I want you to open the Word of God to the
gospel of Mark...the gospel of Mark and chapter 14. With some apology to our guests, we are near
the end of this great gospel and so much has gone on in the past that you have missed,
but it is all available, these days, isn't it. GTY.org, you can download our whole study
of Mark along with everything else. But as we come to chapter 14 of Mark, we find
ourselves in verse 43...verse 43. Let me read verses 43 through 52. "Immediately while He was still speaking,
Judas, one of the Twelve, came up accompanied by a crowd with swords and clubs who were
from the chief priests and the scribes and the elders. Now he who was betraying Him had given them
a sign, or a signal saying, 'Whomever I kiss, He is the one. Seize Him and lead Him away under guard.' After coming, Judas immediately went to Him
saying, 'Rabbi,' and kissed Him. They laid hands on Him and seized Him. But one of those who stood by drew his sword
and struck the slave of the High Priest and cut off his ear. And Jesus said to them, 'Have you come out
with swords and clubs to arrest Me as you would against a robber? Every day I was with you in the temple teaching
and you did not seize Me. But this taken place to fulfill the Scripture.' And they all left Him and fled. A young man was following Him, wearing nothing
but a linen sheet over his naked body. And they seized him. But he pulled free of the linen sheet and
escaped naked." When I was a student in seminary, I was to
write my dissertation before I could graduate. There were many subjects that I might have
chosen to write a dissertation on, but my graduate dissertation was titled, "A Character
Study of Judas Iscariot," because even as a young man, in my early twenties, he was
among the most fascinating people on the pages of Scripture, an incomprehensible unbeliever. How could someone spend three years, 24 hours
a day, seven days a week in the presence of Jesus Christ and do what he did? How can anyone be that evil? That wicked? That self-serving? That callous? That hopeless? I wrote the dissertation. The committee accepted the dissertation and
I graduated and many decades have past and I still can't quite comprehend Judas. But let's back up a little bit. The Jewish ruling council, the Supreme Court
of Israel was called the Sanhedrin. That simply means the gathering together. It was a collection of religious leaders. Some among the sect of the Sadducees who were
religious liberals, most among the sect of the Pharisees who were religious conservatives
and among the Pharisees a group of scribes who were the law experts. They were all religious leaders. After all, Israel viewed itself as a theocratic
Kingdom, God was King, and religious leaders therefore served God by disseminating His
will and His Word into the life of the people. They didn't necessarily agree on everything,
they...they had strong agreement about how they interpreted the Scripture. As I said, the Sadducees were liberals and
didn't believe in the resurrection, and didn't believe in an afterlife and didn't believe
in angels. And the Pharisees believed in all of that. And there were even divisions among them. They didn't agree on everything. In fact, rarely did they agree on everything,
but this time they agreed. They agreed right down to a man with perhaps
just one or two exceptions...like Joseph of Arimathea. But they were unanimous that they wanted Jesus
dead...they wanted Him dead. They hated Him. They were jealous of His power, for who of
them could raise the dead? Give sight to the blind? Hearing to the deaf? A voice to the mute? Who could make people walk? Heal them of all diseases? Deliver them from demons? Who could create food? Control storms? Obviously they were jealous of His power. They were also jealous of His popularity for
His power had garnered Him popularity, the likes of which no person ever walking on this
planet had received because none had ever done what He did. They were jealous of the accolades He received
from the crowd. They hated His message. Theirs was a message of earn your salvation
by works, and His was a message of repent for your sin and receive your salvation as
a gift of grace, and they hated that because they were proud and self-righteous. They wanted to earn their way in. They hated Him so much because He was encroaching
in to their space. He was taking over their position and their
popularity. And then, this week, their hatred of Him was
amped up when on Monday He arrived, came into the city and there were hundreds of thousands
of people hailing Him as the Messiah. That frightened them even more, made them
more hostile toward Him. Then He came back on Tuesday, went right to
