The Master At Work
Notes
Transcript
Good morning. Welcome again to Dishman Baptist Church. Please turn in your Bibles with me to Mark 14, Mark 14. We’re blessed that you are here with us this morning. Many of our brothers and sisters in Christ are caught in the throes of a late winter storm - but here, we are gathering and we are blessed that we are able to do so. So we are thankful that you are with us this morning whether here in person or for those who continue to join us online we appreciate your faithfulness to Christ and to the teaching of His Word.
This morning we will be continuing our look at the last night of Christ’s life as Mark presents it to us in his Gospel. Last week we looked at the preparations that Christ took to ensure that this final Passover meal with His disciples would be uninterrupted as He said in Luke “I have fervently desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.” This evening contained a vast amount of teaching - so much so that the Apostle John dedicates four chapters, chapters 13-16, to this evening. Here, Mark, in his typically brief and abbreviated style gives us just a few verses to paint the picture of what took place in the upper room that evening. Yet even in these brief pericopes, these brief snapshots in time, these stories, we can gather much spiritual fruit. Paul wrote that all Scripture is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness and so even in these seeming insignificant moments there is much for us to learn.
Have you ever watched a master craftsman work? Or a master artisan craft? When Michelangelo was painting the Sistine Chapel, the pope at the time Pope Julius would stop in to see how work was progressing. He was so overwhelmed by the work that Michelangelo had done that he told the artist to remove the scaffolding so that he could open up to the public to share the master’s work. “I can’t” protested Michelangelo, “I’m not finished yet.” The pope responded that if he didn’t remove the scaffolding that he would have Michelangelo thrown off of it. The public crowded into the chapel and the news spread about the paintings. Michelangelo was eventually able to finish the work that he had started - but not until the public had an opportunity to appreciate first hand his mastery.
This passage that we are going to look at this morning is a text that carries a sort of mastery that should awe each of us. At first glance it doesn’t seem to have much for us in our modern context - just a rabbi and His disciples sitting down to Passover. Yes there is the bombshell that someone will betray Him. And there is the comment that the Son of Man will go just as it is written about Him - which is a key point for this morning as we are looking at this text as a part of our four movements - last week was the preparation, this week is the past as we’re going to focus in on what was written about Jesus, next week is the Passover and finally we’ll be looking at the prayer. But even as we go through this morning if the only thing we do is examine the writings that preceded Jesus and His coming I think we will miss the true mastery of this text - and miss the beautiful truth and warning that we should gather and take from this text this morning. Read along with me as we look at Mark 14:17-21 and then I’ll explain a little more of what I mean.
When evening came, he arrived with the Twelve.
While they were reclining and eating, Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, one of you will betray me—one who is eating with me.”
They began to be distressed and to say to him one by one, “Surely not I?”
He said to them, “It is one of the Twelve—the one who is dipping bread in the bowl with me.
For the Son of Man will go just as it is written about him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been better for him if he had not been born.”
I will admit that it is with a fair amount of trepidation and a willing acknowledgement of my own limited intellectual capacity to grasp much of what were going to talk about this morning that I stand here before you. Do you see what I’m talking about? Do you see the great doctrinal truth that Christ so subtly yet so masterfully lays in to this text? Let me illuminate it for you - “Truly I tell you, one of you will betray me” that is the truth of man’s responsibility. “For the Son of Man will go just as it is written about Him” - that is the truth of God’s sovereignty. “But woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed” - again we’re back to the truth of man’s responsibility. It’s like the front of this pulpit - you have the truth of man’s responsibility laid on both sides and right in the middle is the sovereign action of God that leads to the cross.
And this is one of the most difficult and challenging doctrines in all of the Bible. Yet it is also one of the truest - as Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones said “The doctrine of the sovereignty of God and the doctrine of human responsibility are both true”. But what does this mean for us today? Let’s dig in to this text and observe as Christ masterfully weaves these two seemingly conflicting truths together and challenges us in our faith by the end. First we have to look at the setup, then the teaching, next we’ll see the rejection and finally, well we’ll get to that part when we get there.
The Setup
The Setup
Peter and John had been busy. They had gone and found the room just as Jesus had said and spent the afternoon preparing the Passover feast. Early in the evening Jesus arrives along with the other disciples for their meal. The location would have been a secret to the other disciples as Jesus, desiring to keep the information from Judas Iscariot, would have kept it to Himself. But now the entire group is reunited in the upper room to celebrate this final meal together.
