A Knife In Jesus' Back

It’s a surreal experience when you’ve lived with the dread of something and the moment has finally arrived. There’s a potentially life-altering, or even life-determining surgery, and you dread it and dread it. And, then suddenly you find yourself kissing your family, being wheeled down the hall, and having your naked body put upon that freezing metal table. How’s that for vivid imagery? Or, you’ve sat at the bedside of somebody you love more than your own life, and you know that they’re deteriorating and, it’s only a matter of time, but there’s nothing that prepares you for the moment that it actually happens, is there? You have a meeting on Monday with your boss, and you know exactly what is going to happen. You rehearse what you’re going to say in your mind a thousand times, but when Monday comes, it’s like it happens in slow motion, right?

For Jesus, the moment has come. He had told his disciples that He would be betrayed by someone so close to him that they dipped their hands together in the dish, and now, it was time for him to finally receive his knife in the back. Now, He would finally be arrested. No more dread. No more preparing. No more expectation. The moment had come for him and for his disciples, revealing so much to us about his character and theirs.

“Judas came, one of the twelve...” As we come to our passage this morning, we should see no break from our passage from last week. It’s really unfortunate that we even had to break when we did. In actual events, there was no break. In fact, no sooner did Jesus say arise was Judas and the posse there. So, they’ve come to Jesus under the cover of night, and this is to be expected, since you’ll remember it’s the priority of the Sanhedrin to avoid a riot in Jesus’ arrest. They want to be subtle and stealthy. So, they’ve chosen to use night as a cover. It’s the primary reason they’ve hired Judas. They’ve hired Judas so that they can find Jesus when He’s out of the public eye to avoid a public spectacle. As Jesus even tells them here, he had been teaching every day in the Temple if they had wanted to just arrest him. But, they want to do so privately. John’s account of this same story says that Judas knew that Gethsemane was a place that Jesus often went, and this is why he took the contingency there. This means that it’s likely that he might have tried a few other places first looking for Jesus. He may have taken them to the Upper Room first, discovered they weren’t there, and then proceeded to Gethsemane. But, Jesus certainly wasn’t hiding from Judas and the arresters. He was expecting them. After all, He told the eight disciples at the gate to watch out for them, and then told the other three to go and out and greet them once the time was at hand.

“Have you come out as against a robber?” It’s interesting who all is there. You have soldiers and police officers who have come out with Judas to arrest Jesus. Jesus even asks them, “Do you really need the clubs and swords?” William Hendrikson puts it eloquently saying, “They came with torches and lanterns to seek out the light of the world. They came with swords and clubs to subdue the Prince of Peace.” But, honestly, you can hardly blame them. Though Judas didn’t believe in him, he had personally witnessed his strange power. And so had the leaders of Israel. In , Jesus spoke in the synagogue in his hometown of Nazareth, and they became angry at his words. They ran him to the edge of town to the edge of a cliff where they were going to throw him off and kill him, and he just passed through them. In , Jesus in the Temple, and He tells them, “Before Abraham, I was.” They decide they have to stone him for blasphemy. But, Jesus just passes through them. So, you can hardly blame them for bringing this mob. Jesus, believe what you want about him, is a powerful, slippery dude!

“he kissed him” So, Judas identifies him with a kiss. You have to understand that in a world without Facebook and Fox News, even celebrities were hard to recognize in the dark. You likely had never seen their faces. So, you needed someone that had seen them before to identify them. This why Judas needs to kiss him first, which was a standard greeting of the time. And, it’s the emphasis of the Judas as one of the twelve, the intimacy of the kiss at the greeting that highlights the egregiousness of the betrayal. The closer someone is to you the more painful the betrayal is. Benedict Arnold had George Washington’s fullest trust and had even been defended by Washington. Washington had made him the commander of West Point, only to have Arnold offer West Point over to the British for accolades and rank. And, here is Judas, and when they conspire together on a potential sign to identify the Son of Man, Judas must’ve spoken up and said that he would be able to show them by kissing his very face. This was how close they were. This was the access he had. It was treachery of an unthinkable level.