the temple where the leaders of the Sanhedrin essentially ran temple operations, selling
animals and exchanging money and it was nothing but the Israeli mafia, a den of robbers, Jesus
said. And He went in and threw them out. One man by himself with hundreds of thousands
of people massed around that massive courtyard, he went in, threw over the money changers,
threw the buyers and sellers of animals and emptied the place of the bizarres of Annas,
the former High Priest who ran that. Came back on Wednesday to the debris lying
around, commandeered the entire place and for one solid day that place echoed with the
truth coming out of His lips. Those three days had sealed His fate for certain
if there was any question at all about whether they wanted Him dead. He had a problem, however. Chapter 14 says, "They were afraid of the
people." How are you going to arrest this man? How are you going to pull off this execution
with kind of popularity? So in chapter 14 verses 1 and 2, they think,
"Well, you know, maybe we better not do this during the festival." They can barely hold their hatred in another
day, let alone another week or two. They know that it might be a bad thing to
try to do this in public. They know there will be some repercussions
with the people and a riot could start. That's not good. The Romans don't like that. And maybe they couldn't even handle the people. So they have a problem. They need to capture and arrest Jesus, shut
Him down and kill Him but they need someone to point Him out in the darkness of the night
when the crowds have all dispersed. But who? They can't and offer themselves to one of
His Twelve Apostles. As far as they know, they're all loyal and
that will blow their plan. They have to wait till someone shows up. Who would that be? Who would do that? Everybody who followed Him was enamored with
Him. Who would be a betrayer of Jesus? The people were on the side of Jesus when
He cleaned out the corruption in the temple because they were all the victims of it. They were paying ten times what you should
pay for an animal to sacrifice. They were getting gouged on the coin exchange. Who was going to do this? Amazingly, someone showed up. Chapter 14 verse 10, "Judas Iscariot who is
one of the Twelve went off to the Chief Priests in order to betray Him to them." He initiated it. Amazing. People didn't come to him and talk him into
it, he initiated it. And they were glad when they heard this, verse
11. Yeah, where else were they going to find someone
to do this? They promised to give him money and he said,
another of the four gospels records and it's in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, all these
events. One of the other gospels says that he negotiated
for 30 pieces of silver. They were willing to give him 30 pieces of
silver which, by the way, was the price of a slave. So he was willing to sell Jesus for the price
of a slave, which is exactly the amount the Old Testament says that He would be sold for. Unwittingly they fulfilled a prophecy that
proves the validity, accuracy of the Old Testament. And so, he began to seek how to betray Him
at an opportune time. He's got to find a time away from the crowds
at night in the dark. Well you know what we've covered in Mark 14. It's Thursday now. And they go together to an upper room where
they have the final Passover, the final legitimate, official, Jewish Passover. And then our Lord institutes the Lord's Table,
or the Communion service, the Lord's Supper with them there. In the middle of that evening, that Thursday
night which goes essentially from sundown all the way to midnight. It's a long prolonged time in which our Lord
does extensive teaching, recorded in John 13 to 16, and lots of things are happening. But one thing that happens is the issue comes
up of the betrayal. The issue comes up that somebody is going
to betray Him. Verse 18 of chapter 14, "They were reclining
at the table and eating and Jesus said, 'Truly I say to you, one of you will betray Me. One of you who is eating with Me.'" They were just absolutely shocked. Judas was such an adept hypocrite, such a
skilled hypocrite that they had no idea it was Him. In fact, it says they began to be grieved
and to say to Him, one by one, all of them, "Surely not I?" They no more thought it was Judas then they
thought it was themselves. That's how skilled he was as a hypocrite. Jesus said, "It's one of the Twelve. One of you who is dipping bread in the bowl
with Me. It's one of you. For the Son of Man is to go just as it is
written of Him. But woe to that man by whom the Son of Man
is betrayed. It would have been good for that man if he
had never been born." Better never born, than forever in hell. So Jesus unmasks Judas. The rest didn't get it, and Satan entered
