When we take time to examine the events that led up to the crucifixion of Christ, it's easy for us to be shocked by the responses of those who lived with him and learned from him for three years. Today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg cautions us not to be too quick to judge Jesus' disciples.
We may be more like them than we think. We're looking at chapter 14 of Mark's Gospel. Alistair begins today in verse 43. Let the camera settle on these disciples.
Judas is a character here, Jesus is a character here, the crowd is a character here, and here we have the credits running now for the disciple band. They're about to collapse like a pack of cards. Peter is about to go down like a broken deckchair.
It's tragic, isn't it? Luke records the fact that he asked this question almost in unison, "'Shall we strike with the sword?'" And before Jesus apparently has a chance to answer, Peter decides the answer is yes, and so he takes his sword and he lops off the ear of Malchus, who is the servant of the high priest.
And there they go, under cover of darkness, their sordid departure recorded for us in a phrase. Verse 50, And they all left him and fled. Actually, again, John tells us that Jesus said to his captors, It's me you've come for, let them go. Which made me think again of Moses, who stepped forward to say, Let my people go. And he who is the great prophet, who outprofits all the prophets, steps forward in the garden, and he says, Let my people go. He has come to deliver, to succor, to save. Now, let me just mention the young man here in 51 and 52, because this little section can derail most home Bible studies. It's the kind of thing that when the teacher is trying his very best to explain the significance of the passage, somebody wants to do nothing other than talk about the fellow who was running naked down the street.
Who is he? Why was he naked? What was he really wearing? Was it a kilt? Was he wearing his pajamas? What was he doing? Before you know where you are, the whole Bible study has gone to pot.
And you must resist that entirely. The answer is, we don't know who he is. The chances are that it was Mark himself. The house of John Mark may have been the house in which the Passover was celebrated. He then came out of the house, in the context of the unfolding drama. He may well have been on the periphery of things. And when they began to round up Jesus and they saw that there was one lingering young fellow there, scantily closed, they made a grab for him as well, and he did a Joseph on it. Remember, Joseph, when pursued by Potiphar's wife, slipped off his kilt and ran down the street, and here, the exact same thing happens.
But don't get waylaid by the streaker. Just leave it alone. It's not, the main things are the plain things, and the plain things are the main things. So from narration, then, to interpretation. The narration is straightforward. The storyline is understandable, isn't it?
It's the story of treachery, it's the story of betrayal, it's the story of an arrest, it's the story of the composure of Jesus. All of this is there, and Mark is recording it for us. Now, how are we then to interpret it? What is Mark doing with this material?
Why is Mark writing as he writes? What is the intentionality of the author—the ultimate author being, of course, God the Holy Spirit? So how do we interpret this? Well, again, you need to interpret it in light of context—the context of the entire gospel, the context of the immediate surrounding text. And so we immediately have a hint of things in verse 41, where Jesus says, The Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. That may not mean very much to us until we go back to Daniel chapter 7 and realize that the Son of Man is the depiction of the one who is there in eternity with the Ancient of Days. And this Son of Man is an enigmatic figure in the Old Testament, and interestingly, as Jesus engages in ministry, his favorite self-designation is as Son of Man. And actually, if you want, just to fast-forward in your thinking to verses 61 and 62 in the passage here, to which we will come in a few weeks, he's being interrogated by the high priest.
He doesn't give him an answer. The high priest asks him—this is verse 61—"Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?" And Jesus says, I am, ego, I me, and you will see, he says, the Son of Man seated at the right hand of power and coming with the clouds of heaven. And the high priest tore his garment and said, What further witnesses do we need? We have heard his blasphemy.
In other words, they knew exactly what he was saying. I am the Son of Man. I am the one predicted here in the prophecy of Daniel. So it is as the Son of Man that he steps out from the experience that he's had in the garden. It is, remember, in the perfection of his humanity that he has recoiled from the prospect of Calvary. But that issue has now been settled in prayer. It's not about my will or my design, Father, but it is about yours. And once that is settled, then he steps forward. You get the immediacy of it in verse 42. Rise! Let us be going.
