Luke 22.39-46

Pray Like the God-Man

(Luke 22.39-46)

Today’s text picks up directly after Jesus’s last supper with his disciples. They leave the upper room together, and they head toward the Mount of Olives, which was (according to Luke) Jesus’s custom when he wanted to get away from the city. 

(Apparently during this time Judas slipped out to let the religious authorities know where Jesus would be next, so they could come arrest them. So Jesus and the disciples would have a bit of a head start—a few minutes, or an hour, before he would be arrested.)

What we see in the text is very simple: Jesus goes up to the mountain to pray with his disciples before his arrest.

But even though the text is simple, it has been a source of discussion and confusion for Christians for millenia. 

Let’s read the text together, then I’ll explain how we’re going to try and tackle it this morning. 

Luke 22.39-46: 

39 And he came out and went, as was his custom, to the Mount of Olives, and the disciples followed him. 40 And when he came to the place, he said to them, “Pray that you may not enter into temptation.” 41 And he withdrew from them about a stone’s throw, and knelt down and prayed, 42 saying, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.” 43 And there appeared to him an angel from heaven, strengthening him. 44 And being in agony he prayed more earnestly; and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground. 45 And when he rose from prayer, he came to the disciples and found them sleeping for sorrow, 46 and he said to them, “Why are you sleeping? Rise and pray that you may not enter into temptation.” 

So we’re going to tackle this text in two stages, because there are two things Luke does here simultaneously.

We’re going to start by looking at this text through a theological lens, to see what this text shows us about Jesus Christ himself. 

And once we’ve seen that, we’re going to look at what this text shows us about how Jesus relates to his Father in prayer. And we’re going to end there because I think that’s the main thing Luke is trying to show us.

The Dual Nature of Christ

Luke has spent a significant amount of time in his gospel helping us see that this man Jesus is in fact God—he is the Son of God, the Messiah whom God had promised to send to save his people.

The problem is, in this text we see Jesus saying things, if we’re not careful, could make us doubt that assertion.

In this text, we see him so weak that an angel actually comes and strengthens him. We see him in agony, and afraid. 

This is not the kind of emotion we ascribe to God. God is all-powerful, all-knowing; he doesn’t get afraid. He’s never in agony. He’s never weak.

Similarly, when he prays, he says to the Father (v. 42),  

“Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me.”

We’ll come back to that request in a minute, but just think about the first thing he says: “Father, if you are willing...” 

“IF you are willing”? 

So he doesn’t know? Or is he just so desperate to get out of it that he asks anyway?

In this text, we see Jesus acting in ways that, frankly, don’t seem very Godlike at all. In fact, many people throughout history have actually used this story to try to deny his divinity.

Luke was a smart guy. We see his keen intelligence on display all over this gospel. And he would have known that including this text would make his assertions that Jesus is divine slightly harder to swallow. 

But he chose to include it anyway.

So we know that he has a good reason for it.

And the main reason he (and Matthew and Mark) include this story, no matter how much controversy it may cause, is to show us that even though Christ is totally and completely, 100% divine, he is also totally and completely, 100% human.

This is called the doctrine of the incarnation. 

A few weeks ago we talked about the Trinity—the truth that there is one God, who has eternally existed in three persons—God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. 

The doctrine of the incarnation says that God the Son took on both a human nature and a human form. He was born of a virgin, lived, died and was raised, and ascended to the right hand of the Father, where he is today.

So let’s talk for a minute about what that means. (Fair warning: this is super confusing, but it’s monumentally important.)

Any time we see the man Jesus Christ in the Bible, we see both his divine and his human natures, fully and completely active. 

Everything we can say about God, we can say about Jesus Christ. He is all-powerful. He is omnipresent. He is eternal.

And by the same token, everything we can say about humanity, we can say about Jesus Christ. He gets tired. He gets hungry. He’s afraid. He doesn’t know things. He is exactly like us in every respect (except that he never sinned).

Both of those natures are always at play, together, any time we see the man Jesus Christ in the Bible. 

Now a lot of people won’t have a problem with that…until you start getting into the details of what that means.

Orthodoxy would insist that Jesus Christ was born as a man, all the while maintaining every one of his divine attributes. 

While Jesus Christ was on this earth, he remained all-powerful. He remained all-knowing. And this will blow our minds: he even remained omnipresent.

Athanasius said, “[The Son of God] was not hedged in by his body, nor did his presence in the body prevent his being present elsewhere as well. When he moved his body, he did not cease also to direct the universe by his mind and might.”

Now one objection people will bring up here is Paul’s letter to the Philippians, where we see Paul saying that Christ,  

though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men (Philippians 2.6-7).

They’ll take that verse and conclude that Jesus Christ gave up some of his divine attributes when he became a man. I myself had said that in the past. 

But that’s not what Paul says. He says that he didn’t count equality with God a thing to be grasped: he did not consider himself “too divine” to take on the role of a servant, who would suffer for his people. He gave up his rights, not his nature or essence or divinity or attributes. 

So he was born in the likeness of men, all the while maintaining every one of his divine attributes. 

Now I know this can sound like a whole lot of useless conjecture here, and I know that not everyone agrees on this subject. But if you take the dual nature of Christ away, you lose a massive number of things which are fundamental to our faith.

For example, what happens if the Son, in his divine nature, dies? The author of the letter to the Hebrews says that the Son “upholds the universe by the word of his power” (Hebrews 1.3). The universe exists because the Son is constantly upholding it by his word, and he has always done this.

So what happens on the cross, if the Son dies in his divine nature, and can no longer speak the universe into being? The universe ceases to exist. 

What happens on the cross if one person of the Trinity is separated from the other two? If the Trinity is broken, God is not God, because God is the Trinity.

But at the same time, what happens if it’s just a man, just a human nature, who dies at the cross? If the Son of God doesn’t die on the cross, we are not saved, because only God himself can absorb all of his wrath against the sin of his people.

You can see why it’s complicated. The doctrine of the incarnation, I think, the single most paradoxical truth in all of Christian theology. 

Most of the time, when we talk about biblical truths that are hard to understand, we use the catch-all phrase “mystery.” A lot of the time, that’s a cop-out. A lot of theology isn’t mystery, it’s just hard to understand.

This is one of those truths that are truly mysterious. 