into Judas, Scripture says. And Jesus sent him out and said, "Go and do
what you do quickly." So that Thursday night, Jesus is left with
the eleven. Judas who has been looking for an opportune
time now knows Jesus knows, leaves, goes to find the Sanhedrin members late Thursday night
and set up the rendezvous. He knows where to find Jesus because he knows
where Jesus and the disciples typically go at night, they go to the place where Jesus
had just been, the Garden of Gethsemane. From verses 32 to 42, he had been there praying. That's where they would go. Now remember, there's twelve Apostles and
Jesus. They were all pilgrims in Jerusalem. The place was, you know, basically drowning
in population that came for the Passover. There weren't a lot of places to stay. Probably the house of Mary and Martha and
Lazarus couldn't accommodate them all, so there was a rich person in the city who had
a garden on the Mount of Olives, who provided the garden for them and they went there at
night. It was a place that the Bible says they resorted
to, John 18, Luke 22:39 and it says that Judas knew it well. He knew that's where they'd be. This is a perfect setup for him. It's out of the city, it's on the Mount of
Olives and when the sun goes down in the ancient world, it's really dark. And so he sets it up to take the leaders of
Israel and their entourage to find Jesus in the darkness of the Garden of Gethsemane. Our Lord is already there by the time we come
into this passage in verse 43, because He came there in verse 32. Verse 32 tells us that He came to Gethsemane,
He was there for a few hours praying. You remember His prayer, "Let this cup pass
from Me," three times, "nevertheless not My will, but Yours be done," and He obeys the
Father. I'll go to the cross if that's what You ask
Me to do, as horrific as it is to be alienated from You and be a sin bearer. He's willing to do it. While He's praying, the disciples are sleeping. He warns them that it's dangerous to sleep
when you should be praying cause temptation is coming. The prayer meeting is ended when you come
down to verse 41, the middle of the verse, "The hour has come, behold, the Son of Man
is being betrayed into the hands of sinners. Get up, let's be going. Behold the one who betrays Me is near." They're up there. Here comes this entourage. And there are as many as a thousand of them
in the crowd that's coming. They can see the torches. They can hear the crowd moving. Our Lord sees it, says prayer time is over. Let's go. And He doesn't go the other way, He walks
right into the crowd. That's where we pick up the story in verse
43. And here, early in the darkness of Friday
morning, everything begins to get into motion for the execution of Jesus. He will be dead by about three o'clock in
the afternoon. That's how fast this happens. A betrayal, an arrest, two trials, one before
Jews and one before Gentiles, each with three parts...a crucifixion and death, all by three
o'clock. So He will be Friday in the grave, Saturday
in the grave, and Sunday a portion of that day in the grave, rising later on Sunday morning
so that He fulfills the prophecy of crucified and buried for three days. God is in control of all these details, these
mindless unbelievers who hate Jesus are step-by-step fulfilling the plan of God and no less culpable
for doing it, cause they did it out of the hatred of their own hearts. All right, let's step into the scene. First is the confronting crowd, "Immediately
while He was still speaking, still talking to His disciples saying, 'Let's get up, let's
get going, Judas is here, they're here," Judas, one of the Twelve," and it seems that that
little descriptive of him which we just read in another portion of this chapter, is the
way Mark speaks the unbelieving idea that this man rejected Christ. He just can't get over it...one of the Twelve,
one of the Twelve, one of the Twelve. How can that be? Judas, one of the Twelve, the ultimate tragedy,
the man with the greatest opportunity and privilege that could ever happen to any person,
to be with Christ, the Son of God, that man, one of the Twelve. Busy night for him. The Lord sent him out. Judas was filled with Satan. You know what a demon-possessed person is
like in the text of Scripture, we have descriptions of them, well he's possessed by Satan himself. There's a sense in which the devil has taken
over control of him. It's a frantic night then for the devil-possessed
Judas. He has to go find the Sanhedrin in the darkness
of night. Sometime probably before midnight, before
the Passover and Lord's Table meal was over, he has to get permission from them to get
together their resources because he thinks he knows where Jesus is going to be because