My betrayer is at hand. It's not as if it's all gone into slow motion. And then one of Mark's favorite words, as verse 43 begins, and immediately while he was still talking.
Mark is always moving the action along. Now, what you need to notice, and what Mark is showing us here, is that Jesus proceeds to this event not as a helpless victim held in the grip of dark forces but he emerges into this encounter, in Psalm 19 terminology, as a champion or as a strong man ready to run his course with joy. So any temptation that we have to paint Jesus as somehow or another trapped by circumstances or disabled by this intimidating crowd or reluctantly moving in the direction of Calvary cannot be substantiated from a careful reading of the text. The fact that his disciples didn't get this, and they didn't get it—in chapter 9 and verse 31, Jesus explains to them again that the Son of Man is going to suffer and die and be raised on the third day. And Mark is honest enough to say, but they didn't understand this, and no one was prepared to ask him about it. It's just like a bunch of naughty boys in the class. Nobody understands what the teacher's saying, but nobody wants to acknowledge it. I don't understand.
I haven't got a clue what he's on about. And that's exactly what was true of them. The Gospel writers tell us it again and again. He said, I'm going to give my life as a ransom for many. And they looked at one another and said, What does he possibly mean by that? So here in this narrative, the record of Jesus is the record of him—and notice this carefully—moving purposefully, moving voluntarily, to drink the cup that the Father has given him to drink. They've come from the Passover. This cup, he says, inaugurating a whole new celebration, a whole new commemoration. This cup is the new covenant in my blood. And they must have looked at one another and said, I just don't get this.
He had already told them that the Son of Man must give his life a ransom for many. And they're sitting there with all the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle, trying to put it all together, the way some of us may be doing this morning. We're not unfamiliar with this drama. We're not unfamiliar with this story. But we don't understand. You don't understand. By nature, you don't understand. You can't understand till God makes it possible for you to understand.
In fact, this story, this drama, when we begin to penetrate its essence, is, says Paul, regarded as foolishness by those who are perishing. So it's not as if people say, Oh, yeah, that makes perfect sense to me. They read it, and they say, Does that make any sense to me at all?
Well, that's exactly where the disciples were. He told them. They didn't understand.
They were unprepared to ask. But here Mark tells us, he is moving forward. The Father's wrath is being poured out on sin. He is moving forward as a sacrifice, as a substitute, satisfying the wrath of God against the sinner.
And I wrote down in my notes words that I've given to you before for you to ponder, and they're worthy of further consideration. Mark is moving us to an understanding of the fact that Christ's death is necessary, is voluntary, it is propitiatory, and it is substitutionary. It is necessary insofar as he is the only one who can die in the place of sinners. It is voluntary inasmuch as he goes willingly to the cross. It is propitiatory insofar as he bears the Father's wrath and expresses the Father's love in the cross. Heaven's love and heaven's justice meet herein is love, says John, not that we love God, but that he loved God and gave his Son to be the propitiation—or, as the NIV translates it, to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. And when we look upon the cross, we see Christ up there not as an example but as a substitute, dying in the place of the sinner.
And why is this important? All of this has to be reckoned with if we are not to do a disservice to the narrative that we're just considering. If we're not to find ourselves with a kind of facile response that you hear from time to time from the lips of people when they read the record of the passion of Christ and they seek to sort of set it aside with the observation, that is a dreadful thing to happen to a nice man.
They have no idea what has just been considered by them. That's why, you see, Peter's attempt to do anything with a sword is entirely unnecessary. If Jesus had explained, I can call twelve legions of angels, and we can deal with this in a moment. What do you think you're doing with that funny little sword that you've got there?
Don't be ridiculous. And incidentally, it's frankly unhelpful that you got that thing out. You're just delaying things here, Peter, lopping off people's ears, and I've got to put the ears back on and everything else. If you're trying to deliver me, you're trying to deliver me, you're actually hindering the purpose of the Father.
