I've got six or seven important
things, blessings, I hope, ultimately, for our souls in all of this. The first one we need to take
note of is it is the Lord Jesus who is the sovereign in this
situation. We mustn't allow ourselves to
think that somehow wicked men got one up on our God. Do you see? It is He who goes
to them as sovereign. Rise, let us be going. It is enough. The soul's anguish
that he'd suffered, he says, is enough. See, he goes, as we've
seen in the last few weeks, he goes freely, he goes voluntarily,
he goes willingly, and he goes knowingly. You see, as much as
this seems to be a triumph of men, Colossians 2.15 tells us
that these extraordinary events are a triumph of our God. He made a public spectacle of
them, triumphing over them in it. It was He who is Gethsemane's
sovereign. And the same sovereign rules
again and always has rules, and rules today. His sacrifice was
not an unwilling sacrifice. As John 3.16 says, it's why he
came here from heaven to this place. And here, in verse 43, we have
a description of the enemies of God. What was their enmity
against our Saviour? Their enmity against God, their
hatred against our God, and their hatred against us is hatred because
He preaches the Gospel. if we preach the gospel as he
does, declaring that men have no righteousness of their own. And the only righteousness that
they can possibly have before God is the righteousness that
God gives freely by His grace to those He chooses rather than
rewarding the religious merits and efforts and attainments of
men. You proclaim that and out of
man who seems so good and so moral and so holy will spring
the wickedness that we have here before us. And we've got to remember
that the wickedness of the Romans and those soldiers, the captains
of the guard and others, is a wickedness that's all led by religious people. This was stirred up by the chief
priests and the scribes and the elders. The spiritual, religious,
so-called Christian leaders of nation Israel are the ones who
are behind all of this. It was a very stark thing that
the Lord revealed to me and I hope revealed to others as we went
through that parable on Thursday night and saw the rich, the man
who had the two sons and the young son went away and treated
his father abysmally and wasted his money in wicked living and
he comes back and the eldest son the eldest son who for all
of his life would have appeared to everyone around him and certainly
to himself as a moral, godly, righteous man. All of a sudden,
when the Gospel is revealed, that God will accept rotten sinners
back because of grace, not because of something that they have done.
Accept them back because they have no merits of their own.
Accept them back because of His eternal and infinite love for
them. All of a sudden, When that situation
arises, a man who seems religious and moral and zealous and upright
is exposed by God as someone who is extraordinarily wicked,
hating his brother, hating his father, hating God, hating his
work. God in the Gospel exposes people. You've got to remember that they
were led, in verse 43, by Judas. For three years, Judas was a
constant companion of the Lord Jesus Christ. For three years,
he preached successfully. For three years he performed
miracles. For three years he was accepted
by the other apostles as the genuine article. In fact, in
the apostolic group, he rose to a position of prominence.
He was their treasurer. And here he is. His heart is now laid bare before
us. The enemies of God come in many
forms, don't they? Psalm 2 was preached on constantly
by the early church. Why do the nations rage? and the people's plot of vain
thing. The kings of the earth set themselves
and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and His anointed
saying, let us break their bonds in pieces and cast away their
cords from us. At the heart of wickedness is
man's rebellion against God as King and Sovereign. And they gather together, the
religious leaders gather together, the Romans gather together with
them. against Jesus, what has He done? What has He done to deserve all
of this? He's just proclaimed the fact
that He is God. He is their Messiah. And He's portrayed, verse 44,
just the name Judas conjures up Extraordinary things in our
thoughts generally, doesn't it? But he betrayed him with a kiss. That was the signal that he organised. He kissed him. He kissed Jesus
as if to show love for him. He kissed him in an affectionate
and earnest manner, the word says. He first kissed him and then
they laid their hands on him and took him. You have before
you on your notes John's account of this and it's fascinating
to see all the witnesses that God the Holy Spirit has given
us to them, given us of this event. You see, In our translation,
the word he is in italics in verse 5 of chapter 18. Who are they looking for? Who
are you looking for? He said to them, I am. And again, he said to them in
verse 6, I am. and they all drew back and fell
to the ground. A great multitude, a great multitude,
because Judas had seen the Lord Jesus slip through the hands
of angry crowds before. In Nazareth, when he went back
there, there was a crowd going to throw him off a cliff, and
he just slipped through their hands. In Jerusalem, he was able
to just walk through the crowds of people, because this is his
hour. Those times were not his hour. They, like the Jews today, and
