Untitled Sermon (4)

I have always been fascinated by time travel. The idea of being able to go backward or forward in time to see how things were, or how they are going to be is just cool to me. But every story that involves time travel has to wrestle with this idea: How will changing how things were affect how things are?

In back to the future for example, Marty McFly is sent back in time to when his parents were in high school. He accidentally prevents his parents from meeting, and spends the rest of the movie trying to figure out how to get them together so that He doesn’t cease to exist all together.

See in these time travel stories, the characters are usually pretty excited when they initially go back, wanting to fix or prevent a personal or family tragedy. But on the way they end up accidentally interfering with something that is crucial to their existence. So they spend the rest of their time in the past or future trying to figure out how to fix this mistake, confused as to how to act, because what they do know is dwarfed by what they don’t know, and they realize they have to be much more careful with how they interfere.

And for us, when we’re watching these movies or hearing these stories, we get it. The choices these characters make, the things they do or don’t do, which are seemingly small at the time, can have a huge impact on how the story plays out. We get it. We think “man, they better be careful!”

And then we immediately go back to dwelling on things that have happened in our past that we wish had worked out differently. In fact one of the things I consistently see people struggling with in their faith is asking why God allowed this or that to happen in their lives.

And this is no big surprise. Because the bible teaches us that God knows everything, the future, the past, and that He directs it in certain ways, that he’s in control. So when He let’s something happen in our lives--a tragic death, a huge mistake on our part, a cruel betrayal by someone close to us--it really makes us question Him sometimes.

We ask questions like “if God is really good, and really loves me, how can he let something like this happen to me or to someone I love?”

These things are hard for us to get our mind around. And if we’re going to walk in close relationship with Jesus, like we were created to do--we really need to have a good answer for these questions.

And the first thing we have to get is that God is so much bigger and wiser than us. Our frame of reference is so tiny compared to his. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that He’s doing things and working in ways we don’t understand.

In , God puts it like this,

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For my thoughts are not your thoughts,

neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.

9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth,

so are my ways higher than your ways

and my thoughts than your thoughts.

This is a really important thing for us to understand, but like most things God teaches us, just knowing it doesn’t immediately change how we interact with the world. But as we watch God’s plans unfold, we begin to see--Man, God, I really thought that when X happened to me, it was the end of the world, but now I’m beginning to see how you worked through that.

As we’ve been going through John these last few months, we’ve been seeing this numerous times, as the disciples or the Pharisees try to talk to Jesus about something, only to discover He’s thinking or acting on a totally different level than they understood.

And here at the end of , we’re going to get to another puzzling fact of Jesus’s ministry on earth. So Jesus has consistently told us that He is doing everything that God the Father tells him to do. And at various times, we see Jesus exhibiting supernatural knowledge about things, and certainly we know that none of the things happening were a surprise to the Father.

Have you ever thought about this?

Jesus walked in ministry with his disciples from between two-and-a-half to three years. In the beginning, He went up to twelve different dudes and said “come follow me.” And they did. Twelve of them.

And Judas Iscariot was one of those twelve. Now John has been prepping us emotionally for this coming betrayal all throughout His book. Every time Judas is mentioned, John sort looks straight at his audience with an ominous look: “Then Judas, *Dun dun duunnnnn* who would later betray Jesus….”

So we know it’s coming. We already know he was the traitor in their midst, and John has revealed that this was consistent with Judas’s greedy character. He was the one put in charge of the money box intended for covering Jesus and the disciple’s expenses as they traveled around. And He would steal from it.

So not only did Jesus give one of the twelve disciple spots to the guy who would later betray Him--he let that guy be the one who had immediate access and control to their day to day finances! What was Jesus thinking? Did He not know? What’s going on here?

Great question, and that’s exactly what John is going to help us figure out here in chapter 13, starting in verse 17.

17 If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them. 18 I am not speaking of all of you; I know whom I have chosen. But the Scripture will be fulfilled, ‘He who ate my bread has lifted his heel against me.’ 19 I am telling you this now, before it takes place, that when it does take place you may believe that I am he. 20 Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever receives the one I send receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me.”