I’ve hinted around a lot at Matthew chapter 10 lately, but let’s go back and read it together. Read . In , Jesus is warning his disciples about what is to come, but notice at the end, why does He say that it’s coming? It’s coming because ‘a disciple is not above his teacher.’ It’s coming because He will experience it first. It’s coming because He will be betrayed by one of the brothers. It’s coming because he will be dragged before governors and kings. He will be flogged, and He will be hated. He will have to persevere.

APPLICATION: You will not live for Jesus in a broken world without having your heart broken. For most of us, we usually begin living for Jesus with this naive understanding of what it means to be a Christian. We’re going to love Jesus a whole lot, do some really great things for him, and then skate past all of the sacrifice and suffering part. But, what happens when you begin to follow Jesus, what He was explaining in , what we see being illustrated in here with Judas, is that when you live for the Kingdom the world will come against you. And, you’re going to have your heart broken by this world. It’s going to happen. We’re not going to make it out of this thing unscathed. People close to us are going to hurt us. Things around us aren’t going to go as smoothly as we want them to. Marriage isn’t going to be as easy as we think it should be. You know, we have a young church with a lot of young Christians, and that’s wonderful. But, our generation isn’t very good with what we see Jesus walking through right here. We’re not good with having our hearts broken. We’re not good with failure. We’re not good with things not going perfectly. Honestly, I blame the participation trophies. :) But, brothers and sisters, let’s remember, we’re following Jesus toward his Kingdom in the midst of a world that isn’t submitted to his reign. They’re going to come against him. One of the inner circle is going to hurt you. You’re going to take some losses. You’re being sent out as sheep among wolves, oh, but the cross is the doorway of the Kingdom, and the Kingdom is coming! The Kingdom is coming! And, those who persevere until the end will receive the Kingdom!

“Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?” For Peter, his moment to live up to his bravado had finally come. Now, you have to remember that he was a fisherman, not a soldier. So, he makes this ill-advised attempt to defend Jesus against the slave of the chief priest, Malchus (John’s account), and apparently bounces the blade off of Malchus’ skull and lops off his ear. Now, here’s Peter, a fisherman so skilled with a sword that he aimed for the head and got an ear in the middle of what most scholars believe to be a mixture of more than a hundred Roman soldiers and temple police. And, Jesus is like, “Do you want to die? Those who live by the sword die by the sword!” And, of course, Peter reveals here the same thing that he had revealed back in chapter 16. He fundamentally misunderstood the mission of Jesus. Peter is like me. He’s an idealist, and he’s still holding onto this ideal that he’s going to experience this triumphal messianic rise with Jesus. And, it’s like he’s assured he’s going to be the one that’s going to get it started. He’s going to be the catalyst. And, it’s like Jesus is looking back to him here and saying, “Peter, you’re just going to get yourself killed.”

The question that Jesus asks to Peter is really a remarkable one. He asks him, “Don’t you think that right now I could pray silently in my heart, or perhaps with a loud war cry, and the Father in heaven could in an instant send me 12 legions of angels to annihilate these suckers?” At the time of Jesus, a Roman legion was made up of 6000 soldiers. So, Jesus is saying quite literally that He is restraining some 72,000 soldiers from descending upon them at that very moment to stop this posse with their clubs and torches. gives us some concept of what this looks like and just how literally Jesus meant it. The king of Syria was attempting to capture the prophet Elisha as Elisha was going to warn the King of Israel of Syria’s attack. One night, the Syrian army surrounded the city of Dothan, and Elisha was sleeping peacefully. His servant awakened him in a panic sure that calamity was about to destroy them. Elisha then prayed that God would open the eyes of his servant so that he could see. At that instant, the servant began to see myriads of angels filling the mountain riding chariots of fire. Men with clubs? Men with torches and swords? It wouldn’t have mattered if they would have had tanks and F-22’s unless the Lord Jesus willingly restrained the forces of heaven so that he might embrace the will of the Father. Jesus is betrayed. And, Jesus is arrested. But, brothers and sisters, Jesus is not passive. Jesus is willing! Jesus restrains the warriors of heaven to embrace the will of the Father that you might be saved.