Our minds cannot conceive of how Jesus Christ died a very real, human death in the place of sinful human beings…and how, at the same time, he kept upholding the universe by the word of his power. How he could die a very real death on the cross and still be God.

But he did. And the gospel makes no sense if he didn’t. Only a man could take the place of men; and only God could absorb the wrath of God against sin.

Both things must be true if the gospel is to make sense. The dual nature of Christ is our assurance that our salvation was actually accomplished by Jesus Christ on the cross.

Now if you’re confused right now, that’s fine. The church spent the first four hundred years of its existence struggling over questions like this, and we still struggle with it. So you’re doing fine.

The main thing you need to remember is that in Jesus Christ, we find both God and man. Two natures, in one person. 

…But sometimes, the biblical authors will choose to accentuate one nature more than the other. 

At the transfiguration in chapter 9, for example, Jesus’s humanity is sort of peeled back for a moment, to reveal the glory of his divine nature behind it. Almost everything Luke has written since chapter 19, when Jesus begins manifesting his authority as King over the religious establishment in Israel, speaks to the glory of his divinity.

In this passage, Luke is doing the opposite. He is showing us a clearer picture of the human nature of Christ. It’s not that his divinity isn’t at work at this moment, but rather that Luke wants us to see his humanity a little more sharply. Christ is absolutely sovereign, absolutely in control, and absolutely aware of everything that is going to happen to him, and why it will happen… 

But at the same time, he’s a man, so he’s afraid to go through with it. Because it will be a suffering unlike anything any human being has ever experienced.

Human beings have physically suffered worse than Jesus did at the cross—no question. No matter how horrific his death was, many people have had it even worse (including several of his own disciples). 

But no human being has ever absorbed the wrath of God against the sin of all of God’s children.

That’s what Jesus meant when he asked the Father to remove this cup from him. The cup is a frequent image used in the Old Testament to describe the wrath of God.

Jesus knew that he was the only one who could drink the cup of God’s wrath, because he is the only one who is both God and man. And as the Son of God, this was his plan all along, the plan he had formed before creating the world.

But at the same time, as a man, he was afraid. He was heartbroken over the losses and the disappointments he had already suffered, and he was tormented at the thought of what awaited him.

So the question—and, I think, the bigger point Luke is trying to make here—is, when he finds himself in this situation, what does he do?

The answer is so simple that many of us wouldn’t naturally think of it.

He prays.

Christ’s Prayer

Remember what we saw last week. 

The disciples give Jesus disappointment after disappointment following his institution of the Lord’s Supper. And we can see that he’s still feeling the heaviness of their failures in the garden. When they get there, Jesus tells them (v. 40): “Pray that you may not enter into temptation.” And at the end of the text (v. 46), just before his arrest, he returns to find them sleeping, and repeats his exhortation.

It’s interesting that this same story is told in both Matthew’s and Mark’s gospel, and in those gospels, we see Jesus returning to the disciples three times to find them sleeping, and he scolds them for not being able to stay awake and pray with him.

But while Luke mentions that Jesus finds them sleeping, he only mentions it briefly, because he wants us to focus on something different. He wants to help us focus on Jesus’s relationship to his Father in prayer.

So what does Luke show us? How does Jesus pray here?

Complete transparency (v. 43-44)

The first thing we see here is complete transparency on the part of Jesus, not only in what he prays, but in how he prays. 

V. 43:  

43 And there appeared to him an angel from heaven, strengthening him. 44 And being in agony he prayed more earnestly…

Christians in our church tradition have a very hard time with this kind of transparency. 

I grew up in a church tradition where, when people prayed together, they all prayed at the same time, with everyone speaking over each other. Now, I have to say, I’m not crazy about that—how can you say “Amen” to someone’s prayer if you have no idea what they’re praying? I like the way we do it, with one person praying at a time, so everyone can hear what’s being said and agree to pray for the same things. 

But one very unfortunate side effect of this kind of prayer is that it gives people a chance to show off. 

We’ll hear other people praying these well-constructed, beautiful prayers. We’ll find snippets of Scripture thrown in there to remind us they’re rooted in the Word; we’ll hear them form their phrases in such a wonderful way that someone like myself, for whom French is a second language, or someone who’s just not very comfortable speaking aloud in public, can feel really intimidated.

It can give the impression that our prayers need to be well-constructed and well-thought-out in order to be legitimate; like God’s going to turn his nose up at very simple, very honest prayers—when of course that is absolutely untrue.

We had someone in one of our discipleship groups a while back who had never prayed before, and who started her first prayer in the group by saying, “Uh…hi, God.” 

That’s fantastic. So often we forget that when we pray, we’re not giving an oral exam; we’re speaking to an actual person. And we forget that this person to whom we’re praying is a Father who loves us and who just wants us to speak to him.

Have you ever heard really small kids trying to talk? You can barely understand them. They respect no rules of grammar; their vocabulary is horrendous; there’s no thought that goes into how they’re saying what they’re saying.

But no parent of a small child is going to listen to that and go, “No, come on—do that again. Use a verb this time.” Of course not—we’re just happy they’re talking.

Jesus’s prayer here is profoundly simple—it’s not much more articulate than, “Father, HELP ME.” So we shouldn’t be afraid of this kind of transparent simplicity.

Another risk we have is getting the impression that prayer must be solemn, and calm, and devoid of emotion—as if being emotional in prayer is somehow going to make God uncomfortable.

We see in Jesus a state of intense agony here, and he makes no attempt to hide that fact.

Matthew says in his gospel that Jesus was “sorrowful and troubled”, and Jesus says to his disciples, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death” (Matt. 26.37-38).

He’s in agony, and he shows it.

He prays earnestly. He works himself into a sweat. And he prays with such emotion that (if we believe v. 43-44) the blood vessels under his skin burst and he bleeds.

Can you imagine if someone prayed like this in a Baptist church? People would lose their minds if someone prayed like this, say, in a community group. 

But Jesus does it—he prays like a Charismatic! (And I don’t mean that as an insult.) He is totally transparent, he's very emotional, and he doesn’t try to hide it.

Now obviously this doesn’t mean we should work ourselves up into a frenzy so we can say we are being “authentic.” But if we feel something, we shouldn’t be afraid to show it. 