Notice that the meal was eaten in the typical Middle Eastern fashion of reclining at the table - the same way that Mark had described the feasts thrown for Jesus by Levi in Mark 3 and Simon the Leper earlier in Mark 11. This is a change from the way the first Passover was eaten - when the Israelites were instructed to eat the meal standing up with their sandals on
Here is how you must eat it: You must be dressed for travel, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. You are to eat it in a hurry; it is the Lord’s Passover.
There was no need for haste this evening. Throughout the intervening centuries the Passover celebration had become a longer event and so participants lingered at table a bit longer. This particular evening the meal would have been interrupted by Jesus getting up and washing His disciple’s feet among other events. Jesus, as the rabbi, would have taken charge of the evening and led the group through the different phases of the Passover meal.
The first phase of the meal consists of a prayer of thanksgiving for God’s deliverance, protection and goodness accompanied by the first of four glasses of wine. Then there would be a time of ceremonial washing of the hands of participants as a recognition of the need for holiness and a cleansing from sin. It would seem antithetical but it may have been during this time of the meal that the disciples got into another argument over who is the greatest resulting in Jesus having to calm them saying
Then a dispute also arose among them about who should be considered the greatest.
But he said to them, “The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those who have authority over them have themselves called ‘Benefactors.’
It is not to be like that among you. On the contrary, whoever is greatest among you should become like the youngest, and whoever leads, like the one serving.
After this there is the eating of bitter herbs and loaves of bread would be broken and dipped into a thick paste made from ground fruit and nuts. It seems likely that it is at this moment that Jesus, having settled the room’s atmosphere twice now, makes a startling pronouncement. “Truly I tell you one of you will betray me - one who is eating with me.”
I would imagine that at that instant a pin drop could have been heard in that room. The muted babble that surrounds any dinner table and certainly a table at festival would have abruptly stopped. Even the words that Jesus uses would evoke shocked silence. The word for betray is paradidomai - meaning to hand over or to give over and it was often used to describe the arrest of criminals or the delivering of prisoners to judgement.
Jesus is echoing David here. David was used to being betrayed by those he trusted and writes in several Psalms
Even my friend in whom I trusted, one who ate my bread, has raised his heel against me.
and also in Psalm 55
Now it is not an enemy who insults me— otherwise I could bear it; it is not a foe who rises up against me— otherwise I could hide from him.
But it is you, a man who is my peer, my companion and good friend!
We used to have close fellowship; we walked with the crowd into the house of God.
Jesus has previously predicted His death and even that He would be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes and that they would condemn Him to death but only here does He indict one of His own disciples as the one who would be instrumental in handing Him over. So the room is silent. And then shocked silence gives way to action.
What ensues is not what we would expect. I think if you were to put me in that room my reaction might have been a bit different. I would immediately have had about eleven ideas of who it was who was going to betray Jesus. And none of them would have been me. But here the disciples in equal parts of naivete and self-awareness begin asking Jesus one by one - “surely not I?”
Now there are two ways to read this - the first is that each could have been so self-confident in their own devotion to Christ that it seemed unthinkable to them that it could be them that would betray Him. The second, and I think more likely, is that they were just enough self-aware of their own weaknesses and maybe still a bit raw from the rebukes they had taken over the last few weeks regarding their own self-importance and self-promotion that they had a healthy amount of doubt. Mark writes that they were distressed or grieved by Christ’s pronouncement. This is the same word used of the rich young ruler who was grieved to hear that he would have to sell all of his possessions - in effect giving up his god - to follow Christ. He went away profoundly pained.
This is not the reaction of a group of men pointing fingers at one another and seeking to vote someone off the island. This is a group of men who are deeply saddened and forced to be introspective as to whether or not they were in fact capable of such treachery. And of course - all of them would justify this self-doubt within the next twelve hours as each, while not betraying Christ, would abandon Him in His time of trial and need. And it begins even before His arrest. It begins in the Garden as He asks them to pray with Him. We’ll look at that in a couple of weeks but for now we need to return to the disciples in the upper room. They are distressed by the announcement that one of them would betray Christ.
Are you as self-aware as the disciples? Do you wonder whether there is the possibility that you could betray Christ and are you grieved by it? Of course we are incapable of betraying Him the way that Judas did - and we’ll come back to this again later in the sermon - but doesn’t that make our betrayals of our Savior even worse? As I said we’ll come back to that point or that question in a few moments but we also need to recognize what Christ is saying here and try and come to grips with it.
