025 - Betrayal and Bravado

You pick up your Bible and wonder, is there more here than meets the eye?

Is there something here for me? I mean, it's just words printed on paper, right? Well, it may look like just print on a page, but it's more than ink. Join us for the next half hour as we explore God's Word together, as we learn how to explore it on our own, as we ask God to meet us there in its pages.

Welcome to More Than Ink. If you knew somebody was going to turn on you, would you invite them to dinner? Invite them to dinner? Never! No, I'd out them tonight, stop them. Would you sit in a quiet evening and offer them bread dipped in wine? No, never. Or wash their feet?

He washed his feet? Well, let's take a look at this. This is Judas, right? Yep. Yeah, okay.

At the Last Supper. On More Than Ink. Well, good morning.

Welcome. This is More Than Ink. Pull up a chair and join us at the table. I'm Dorothy. And I'm Jim, and we're just delighted you're back with us as we do our informal walking through the Scriptures. It's very informal. It's very informal.

It's not scripted at all. Right. Sometimes we surprise each other, and the word always surprises us.

Not meaning that we're not prepared, it's just that we haven't really compared notes. Well, we, yeah. You're getting us sitting around the table talking to each other about the word. And we think this is a really valuable process.

We think it's a good way to do it. We hope a lot of people do this because the word is not only just fascinating, but it gives us an understanding of the heart and nature of God. Especially when you look at Jesus, and we're looking at Jesus in the Gospels, you're seeing what the writer of Hebrews calls the outshining of God Himself. You're seeing who God is. So Jesus, as a result, does some very unexpected things. We saw that last week, and then in this second half of John 13, more unexpected things go down, which would tend to make you think, if you were in a possible looking for the kingdom of God, that everything is falling apart.

But it's not. Well, there was at least one of them who thought things were falling apart. That's exactly right. And probably before we get into reading this passage, we need to kind of remember that at the end where we stopped last week, was right where Jesus had said, now if you know these things, you're blessed if you do them, right? If you're blessed if you serve one another the way I have served you.

And then he said something really interesting. He said, I'm not speaking of you all, I know whom I've chosen, but that the Scripture may be fulfilled. He who ate my bread has lifted his heel against me.

I'm telling you this now so that when it does take place, you may believe. So, you know, Jesus says, I know whom I've chosen. Judas was there. Judas was there for the foot washing.

He was there for the dinner because the dipping of the bread and giving it would have taken place in the context of the eating portion. So it's just very interesting to us when we think about Judas being there. And John is going to tell us exactly the point at which Judas left. It's a little hard to tease out when you read all of the Last Supper narratives together. But there is a point at which John tells us very specifically this is when he left.

So we're going to have that this morning. Yeah, so let's focus on Judas a little bit. Okay, so who's going to read? Do you want me to read at 21? Why don't you read at 21?

We're at 21. After saying these things, Jesus was troubled in his spirit and testified, Truly, truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me. The disciples looked at one another, uncertain of whom he spoke.

One of his disciples, whom Jesus loved, was reclining at table at Jesus' side. So Simon Peter motioned to him and said to ask Jesus of whom he was speaking. So that disciple, leaning back against Jesus, said to him, Lord, who is it? Jesus answered, It's he to whom I will give this morsel of bread when I've dipped it. So when he dipped the morsel, he gave it to Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot. Then after he had taken the morsel, Satan entered into him. Jesus said to him, What you're going to do, do quickly. Now no one at the table knew why he said this to him.

Some thought that because Judas had the money bag, Jesus was telling him, Buy what we need for the feast, or that he should give something to the poor. So after receiving the morsel of bread, he immediately went out, and it was night. Night.

I hear a lot of movie background music when I read this. Well, and we know that John uses that imagery of darkness and night frequently. I mean, he starts the whole gospel saying that the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. Yeah, yeah. So it was night. It was night.

And this really is a fall of darkness. I mean, just see it happen. And it is so unexpected, it is so unexpected when Jesus announces, I mean, very point blank in verse 21, one of you will betray me. I think all of their eyes just open up and say, What are you talking about? I mean, they're clueless.

They didn't have any idea who it would be. We've been with you for three years. What are you talking about? This is just nuts talk, you know? And so Peter motions to John, who's close to Jesus, so he's the closest one to ask. And I think through sign language or something, tells him, You asked Jesus, who's he talking about?

Who is it? He says in 25. Well, they're probably all talking to each other. I'm sure they are. You got 12 people sitting around the table, or probably many more than that. It could have been a lot, yeah.