this is where they go, to the Mount of Olives, and he's familiar with it. And then he has to get permission from the
Roman authorities to give soldiers to go along with the Jews, because the Jews are afraid
that even with their temple police, they couldn't handle something if it began to happen, some
kind of crowd revolt, if the word got out. So permission has to be gained for the Roman
soldiers, and not a small group but a speiron is the Greek word used, a cohort, a full cohort
would be six hundred Roman soldiers. And the Romans would have extra soldiers at
Passover because of the massive influx of people, they would have them there for security. And by the way, there had recently been a
Jewish insurrection against the Romans. And they put that insurrection down and that's
referred to in Mark 15:7 and one of the principles in that insurrection was a man named Barabbas...Barabbas. So the Romans didn't like insurrections, the
Romans would have accommodated Judas. So it's a busy night for this devil-possessed
man, as he puts together the pieces of this little puzzle, probably had to gain permission
from Pilate, himself, the governor. But those places are so close by. Fort Antonia where the Romans were and where
Pilate was, is less than a minute walk across from the wall, the northeastern side of the
temple, the northern wall of the temple. It's all very close and he was scrambling
to get it all done. He had betrayed the location and therefore
the Son of God for 30 pieces of silver. So the crowd shows up. It says in verse 43, "They were with swords
and clubs." The swords would have belonged to the Romans,
machaira is the word. They carried a small little dagger, a very
lethal, sharp on two sides, two-edged dagger that they were very skilled at handling, for
slitting throats, and putting that dagger in the appropriate places to bring about a
quick end to life. They were skilled with that. Clubs? They would have belonged to the temple police. The temple police didn't use deadly weapons. They controlled crowds with billy-clubs. So here comes the temple police who were normally
the ones who took care of the temple security, along with the Romans with their swords. And we learn a little more about this. Also we learn from John 18:3, John gives us
further details, that they came with torches and lanterns. The only way you could light the night. It was critical that they be able to see where
they were going, and locate the Lord at the appropriate moment. So out of the blackness, out of the middle
of that night comes this huge crowd, hundreds and hundreds of them together, mindlessly,
cowardly, unjustly and profanely coming for the purpose of killing the Son of God. The traitor then identifies the Lord. He tells them how he's going to do it. So you go from the confronting crowd, to the
betraying disciple, verse 44, "He who was betraying Him had given them a signal, or
a sign, saying, 'Whomever I kiss, He is the one.'" And then amazingly Judas gives them the order,
"Seize Him and lead Him away under guard." He also hated Jesus. But if Satan was speaking through Peter when
Peter said, "No, Lord, You're not going to die," Satan was certainly speaking through
Judas when Judas said, "Seize Him and lead Him away under guard." By the way, this is a good indication that
Jesus didn't wear a halo or Judas would have said, "It's the guy with the halo," or "It's
the guy with the supernatural glow on His face." There was nothing external that could identify
Jesus as divine. But there were obvious needs to be able to
identify Him in the crowd, and to make sure that somebody else didn't step up and say,
"I'm Jesus," and then Jesus slide away and escape. The assumption was He would try to escape. That's another reason for the force, that
He would try to escape, that He wasn't going to let this happen. They didn't want somebody else to pretend
to be Jesus while He got away. So Judas says, "I'm going to mark Him out,
I'm going to mark Him out. "Whomever I kiss, He's the one, seize Him." A kiss, strong embrace, an ancient sign that
that could be delivered in a number of ways. Slaves kissed feet. Inferiors kissed hands. And equals kissed cheeks. This is an equal. This is an act of affection, honor, love,
respect. That makes it all the more ugly, doesn't it? I mean, we've all been betrayed. We all know that. But with a kiss, this is hypocrisy at its
blackest. The man of sorrows had many sorrows and He
can add this to the list. Verse 45 says, "Judas was unhesitating. After coming, Judas immediately went to Him
saying, 'Rabbi, teacher,' and kissed Him." By the way, the Greek verb kataphileo here
means to kiss fervently...to kiss fervently. It's got a preposition added at the front