many Christians who encouraged the Jews today thought that Messiah's
kingdom was an earthly kingdom. They thought it was a political
kingdom. And they came, therefore, prepared
for a physical conflict. They came with swords and clubs
and lights. He had just been through the
most extraordinary conflict that any man up to that stage had
ever been on in this earth. His sole conflict as the weight
of becoming sin, the weight of bearing the wrath of God, caused
him to bleed in the garden. These men, doing the best that
men can do, just come with their swords and their clubs. And he's betrayed by a kiss. He's betrayed by the kiss of
a friend, a supposed friend. There's an article in your bulletin
by a man who is no longer with us called Jack Shanks. You can read it at your leisure. Judas betrayed innocent blood and sold the Saviour for 30 pieces
of silver and betrayed him with a kiss. And he says, ever since
he betrayed innocent blood, selling the Lord Jesus to the highest
bidder, the name Judas, has been a byword, symbolic of the worst
form of treachery and deceit known to man. However, though
he stands out in history as unique and his crime the most sinister,
his sin is still with us. The man who identifies with or
supports in any way preachers, churches and ministers which
in their preaching deliver Christ into the hands of his enemies
to do with him as they will, auctioning him off to the sinful
crowd, selling him out as a price agreeable to fallen man's sinful
will. That man is a Judas. Any preacher or pastor who gets
his people to be faithful, frightens them with the hounds of hell,
drives them with the whip of the law, or bribes them with
the promises of exalted positions and great rewards in heaven,
that preacher or pastor is a Judas. Then he finishes with a challenging
paragraph. Is the Lord Jesus Christ such
an ugly, unattractive, undesirable husband that his bride will not
love nor serve him unless she is driven or bribed? What a dishonouring thought!
What a blasphemous thought! Those who truly know the Lord
Jesus love Him, desire to honour and serve Him, do these things
as willing and thankful servants, constrained by the knowledge
of His great love for them, and the love which they have for
Him. See, the Lord Jesus is sold in
our land as a commodity. Just a few years ago, all over
this state and all over this town was a program mounted to
sell Jesus, to make Jesus attractive, formulated by an atheist. paid for by people who claimed
to love Jesus. The end result of it was on national
television. Jesus was mocked and the whole
program was a source of comedy sketches because they were selling
Jesus. They were trying to make Him
attractive to sinners who despised Him in their hearts. It goes on and on. May God protect
us from betraying our Saviour with a kiss. I don't mind being
called intolerant if tolerance means tolerating things that
are blasphemous of my husband. I don't mind being called hardline
and doctrinaire if that's proclaiming the truth about our Saviour. And at the end of the day, we
like the Lord and all of his people through all of history
must brace ourselves and prepare ourselves that this is going
to be our lot here for the rest of our days. for Peter, James and John. It was for all of God's saints,
from Abel through to the ones that are around us today. We
cannot expect that the world, and especially the religious
world, is going to applaud us for telling people that they
have no righteousness of their own. Just read Romans 2 and Romans
10. Our Savior's name is blasphemed
in the workplaces and on the television of this land because
people have betrayed the Lord Jesus with a kiss and sold him for just 30 pieces of silver. The price of a slave shows you how much Judas really
valued him. He was the most famous man in
all Israel at that time. He could have got a bucket load
of money for Jesus. Money wasn't his motivation. And as much as we are caused
to remember the cowardice of the apostles, I would love for
a little while to have the courage of Peter. John tells us it was
Peter, in verse 47, who drew his sword and struck the servant
of the high priest and cut off his ear. This wasn't a big sword,
it was a knife that Peter had. remarkably courageous. But the Lord reminds him and
reminds us that the Kingdom of God has never relied on carnal
weapons and will never rely on any carnal means for its success. God's Kingdom grows despite the
swords of men. God's Kingdom grows because our
weapons of warfare are not carnal, but they are mighty in God. The weapon of our warfare is
the Gospel. We just keep preaching the Lord
Jesus in His beauty, in His deity, in His infinite eternal love
for His people. The fact that He sits on the
throne ruling this town and this universe with absolute authority,
perfect absolute authority, with complete knowledge of what He
is doing, and why he is doing it. The light of the world works
openly. These men show what Satan does. That prince of darkness works
in darkness. The Lord Jesus challenges them,
doesn't he? in verse 48, Have you come out
as against a robber, with swords and clubs to take me? I was daily
with you, I was close to you, it means, in the temple teaching,
and you did not seize me. The enemies of God's people are
cowards. Always they are cowards. Always they need darkness. Always they need to cover up