He is saying that His betrayal will come at the hands of a human agent. But here’s the interesting thing - this human agency works right alongside divine sovereignty. Look back with me at Mark 9.31
For he was teaching his disciples and telling them, “The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into the hands of men. They will kill him, and after he is killed, he will rise three days later.”
This is the same verb that is used - paradidomi - but here it is what is known as a divine passive meaning that the Son of Man will be handed over by God to these men. But here, in our text this morning, Mark tells us that the agent of Christ’s betrayal would be a man - one of His very own disciples. Does this contradict what was written and what Christ says in Mark 9? No. What it does is demonstrate what Christ is about to teach His disciples - that this was all foreordained by God to take place. Does this alleviate Judas from responsibility for his actions? No. As we see in a moment God uses the sinful act of a man to accomplish His purposes but that does not remove the man’s responsibility for those actions. We are responsible for our sins - and Judas would be held responsible and accountable for his. But first we need to see Christ’s demonstration of God’s sovereignty in all of this.
The Teaching
The Teaching
Jesus says “For the Son of Man will go just as it is written about Him.” Now stop there for two reasons - first that is all the farther we need to go. Second we need to understand how strange this is going to sound to the disciples. We read this with our modern eyes and we say of course we know the Son of Man is another name for Jesus and that He was destined for the cross. But that is not how His disciples would have interpreted what He was saying.
The first century Jewish concept of the Son of Man would have been drawn out of the book of Daniel. Look with me quickly at Daniel chapter 7.
“As I kept watching, thrones were set in place, and the Ancient of Days took his seat. His clothing was white like snow, and the hair of his head like whitest wool. His throne was flaming fire; its wheels were blazing fire.
A river of fire was flowing, coming out from his presence. Thousands upon thousands served him; ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him. The court was convened, and the books were opened.
“I watched, then, because of the sound of the arrogant words the horn was speaking. As I continued watching, the beast was killed and its body destroyed and given over to the burning fire.
As for the rest of the beasts, their dominion was removed, but an extension of life was granted to them for a certain period of time.
I continued watching in the night visions, and suddenly one like a son of man was coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was escorted before him.
He was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, so that those of every people, nation, and language should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will not be destroyed.
Their concept of the Son of Man was one of a conquering king who will be given dominion by the Ancient of Days and, more importantly in the first century Jewish mindset, a kingdom. The Davidic kingdom would be restored and would last forever. There is no where prior to the advent of Christ where the concept of suffering is tied to the Son of Man. Instead the picture of the Son of Man is one of victory and a conquering hero. Yet, this concept of the Son of Man does not encompass the story or picture of suffering that Jesus has tied the Son of Man to throughout this gospel.
Three times Jesus has predicted His death. Three times He has referred to Himself as the Son of Man.
Then he began to teach them that it was necessary for the Son of Man to suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, be killed, and rise after three days.
For he was teaching his disciples and telling them, “The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into the hands of men. They will kill him, and after he is killed, he will rise three days later.”
“See, we are going up to Jerusalem. The Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death. Then they will hand him over to the Gentiles,
and they will mock him, spit on him, flog him, and kill him, and he will rise after three days.”
Now He ties the Son of Man to the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53 and the figure described by David in Psalm 22.
Isaiah 53 is the beautiful and most complete passage regarding Christ’s suffering in all of the Old Testament. There is no one else who more completely fulfills the picture of the suffering servant.
Yet he himself bore our sicknesses, and he carried our pains; but we in turn regarded him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted.
We all went astray like sheep; we all have turned to our own way; and the Lord has punished him for the iniquity of us all.
He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth. Like a lamb led to the slaughter and like a sheep silent before her shearers, he did not open his mouth.
He was taken away because of oppression and judgment, and who considered his fate? For he was cut off from the land of the living; he was struck because of my people’s rebellion.
He was assigned a grave with the wicked, but he was with a rich man at his death, because he had done no violence and had not spoken deceitfully.
The prophets Zechariah and Amos write of a day when there will be mourning for an only son
“Then I will pour out a spirit of grace and prayer on the house of David and the residents of Jerusalem, and they will look at me whom they pierced. They will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child and weep bitterly for him as one weeps for a firstborn.
And in that day— this is the declaration of the Lord God— I will make the sun go down at noon; I will darken the land in the daytime.
I will turn your feasts into mourning and all your songs into lamentation; I will cause everyone to wear sackcloth and every head to be shaved. I will make that grief like mourning for an only son and its outcome like a bitter day.