which intensifies the verb. This was an ongoing affection, expression
of an affection. This is reminiscent of the prodigal son coming
home and the father, remember, in Luke 15, receiving the prodigal and kissing him all
over the head. Boy, Judas really put on a dramatic show of
false affection, designed to make it unmistakable exactly who was the one, so the soldiers would
know. Luke adds this, Luke 22:48, "Jesus said, 'Judas,
are you betraying the Son of Man with a kiss? Are you betraying the Son of Man with a kiss?'" Jesus could have destroyed him on the spot. He could have incinerated him on the spot. But He didn't. He submits to the betrayal in order that Scripture
would be fulfilled. You remember, the psalmist said, didn't he?,
that His own familiar friend would lift up his heel against Him and He would be betrayed
in the house of His friends." Mark says no more about Judas. He kisses Him and he disappears off the pages
of Mark's history. So what happened to Judas? Matthew tells us. Matthew chapter 27 tells us what happened. "Judas who had betrayed Him," verse 3, "saw
that He had been condemned." What does that mean? Judas hung around after he betrayed Him that
night. He hung around for the trial that morning. The trial went on in the early hours of the
morning. And at the end of the trial, Jesus was condemned
to death and Judas is still hanging on the fringes watching this happen. And when he saw that He had been condemned,
he felt remorse and returned the 30 pieces of silver to the Chief Priest and the elders. He went back to wherever the Sanhedrin was
located and he gave them back the money. And he said, verse 4, "I have sinned by betraying
innocent blood." And they said, "What is that to us? See to it yourself." What do we care? And he threw the pieces of silver into the
temple sanctuary and departed and went out and hanged himself. Hanged himself? That's remorse. That's repentance not unto salvation. He went out and hanged himself. He didn't do that very well cause Acts 1 says
that ultimately his body fell, smashed on the rocks and his intestines came out. The rope broke, or the branch broke as he
suspended himself over the edge and he died a horrific, tragic death. And people don't name their sons Judas, they
don't even name their dogs Judas. The greatest illustration of wasted opportunity,
squandered privilege ever...ever, ever, ever. So they arrest Jesus. Verse 46, "They laid hands on Him and seized
Him." John 18:12 says, "The Roman cohort and the
commander and the officers of the Jews, the temple police, arrested Jesus and tied Him
up." That takes us to verse 47. We have seen the confronting crowd. We've seen the ugly, tragic betrayer, Judas. Now we are introduced to another person in
the drama, we'll call him the impulsive disciple...the impulsive disciple. Verse 47, "One of those who stood by drew
his sword and struck the slave of the High Priest and cut off his ear." This is strange. Startling incident. Fortunately we know who this is. If we weren't told, we'd know any way. We could guess that it would be Peter, couldn't
we? We could guess that it would be Peter, impulsive,
impetuous Peter. And we are right. According to John 18:10 it was Peter. And according to John 18:10 the guy's name
was Malchus and he was a servant of Caiaphas the High Priest. He wasn't even a police officer, nor was he
a soldier. What is Peter doing? He seems so often out of touch with the plan,
doesn't he? Why is he doing this? I'll tell you why he's doing this. He's got something to prove. Back in verse 29 of chapter 14, Peter said
to Jesus, "Even though all may fall away, yet I will not." Peter was a confident guy. Wow, he believed in himself. You know, he'd fit in to the modern world. If you believe in yourself, you can do anything. That was Peter, he believed in himself. He wouldn't fail, he wouldn't fall. You say, "Well there's some boldness there,
some courage there." Sure, there is some boldness and some courage,
but something had just happened that led Peter to be that courageous, and I'll tell you what
it was. John 18...John 18 gives the same account,
same incident. But I want you to know what happened there. They all arrive, the entourage. Jesus walks up to the Roman cohort, the officers,
the Chief Priests, the Pharisees, the massive crowd with their torches and weapons and lanterns,
and Jesus says, "Whom do you seek?" Who you looking for? And they said, "Jesus the Nazarene." And He said to them, " Ego Eime, I am . And he said the tetragrammaton, the name of
God, the I am , and that's all He had to do was say I am. Judas was standing with him and when He said,