their activities and their real intentions. And especially they'll
scurry for cover when the gospel is proclaimed. They'll always
find some place to hide. God's work is done openly. God's kingdom is not built by
swords and clubs. And then there's a great word
at the end of that, verse 49. But, all this is happening, but
the Scriptures must be fulfilled. The Word of God must be fulfilled. What a wonderful promise. Simon's
been talking to us about some unbelievable promises to sinners
in Romans 8. Remarkable promises. The Scriptures
must be fulfilled. Despite what we see around us
with our human eyes, God's Scriptures must be fulfilled. Just read
the description of these activities in Acts chapter 13, from verse
26 to 29. Men and brethren, sons of the
family of Abraham, and those among you who fear God, To you
the word of this salvation has been sent for those who dwell
in Jerusalem and their rulers, because they did not know him,
nor even the voices of the prophets. They didn't know Jesus, and they
didn't know what Isaiah was saying. Nicodemus, Caiaphas, these men
who knew their scriptures off by heart, they didn't know God. and they didn't know the word
of God, even though they had read every Sabbath had fulfilled
in them condemning him. And though they found no cause
for death in him, they asked Pilate that he should be put
to death. Now when they had fulfilled all
that was written concerning him, they took him down from the tree
and laid him in a tomb. Nothing happens in this world
outside of God's Word being fulfilled, God's purposes being fulfilled. The world looks like it's out
of control, financially, militarily, Environmentally it looks like
it's out of control. It is. It's out of men's control
and it's perfectly in God's control. And He at any time can do with
His creation as He sees fit. The Church of God seems weak,
seems pathetic. seems like it struggles like
us all the time. But the Church of God in this
world is perfectly healthy. It's achieving God's purposes
absolutely perfectly. When the Lord Jesus said, I will
build my church and the gates of Hades will not prevail against
it, Gates are defensive weapons, not attacking weapons. You don't
attack anyone with a gate. He's saying, I will build my
church and my church, my gospel, will overcome the defences that
Satan and men build against it. God's sovereign purposes, as
he's written in his word, will be fulfilled. It's a great promise from our
Saviour, who's living out the most remarkable promises. In
this last week of His life, 75 prophecies about the Lord Jesus
were fulfilled. It was as if Caiaphas and the
others had a script before them. written out in Bible verses from
Genesis to Malachi. And they worked out, what will
I do? How much are we going to sell Jesus for when Judas comes
along? And they turned over to Zechariah,
that's right, 30 pieces of silver. Again and again and again. It
was as if they were actors in a play fulfilling a script. They were. and they are fully
responsible for every tiny little bit of their wickedness and have
been so for this last 2,000 years. Then we see the best of the apostles, men just like us. Then they all
forsook Him and fled. Arise, thou sword, and strike
the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered." Jesus had promised
them that this was going to happen. God's Word had prophesied and
promised that it was going to happen. It's a great reminder, isn't
it, that our flesh that all flesh is just grass. It's a great reminder
that salvation is the Lord's, to win and to give to who he
chooses. It's a great reminder that God's
dearly loved people fail again and again in things that they
promised that they won't fail in. We are reminded that we are
preserved and restrained and we are kept by grace. And it should cause us to walk
humbly before our God. It should be a cause for great
thankfulness to His grace in the Lord Jesus towards us. And
it should cause us, when we see our brothers and sisters stumble
and fall, to go to them in love and put an arm around them rather
than go to them with a stick or a club. to beat them up again. Because God's children are beaten
up on the inside all the time. It's a great reminder of grace. Obviously there's a remarkable
contrast between Judas and Peter here. Peter and the others all
fled. and that just reveals the weakness
of their flesh. Judas betrayed and sold the Lord
Jesus. He was not given by God godly
repentance for his wickedness. He didn't care about the Lord.
He cared more about worldly gain, and he was prepared to sell the
Lord Jesus. to have him betrayed. But for
the rest of God's children, for God's Israel, just listen to
these remarkable words in Hosea 14.4. I will heal their backsliding. Any backsliders here? What a
promise from God. I will heal their backsliding.
Why will He heal their backsliding? The next words are remarkable.
because I will love them freely. It's one of the most remarkable
things to come to realize that God loves us because of
who God is and what's in God, not because of who we are and
what's in us. And we can't do things to win
God's love or compel Him to love us more. No prayers, no tears,
no good works, no giving are an inducement to Him to love
men. I'm not sure who wrote the rest
of this, but it's just wonderful. Not only nothing in themselves,
but nothing anywhere else was the cause of His love for them.