Psalm 22 accurately describes not only the process but the horror of a crucifixion hundreds of years before it was devised as a method of torture and execution
I am poured out like water, and all my bones are disjointed; my heart is like wax, melting within me.
My strength is dried up like baked clay; my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth. You put me into the dust of death.
Christ, the Son of Man and the Suffering Servant of Israel - one and the same would go as it was written about Him. This is why Peter could say on the day of Pentecost
Though he was delivered up according to God’s determined plan and foreknowledge, you used lawless people to nail him to a cross and kill him.
And Paul would later write to the church in Corinth
For I passed on to you as most important what I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,
that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,
All of this was the perfect, preordained and orchestrated plan of God set in motion before time began, before man even came from the dust from which he was created. God’s sovereign decree was that His Son would come and would submit to all things that were written about Him just as Paul writes in Philippians 2
who, existing in the form of God, did not consider equality with God as something to be exploited.
Instead he emptied himself by assuming the form of a servant, taking on the likeness of humanity. And when he had come as a man,
he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death— even to death on a cross.
For this reason God highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow— in heaven and on earth and under the earth—
and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
But even though this plan was preordained and superintended by God Himself - Judas was still accountable for his own actions as Jesus is about to illustrate in vivid terms to His disciples.
The Rejection
The Rejection
Jesus says “Woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed.” This is more than simply a warning or a lament for the poor soul - this is a divine pronouncement of judgement. Jesus used similar language in His condemnation of the Pharisees and scribes in Matthew 23 pronouncing seven woes on those men and here He pronounces a judgement on the man by whom He would be betrayed. Note this - there is no malice in Jesus voice. There is no bitterness or vindictiveness here. This is simply what must be. It would have been better for Judas if he had never been born.
And it is easy for us to stand in judgement of Judas from our side of history and knowing the full story. Even as his actions facilitated the fulfillment of God’s preordained plan Judas was still culpable for his own rejection of Christ, for his own betrayal of Christ, that led to His crucifixion. Judas was not an automaton who was simply moving according to God’s direction - he chose to betray Christ and so doomed his soul to hell.
Yet Judas could have thought to himself that he was doing the right thing. That he was doing what he was doing for the benefit of the nation that he loved. What is our excuse? I said a few minutes ago that we would get back to this point - that our betrayals of Christ are far greater on this side of Calvary. We don’t have the luxury that Judas had - he could have consoled himself with the idea that the Jewish religious leaders wouldn’t or couldn’t kill Christ. We know better - and worse yet - we know why He was killed. And yet how often do we betray Him by our very thoughts, our very actions or even our inactions? We know what our sins and our willful actions cost Christ - and yet some of us wallow in them and continue them. Think of the shame that has been brought on the name of Christ just in the past weeks as the information surrounding Ravi Zacharias has been revealed. The shame that is brought on the name and the blood of Christ by the continued infighting and misrepresentation of His Word and His church that is happening right within our own convention.
We are responsible for our own actions. And yet - even in the recognition of our responsibility for our own sins we have the beautiful truth laid right alongside of it that God is sovereign over salvation and life itself. In one of his most famous sermons ever Jonathan Edwards said this “There is nothing that keeps wicked men at any one moment out of hell, but the mere pleasure of God.” The writer of Hebrews writes
It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
And we must recognize this - that there is responsibility for our sinful acts that hangs over our heads and therefore it would, it should be a fearful prospect for us to fall into the hands of the living God - unless we be found in Christ.
The Gospel
The Gospel
That is the ultimate beauty of our text - that even though He was betrayed by man that He went to the cross in fulfillment of the sovereign plan and decree of God to provide salvation for His people so that even though we should be held responsible for our sins, the punishment for those sins, the payment of that debt was laid on Him on that cross and we are free because of it. Which should cause us to examine ourselves even closer, even more asking ourselves whether we could be capable of betraying His holy and righteous name in our thoughts, actions or inactions.
Now there may be some who are thinking that I have done a pretty poor job of making the case of man’s responsibility laid alongside of God’s sovereignty - and that may be the case. But that doesn’t diminish the truth that both lay alongside one another - that we are responsible for our sins and that God is sovereign over salvation. He may use our sinful acts to accomplish His good purposes but He is neither culpable for them or tarnished by their use. In the same way we are only responsible or accountable for our sins - we can in no way earn any favor or good pleasure from His use of our sins for His good purposes nor can we achieve salvation through any other means than the shed blood of Christ on our behalf.