21 After saying these things, Jesus was troubled in his spirit, and testified, “Truly, truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me.” 22 The disciples looked at one another, uncertain of whom he spoke. 23 One of his disciples, whom Jesus loved, was reclining at table at Jesus’ side, 24 so Simon Peter motioned to him to ask Jesus of whom he was speaking. 25 So that disciple, leaning back against Jesus, said to him, “Lord, who is it?” 26 Jesus answered, “It is he to whom I will give this morsel of bread when I have dipped it.” So when he had dipped the morsel, he gave it to Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot. 27 Then after he had taken the morsel, Satan entered into him. Jesus said to him, “What you are going to do, do quickly.” 28 Now no one at the table knew why he said this to him. 29 Some thought that, because Judas had the moneybag, Jesus was telling him, “Buy what we need for the feast,” or that he should give something to the poor. 30 So, after receiving the morsel of bread, he immediately went out. And it was night.

So real quick,

Three things John wants us to know at this point:

Jesus knew the whole time.

Not only does He predict his betrayal by one of his most intimate followers, He reveals to at least John, if not Peter, that He knows it is Judas who is going to betray him. Jesus called Judas to be His disciple, knowing that Judas would never fully buy in. Put him in charge of the money box, knowing that a greedy person like Judas proved to be, would help himself to it’s contents. And Jesus didn’t skip over Judas when He was exhibiting radical servant leadership earlier in chapter 13, by washing the disciple’s nasty dirt-and-animal-poop-encrusted-feet. Jesus knew the whole time.

Furthermore:

The disciples had no clue Judas was the traitor.

This one is probably the most surprising for us. Because for us, we’ve known all along. Every time Judas comes up, John throws shade at him. John has wanted us to know all along, but makes it very clear that this was not something that was blatantly obvious. When Jesus said “one of you will betray me”, everybody didn’t immediately look over at Judas. In fact, somehow, in the midst of this shocking revelation, the nine other disciples totally miss John and Peter’s question to Jesus about who it was, and they didn’t hear Jesus’s answer, or get what He was saying to Judas. They thought He was sent to the store to buy milk.

This isn’t the cartoons where the bad guy is named “stanley Sinister” or “dr. evil” or whatever. None of the disciples saw this coming.

Third, John clarifies for us:

This happened as a fulfillment of scripture.

Not only was it prophesied that Jesus would come, suffer and die, it was prophesied that His betrayal would be by one of his closest friends. says “the one who ate my bread has lifted his heel against me.” It’s the ultimate betrayal of trust. It’s not, “somebody broke into your house and stole from you.” It’s “someone you let stay with you, that you fed, that you cared for, betrayed you and stabbed you in the back.”

So why does John want us to know this stuff?

Well remember, John is writing this gospel so that we would recognize that Jesus is who He says He is, the messiah who came to save us, so that we would believe in Him and so gain eternal life.

But if you’re looking critically at this story of Jesus’s life, you’re going to have some of these questions. If Jesus is so wise and good, if he’s really being directed moment-by-moment by God the Father, why was He dumb enough to pick a traitor as one of the twelve?

John clarifies for us--Jesus knew. He didn’t pick Judas because he hoped things would turn out for the best, or because He didn’t know who Judas was, how greedy and corrupted He was. He chose Judas because He was there to accomplish the Father’s plan. And that plan was for Him to be murdered by His own people on a cross.

Not only was it important in the big-picture for us to know that Jesus knew the whole time, some of the things He said here at the last supper would turn out to be patently wrong. In the passage we looked at last week, Jesus has this conversation with the disciples saying that He has already made the disciples spiritually clean. But then in 13:10-11 He says, “You all are clean, but not every one of you.” For he knew who was to betray him; that was why he said, “not all of you are clean.”

If Jesus had merely said “I made you all spiritually clean. You’re mine forever.” and then almost immediately one of them betrays him, we would have some big questions in our mind about just how wise Jesus really was. But Jesus did know, and even as he’s teaching this powerful message about how He has taken His disciples, broken and sinful as they are, and made them spiritually clean before God, He’s preparing them for the shock they are about to experience when Judas betrays him.

Even though He’s been telling them all along that He would be betrayed and sacrificed, they are still shocked and horrified when their master gets taken from them and murdered. He told them this in advance to help them hold together. And repeatedly we’ll see them not remembering a lot of it at the time, but afterwards putting the pieces together--”ohhhh, He told us this was going to happen!”

Jesus knew the whole time.

And John wants us to know that His disciples, in the moment, didn’t.

But it was all a part of God’s plan.