Why are we so afraid of showing emotion when we pray? And I’m not talking about just heavy negative emotions like we see here; I’m talking about joy as well as sadness. Look at the Psalms. Look at how David danced when he celebrated the Lord. 

There is a certain solemnity which is appropriate in some contexts. But I don’t think that solemnity is always appropriate when we’re praying. We’re speaking to the God of the universe, and we’re speaking to him of truths which are more massive, and more overwhelming, than anything else we could possibly say. Is it really appropriate to thank God for the gift of his Son, or to ask him to put his infinite power to work in the delivrance of his people…and to do it like we’re reading the Terms and Conditions from iTunes?

Of course not. Jesus hides nothing, he puts on zero airs when he prays. He is totally transparent before his Father, and before his disciples.

Total Honesty (v. 42a)

The second thing we see is that, in addition to being emotionally and verbally transparent, he is honest about what he wants. 

Knowing everything the Bible tells us about the divine nature of Christ, and his eternal relationship with his Father, what he says in the beginning of v. 42 seems completely crazy to me:  

“Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me.”

It sounds crazy because he knows this is the plan! He’s been talking about this plan for a while now; he just finished giving his disciples a picture of this plan at the Last Supper. This request—“Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me”—is, honestly, completely unnecessary.

But he says it anyway. 

So why does he say it? I don’t think it’s because he actually thinks God’s going to say, “Okay, fine—go live your life.” 

Remember Christ’s dual natures—he is divine, so he knows what’s going to happen, and why. 

But he’s also human, so he doesn’t want to suffer like this.

He asks God to remove this cup from him because, as a human being on the verge of unimaginable suffering, he wants that cup removed. He doesn’t want to suffer. He doesn’t want to go through what he’s about to go through. He doesn’t want to be falsely accused, and tortured, and killed.

And here’s what’s beautiful: he’s not afraid to say what he wants. 

He’s not afraid to show his Father that he's feeling things like a human. He’s not afraid to show his disciples that he is afraid. He’s not afraid to say that there’s a part of him which really doesn’t want to do this.

He’s honest with his Father, no matter how undignified it sounds. 

Some of us—particularly those of us who have grown up in churches of a more Reformed bent—have a hard time praying like this. We have been raised in a long tradition of very rich prayers, of prayers which are so full of gospel truth that they inspire us.

Read the Confessions of Saint Augustine. Read any number of collections of prayers from the Puritans. These are such wonderful tools because they take what we know is true of the Bible, and use those things as fuel for prayer. 

This is one of the reasons why we speak so much about knowing our Bible well: we want to know what God has promised in his Word, so we can ask him to fulfill those promises for us.

But there is a flip-side to that coin…

Some of us are so afraid of praying “wrongly” that we don’t dare pray honestly. 

We’ll recite promises we’ve memorized, but we forget that God knows perfectly well that we don’t always want those things. 

Now, if we’re honest, this is just a fundamentally dumb way to approach God. Can I tell you a secret? If you want something, you might as well go ahead and tell him. It’s not as if he doesn’t already know it. We’re not fooling him.

But in addition to just being kind of dumb, neglecting to be honest in prayer betrays some misunderstandings we have about who God is.

We sometimes speak to God the way an abused child speaks to his abusive father. The kid knows exactly what to say to keep Daddy happy, so that Daddy doesn’t hurt him. But nothing the kid says is actually sincere. He has no relationship with his father other than that of fist to face. 

Now of course I’m not saying we all feel that way about God (though some of us may). But we have somehow bought into the idea that anything other than “the right kind of prayer” is somehow displeasing to our Father.

A Father who loves his children will not be displeased with them for being honest with him. He will listen, and he will nod, and he’ll say, “I understand.” 

And only then will he look us in the eyes and say, “But what do you know is true?” And then he’ll point us back to his promises. He’ll point us back to what he’s told us, and what we know. He’ll point us back to the prayers we’ve memorized, to remind us of what they say. And he’ll help us pray them sincerely.

Jesus isn’t afraid of displeasing the Father with his honesty. He isn’t afraid of saying what he’s feeling, of expressing what he wants in his humanity. He is honest with his Father.

Trust in the Father’s Good Will (v. 42b)

And then, after being honest with his Father, he turns to what he knows is true. 

He makes a conscious call-back to what he had already taught the disciples in the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6.9-13), which begins, “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done.”

After being honest with his Father, he recalls his trust in the Father’s good will, and says,

“Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.”

This is the part of the prayer that Calvinists love. We love talking about God’s sovereignty, and we love giving God the prerogative of doing his will in our lives. 

That’s a good thing. That’s how the Bible teaches us to think.

But I’d like to press on that just a bit, if I could.

We often use this phrase as an easy out. Someone asks us to pray for God to heal them, so we do…but we don’t really think God will actually do it, so we say “If it’s your will” at the end of our prayer, so that we won’t be too disappointed if God doesn’t actually do it. It’s a convenient way out of a tricky situation.

That is not what’s happening here. And that is never how we should pray this.

Think of everything we’ve seen today—all the humanity we see on display here in Christ’s prayer to his Father. He knows perfectly well what’s waiting for him. He knows perfectly well what his Father’s will is; he’s been talking about it for weeks.

So imagine, from a human perspective, how terrifying it must have been to pray this last.

It’s easy for us to pray, “Not my will, but yours, be done,” when we’re living in relative ease and comfort. 

But this week alone, I received news of a friend—a father of two teenagers—in the hospital with advanced cancer; a 31-year-old friend, newly married, who learned that she has a very aggressive form of breast cancer and will have to go through chemo and a mastectomy in the coming months; and another friend, one of my best friends from high school, 37 years old, who was out on a date with his wife—after dinner, she passed out, and died on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant. They have two little girls.

Do you think it’s easy for them to pray, “Not my will, but yours, be done”?

It’s a scary thing to pray that God would do his will when we know that his will is probably different from ours, and we feel that all of our happiness depends on our will being done.

And the only way that we will be able to pray this sincerely is if we have such a deep and real relationship with God that we honestly know his will is better.

On Thursday I spoke at JPC’s evangelism week; some of you were there. I mentioned the distinction between objective knowledge and subjective knowledge.

Objective knowledge, of course, is that knowledge which comes from proof we have received. I know that Loanne loves me because we were married on April 28th, 2003. I have a certificate to prove it, which I can pull out any time I want. That’s objective knowledge. 