The reason I have come is to this very hour. Don't try and slow things up. Put your sword away! Sheath your sword! Shall I not drink the cup the Father has given me? And it was going to take up until Pentecost for Peter to finally get that. I wish I had been present on the day, when he preached on the day of Pentecost, to hear him finally explaining to the listeners, this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God. Say, There you go, Peter. You're on it now, boy. That's fabulous.
Where'd you get that from? Some of his colleagues are going, Man, that was some talk, Peter! And he said, Well, didn't you listen?
Didn't you listen to what he told us in those days? And when he finally writes to the scattered believers of his day, he puts it succinctly, Christ also suffered for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God. Well, let's just say, a couple of words concerning application.
Application. You will notice that Jesus' prediction that they would all fall away is fulfilled. Zechariah pictures the day when the shepherd will be struck and the sheep will be scattered, and here it is before us.
And they all left him and fled. The Scriptures let them be fulfilled. Now, what legitimate points can we make by way of application? Let me just give you a few. I'll get you started. As it were, a charcoal sketch you can fill in.
Take the coloring pencils out in the afternoon. First of all, we dare not miss the corruption and moral blindness of Judas. The corruption and moral blindness of Judas. Because it is a chilling reminder of how possible it is to be outwardly attached to Christ and to his church, only to turn against him when he fails to meet our expectations, only to turn against him when we realize that he's not the Jesus we wanted him to be.
Now, this is not a reach for me to say this. In pastoral ministry, it's happened to me more times than I care to recall when I've sat with someone in a room, laid out for them what Jesus means when he says discipleship. The person has looked me in the eye and says, You cannot ask me to do that.
I am unprepared to do that. What they're really saying is, I want Jesus to do what I want him to do. I do not want to do what Jesus wants me to do. Then Jesus says, You can't be my disciple. Whatever was going on in the mind of Judas, in the mystery of all of that, his expectations had collapsed. And yet he followed with him, he listened to him, he participated, and he wasn't one of them. He was like those to whom John refers, when he says, They went out from us, because they were not of us. If they had been of us, they would have continued with us. Secondly, we may not identify with Judas in his corruption, but I don't think any of us can avoid the fact that we see ourselves reflected in the confusion of the disciples. If you take this whole story, one minute is bravado.
None of us will ever leave you or fall away from you, Jesus. Then it is they're asleep. Then it is that they're ashamed. Then it is that they're slinking off to find a place to hide. Have you ever been tempted to just fall asleep and chuck it?
Slink off and find a place to hide? Aren't you glad that the work which his goodness began, the arm of his strength will complete? That his promises are yes and amen, and they never were four feet yet?
In other words, that he doesn't ditch these fellows, and he doesn't ditch us either. Thirdly, notice that the powers of darkness that are arraigned against Jesus here are a sorry combination of politics, military might, and religious authority. Church history is littered with occasions when the religious establishment is combined with political authority and sought to silence the voice of Christ.
The story of Bonhoeffer is such a story, and the story is repeated again and again throughout our world. Don't immediately assume that the established church, the magisterial pronouncements of the church, pronounce on the side of Christ. They didn't hear. Fourthly, let's recognize how quickly we may reach for the wrong weapons in waging war. Remember, Jesus had said, If my kingdom was of this world, then my boys would fight. But it's not, so they don't.
He didn't, and we mustn't. The weapons of our warfare, says Paul when he writes, are not swords and guns. The weapons of our warfare are two, their prayer and the preaching of the Word of God. People say, Are you crazy? You're gonna turn the world upside down by praying and preaching the Bible, gossiping the gospel, taking this good news, playing soccer, and then telling people that Jesus is the only Savior because he's the only one qualified to save? Yes. Yes.
Yes, a thousand times, yes. When the church in any generation loses confidence in the weapons given by the commanding officer—namely, prayer and the preaching of the Word of God—when a church in any generation loses confidence in that weaponry, you will notice that it takes up its own inferior weaponry and seeks to do by political and religious might what can only be accomplished by the power of God the Holy Spirit through the Word of God and through prayer. Read church history. You're sensible people.