See the bible teaches us that the proper and just payment for sin is death. Jesus couldn’t just come, teach us to sing Kumbayah together, and everything would be great again. WE were still separated from God by our sinful nature.

If everybody had just listened to Jesus when He came, he never would have been sent to the cross, to make the just payment for our sins.

Jesus had to die. Which means His heardhearted people had to reject Him. Which meant that one of his closest followers had to betray him.

And the disciples had no clue.

But it was all a part of God’s glorious plan to bring us back into relationship with Him through the atoning work of Jesus on the cross.

So where does that leave us?

Like the disciples in , we all find ourselves in the middle of the story. You each came in here with things on your heart. Some of you are in a season where things seem to be going well, and some of you came in here burdened by your circumstances. We’re in the middle of the story.

I think one of the reasons the idea of time-travel is so fascinating to us, is because it gives us the illusion of having more control over our life and our destiny. But just like the characters in those stories--the way little and big tragedies and triumphs impact the course of events is way out of our league to understand and anticipate.

And here in , John is showing us that even though the disciples had no clue, Jesus knew what needed to happen, and how it need to happen, and He was faithfully moving towards that goal.

So the three things we need to take away today are directly related to what John wanted us to know in this passage:

God knows what’s going on in Your life.

I am so grateful for the ways God has proven this to me, time and time again. He’s taken my heart aches and tragedies, and shown me how He has used them to accomplish good in my life. It’s so cool that we are looking at this passage the same week that our main service studied through , “We know that all things work for the good of those who love God, who are called according to His purpose.”

God knows what is going on in your life. And that truth brings with it a second, related truth:

We don’t always know what’s going on.

You may be baffled and disappointed by all the things going on in your life. But God is not baffled. He is good enough, and big enough, and strong enough to accomplish the things that need to be accomplished in your life.

We may be as dismayed by the things happening in our lives, just like the disciples were blown away when one of their own betrayed Jesus. But God was at work.God is at work, which is point number 3:

God has a plan.

God knows and we don’t. And He is always at work in the world. Like time travel teaches us, we don’t know nearly enough to start messing around and changing things in the past to bring about a better future. We don’t know enough. But God does.

One of the things that is so fascinating about this passage in is in verse 27 where it says “Satan entered into Judas.” We’ve seen through the gospel that although Judas was one of the disciples, that He was never a disciple in the trueest sense. He was stealing from Jesus and the other disciples all along--even though He was there with them, hearing Jesus’s teaching, seeing these incredible miracles. says that Satan had already put the idea into Judas’s head to betray Jesus.

This is one of the things that blows my mind: Satan wanted Jesus to die. Scripture never fully explains how it came to be that Satan, God’s enemy, came to be one of the primary means of bringing God’s plan to reality.

And this only further reinforces the point that God has a plan. And His plan was so big and good and perfect, that He used Judas, and his weaknesses and wants, and Satan, in all His hatred of God, with both of them initially acting of their own volition, doing what they wanted to do, to accomplish God’s plan.

That’s the God that we serve. See we hear these truths and think “sure, God is always at work. I see some good stuff here and there.

But at the same time we are overwhelmed and disappointed by all the bad stuff. And it creeps into our mind: does God know about this? Isn’t he big enough to stop it? Does he even care about us.

Don’t miss this. All these questions we ask, are exactly the questions the disciples are about to be asking themselves after Jesus’s death. Were we crazy to believe him? What’s happening? Why didn’t Jesus keep these bad things from happening?

See God doesn’t keep all the bad things from happening. He’s given us the free will to obey him or disobey him. And most of the world has chosen to disobey him. But He’s always at work, bringing about His glorious plan to restore and redeem rebels like us.

He doesn’t protect us from all the disappointments and tragedies. But He doesn’t send us there alone. He’s given us his word, which tells us He’s good enough, and big enough, to not just work some good in with the bad, but to work the bad into good.

If He could use the betrayal of Judas, the scheming and murderous planning of Satan, and the ugliness of the cross to accomplish his beautiful purpose to bring us back into relationship with him, can’t He work in the dissapointments and tragedies of our own lives?

So as you head back into your week, do so armed with the knowledge that God knows. That He cares. And that He’s at work. Even if you can’t see how. Because His ways are higher than our ways, and his thoughts are higher than our thoughts.

Let’s pray.