But by itself, it’s not complete.

Subjective knowledge is that knowledge which comes from experience. I know that Loanne loves me because I’ve lived with her, as her husband, for sixteen years, and I have seen her love for me on display in a million practical ways every day of that time.

Jesus, in this phrase, displays his own subjective knowledge of who the Father is. He knows what the Father’s will is, and he knows the Father’s will is good. 

Why? 

Because he has been with the Father since forever. He has enjoyed communion with the Father and the Spirit for all eternity. He knows the Father’s character as intimately as he knows himself.

And in his humanity, he has seen and experienced the Father’s goodness at work for him. He has seen the fruit of the ministry the Father sent him to accomplish. He has seen the faithfulness of his Father preserving him from danger and temptation. He has experienced the goodness of his Father in answering his prayers to heal others, to resurrect the dead. 

He trusts in his Father because he knows his Father. So no matter how afraid he is, he can sincerely pray that God not spare him this suffering. Because he knows him.

This is not an easy out for those prayers we don’t really want to pray. This isn’t a way to protect ourselves from disappointment just in case God doesn’t answer our prayers.

“Not my will, but yours, be done” is our way of placing our lives back in the Father’s hands, even though we feel our lives will completely fall apart if he doesn’t give us what we pray for. 

And in those desperate moments, we will not be able to pray it with any degree of sincerity if we haven’t invested in our relationship with God to such an extent that we have experienced his love and goodness to us. 

We won’t be able to pray this with any kind of sincerity if we don’t desire God more than whatever it is we’re praying for.

And that is ultimately what drives Jesus to pray this. He wants to be spared. He wants to escape suffering. Absolutely.

But he wants his Father more. 

Conclusion

When they arrived at this place on the mountain, Jesus told his disciples (v. 40), “Pray that you may not enter into temptation.” And in v. 46, he says the same thing again.

He insists on it, because that’s what he’s been doing. In this moment, although it’s not explicit in the text, I think that Jesus was under the most severe temptation of his life—at best, a temptation to despair, and at worst, a temptation to escape.

But he prays in order to escape temptation, and he tells the disciples to pray as he is praying.

And no wonder—Jesus’s prayer here is exactly what we need. 

So if I could summarize what his prayer teaches us in this passage, I would say two things.

First of all: Pray what you’ve got. 

Prayer can be really intimidating for a lot of people, for a very simple reason: we don’t know what to say. We’re afraid of doing it wrong, or we just can’t think of anything, or we’re afraid of saying the same thing to God we’ve already said a million times (like he’ll get bored with us or something), or because, frankly, we’re so angry we’re afraid of offending him.

Jesus’s prayer should do away with all of that.

In his humanity, Christ is completely transparent before the Father. He doesn’t hesitate to show great emotion, and to be vulnerable before his Father.

And he’s honest with the Father about what he wants. He doesn’t pull any punches, or try to pray something presentable.

The hardest part of praying is getting started, opening up that dialogue.

So pray what you’ve got. 

Don’t worry about boring God, or not being eloquent, or even making theological mistakes. Say whatever you have, say whatever you feel, say whatever you need. No matter how frivolous or embarrassing or incorrect. 

Pray what you’ve got.

The second thing is this: After praying what you’ve got, go to the Bible for more.

Along with his honesty, Jesus reminds himself of what is true. He reminds himself of the Father’s goodness and love to him, and he places himself back in the Father’s hands, trusting him that his will is good.

If we only pray what we’ve got, necessarily all of our prayers are going to be incredibly self-centered. We’re going to tell him what we need, what we’re thinking, what we’re feeling. And he wants to hear that. But he also wants us to know what he knows, what he has promised, what he has done.

So no matter how much or how little you have to pray, always go to the Bible for more. Use the Bible as fuel for prayer. Don’t be afraid to actually pray the Bible back to God. 

Pray what you’ve got, and go back to the Bible for more.

Brothers and sisters, learn from Jesus here, and pray like Jesus prayed. And when you do, remember, and marvel at, the glory of our Lord, who while maintaining every attribute of his divinity, took on our humanity. Let us remember that he knows what it’s like to suffer—what it’s like to have to pray like this. 

And let us run to him for comfort and rescue, knowing he is still praying for us today.

Luke 22.54-62

Denial and Redemption

(Luke 22.54-62)

Welcome back to Luke’s gospel! 

If you’re joining us for the first time today, let me explain what we’re doing. At Eglise Connexion our regular habit is to preach through books of the Bible. We begin at chapter 1, verse 1, and we preach all the way through the book, chapter after chapter, until the end. We believe that’s the most faithful way to preach the whole of Scripture.

So we have been in the gospel of Luke for two and half years now. We take periodic breaks from time to time (usually during the holidays), but for the most part, we have been slowly and systematically walking through this wonderful book. 

And we’re almost finished. Lord willing, we should be finishing Luke’s gospel on Easter Sunday. 

So let’s just remember where we’ve been so far. 

Luke is writing this gospel—this account of the life and ministry of Jesus Christ—to a man named Theophilus, who is presumably either an unbeliever or a new Christian, so that Theophilus may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught (1.4). 

He recounts the events that preceded Christ’s birth; he tells us how Jesus was born; and he recounts his ministry—his teachings, his incredible miracles. He writes his book in order to show that the gospel is for all peoples, because Christ is the King of all peoples—he is the Savior, the Messiah God had promised in the Old Testament.

We saw Jesus make his way toward Jerusalem, knowing full well what awaited him there. We saw him enter Jerusalem as the promised King of God’s people. We saw his rejection by the Jewish religious establishment, who saw him as a threat to their way of life. And most recently, we saw Jesus take his final meal with his disciples, and the disappointments that met him following that meal.

In particular, I’d like us to remember one of those disappointments.

Go to Luke 22.31. If you remember, Jesus is still at the dinner table with his disciples, and at one point he turns to one particular disciple—a man named Simon Peter.

Peter is the courageous disciple, the hothead who says whatever’s on his mind (whether it’s appropriate or not), who always wants to get in on the action.

In Luke 22.31, Jesus turns to him and says, 

31 “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, 32 but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.” 33 Peter said to him, “Lord, I am ready to go with you both to prison and to death.” 34 Jesus said, “I tell you, Peter, the rooster will not crow this day, until you deny three times that you know me.” 

