Afraid of servant girls (66)

Dramatically calls down a curse upon himself and swears (71)

Broke down and wept (72)

If you believe the Bible, you believe you can fall:

Heart is deceitful above all things (Jeremiah 17:9)

Every man is tempted- James 1:14

Paul said in Romans 7:

For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man. But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.

He called himself the chief of sinners after he was saved.

Hebrews 3:13 warns us not to be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

There is a war being fought in our souls. We are not in heaven yet. We still battle sin. The Bible teaches us to be on our guard.

C. Any Christian can fall into the sin Peter fell into.

Look at the end of verse 31 “And they all said the same”.

We are proud people. We think we are stronger than we are. The truth is we can’t even win the battle against cake, much less sin.

We are forgetful people. Illust. Of Brody telling me about a sermon I preached. He saw it on Youtube. I told him I never preached that. He showed it to me. I forgot!

If I can’t even remember what I preached I’m sure you can’t.

How do we keep ourselves from the mistake the disciples made?

We believe what the Bible says about us. We are weak. We are battling a sinful nature. We are not perfect. Any of us can fall.

We remind ourselves of what the Bible says. Read, study, memorize.

The Bible gives us lots of advice on overcoming sin:

Watch the company we keep

Put our mind on things above

Don’t stop going to church

Read your Bible

Don’t trust yourself

2. They forsook the discipline of prayer (32-42).

A. Jesus needed their prayers.

I don’t mean that His success depended on them. Thank God for that. If Jesus success depended on the prayers of the disciples Jesus would have failed.

By “needed” I mean that Jesus was experiencing turmoil in His humanity. Look at the text.

“began to be greatly distressed and troubled” (33)

“My soul is very sorrowful even to death”- He was so broken hearted He felt as if He were about to die.

He’s on the ground (35)

He’s asking for this to be accomplished in another way if possible (35-36).

He knows what He is about to experience. He’s going to experience hell for us in His own body.  

They know this. He tells them. They have never heard Him talk like this before.

He asks them to do two things: stay awake and pray. They do neither.

If someone asks us for prayer we ought to pray for them.

If we see someone in need of prayer we ought to pray for them.

B. They needed their own prayers.

Look at verse 38.

“may not enter into temptation”

“spirit is willing” We know you don’t intend on forsaking the Lord. None of us do. We want to live for God.

“flesh is weak” we underestimate this.

Peter said he would die for Jesus in verse 31 and in verse 37 he won’t even pray for Him.

That’s how weak the flesh is.

Praying costs nothing.

We don’t have to go anywhere.

We don’t have to do anything.

The flesh is so weak they fall into the same sin three times in just a matter of moments (37, 40, 41).

The end of verse 40 is interesting.

“they did not know what to answer Him”

What will we say to the Lord when He asks “Why didn’t you pray?”

I was sleepy? The disciples wouldn’t even say that and they were sleepy (40).

I forgot? How many times has the Lord reminded us?

C. If we forsake the discipline of prayer we can expect to fail spiritually.

The truth is we normally:

Study harder than we pray

Preach harder than we pray

Serve harder than we pray

Look at verse 42. The enemy is coming whether we pray or not.

The question is, will we be prayed up when he arrives?

Pray today because tomorrow could be the worst day of your life. It was for the disciples and they failed the Lord. 

There is so much grace in this section. Did you notice Jesus kept waking them up? He kept getting them up and reminding them to pray.

If we are saved the Lord will keep waking us up from our spiritual slumber. He won’t let you sleep long:

He’ll prod you

He will nudge you

He may even kick you out of the bed

God won’t quit on us. He will keep waking us up and reminding us to pray.

Through a sermon

Through a circumstance

Through a Scripture

The Holy Spirit is our spiritual alarm clock. When we fall asleep, He’ll sound the alarm.   

3. They fought the battle in the power of the flesh (43-52).

A. The battle was harder than they imagined.

“immediately” Jesus is midsentence, and a huge crowd comes out of the darkness:

Judas leading them- they never suspected it. Too busy trying to figure out who the greatest was to even consider who the worst was.

A crowd- not wanting to see signs and be fed but to kill Jesus.

Weapons- clubs and torches (beat and cut)

Powerful people- chief priests, scribes and elders

Jesus told them word for word what would happen (10:33).

Jesus has told us what will happen:

The world will be against us

The devil will be after us

We wrestle not against flesh and blood but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places” Eph. 6:12

If you think it’s easy to live the Christian life, then you haven’t tried to.

Try to resist the flesh

Try to love your enemies

Try to forgive those who wronged you

Try to pray, read, obey

Try to serve in the church

Then you’ll see the battle! I’ll tell you what’s easy- not living for the Lord. The devil is not bothering anyone on his side.

B. They followed their emotions.

“and they laid hands on Him and seized Him”

This had never happened before. Jesus had always walked away. Now they see their leader in the enemy’s grip.

Peter tries to start a war. He tries to cut the head off the High Priests servant. He grazed the side of his head. Jesus stops everything before more blood is shed (Matt. 26:52).

Jesus followed Scripture “let the Scriptures be fulfilled” (49).

We cannot fight spiritual battles in carnal ways:

Anger

Bitterness

Physical force

If they had followed Scripture rather than emotion, they would have let Jesus be arrested without incident.

Don’t get mad at Peter.

We are ready to cut someone’s head off when:

They get our order wrong.

They vote differently than we do.

They root for the wrong team.  

When you are in a battle what you feel like doing is probably the wrong thing to do. Do what Scripture says to do.

C. They were humiliated.

“they all left Him and fled”

What happened to verse 31? I thought they were all ready to die for Him. They weren’t even willing to go to jail.

Look at 51-52. There is an unnamed follower there. It was late at night, and it looks like he had his pajamas on. He wasn’t wearing the customary underclothes men wore.

They try to arrest him. They grab him and he wrestles out of his clothing and runs down the road naked. Pretty humiliating, isn’t it?

Everyone scatters in their own direction.

If we are not prepared to fight spiritual battles we will be embarrassed.

I mentioned earlier that Jesus woke the disciples up a few times. Also notice that Peter was told the rooster would crow twice before he denied the Lord.

Why twice?

I think the first was a warning shot. Peter should have heard it and straightened up. God isn’t trying to embarrass us. In fact, He normally gives us a lot of warning shots before He drops us.

The disciples failed a lot of pop quizzes before they failed this test. It is the same with us.

We see the disciples at their worst. Thank God we see Jesus at His best.

He remembers Scripture

He prays

He submits to the will of the Father

The disciples scatter. He gathers them back up.

Isn’t it amazing that not one disciple was:

Arrested

Killed

Lost (Except Judas and Jesus made that clear from the beginning)

Jesus will always gather His sheep. He will never lose a single one.

When we are at our worst Jesus is at His best.

The Shepherd was struck so the sheep would not be!

Why are you still in church?

Why are you still living for the Lord?

Why are you still serving Him?

The grace of God!

When we forget the promises of Scripture, He remembers them!

When we are sleeping, He is awake!

When we are too weak to fight He overcomes for us!