It could have been a lot. And, you know, there's going to be, it's not dead silent. Yeah. And in fact, if you look at Da Vinci's painting of this, that moment of confusion about, you know, one of you, and they ask themselves, is it I? They're looking at each other. They're looking at each other. They're making emotions. That's exactly what Da Vinci captures, is that moment where they're going, Now what?

Is that me? Right. And so when actually he asks Jesus, who is it?

Jesus says, Well, the one I'm dipping my bread in right now, I'm going to hand it to him. And he does. And they all get who it is, right? Yeah. No. Isn't that funny?

Isn't that funny? But it's not, see, it's not real clear that John was maybe the only one who heard him say, It's this one. Could be.

Right? That could very well be. Now John maybe later told Peter, Well, it's Judas. Well, it becomes very apparent in a couple of hours when they're in the garden, and Judas comes in with the soldiers.

Yeah. So it could be that John himself understands this sign, and that no one else did, because John himself may have been the only one who heard the part about the bread and the dipping and stuff like that. And so then out of the blue, it seems like Jesus says, to address it, Jesus says, You know what you need to do, you need to do quickly, which again, they all misinterpreted. They didn't know what that was all about.

He said, some of them thought, since he had the money bag to go buy something, you need to go buy something and do something for the poor. So even at that point, they had no clue, didn't even suspect that Judas might do this. Okay, so here's one reason why that might have been, and this just occurred to me just now, so you can debunk it if I'm wrong. But is it possible that in the process of saying to them, This bread is my body broken for you, this wine is the new covenant in my blood, that Jesus had dipped and given bread to each one of them, and it simply was the moment when that was for Judas, and he revealed to John, It's this one. Which is why they wouldn't have had a clue, because Judas didn't appear to receive any different treatment than any of them had received.

He was one of the guys. Okay, so that's just totally off the top of my head in the moment, but that seems plausible to me. Yeah, but the idea that someone as powerful as Jesus, they've seen him raise people from the dead, they've seen him heal people and stuff like that, the whole idea that someone would betray him in the midst of the highest ranks of his followers, and that if Jesus is the King of Kings, that he wouldn't put a stop to it, this just seems nuts. Yeah, because kings put down revolutions.

They put down revolutions, if they find out about them. And so when Peter asks through John who it is, and Jesus seems to know who it is, isn't it amazing? He does not put a stop to it.

That's just crazy. Which again, when you look at John's, between the lines he tells us, this is stuff that we didn't know at the time, but he tells us that this was all according to plan. This is nothing here that's really out of context according to God's timeline. This is the way it was supposed to be, but at the moment, betrayal? I don't think so. That's just nuts talk. No, there isn't going to be any failures at the top here. No one's going to do that. But this departure, when Judas goes out, starts this, lights a fuse.

Yeah, it does. That's going to explode in the garden in just a few hours. So Jesus knows this is the moment he's gone, we are now in the dark. The power of darkness is yours, as he had said, Luke had recorded that in chapter 22. This hour and the power of darkness are yours. Exactly. So here we are at the end of 30 at night. We're in the night, both literally and spiritually speaking, we're in night. So it's funny that Jesus then, in the next words in John's Gospel, would talk about what he's talking about.

Isn't that amazing? Wouldn't you think he would talk about the enveloping darkness and you all need to beware because there will be false Christs? Look where he goes.

He does not go there. When he had gone out, Jesus said, now is the Son of Man glorified. And God is glorified in him. If God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and glorify him at once.

Let's just stop there. Oh. We need to define what glory is because that's a religious word that most people don't connect to. Glory, glory, glory, glory. Yeah. What is that, four times? What does it mean? Five times.

Five times. Yeah, Son of Man is glorified, God is glorified, God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself. Yeah, so we have this close association of God and the Son, the Father and the Son glorifying one another in this very moment when the betrayal is unfolding. Yeah, Jesus did. What? Judas just left the door. That hurts my head.

Judas just left the building. So we don't understand glorifying. Okay, so what is glorifying?

My simplistic way of looking at glorifying is just to make publicly known something that's not quite obvious at the moment, to make it big. Okay, to make it recognizable. Right, I call it billboarding. So in a way you take something, you stick it on a billboard and you make it very known that you couldn't see before. So what he's talking about here is the nature of God, the nature of Jesus is going to be made, is going to be billboarded based on what's going to happen next.