Which, of course, would have been unthinkable to Peter—he had literally just said that he would go to prison and even die for his Master. And yet, Jesus’s prediction hangs over him.

After this meal, Jesus leaves the Upper Room, and he goes up to the Mount of Olives with his disciples. While he is praying there, one of his disciples betrays him to the chief priests and the officers of the temple, who arrest Jesus in the middle of the night. 

When they come to arrest him, here comes courageous Peter, ready with a sword in hand. And Jesus tells him to stand down. He lets himself be arrested, and the soldiers take him away.

And that is where we pick up the story today.

In this particular passage, we’re going to follow Peter. We’ll see what happens to Peter after Jesus’s arrest. We’re going to see, first of all, how right Jesus was when he predicted Peter’s fall; and then we’re going to look elsewhere to see why these things happened the way they did, and what these events mean for us today.

Peter’s Denial (v. 54-60) 

54 Then they seized him [Jesus] and led him away, bringing him into the high priest’s house, and Peter was following at a distance. 55 And when they had kindled a fire in the middle of the courtyard and sat down together, Peter sat down among them. 

So already this scene is full of menace. All of the other disciples have left, run away—at the very least, Peter had the guts to follow, even if it is at a distance.

When they arrive at the home of the high priest, they take Jesus inside to be questioned, leaving a handful of people—more than likely servants of the high priest—outside. It’s the middle of the night; it’s cold; so someone has lit a fire. And although Peter is essentially in enemy territory, he’s cold too. Those who had been present at the garden are presumably inside the home of the high priest, so Peter comes close to the fire to warm himself, hoping to keep an eye on what’s going on with Jesus.

But almost immediately, Peter is recognized by several people around the fire.

V. 56: 

56 Then a servant girl, seeing him as he sat in the light and looking closely at him, said, “This man also was with him.” 57 But he denied it, saying, “Woman, I do not know him.” 58 And a little later someone else saw him and said, “You also are one of them.” But Peter said, “Man, I am not.” 59 And after an interval of about an hour still another insisted, saying, “Certainly this man also was with him, for he too is a Galilean.” 60 But Peter said, “Man, I do not know what you are talking about.” 

Now I think it’s important to remember that we’d probably have done no better in his case. Peter had seen Jesus do the unthinkable during his ministry; he had seen him heal the sick, and raise the dead, and cast out demons, and even control nature itself when he calmed the waves. And yet, just a few minutes earlier, he had watched as Jesus was put in chains, beaten and led away like a common criminal.

Suddenly the words Jesus spoke during the last supper—This is my body…this is my blood…—would have taken on a much more dire meaning.

If this could happen to Jesus, then who knows what could happen to Peter! 

He was, quite understandably, afraid. Afraid that he would be brought into the high priest’s house and accused of the same crimes as Jesus—or at best, accused of following this blasphemer. He could well be tried alongside his Master, and beaten, made a public spectacle of, and killed as well.

And for all of his posturing, Peter was afraid: afraid to lose his life as Jesus surely would.

First, he denies knowing him (v. 57). 

Next, he denies following him (v. 58).

And finally, he exclaims frustration at the interrogation (v. 60). Mark’s gospel is even more explicit—Mark 14.71 says,  

But he began to invoke a curse on himself and to swear, “I do not know this man of whom you speak.”

Angry, frightened vulgarity, when for so long he had boasted of his courage. 

This was what was really going on in Peter’s heart. He wasn’t courageous. He wasn’t bold. He was a frightened man who wanted to think himself something he wasn’t.

And in this midst of this final exposure of the true state of his heart, he surely wasn’t ready for what happened next. 

Apparently at that very moment, Jesus was being led out of the house again; or perhaps he was next to a window out of which he could see the courtyard. Regardless, when Peter launches his curse and final denial (the second half of v. 60):

And immediately, while he was still speaking, the rooster crowed. 61 And the Lord turned and looked at Peter.

That sound, and that look from Jesus, would have been a gut-punch to Peter. Because he knew how much bravado he always tried to show. He knew the face he tried to put on before the other disciples, and before Jesus himself.

And in that instant, when the rooster crowed and Jesus looked at him (v. 61):  

And Peter remembered the saying of the Lord, how he had said to him, “Before the rooster crows today, you will deny me three times.” 

He knew. Jesus knew what was really going on in Peter’s heart, and he knew exactly what would happen. He was right.

And Peter, finally, reacts appropriately. V. 62:

62 And he went out and wept bitterly. 

So there are two things happening in this text: one is primary and one is secondary. 

The secondary thing we see is the failure of Peter himself—we’ll deal with that first.

Peter’s Redemption

In this text we see a huge step in the process of Peter’s being shaped into the man God wants him to be. 

If we’re Christians, we’ve all had this experience. Something seemingly innocuous—a look, a throwaway sentence from another believer, a verse in the Bible we’d never quite seen before—can be enough to make us realize that we are not the people we thought we were.

We all have ideas in our minds of the people we are, and it’s usually a picture of the kind of person we’d like to be. We think of certain kinds of behavior, certain attitudes, certain desires, and we think, Well I’d never do that. And then something happens to show us what we’re really like, and that realization can be devastating.

Think of a husband who is unfaithful to his wife. (It could also be a wife who cheats on her husband, but say it’s a husband for the sake of illustration.) This isn’t the kind of thing that just happens. He makes a series of tiny desires, tiny decisions—casual flirting with a colleague, or an occasional look at pornography—and these tiny decisions grow over time, almost imperceptibly, until they lead to something big.

At the same time as all this is happening, this man experiences a series of tiny self-deceptions, moments when he is able to convince himself that this little thing isn’t such a big deal, this little moment of weakness doesn’t fundamentally change who he is. Over time, as the sinful decisions grow, the self-deception grows as well. He sinks deeper and deeper into sin, all the while convinced that really, that’s not who he is. Really, he’s basically a “good guy.” 

And then his wife finds out. She discovers a text, or opens a web page he forgot to close, or sees a charge he made with the wrong credit card. She is devastated, and confronts him with her devastation. And because, for the first time, he sees himself through her eyes—sees the immense pain he has caused her—for the first time, he sees himself as he actually is. 