"I am," they all collapsed to the ground. The whole crowd went down flat. They couldn't...they couldn't touch His power
if He didn't give them permission. That's why He said, "No man takes My life
from Me, I lay it down Myself." He asked them again, once they scrambled back
up, "Who do you seek?" And they said, "Jesus the Nazarene." "He said, I told you, I am." Now if you had just seen Jesus say, Ego Eime
, in Greek, different in Aramaic, but if you had...let's take two words, one word in Aramaic,
if you had just seen Jesus say one word and a thousand people collapsed to the ground,
you'd feel okay, right? You'd feel like you could pull out your little
knife and start through the crowd because at any moment all Jesus would have to do is
say another word and they'd all go down again. It was amazing, miraculous, triumphant, glorious
powerful act of Jesus that infused Peter with strength. He needed to prove his loyalty again. You say, "Where did he get a sword? What's he doing with a sword?" Well, Luke tells us that Jesus said in Luke
22:36 to 38, you know, "I sent you out, you didn't take a belt, you didn't take a bag,
you didn't take extra shoes, you went out and you preached the gospel and you were cared
for and your needs were met, but in the future when I send you out, you better take a belt
and you better take a bag, cause there's going to be persecution out there. And by the way, you better take a sword." He actually said to them, "If you don't have
a sword, you better get one, not to kill people, Christianity doesn't advance like Islam, it
doesn't advance by killing people. And any supposed Christian effort to advance
by killing anybody is false Christianity. But He said, "You're going to need a sword
because you're going to be confronted, you're going to be persecuted, you're going to need
to be able to defend yourself." In which the Lord advocates self-defense. So Peter said at the end of that little conversation
in Luke 22, some of the disciples responded, "We have two swords, we found two in the group." Well you can be sure Peter had one of them. Or for all we know, he's two-sword Peter. He may have gotten both of them. But he pulls one out and he whacks off the
ear of Malchus. Now look, he didn't have any surgical training
and I promise you, he was better at throwing nets than he was at slitting throats because
he missed the throat and hit the ear. He was not trying to cut off somebody's ear. He was trying to slit the throat, because
that's what you did with that. The guy ducked. And the Lord says, according to Luke 22, "Stop,
no more of this, no more of this." This is wrong headed, impulsive, and dangerous
because in Matthew 26 He says to Peter, "Peter, put your sword away for whoever lives by the
sword, dies by the sword." And our Lord with that advocates capital punishment,
in capital crime. That's a reiteration of Genesis 9. "Who sheds man's blood, by man shall his blood
be shed." Peter, they'll have a right to kill you if
you kill somebody. That's our Lord advocating capital punishment. Put your sword in the sheath. John 18:11, he says, "Put your sword in the
sheath, the cup which the Father has given Me, shall I not drink it?" And later Jesus says, "My Kingdom is not of
this world, otherwise My servants would fight. The Kingdom does not advance by force, it
advances one person at a time by faith in Christ." Christianity makes no advance by the sword,
none whatsoever. Well people say, "Well Christians are fighting
in northern Ireland, and Christians are fighting in Bosnia and Croatia, and Christians...what
about the Christian crusades? None of that is Christian. It may have the word, it's not Christian. The Kingdom advances one soul at a time by
faith in Christ. Well we learn from the New Testament record
that the Lord reached over and gave him a new ear. The only healing in the New Testament of a
fresh wound. "Peter, that's not how we do this." So you see the crowd, the betrayer, and you
see the impulsive disciple. And then in the next little scene, you see
the glorious Christ, the triumphant Christ. "And Jesus said to them, 'Have you come out
with swords and clubs to arrest Me, as you would against a robber? Every day I was with you in the temple teaching,
you didn't seize Me. But...as if to say here and now...to fulfill
the Scripture." You know, He is surrounded by this...this
crowd of really tragic figures, corrupt apostate religious leaders, mindless, blind, ignorant,
pagan, idol-worshiping Roman soldiers, killers by trade, weak, cowardly, wrong-headed followers
and a wretched, evil betrayer. He's standing before the forces of hell and
the forces of man. And he's just in charge. He says, "Why now? You think you're going to get resistance? Why the soldiers? Why all the police? Why all the clubs? And where were you on Monday when I was at