Just listen carefully. Not even the blood of Christ,
not even the groans and tears of His beloved Son. These are
the fruit of His love, not the cause of His love. He doesn't
love because Christ died, but Christ died because the Father
loved and Jesus loved. We need to remember that the
fountain of love has its spring in itself, not in you, not in
me, but only in the Father's own gracious infinite heart of
goodness. The cause of God's love for us
is in God. That's a comfort for backsliders. That's a comfort for me when
my weak flesh is exposed again and again. God loves us freely. And in Romans 3 the word freely
means without cause. There's no cause in us to cause
God to love us. He loves us freely. Which is why in Philippians 3.3
is probably one of the most succinct and best descriptions of Christians
in all of the scriptures, isn't it? For we are the circumcision
who worship God in spirit, rejoice in Christ Jesus and have no confidence
in the flesh, no confidence in anything I do, ever, no matter
what it looks like to the world out there, no matter what it
looks like to the religious world. And at the end of this passage
is a verse that Troubles lots of commentators because you wonder
why if the scriptures must be fulfilled and every word that
God has written is there for our instruction and learning. And God the Holy Spirit didn't
put any of these words in here by accident. The words we have
before us are God-breathed words. And now a certain young man followed
him, having a linen cloth thrown around his naked body. And the
young man laid hold of him, and he left the linen cloth and fled
from them naked." I don't want to be someone who speculates
about Scripture. I don't. I detest this common
modern thing where you have four views on the atonement and five
views on the end times and you write books about it so people
can be confused rather than just go to the simplicity that's in
Christ. So let's look at the simple things
of history. The book that we have before
us is a book of history. When God's talking history, it's
real history. When he's talking science, it's
his science and it's real science. So he was not dressed as one
of the apostles. He wasn't one of the apostles.
They had left the upper room and gone with the Lord Jesus
straight there. So they hadn't gone home and
gone to bed. Their bed for that week had been
in Bethany, these people. He was woken up, and probably woken up because
of the commotion. When in John's account it talks
about a detachment of troops and the captain and the officers,
that detachment of troops and that captain normally refers
to someone who is in charge of 500 troops. So there could have been, when
Mark calls it a great multitude, there could have been a very
large multitude. This was a very, very big deal
for the Jews. If this went wrong, they were
in very serious trouble. They had to get the politics
and the military efforts here organised really well. So I imagine
that he was woken. And like most people, when there's
a crowd, they want to see what's happened. They want to see where
it's going. So it says that he followed.
He followed Him. He followed the Lord Jesus. And such was the rage of this
crowd that anyone that they suspected was associated with Jesus, they
were going to take them. And this man just managed to
escape as they grabbed his linen cloth. He left the linen cloth
go and ran away naked. And it was a history, wasn't
it? It was a real story. For those who needed eyewitness
confirmation, here were maybe hundreds of people who were verifying
what God the Holy Spirit had written. But I think there are
some great spiritual lessons in this story for it. When sin
was dealt with in Israel's camp, as it was when a leper was healed. There was one dove killed and
they dipped the wings of the other dove in the blood of the
dead dove and they let it go free. You can read about it in
Leviticus 16. And on the Day of Atonement one
goat was slain and another was set free. And here The Lamb of
God says to these people, if you seek me, in John 18, let
these go their way. The Lamb is taken to be slain,
but God's people, God's chosen people, must be let go. You cannot have Jesus and his
people. And so sin, the world and the
devil would make God's children captive. And like this young
man, we barely escape. We don't escape with any confidence
in what we've done. And when we escape, we have to
leave behind the covering that we have that covers our guilt
and our shame, which is why we have clothing. Adam and Eve were
clothed by God to cover their guilt and to cover their shame. And the Lord Jesus has just finished
being the priest. He has much more to do with the
sacrifice. He's prayed his high priestly
prayer. And Hebrews 2 describes him as a merciful and faithful
high priest. And there are four qualifications
in that verse in Hebrews 2, 17. He must be merciful and faithful. He must be someone who sympathizes
with our weaknesses. and ultimately he has to be someone
who makes reconciliation. He must suffer the wrath of God. We escape because God put our
sins on his Saviour. We barely escape the entanglement
of this world, its shame and its guilt that we brought on
ourselves. All this shame and all this guilt was laid on our
Saviour in that garden and He groaned under that burden. And
in a few hours' time He'll be lifted up on a cross and He'll
be cursed by God because of our guilt and our shame and our rebellion
and our love of sin and our love of this world. But he makes a
way of escape for his people. We go free. We go free because
he loves us freely. Let's pray.