That’s what’s going on with Peter in this text. 

He has spent three years convincing himself that he is worthy to be with Christ. He’s been the go-to disciple, the one who gets things done, the one who would follow Jesus where none of the others would. And some of the time, that served him well—like I said, at least he was there, following Jesus from a distance when all the others had left.

But the simple force of his will—his desire to be that kind of disciple—isn’t enough to do the deep work in his heart necessary to make him a different person. When the going really gets rough, he shows the kind of person he actually is: not the courageous disciple willing to follow Jesus into fire, but a frightened man who wants to preserve his own life, even if it means leaving his Master alone in his suffering.

And through the sound of a rooster crowing, and one look from Jesus, suddenly he knows it. He is confronted with his sin, with the state of his own heart, and he is horrified by what he sees.

Now here’s the thing we have to keep in mind. When we hear the example of the unfaithful husband, most of us think, No, of course I’d never do THAT. But it’s hard not to identify with Peter here, because who among us can really be sure we’d act differently? 

The problem is that the unfaithful husband with whom we can’t identify, and the frightened disciple with whom we can identify, are in exactly the same situation. Different results, same root cause. Both men are sinners who have convinced themselves they’re really not as sinful as they seem. Both of them are confronted with their sin and realize that they are in reality far worse than they imagined.

And to both, Jesus holds out the same hope of redemption.

I don’t want to presume that anyone knows the rest of Peter’s story, so let’s do a quick overview. 

Following this event at the high priest’s house, Jesus is tried, falsely accused of blasphemy, convicted and executed as a common criminal. This is what we’ll see in the coming weeks.

And during all of this, Peter is nowhere to be seen. He runs away weeping after Jesus’s look, and disappears entirely until after his death (presumably, he is in hiding like most of the other disciples). 

The next time we see Peter is three days after Jesus’s death. A handful of women have gone to Jesus’s tomb, and found it empty. So they run back and tell the other disciples. Peter comes running to the tomb to see for himself, and Luke tells us that after seeing the empty tomb (Luke 24.12), he went home marveling at what had happened. 

This is the last thing Luke says specifically about the apostle Peter in his gospel, and there’s a reason for that: Luke’s gospel is Part One in a two-part story he’s writing. Part Two is the book of Acts, which Luke also wrote, and which picks up Peter’s story where he left it off here. 

In the book of Acts, Luke describes a very different Peter. 

On the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit comes down and fills the apostles where they are praying, and Peter gets on the roof and preaches a sermon to the crowds—a masterful sermon which God uses to save three thousand people. 

Following this, Peter is the leader in the initiative to begin the Christian church. He is the first apostle to receive the news from God that the gospel should go out to all peoples of the world, and not just to the Jews. He is the apostle whom we see arrested and ordered to stop preaching, and miraculously delivered from captivity. He is the apostle who would later write (1 Peter 1.6-7):  

6 In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, 7 so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

He can write this way because this is what has happened to him—tried in the fire of his own failure, he came out the other side a different man entirely, whom God used to help establish his kingdom on this earth.

Peter’s failure in this text is not the end of his story, and Luke will take great pains in the book of Acts to remind us of that fact. 

But Peter’s failure and redemption are actually not the main point of this text.

The primary thing Luke is trying to show us in this text is the extent to which Jesus is completely and utterly alone in what he’s about to suffer.

Christ’s Solitary Work

Jesus had already been betrayed by Judas, and deserted by the other disciples. But like we said, Peter was always the disciple whom, at least from a human perspective, you’d expect to stay with Jesus.

But he didn’t. In the end, Peter denied him and left him alone.

So when Jesus was taken from the high priest’s home, he was completely alone.

When he stood trial, he was completely alone. 

When he was tortured, he was completely alone.

And when accomplished his saving work by dying on the cross, he accomplished it alone.

The point is that Christ didn’t achieve salvation for his people through his disciples’ help. They couldn’t help, because they needed saving too. 

Christ’s work for his people was absolutely solitary, and beyond the help of any other human being.

Why does this matter? 

Because if someone helped Christ accomplish salvation for his people, then we might be tempted to think he’s not enough to save us on his own.

We’d be tempted to think that Jesus isn’t enough, so we need other sources of wisdom.

Jesus isn’t enough, so we need relationships.

Jesus isn’t enough, so we need stability.

Jesus isn’t enough, so we need a family.

Jesus isn’t enough, so we need a seminary degree.

Now obviously, God gives us good gifts which, through his Holy Spirit, absolutely do help us to grow in our faith. He gives us the relationships of our brothers and sisters, and he gives us the testimony of the church, and he gives us circumstances which guide us into life.

But none of those things save us, and none of those things can complete or add to what Christ did for us.

Our only source of salvation, and our only hope, is the finished work of Christ, which he alone accomplished for us.

Our only hope is that Christ lived our life and suffered our death, and that God killed our sin on the cross with Christ, and that he alone transforms us into Christ’s image after saving us.

All of our salvation, and our growth in holiness, comes from God alone.

We see this in our own lives, and we can see it in how Jesus changed Peter.

Remember back to the last supper Jesus ate with his disciples. At that dinner, he prayed for Peter. Luke 22.31-32:  

“Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, 32 but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.”

We saw this a couple months ago: when Jesus prays for something, you can be absolutely sure that it will come to pass. So before Peter ever denied Christ, before he ever ran away, it was absolutely certain that his faith would not fail, and that he would strengthen his brothers.

This fact helps us to see everything that happened in our passage today in a different light, doesn’t it? Peter’s denial wasn’t a surprise to Jesus. His failure didn’t shock or discourage Jesus. Jesus was waiting for it, to use it to shape Peter into the man he would soon become.

He predicted Peter’s fall, and the rooster’s crow, so that Peter would realize who he really was: not a courageous disciple, but a frightened man intent on saving himself. He looked at Peter at just the right moment, to drive the nail home: not only had Peter denied his Master, but the Master knew it had happened.

On the cross, he took Peter’s sin on himself—even that sin of denial and betrayal—and was punished for it, in Peter’s place.