And it's going to be different than what you think. Right. Because we think of glory as this splendiferous light shining and indeed that's part of it. There is this outshining of the real nature of something.

Yeah, yeah. Of what it really is shines out. And so if they've been looking for a glorious kingdom where people are going to bow and scrape and sing and celebrate, well, the kingdom is coming in a completely different way. The kingdom is coming in through the death of the king. Right.

And that is an outshining of a reality that they haven't yet understood. Right. So when I colloquialize this in Jim's translation, I take this little comment right here and I basically see Jesus looking at the apostles and saying, hey, you want to see what God's like? Watch this. Watch this. And so that's what's going to happen. He's going to glorify who he is. He's going to let us know who he is. This is the God who sacrifices himself for you.

Watch this. And then he goes on in verse 33, little children, yet a little while I'm with you. You'll seek me and just as I said to the Jews, so now I also say to you, where I am going, you cannot come. And there was. Okay, so let's stop there.

There was an awkward silence in the room. Where was he going? I mean, where I am going, you cannot come. These guys left their homes and have been following them for three years and now he's saying, oh, end of that.

I'm going someplace you can't follow anymore. Right. Talk about creating a huge angst in the apostles.

And if you remember this verse, this verse right here in verse 33, the response to what Jesus says here, the apostles' response to what Jesus is going to address from now through chapter 17. Right, right. Well, why can't we go with you? Yeah, why can't we? I don't understand.

I thought we were going to the big kingdom here. I mean, what happened? I mean, what do you mean I can't follow anymore? So, I mean, that just threw him for a loop. Again, very unexpected and they don't get what's going on. They got it later. Yeah, but we know that in the very immediate future, he was going to the cross. Right. And they couldn't go there. That's true, yeah. That's true. But beyond that, he was going to the Father. And they couldn't go there either, except by way of the cross. Yeah, so in retrospect, we all know this is true.

We know this. But they don't get it. But we don't always connect those dots that way. Exactly, yeah, exactly. So, again, it surprises me what Jesus addresses next.

Because what should happen if you're writing a fictional story, you should have all the guys go, what, what do you mean we can't? They would protest and they would talk about their sacrifice up to that point. And they're saying, well, what are you talking about? Do the plans change?

I mean, there would be a lot of awkward and high voice debate at this point. Oh, those questions are coming. They're coming. So while he has their attention, after saying such a blockbuster thing that he drops in 33, then he goes on and says something, again, unexpected, but he's got their attention. A new commandment I give to you that you love one another, just as I have loved you. You also are to love one another. Like this, all people will know that you're my disciples, if you have love for one another. What a funny place to stick this. But he's got their attention.

But it does connect what will happen soon, but they don't know that. Well, and just a little while ago, John had told us, knowing who he was and where he was going, he loved them to the end. He loved them completely.

Got down on his hands and knees and washed their feet. So he says, I've given you this example. Keep that in mind. Love one another.

You're going to need this love knowing what's ahead. And we see it. Again, retrospectively, we know what's coming. So this makes a lot of sense to us.

But in a real sense, he's answering their questions in their mind. What do you mean we can't follow you? We have been following you, and we want to follow you. And Jesus steps two steps forward and says, you want to follow? This is how you follow. You love.

You love. This is how you follow, by loving. Just like Thomas later on, who demands that he sees the risen Christ. And he says, what you need to do at this point is you need to follow and think about all those people who don't have a chance to touch, but they're going to follow. So he really is answering their immediate question about, how do we follow? I don't understand why we can't follow. We can follow.

The next step in your following is to love one another. That's how you follow. Oh, okay. Yeah.

Did you have something else on there? No. Let's just go on.

Okay. Because this is where the conversation kind of goes where we would go. Well, Simon Peter said to him, Lord, where are you going? Right?

He just misses the whole loving thing and goes right back to, where are you going? Jesus answered him, where I'm going, you cannot follow me now, but you will follow me later or follow me afterward. Right.

It's timing. Peter said to him, Lord, why can't I follow you now? I'll lay down my life for you. Jesus answered, will you lay down your life for me?

Truly, truly I say to you, the rooster will not crow until you have denied me three times. Yeah. And the other gospels point this out as well. I mean, this is a gigantic fail. And so that's why I say this section of John 13 seems to be all about unexpected failure. You've got betrayal that Jesus announces is going to happen. They failed understanding that Jesus is doing it.

They can't even conceive of that. Jesus talks about loving, but they can't follow. That seems like a big fail in the plan. And now here's Peter saying, but I won't fail.