the temple? And where were you on Tuesday when I was there,
and why didn't you arrest Me on Wednesday?" And what He is doing is unmasking the hypocrisy
of this clandestined operation in which they're taking Him at night cause it was a violation
of all their laws. His glorious majesty is displayed by the crumbling
of the crowd when He says, "I am." Displayed by the amazing calm, tranquility
as He asks reasonable questions. Am I some robber, some highwayman, some plunderer
that you need all these soldiers, and all these police? Have I ever tried to run from you? Wasn't I there every day this week? Where were you? But the reason you're here right now in the
middle of the night on a Friday is because today is the day Scripture is to be fulfilled. And in your witless hostile anger, you are
fulfilling the plan of God on schedule...that's why you're here. Scripture will be fulfilled. He will die at three o'clock in the afternoon,
same time the Passover Lambs are being killed because He is the true Passover Lamb. Now a footnote that I mentioned last week,
just briefly. Why would Satan try to keep Jesus from the
cross, which he did earlier. Peter said, "No, Lord, You're not going to
die, You're not going to die, You're not going to die," and Jesus said, "Get behind Me, Satan." It was Satan trying to keep Him from the cross. It was Satan who tempted Him and said, "I'll
give You the kingdoms of the world. You can take popularity. You can take Your satisfaction. You don't need the cross at His temptation." If Satan wants to keep Him from the cross,
then why does Satan enter Judas and have Judas go to the people who want to arrest Him so
that they can kill Him? Why does Satan prompt Judas to go to the Sanhedrin
to have Jesus arrested and executed? I don't know how Satan's mind functions, but
it's pretty simply reasonable to me that the one thing the leaders of Israel didn't want
to do was arrest Jesus during the Passover. They said that, they didn't want to arrest
Him, 14:2, we don't want to arrest Him during this festival, this Passover. Satan's thought may well have been, if I can
get this arrest going during the Passover, even if they get Him in the middle of the
night, this is going to show up in the daytime and the people will rise up and stop this
crucifixion. And if the people don't stop it, Satan's thought
must have been, "I'm going to make it so unbearable for Jesus with the spitting and the mockery
and the crowning and the punches in the face and the beatings and the scourging and the
whole thing, I'm going to make it so bad for Him that He's going to finally say, 'Stop,
that's enough, I'm not going to die.'" Do you remember in chapter 26, verses 51 to
54, He said to Peter when Peter pulled out the sword, He said, "Look, Peter, if I wanted,
I could call twelve legions of angels right now." You know how many that is? Seventy-two thousand. Can you imagine what kind of defense seventy-two
thousand angels would be when in the Old Testament one angel killed 185 thousand Assyrians? Seventy-two thousand angels could do some
serious damage. "Put your sword away." I think Satan must have thought if the crowd
doesn't stop it, Jesus will say, "I've had enough...I've had enough." You all saw the Passion of the Christ, you
saw what He endured. At some point He's going to say, "That's it,
I'm done, I'm not going any further. I don't deserve this and call the angels." No, Satan didn't want to get Him to the cross,
he wanted to make it so bad that Jesus Himself would stop it. But He never did because He was obedient to
the Father for your sake, my sake. There He stands in such majesty. This is to fulfill Scripture. So you see the crowd, it's an ugly crowd. The betrayer even uglier. The impulsive Peter disappointing, weak, cowardly
in the end because verse 50 says, and here we come to the final point, the cowardly Apostles,
"They all left Him and fled." All of them, including Peter. They all left. That's what He said they would do back in
verse 27, He told them, "You will all fall away...You will all fall away." And instead of praying against that temptation,
they went to sleep during prayer meeting. They were ill-equipped, weak, afraid, unfaithful,
they fled. Zechariah 13:7 said that would happen, "Strike
the Shepherd, the sheep will be scattered." And that prophecy was fulfilled. Unprepared, impatient, carnal, inconsistent,
weak, they flee for their lives. And then there's a closing picture of one
person's cowardice. Listen to this. "A young man was following Him wearing nothing
but a linen sheet over his naked body." He would have had his undergarments on, which