And after appearing to him and encouraging him in his resurrected body, he sent his Spirit to Peter, to give him the boldness and the courage Peter had so desired. The man Peter wanted to be—the best version of himself—is exactly what he became, but not for his own glory. He wasn’t perfect (as we see in Paul’s letter to the Galatians), but he became courageous, and bold, and wise, for the glory of the One who had saved him, because he knew that his salvation wasn’t owing to anything in himself, but to Christ, who accomplished it alone.

Often when we read texts like this, we can come away simply feeling depressed. We just see a massive failure—one with which we identify, on top of everything else. So it can be easy to have a hard time knowing what to do with it.

That’s why it’s important to know the whole biblical story: when we see failure in the Bible (and there are many failures to see!), we need to understand what those failures have to do with the overarching narrative of the biblical story, what God did through and sometimes even because of that failure—and what can do through our failures as well.

So reading the story of Peter’s denial of Christ, we need to remember three main things.

1. You are worse than you think you are.

When the rooster crowed and Christ looked at Peter after his denial, it was a wake-up call for him. Peter realized that for all of his posturing, he was not the solid, courageous disciple of Christ he thought he was.

And neither are we. You may think you’ve come a very long way with Christ, or you may think there’s not much wrong with you, and you don’t really need him. Regardless of our situation, we are all far worse than we think we are. 

The prophet Jeremiah said in Jeremiah 17.9:  

The heart is deceitful above all things, 

and desperately sick; 

who can understand it? 

That’s why this is a problem for us: it’s not a question of our behavior. Peter wasn’t a sinful man because he denied Christ; he denied Christ because he was a sinful man. He did his best to let everyone around him see what he wanted them to see—courage, and honor, and a willingness to deny himself and follow Christ. 

But ultimately his heart was still turned toward himself—his own desires, his own self-preservation. And when the right “stressers” were applied, when the right situational cocktail arrived to its boiling point, his own weakness got the better of him, and he denied his Lord.

God expects us to be honest about that reality: that no matter how good or bad we think we are, we are all much worse than we think. 

That’s the bad news. But there is good news...

2. Jesus doesn’t need your help.

Luke makes a point to show us that when it came time for Jesus to pass by his greatest trial, he was absolutely alone: even the disciple everyone would have expected to stay by his side abandoned him.

He wants us to see this in order to remind us that what God accomplished in the life, death and resurrection of Christ, he accomplished without the help of anyone or anything else. 

What God accomplished in the life of Peter and the apostles following this event, he accomplished without any outside help. Of course, they responded to God, and went where he led; but they only did that because God alone so radically overhauled their hearts and minds that doing otherwise was unthinkable.

What God accomplished in establishing the church and causing his gospel to go forward throughout the world, he accomplished without any help. 

Our immediate temptation, when we realize just how sinful we actually are, is to wonder, OK, what can I do? Give me a book to read, give me a 12-step program, give me some music to listen to, I’ll do anything. Just tell me what to do.

But you can’t do this work in yourself—only Christ can do it, through his Holy Spirit, and he doesn’t need your help. This is why we pray—if we pray that God would do something in us, or in someone we love, it’s because we know we can’t do it ourselves. 

One of the biggest battles of the Christian life is to really believe that what we need for salvation, Christ does for us and in us, and he does it without our help.

Now there’s one last thing we have to remember here, and this can sound shocking at first:

3. No sin is too great to be used.

I hesitate to say this, because I know how someone could hear that wrong. 

I am not saying it was a good thing for Peter to deny Christ, just as I am not saying it is ever good for any of us to sin in any way.

But here is the goodness of our God: he is capable of taking even the worst sins we commit and using them to make us more like Christ.

In John’s gospel, we see one last encounter between Jesus and Peter. It is the third time Jesus has appeared to his disciples after his resurrection. And as they’re finishing breakfast (such a mundane situation for a life-changing event) something extraordinary happens. 

John 21.15-19:  

15 When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” He said to him, “Feed my lambs.” 16 He said to him a second time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” He said to him, “Tend my sheep.” 17 He said to him the third time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Peter was grieved because he said to him the third time, “Do you love me?” and he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep."

Now what is clear, if you know what came before, is why Peter was grieved when Jesus asked him if he loved him for the third time. He was grieved because that is exactly how many times Peter denied Jesus. And because the memory of Peter’s failure was still very fresh in his mind, he knew what Jesus was getting at.

Very often when we talk about God’s forgiveness, we talk about it in terms of forgetting. Forget the past; forget what you did before; only look forward to what’s ahead. I’m sorry, but Jesus would disagree with you. (That’s a misapplication of what Paul says in Philippians 3.) 

Jesus doesn’t want Peter to forget his sin. He wants to remind Peter of his sin, because he wants to use it, to make him see his sin as horrible, to make him fear sin rather than the authorities who would soon persecute him.

I hope you can see how beautiful this is. Our sin is what separated us from God. And Christ alone did what was necessary to remove that sin from us. But rather than simply taking an eraser to the past and acting as if it never happened, Christ redeems our sinful past, using it to make us more like him. 

Again, this is not an encouragement to treat sin lightly (Scripture has strong words for those who would have such an attitude), but rather assurance for those who are burdened by their sinful past, who can’t forget what they’ve done, and who have been beating themselves up about it ever since. 

That guilt you feel is right. That sadness and horror you feel over your sin is right.

Which is why you mustn’t let it go to waste. Rather than trying to forget your past sin, own it. Be honest about it. Confess it. And let the fact that Christ has suffered your punishment anyway, and given you his righteousness anyway, shape your desires for holiness. Let the memory of who you were fill you with wonder at who Christ has made you become. 

Or, perhaps you’re filled with shame at present sin in your life—as Peter was when he heard the rooster crow, and saw Jesus look at him. How are you going to respond to that shame? Most people try to fix it on their own—OK, I’ll do better—but this text makes it abundantly clear that Christ doesn’t need your help. The only thing you can do in this situation is let him save you, and repent of that sin, and trust his perfect righteousness for your future. 

So whether you’re a Christian or not today, the call of this text is the same: trust in the finished work of Christ, who achieved salvation for you. Trust that because he suffered and died alone, he doesn’t need any help saving you. And trust that he can take even your mistakes and use them to shape you into his image.

Luke 22.1-6

Satan, judas and the providence of god

(Luke 22.1-6)

Jason Procopio

Last week’s text was a difficult one, so I’ve got good news for you: today’s text (Luke 22.1-6) is a narrative text, in which Jesus himself says nothing at all—we just see stuff happen—so it’s a lot more straightforward.

