The last Friday that we met, we talked about Unity and church community and what the ultimate purpose of that is. We talked about these things as a result of Jesus’ prayer in John chapter 17. The entire chapter of John 17 is Jesus praying and in it He prays for His disciples; all of the disciples that were there in His presence with Him at that moment, He also prayed for all that would come to believe in Him in the future, which includes us, which is amazing, and that’s what we talked about last time, but as He prayed, He also prayed for Himself. He prayed for Himself in John 17, because it was now time for the events of John 18 and 19 to happen and Jesus knew full well what that meant and we’re going to look at all of this in just a moment.
But before we get into this, I don’t ever want to take for granted that someone sitting here tonight or someone that might listen to this later might not have heard the good news of Jesus Christ. That’s what we’re always here for, but it’s specifically what we are celebrating this entire weekend and I want to make sure we lead with it.
To understand the good news or Gospel of Jesus Christ, we have to understand some bad news first. The bad news is that we are all sinners, and some people don’t want to talk about that, but it’s important and it’s true, it’s true for every single one of us, and that sin breaks the relationship between us as people and God Himself. But what is sin? Sin is every wrong thing that we can say, think, or do that goes against what God would have us do. The most relatable is usually some of the 10 commandments. You know, honor God, honor your Father and Mother, don’t lie, steal, murder, etc. There is not a single one of us that is perfectly innocent of even just those few. And you know we might be thinking that some of those don’t seem all that bad, and as people we would probably put them on different tiers of how bad they are. But the reality is that the absolute worst part of any sin is that at its core it is us being defiant against a perfect God and that makes them all really serious. So serious that that sin separates us away from Him. And that’s some terrible news to hear, but in the middle of that really bad news comes the best news ever in Jesus Christ. That Jesus Christ, the very son of God, would come down to this Earth as a man completely without any sin at all to take the consequences of our defiance, our sin, our problems, our shame, everything on Himself. The bible says that the ultimate result of sin is death, and even worse than just death, death and forever separation away from God. But what we’re looking at tonight is the fact that Jesus took that death that our sin deserved for all of us. And spoiler alert, but if we’re going to talk about the Gospel, we really need to know the whole Gospel, and that is that yes Jesus died on a cross for our sins and we’ll see that tonight, but He was also buried and rose back to life three days later to now invite us to turn away from our sin, to be saved from that death, and to have a relationship with an awesome God if we would believe in Him and follow Him. That’s the gospel, that’s the good news in the face of some really bad news, but thankfully the good news outweighs the bad news big time.
And so, in light of that, let’s get going in the word tonight and see what Jesus went through, FOR US. We’re going to start right at the beginning of John 18.
Read John 18:1-6
Things have obviously escalated pretty quickly here. When Jesus finished praying in Chapter 17 as it says He left with His disciples and came to a garden. A place they had been before, a place that Judas here was familiar with, and ultimately the place that he chose for his betrayal and his assisting of these people that were out to get Jesus. But there is something I want us to consider and to pay attention to as we move through these verses. Jesus is going to go through a lot as we continue, but there are parts of what He goes through that maybe we haven’t really stopped to consider before. We often look at the physical torture and the excruciating physical pain that He went through in these events, but remember that Jesus came down as a man. Fully God, but also fully man, and in His humanity, He had relationships with people, He felt emotion, He felt so much of what we feel at times when things are difficult, when times are hard. And this time that He is facing is really hard, but not only because of the physical pain that He was going to endure. But right on top of that, we’re going to see that the people closest to Him are also going to betray Him, deny Him, and even abandon Him as these things are going on, and that adds a whole different layer of what He went through that I don’t think we often look at.
And we’re seeing that start already right here with Judas. Jesus already knew what Judas was going to do, John makes that clear in verse 4 when he says that Jesus already knew ALL THINGS that would come upon Him. So, this wasn’t unexpected, but Judas was one of the twelve, one of the disciples. He had been part of this group and in the middle of everything with Jesus for the last three years. This wasn’t just some random person that found out where Jesus was and called in the authorities. And it wasn’t like Jesus had done anything to cause the need for the authorities to take Him into custody either. Rather Judas had been paid off to do this, paid off with 30 pieces of silver which works out to about 4 months’ pay for the average worker at that time. So, four months’ pay to turn on Jesus and feed Him to the wolves so to speak. Jesus knew it was coming, but He still fully experienced this betrayal from someone that had been so close to Him for the last three years and that had to hurt.