They might fail, but I won't fail. But actually, if you read Luke's account, at this point, Luke includes, Jesus says to Peter, but I have prayed for you and when you've turned, strengthen your brothers. So if we read all the narratives together, we realize that Jesus, even in the midst of telling them, looks like things are going bad, but they're not. This is all according to plan.

But he's giving them comfort and information all the way along. He says, so when it happens, you'll know. So you'll know. I told you ahead of time.

I prepared you. Yeah. He said that in the first half of 13, so that when these things happen, you'll know that I'm he.

You'll know that I am. Right. And he understood at the moment that it was probably just confusing them. But he knew that he was laying these little tidbits so they could come back later and say, oh, don't you remember?

He said this. And go, oh, well, he must be the guy. I've always wondered, if they sat around the campfire, can you believe it? They'd say, we were up there in that upper room. Jesus actually revealed to us who was going to betray him. And can you believe that as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, he did not stop Judas, even though he fully knew what was going on. Can you believe that? And it happened right in our very eyes.

It seems as though he is so sovereign that even when he knows that he will be betrayed and who will betray him, you cannot stop the sovereignty of this king. Wow. Yeah. So there's a lot of things that they're witnessing that they're going to have to post-process, as we say.

They're not going to get it here. But, again, we come back to Peter. Peter does this wonderful statement. I mean, it's just you've got to love Peter. I mean, you've really got to love Peter because he steps out there and he says, look, I'm going to say right here in front of all the guys that I'm committed enough that I'll actually lay down my life for you.

I mean, I'm willing to do that. And a couple hours later, it's going to be really clear that that's not the case. Yeah, I know. And, again, Jesus, I love it here, he doesn't berate him and say, oh, yeah, Peter, you don't know your heart.

I can tell you. He doesn't berate him. But he just tells him a fact. And when that fact happens later on, it just crushes Peter. As he goes on, he weeps bitterly. And part of that weeping is because he realizes at that point the weakness of his intentions and to act in the flesh to love Jesus and to support him, to follow him, to be his disciple.

He realizes he just can't do it in his own stuff. And it's very interesting to compare the premeditated, profitable betrayal of Judas with the totally unself-knowing, stepped in it without recognizing it, self-unawareness of Peter. They both denied the Lord.

And so what's the difference? That's a very interesting course of thought if you take some time to think about that. Because Jesus prepares Peter and says, oh, Peter, you're going to do this, but I've prayed for you. And he does again, John doesn't include that, but Luke does, I've prayed for you and you will turn again. Well the spirit is willing and the flesh is weak. Jesus already, and he warns him about this.

He might have great intentions, your love for me might be profound and deep. You may be fully in and you're fully in the program, but I got to tell you, when you serve me and follow me in the flesh, you're going to fail. He's going to actually, that phrase comes from the prayer in the garden.

Bingo. Which actually John does not include that. Luke, I think, is the one who tells us about that part of the conversation. So here you have a collection of really well-intentioned, very committed, I mean, uber-committed guys. They've left homes and family and stuff like that.

Another passage they say, look, we all left our homes, what are we getting in return? But such sacrificial, such great, honest and authentic following, and yet still they will fail. And Peter's just the only one who puts words and proclaims it in front of the rest of them and is sort of embarrassed by the fact that he's going to fail. But that's actually a truism about our following of Christ.

We don't offer to follow him with the strength of our will and that somehow impresses him because you know what, there's just not much to that. However, ironically, Peter will give his life at the end of his life. Much later. Much, much later.

So what's the difference? He claims that he's going to do it, but he fails, but there he doesn't fail. He actually gives his life. So what happened in the interim?

What happened in the interim when you read Acts is the Holy Spirit. He's changed. He's a changed man. But here at the outset, as he's following Jesus, his love for Jesus isn't any less than anyone else's. Well, his intention isn't any less authentic, but he's just weak.

He's just weak. And something about a lifetime of walking with Jesus, Jesus himself through the Holy Spirit will change that. Yeah, and if you read, and it would be an interesting thing to do, go and read just quickly through 1 and 2 Peter, and you'll see these very things coming up.

Oh, they do. And again, I just did that this morning. I was astonished at how often Peter talks about the glory of Christ and loving one another. Oh, well, those both come from right here in this moment, right before the Lord said to him, you're going to deny me.