they always wore, but nothing other than a sheep wrapped around that. They seized him. "He pulled free of the linen sheet and escaped
naked." This is the only place that appears. It doesn't appear in Matthew, Luke or John. People say to me, "Who is that young man?" I have absolutely no idea who that young man
is, how would I know? I'm looking at the same Bible you're looking
at. I don't see a name. And what is the linen sheet? I have no idea, but I do know that when people
went to sleep at night, they put a linen sheet on. And he wrapped himself in a linen sheet and
they tried to seize him and he pulled free from the linen sheet and ran away. I love that about the Bible, it just says
it because it happened. If a committee wanted to organize this, they
would say, "Take that thing out because it doesn't add anything to the story. What's the point? Who's the guy and why did he do it and what's
the sheet and...?" I'll tell you what happened. I mean, this we know, somebody in the middle
of the night heard a commotion, some guy, and thought, "What is going on?" And jumped out of his bed and just wrapped
himself with a sheet and said, "I'm going to go out there and find out what's going
on." And as he was poking around on the Mount of
Olives, maybe he worked there, you know, up on the...maybe he was in a vineyard up there. And he's poking around out there and all of
a sudden somebody thinks he's a threat that belongs to the crowd that goes around with
Jesus, and they grab him and he just runs. And the guy's left, holding the sheet. And that, my dear friends, is a true interpretation
of this passage. Anything more than that is pure speculation. Some people say, "No, no, that's Mark...that's
Mark." It is? "Yeah, because it's a first-person account,
who would know that but the guy who was doing it? Who would know that? Maybe it's Mark. Maybe he just doesn't want to call himself
that because he's embarrassed that he was running around without his clothes on in the
middle of the night." I don't know, maybe it was Mark. Maybe the reason it's here is because it was
Mark and maybe somebody even suggested that before Judas went to the Garden, he checked
Mark's house because Mark's mother was one of the early believers and maybe checked to
see if Jesus went there instead of to the Mount of Olives, and when Mark found out they
were looking for Jesus, he threw his sheet on and jumped out the window cause he was
very young, his mother wouldn't let him go out in the middle of the night, and followed
along...and well.... Well now we're creating some fiction here
instead of what it says. What's the point? The point is, Jesus is alone. Everybody's gone. The Apostles are gone and even a sort of,
I don't know, a normal follower of Jesus, just a guy who saw what was going on and the
more he saw, the more he knew and he was a follower. He was following Him. Get closer and closer and closer and he's
gone too. It's just to show that there's no one left...no
one left. And so alone, verse 53 says, they led Him
away in the darkness of night to a Kangaroo Court to put Him through two trials with three
parts each, six separate tribunals. Trumped up charges, bribed witnesses, corrupt
judges, proverbial kangaroo court, get Him on the cross in the morning, He's dead in
the afternoon. In the end, nothing is to be said except that
Jesus triumphantly knowingly goes to the cross, fulfilling prophecy. There were prophecies about Judas, the betrayer,
there were prophecies about the scattering of the disciples. There were prophecies about Him as the Passover
Lamb that had to be fulfilled on Friday. There were prophecies about the cross, that
He would be lifted up. There were prophecies about Him being pierced
by the nails and the sword. It is all what Scripture says. Isaiah 53, "He is led as a sheep to slaughter." But He goes willingly. He does it out of love for His Father and
love for you because it's your sins that He carried there. Father, what an experience for us to be there
on the Mount of Olives that day through the eyes of Mark and the other writers of the
gospel account, and to experience the betrayal and arrest of Jesus, at least in a small way. Just adding to the gratitude for which we
have for His willingness to give His life who was perfectly holy, sinless and bearing
this kind of scorn when He had only been worshiped forever by angels and adored and honored,
to be kissed by a betrayer, to be arrested by sinners and to be judged, as it were, by
You on the cross, to be punished for our sins. The horrors of this are beyond comprehension
and yet His majesty and magnificence shines through. O what a Savior is ours. And we praise You, O God, for giving Him to
us and giving us to Him. In His great name we pray. Amen.