And also, an interesting note in these verses, because for some reason I have run into this thought process a bunch of times that Jesus never claimed to be God in the Bible or simply that the Bible never says that He is and I have no idea where people come up with that from, because it clearly does a lot. And if you look at verse 5 here, this is one of those times. In verse 4, Jesus asked this mob that Judas brought, “Whom are you seeking?”, then they replied, “Jesus of Nazareth”. And then notice His response, I think all of our Bibles probably say, “I am He”. And this was translated this way to better help understand the question and answer going on in English. But the “He” was actually added in the translation process and if you were to go back to how this was originally written you would find that what He actually said was “I AM”, not “I am He” and that statement of “I AM” is a name God calls Himself numerous times throughout scripture. This name goes all the way back to the book of Exodus and Moses, when Moses is talking to God and Moses says “If I go to your people and they ask me Your name. What should I say?” And then God responds, “I AM WHO I AM”, tell them “I AM has sent me to you”.
So, Jesus’ response to them is “I AM”, and He is saying this as a very clear I AM GOD statement, because that is exactly what it means. And if there was any doubt that that is what is happening here, then look at verse 6.
- “Now when He said to them, “I am He,” (or I AM) they drew back and fell to the ground.”
This isn’t just some guy saying, “yeah that’s me”. This is God come down as a man saying I AM GOD and when He did this, all of these people moved back and fell to the ground. And this isn’t just a few people, based on the wording in verse 3 it’s believed that there were likely around 600 soldiers that came for this arrest, not to mention everyone else in the mob with their lanterns, torches, and weapons. And that may seem crazy, maybe it seemed crazy to them to have all these people there to arrest this one guy, but it probably didn’t seem all that crazy anymore when Jesus says, “I AM” and they all fall to the ground. But let’s continue.
Read John 18:7-11
Here we see Peter jump in, he probably has good intentions, but ultimately doesn’t understand what Jesus understands in how all of this is all supposed to go down and he attacks one of the High Priest’s Servants. I mean he didn’t go for the soldiers, he didn’t go for the leaders of the mob, he went for this servant guy, and he very well might have attacked him from behind as well since his attack hit this guy’s right ear. But Jesus stops the attack and from Luke’s Gospel we know that He actually heals the man’s ear. And it’s at this point in verse 11 where Jesus says, “Put your sword into the sheath. Shall I not drink the cup which My Father has given Me?” Which basically means, “Shall I not follow through with the plans that God the Father has made for me?”
He knew what the plans were, He knew everything that was coming to Him, and He let them arrest Him at this moment. And it’s at this moment, when they are taking Him under arrest, that all of His disciples ran away and abandoned Him. We know that from Matthew’s Gospel, in Matthew 26:56 which is recording this same event and says “Then all the disciples forsook Him and fled.” He’s been betrayed by a friend, now He is being abandoned by His friends, and let’s keep reading.