Yeah, yeah. And interestingly enough, in the face of our own personal failures, Peter's personal failures, you would think to yourself, I've let down the king. I've let down the one whom I've come to love. And will my relationship with this special one change as a result of my failures? That's what we would all do.

Will he change toward me? Exactly. Yeah. That's our fear. Yet in the face of all of that, in the face of all that failure, which Jesus knows is going to happen ahead of time, it does not seem to affect Jesus' love for us. That's what's really profound about it. This is why we love Peter so much, because Peter's the guy who just has the high-profile failures, but Jesus still loves him. Indeed. It's kind of sad that we have the chapter break at this point, because right after Jesus had said to him, you'll deny me three times, then the text goes right on, but don't let your heart go on being troubled. But don't be troubled.

Don't let your heart and believe in me. Right. Exactly. I'm getting ahead of myself, because we'll talk about that next week. But what great hope.

I mean, we end chapter 13 on a downer. You'll deny me three times. I go, oh. See, this is why I say you have to press on through the whole conversation, the whole evening of all the important things that Jesus said in the face of these bombshells bursting. He says, but, but I'm going to prepare a place for you where I am, you'll be, I'm going to receive you to myself, you'll never be apart from me. If you see me, you've seen the Father. All of those things come on the heels of this, but you're going to deny me statement.

So read the whole conversation. Just keep going, because they are deeply troubled about the fact that Jesus said in verse 33 there, where I'm going, you can't come. And that just wrecks their world. I mean, it just wrecks their world. Why couldn't they come?

And why couldn't they come? And then on top of wrecking their world, someone's going to betray them, which usually means the king's not going to become king. And then on top of that, all of our great claims of being able to follow and we're going to follow you to the death and stuff like that, those are going to fail in Jesus. And even with all of that shadowing over what looks like it should crumble this entire plan, Jesus goes into chapter 14 and says, don't worry about it, guys.

This is where we're going. Yeah. Don't go on being troubled.

Don't live in a state of troubledness. Believe me. Right. Believe God. There's a plan here. Right. And again, it turns out, like the guys walking to Emmaus, what changes our perspective on what looks like the world is falling apart is the very word of God, which must happen.

It will happen. He's stated his attention on what's going to happen. So that's what changes it. And the reason you can't come now is because I have to go to the cross. I have to pay the penalty for sin to open the way. I am the way, the truth, and the life, which is what he's going to say in a minute.

But I have to die in order to accomplish your salvation and open the way for you to be with me where I am forever. They don't get that yet either. They don't get it yet, but they will. And I've always thought that Jesus kept the identity of the betrayer from them because someone like Peter probably would have said, well, it's Judas.

Let's kill him. And they would have killed him on the spot. They might have. And they would have erupted in self, in blaming one another. And actually, in another account, they do, actually. Then the conversation immediately turns to, well, who's the greatest?

Who's the greatest? I think that's in Luke's account. That's in Luke's. Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly.

Right after the Last Supper. Yeah. So it's like... So there was more to this conversation than John records. Yeah.

Yeah. So anyway, so Jesus is being very careful to make sure that they don't get in the way of the plan. But the plan will happen.

And Jesus says, there's lots of places where I'm going, and I'm making a white place for you, and I want you to be where I am. That's my heart. And right now, you can't follow. Wow. So he'll address that in the next chapter. So anyway, we're glad you're with us, and we're gonna start into Chapter 14 next week. Will we do half of Chapter 14, you think? Probably. Yeah, probably half of Chapter 14.

Oh, 14 is so... 14 is great. But just keep remembering, this is Jesus' response to their being really concerned about the fact that Jesus says, where I'm going, you can't follow. And this is not your typical Passover dinner conversation. No.

No, not even close. Passover is a celebration of deliverance. Well, this is suddenly taking a turn toward the dark. Turn toward the dark.

There's betrayers, there's failure, there's real weakness on how we watch and how we follow. So anyway, it seems like a dark time, but Jesus is gonna turn it into a bright time. He says, believe in me.

Yeah. So anyway, thanks for being with us, and we hope that you're enjoying walking through the scriptures with us. And we'll be back next week on John 14. So I'm Jim.

And I'm Dorothy. And we just trust that God is speaking to you and He's glorifying, making known, billboarding who He is through these words. So thanks for being with us. Thanks today. Next week. Bye. Bye. More Than Ink is a production of Main Street Church of Brigham City and is solely responsible for its content. To contact us with your questions or comments, just go to our website, morethanink.org. Yeah, let's do this again.