Figure it out. Finally, by way of application, we dare not miss the fact that Mark is describing these events in such a way as to make it clear to the reader—that is, to you and me—that the death of Jesus is for sinners, that he drinks the cup of his Father's wrath as a substitute for those who deserve it, that on the cross he is going to bear the judgment that we deserve in order to give to us the forgiveness we don't deserve. He wants us to see that Jesus, the Lamb of God, is going to his death completely in control of events—voluntarily, vicariously, and obediently—and as a substitute for sinners. Do you understand what we're reading here? How can I, unless someone explains it? Do you get this good news about Jesus? I don't mean do you get it in the same way that you got your maths at school, when the person said, you know, the circumference of a circle is whatever it is?
I always mention that, because I never paid attention to anything, and I still don't know which one is the diameter and which is the circumference, so I usually just stop at that point, as I'm about to do now. But in other words, it is possible to read this and take it and say, well, intellectually, I grasp this in its entirety, without ever embracing it personally. Without ever coming to trust it. Without ever turning and saying, you died for me, because I'm a sinner. You were a substitute for me, because I deserve judgment. You're a wonderful Savior to grant to me, who only deserves judgment, forgiveness. Whatever you do that, I want to receive that from you.
I want to rest in that today. In the summertime, I decided—and I may have told you this before—I decided that I was way past any kind of statins for potential heart disease. I had moved on from that. I had it under control. I was now able to handle this without any external help from the physicians or from their medication. So I went for about three or four months to prove how good I was doing—only to submit to a blood test and prove that I wasn't doing very good at all.
My knowledge of the opportunity for the help of the Lipitor, the access to the tablets in my medicine cabinet, my awareness of the physician's perspective, was entirely irrelevant to me until I availed myself of that which was provided for my well-being. I spoke to people this morning after the first service, and it is clear to me that they just still don't get it. They're saying things to me like, I love coming to Parkside. You're such a good speaker. That was my wife. No, it wasn't. I had just made that up.
No, she wasn't at the first service. No, but I mean, I said, what do you say to that? You say, Thank you. Do you understand? Do you understand enough to cry out to God to save you?
Or do you just understand enough to feel a little bit better about yourself? Jesus Christ did not come to add to the sum of our total happiness. He came to save us. Are you saved? You're listening to Truth for Life with Alistair Begg.
Alistair returns in just a moment to close today's program. You know, as Alistair ended today's message, he posed the most important question any of us will ever answer. Are you saved?
If you can't confidently answer that question with a yes, then I want to encourage you to visit our website truthforlife.org slash learn more. You will find their teaching that explains more about who Jesus is, the Bible, the church, and other essentials of Christianity. Here at Truth for Life, we're passionate about sharing the life-saving message of the gospel. We hear regularly about how God uses Alistair's teaching to bring about drastic change in the lives of people who listen. Our daily program and our online teaching are all made possible because of your giving.
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Again, the title is Sighing on Sunday. Now here's Alistair with a closing prayer. O Lord, look upon us in your mercy, we pray. Open our blind eyes to the fact that you died for sinners. Show us ourselves as sinners. Show us Christ as our Savior. Make the book live to us, we pray. And then help us to say, I can't imagine how you're going to win the nations. As we think of the nations that are represented in our building in these days, as the gospel goes around the world by various agencies, we say, How is it possible that we're going to win these nations? How can it be that he who angels worship would even set his love on us?
It's amazing. Oh, make me understand it. Help me to take it in, what it meant for the Holy One to bear away my sin. And if God is speaking into your life today in relationship to these things, turn to him in repentance and in faith, and embrace him as your Savior and your Lord and your King. Hear our prayers, O God, and let our cries come to you for your son's sake. Amen. Thanks for listening today. Tomorrow we'll learn why Jesus, although betrayed and deserted and falsely accused and abused, was not a helpless victim. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.