Read John 18:12-26
They bound Jesus up, they led Him away, He is being questioned, He gets hit by one of the officers, and on the outskirts of all of this we find one of Jesus’ closest friends…Peter. And it’s kind of interesting because we just looked at Peter pursuing violence on Jesus’ behalf, which obviously wasn’t the right choice there. I think the violent response was probably more of a heat of the moment response. Like a knee jerk reaction to the craziness of this mob coming to arrest Jesus. But as they took Jesus to this guy named Annas and eventually on to be questioned by the High Priest Caiaphas, we see Peter is in the area and one of the other disciples as well. And though in the heat of the moment in the garden he was willing to physically fight for Jesus, at least to some extent, we see Him now not willing to even associate himself with Him. Obviously when the heat of the moment died down, when the reality of these things started to settle in, fear obviously must have started settling in as well. And we see in this passage one of Jesus’ closest friends completely deny his association with Jesus THREE TIMES. The first time there was with a young servant girl who stands at the door, and she says there in verse 17 “You are not also one of this Man’s (Jesus’) disciples, are you?”. And Peter in the face of this young servant girl replies immediately with “I am not.” And then beyond this door there was a gathering of servants and officers standing around a fire and Peter joins them at the fire to warm himself. Then once again this crowd, as we see in verse 25, who were most likely just there during the arrest in the garden, say to him “You are not also one of His disciples, are you?” And of course, Peter once again, “I am not!”. But then you get to this next guy in verse 26 who is a servant of the high priest and that might sound familiar as one of them just got their ears cut off earlier in this chapter. But even more than that, this guy is related to the guy that got his ear cut off and Peter was the one that cut it off. So, we don’t know exactly what their relationship to each other was, I mean maybe they were cousins or something, but this guy is also like “Did I not see you in the garden with Him?”. And this guy has to be like, man I just watched you cut my cousins ear off! Of course, I just saw you in the garden. But Peter even in the face of that still denies the relationship…and then a rooster crows.
The rooster crows because Jesus warned Peter that this was going to happen, and He told him that the rooster would crow when he denied Him three times. Peter was like, there is no way that would ever happen, but he still messed up, and I’m sure he was absolutely terrified with everything going on, most of his other friends that bailed with him still haven’t come back yet and he’s scared. But he, one of Jesus’ closest friends, denies his relationship with Jesus three times and at the end of this book in John 21, Jesus has a really hard conversation with Peter in light of this, but we’re not going to go there tonight.
But what I wanted to see is that we aren’t even to the cross yet, and all of the pain that is associated with that, and already the people around Jesus have betrayed Him, abandoned Him, and denied Him and things are just going to get worst. Sometimes I think we may forget the wide range of difficulty that Jesus faced in His humanity and why as the book of Hebrews says that Jesus can sympathize with our weaknesses, because He faced so much on our behalf. Not just the physical pain that we usually focus on, but emotional pain, spiritual pain, the pain of loss, the pain of people not coming through. There’s so much, but of course there is the incredible physical suffering as well and as we move into the rest of this history that God’s Word records for us, I want to keep all of that in mind and we’re going to just read the rest of this chapter and the next one. So, let’s do that.
Read John 18:28 – End of Chapter 19
He did all of that, all of it…FOR US. Because HE LOVES US. Our sin would forever keep us separated from God and carries with it the terrible sentence of dying and being FOREVER separated from God. But Jesus, came down, and said I’ll take that sentence for you so that it doesn’t have to end up that way for you, so that you can know and have a real relationship with the God of this Universe that isn’t broken any longer by your sin, because I’ll take all of it on Me.
And Him saving us doesn’t cost us anything, the Bible calls it a free gift that we could never earn if we wanted too anyways. The gift is ours if we would but believe that He is who He says He is, that He died, was buried, and rose again FOR OUR SIN, and because of that we would TURN AWAY from that sin and actually FOLLOW HIM, because He is Lord God and there is no other way to be saved. And why would we want a different way anyways when this is the way, its free, He loves us, and He is so worth following.
I want to look at one other passage as we get ready to close the night and that’s in Hebrews 12.
Read Hebrews 12:1-2
This is a passage talking to people that already believe in Jesus and I really just want to focus in on one specific phrase here. In verse 2 it starts by saying “looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith” and then right after that, please see what it says and don’t ever forget it. It says, “who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross”. We look at that and we have to ask the question, what’s the joy that was in front of Him? We read through John 18 and 19 together tonight and that seemed horrible, all of it. From the betrayal, abandonment, and denial from the people closest to Him, to the torture and physical pain of the cross, to even more that we didn’t really go into tonight, but there was a whole lot of bad going on. So, where or what is this joy in it all? The joy wasn’t in looking forward to the suffering, the joy was in looking past the suffering to us. The joy that He looked forward to, was to see His people saved from their sin. The joy that He looked forward to IS US that believe in Him and now know God because of it. There was no other way for us, but Him knowing the end result, that we could be saved because of all that He was going to go through, made it all worth it. And so, He chose to move forward and suffer all of it because saving us was worth it to Him and man we should forever praise Him for that.