In the Chronicles of Narnia, there’s a powerful scene. Aslan is fearsome, awe-inspiring, full-mane male lion. The young boy, Edmund, has committed treason against Narnia with the White Witch, and Aslan, the Long Awaited One, resolves to trade his own life for the life of Edmund, even though death is the rightful consequence of his treason. And, it brought tears to my eyes the first time I saw it because it was so vivid. So, Aslan marches up the stone steps, and no one has to push them. He walks by his own desire and by his own decision. Surrounding the steps are these pathetic and pesky creatures, and they’re all mocking him, and here is such a majestic and beautiful gold creature, towering over them all. They throw him to the ground, and they begin to hit him with their sticks, and tie him with ropes. Lucy and Susan keep crying to one another, “Why won’t he fight back? Why won’t he fight back?” Because you’re sitting there, and you’re thinking, “Man, you’re a lion! You’ll crush them like powder! But, he just lays there, and they shave off his glorious mane and the witch impales him with a dagger. But, it wasn’t because he was passive; it was because he was willing. Do you understand the difference? One is afraid. One is courageous. One is timid. One is beautiful. One is powerless. One is powerful. Brothers and sisters, Jesus was not passive! He was willing!

“But all this has taken place that the Scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled” This must’ve been a scene that Judas replayed in his head until he ultimately dangled from the end of his own rope. As Judas and his posse show up, Jesus doesn’t seem shocked, taken back, or the least bit afraid. In fact, it must’ve sent chills down their spines when He told them why it was they were there. Imagine how they must’ve all replayed this scene after news of the resurrection spread when Jesus looks at them and says, “You are here because you are supposed to be here.” You are here because my Father planned for you to be here. You are here because providence has brought you this place. You don’t need swords. You don’t need clubs. You know that I’m a teacher in the temple, not a revolutionary. I’m going to go with you, because God has arranged this before the foundation of the earth. The Father set this into motion and testified to this very moment throughout the entirety of his revelation to us. So, here we are.”

This wouldn’t have just made an impact on his betrayer and arresters that day, but also on his disciples. You can tell it impacted Peter because of what he said in his sermon on the day of Pentecost in what I think is one of the most theologically loaded verses in all of the Bible, , “this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.” That is, Jesus was delivered over to these men by God. It’s what was in their hearts to do. It’s what they wanted. But, it was God’s providence. It was God’s plan.

APPLICATION: The cross was supposed to happen. It was God’s plan from the very beginning, and we cannot think any differently or we misunderstand God. It was the worst thing that was ever going to happen according to the sovereign will of God, but it was going to happen because, according to the sovereign will of God, it was actually going to be the greatest thing to ever happen in the history of the world.

For Jesus’ disciples that day, Jesus’ arrest was the worst news they’d ever heard. For Jesus’ disciples today, isn’t it wonderful news? Isn’t it wonderful news? There is a precious paradox for the people of God. God’s providence is painful, but it is good. Will you trust him? God’s plan is painful when you’re agonizing in the Garden. God’s plan is painful when you’re betrayed by your disciple. God’s plan is painful when it leads to the cross. Oh, but the glory of redemption, the victory of the resurrection proves how good it is! Brothers and sisters, God’s providence is going to be painful in your life. Not one of you will avoid it. Not one of you will avoid the shockwaves of life. It may be your health or your children or your marriage or your job or your family or it may be all of the above, but you will know pain in God’s providence. Will you trust him that it is good? Will you trust him that Sunday is coming? Will you trust him that his Kingdom is greater?

A Knife In Jesus' Back

Introduction

God’s Word

Read

‘One of the Twelve’

You Will Have Your Heart Broken

Jesus Isn’t Passive

Judas is On Time