Judas’s Betrayal

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. That's how skilled he was as a hypocrite. This is hypocrisy at its blackest.

The name is so despised that no sane parents would ever give it to a child. I'm talking of course about the name Judas. And today on Grace to You, John MacArthur is going to look at the events that forever branded this man as history's greatest traitor.

It's part of our brand new series, The Divine Drama of Redemption. Well, John, last week we talked about how you love to preach about Christ and focus on him, and how that fills your mind all week as you prepare. And yet I also know that you have had a longtime interest in Judas and his sad story. And in fact, that actually had a role in your preparation for becoming a pastor.

Talk about that for a minute. Yeah, growing up in a pastor's family and being privy to what was going on in the church, I saw people who claimed to be Christians defect, disappear, commit adultery, wander off from the church, deny the Lord. And I always wondered, how can they do that?

What is the pathology of that? What is happening? And when I was in high school, I had a very close friend, and we were in a youth group together, and we used to go give the gospel to people in a big park in Los Angeles, and he denied the faith, completely denied the faith. And by the time I got into college and I ran into another guy who was a pastor's son, we played on the football team together in my college days, and he was going to be in ministry, that's where he was headed, but he ended up denying the faith.

And I was trying to figure out, how does this happen? What is the reality of this? So by the time I got to seminary and had to pick a dissertation to write, I wanted to understand defection in the most dramatic way, so I wrote my thesis on Judas, a character analysis of Judas Iscariot. What was going on with Judas? Because he is the greatest illustration of lost opportunity in the history of the world. How can you be with Christ 24-7 for three years, see every miracle, hear every lesson, everything he taught, watch his perfection, watch his life, and then sell him for the price of a slave? What is that?

What causes that? And of course, Jesus basically said that he was a devil from the beginning, and he was full of avarice. It wasn't anything complicated. He was a greedy devil. And a greedy devil, even that close to Jesus, if he doesn't repent, is going to end up a greedy devil in hell. The frightening reality of being that close to Christ, and Jesus says he went to his own place, which was hell, is just a graphic, maybe the most graphic warning of all warnings against people who come close to Christ and don't fully embrace him. So that has basically defined a lot of my ministry, as you know, talking about people who aren't true Christians. That's why I wrote on the Gospel according to Christ or Jesus, the Gospel according to the apostles, the Gospel according to Paul, the Gospel according to God, always trying to clarify the Gospel and make sure people knew that they knew the right Gospel and believed it savingly. And, friend, we've never done this before, but we're putting John's student thesis about Judas on our website. John wrote this in his early 20s, but still it's filled with helpful insight into why Judas defected and how you can stay faithful.

So I encourage you to look for it at GTY.org after the lesson. But right now, here's John to continue his series, The Divine Drama of Redemption. I want you to open the Word of God to the gospel of Mark, the gospel of Mark and chapter 14, 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 has 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. 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. They didn't necessarily 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 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, 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 to Him popularity the likes of which no person ever walking on this planet had received because none had ever done what He did. They hated Him so much because He was encroaching into 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 bazaars 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 this 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. But 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.

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 was 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. 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. 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. So Jesus unmasked Judas. The rest didn't get it. Judas did 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 has been looking for an opportune time, now knows Jesus knows, leaves, goes to find the Sanhedrin members and set up the rendezvous. He knows where to find Jesus because he knows where Jesus and the disciples typically go at night, the Garden of Gethsemane. From verses 32 to 42, he had been there praying. He knew that's where they'd be.

This is a perfect set up 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. 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, 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's 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. 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, the crowd shows up. 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.

This is hypocrisy at its blackest. Verse 45 says, Judas was unhesitating. After coming, Judas immediately went to Him saying, Rabbi, teacher, and kissed Him...and kissed Him. 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? 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 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 thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests 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.

Greatest illustration of wasted opportunity, squandered privilege ever. So they arrest Jesus. Verse 46, they laid hands on him and seized him. 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. Now fortunately we know who this is. If we weren't told, we'd know anyway. We could guess 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. 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 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.

It was the same account, same incident, but I want you to know what happened there. They all arrive, the entourage, and Jesus says, whom do you seek? And they said, Jesus the Nazarene. And He said to them, Ego I Me, I Am. And He said to 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 them and when he said I Am, they all collapsed to the ground.

The whole crowd went down flat. 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 on 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 E Me in Greek, different in Aramaic, but if you'd...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. 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. This is wrongheaded, 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 and capital crime. That's a reiteration of Genesis 9, who sheds man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed. 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. And what He's doing is unmasking the hypocrisy of this clandestine operation in which they're taking Him at night because 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.

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, they were ill-equipped, weak, afraid, unfaithful, they fled. Zechariah 13 and 7 said that would happen, strike the shepherd, the sheep will be scattered.

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 sheet wrapped around that.

They seized him, he pulled free of the linen sheet and escaped naked. This is the only place that appears, 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 is the guy and why did he do it and what's the sheet? 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. 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 or 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? 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, 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. Verse 53 says they led Him away in the darkness of night to a kangaroo court to put Him through two trials, trumped up charges, bribed witnesses, corrupt judges, proverbial kangaroo court, put 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 land 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. This is Grace to You with John MacArthur.

Thanks for being with us. John's current study, The Divine Drama of Redemption, is showing you what the Gospel of Mark teaches about the cross, the resurrection, and how Christ secured our salvation. These are truths that are particularly timely to review as Easter approaches. To help you know the book of Mark and all the books surrounding it like never before, I encourage you to pick up a copy of the MacArthur Study Bible. To place your order, contact us today. Call our toll-free number 800-55-GRACE or order from our website, GTY.org. With detailed introductions to each book of the Bible and about 25,000 footnotes that explain virtually every passage from Genesis to Revelation, the MacArthur Study Bible makes Scripture clear.

The Study Bible is available in a variety of English and non-English translations. You can see all the options available and order now at GTY.org or call us at 800-55-GRACE. And remember, this brand new series is one example of the ways Grace to You takes the life-changing truth of the Gospel to people around the world. And it's the support of listeners like you that lets us reach so many. To partner with us, mail your tax-deductible donation to Grace to You, Box 4000, Panorama City, California 91412. Or you can also donate online at GTY.org or when you call 800-55-GRACE. Now for John MacArthur and the entire staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Join us tomorrow when John looks at what he calls the ultimate miscarriage of justice as he continues his new study titled The Divine Drama of Redemption. Don't miss the next 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace to You.