Sort of.

It’s straightforward if you’ve never read the rest of the Bible, or if you haven’t really taken into account a lot of what the Bible says about God. But if you know the rest of the Bible, the very simple things that happen in this text become absolutely staggering. 

So before we get into the text itself, we need to take a couple minutes here at the beginning to lay out a kind of primer for understanding what we see in this text—like a tiny course on systematic theology. I’ll talk about two essential ideas we’ll need to keep in mind first, and then afterwards we’ll see how Luke himself is trying to help us see these things.

Primer: Two Essential Ideas

The first big idea we need to understand is what’s called the doctrine of providence. Calvinists love this doctrine, and we’re right to love it. 

The doctrine of providence is fundamental to our understanding of God as Creator, and it says simply this: God created all things, and he governs and sustains everything he created. 

To put it another way: God did not create the world only to remove himself from the world once he created it. As someone put it, that would be like the guy who builds a car, but has no interest in driving it. 

The Bible says quite the opposite: that God created all things, and that he governs and sustains his creation. He intervenes in the affairs of men. He is active in the world he created. 

Now that’s not shocking in itself—most people know that's what Christians believe.

But it gets trickier when we start to ask ourselves just how active God is.

Which brings us to the second thing we need to understand: the idea of theological compatibilism. 

When you accept the doctrine of providence, you can take it one of several different ways. 

If you’re new to what we call the doctrines of grace, and you accept that God is sovereign over all things, then chances are you hold to the idea that God controls absolutely everything that happens, ever. That idea is called theological determinism—whatever happens, happens because God made it happen. There’s absolutely call for that kind of thinking in the Bible; his sovereignty is indeed described as that absolute.

But you need to go a little further, because if that’s all you say, it’s hard to know what to do with everything we see in the Bible about human responsibility. You’ll often hear the question, How can we be held responsible for our actions if we were never really free to choose right or wrong?

Theological compatibilism is a way of trying to take into account both sides of the argument—it’s the explanation which, in my opinion, most accurately takes into account the whole of biblical teaching.

Simply put, this is what it means: Human beings are absolutely free, yes—but it’s a specific type of freedom. We are free to act in accordance with our nature. I can’t choose to suddenly fly through the air, because I’m not a bird. I am free, but I’m only free to act in accordance with my nature.

So what is our nature?

The Bible says that because of the fall of man, which we see in Genesis 3, human beings are born with a sinful nature. (“Sin” is essentially rebellion against God, wanting to rule ourselves instead of living under God’s rule.) We are born with a sinful nature, which means that we are naturally bent toward rebellion against God—it’s what we want. We are free to do what we want, but what we want is to rebel against God. So all we ever do, if left to ourselves, is sin.

But when God saves us, he gives us a new nature—a nature which no longer desires to rebel against God, but to be holy as God is holy. A nature which desires to obey him as Lord. 

All that to say that in either case—whether we’re Christians or not—we always do what we want to do, because we are always acting in accordance with our nature and our desires.

Those two ideas need to be in the forefront of our minds as we read this text. Because in this text we’ll see two characters acting in a way that naturally makes us think one thing. But if we know the larger picture of what the Bible teaches, we’ll see that in fact something quite different is going on.

And as we’ll see, that’s exactly what Luke himself is trying to show us in this text, albeit more subtly.

Let’s read the text together—Luke 22.1-6.  

Now the Feast of Unleavened Bread drew near, which is called the Passover. 2 And the chief priests and the scribes were seeking how to put him to death, for they feared the people. 

3 Then Satan entered into Judas called Iscariot, who was of the number of the twelve. 4 He went away and conferred with the chief priests and officers how he might betray him to them. 5 And they were glad, and agreed to give him money. 6 So he consented and sought an opportunity to betray him to them in the absence of a crowd. 

The Growing Threat (v. 1-2) 

For several chapters now (and for us, several months), there has been tension brewing between Jesus and the Jewish authorities—the religious leaders in the temple. Jesus has been challenging their authority since the beginning of his ministry. He’s come on the scene telling the Jews, “These guys you’ve been listening to all this time have gotten it all wrong. For all they know about Scripture, they don’t understand it.” 

Now already, that would be enough to make the religious leaders angry—but it’s even worse than that. Here Jesus is, saying these nasty things about them, and they can’t argue with him, because he’s always right! Every time they think they have him cornered with an objection or a defense, he shuts them down, often with a single sentence.

So they want to get rid of him, and they have for a while now.

And to make matters worse, the Passover is coming up—so what was an already densely populated Jerusalem was about to get way more crowded.

The Passover was the opening-day feast of the seven-day-long Feast of Unleavened Bread. It was a feast to remember the last plague in Egypt, the means by which God convinced the Pharaoh to release the Hebrews from slavery in the time of Moses. It’s one of the most important events in the life of the Jews, every year.

Jerusalem was the center of Jewish religious life at the time, so hundreds of thousands of pilgrims would come to the city every year for the Passover.

That meant that Jesus’s sphere of influence was about to get way bigger. Hundreds of thousands of people who had no idea who Jesus was would be coming to the temple, where (as we see at the end of Luke 21) Jesus is preaching daily. So if nothing is done, all of these people will hear Jesus preach, and come to see how right he is about the religious leaders.

So that’s the context. The authorities are desperate to get rid of him, but they can’t figure out how to do it, because there are always people around wanting to hear what he has to say. 

But as it turns out, Satan has an idea about that.

Satan Makes His Move (v. 3-6)

In verse 3 we find this enigmatic sentence: 

3 Then Satan entered into Judas called Iscariot, who was of the number of the twelve.

So there are two “actors” we need to be aware of here.

The first is Judas Iscariot. Judas was, as you may remember, one of “the twelve”—one of the twelve disciples Jesus called to follow him. Judas was the treasurer of the group: he was the one kept the moneybags and arranged payment for food and lodgings and the like.

The last time we saw him was in chapter 6, where Luke simply states that he “became a traitor” (6.16). And now we remember that this traitor has been following Jesus around this whole time as one of his disciples. He was close to him.

The second actor we see is Satan. If you haven’t grown up in church, you may have a picture in your mind when you think of this character “Satan”—the mischievous red guy with horns and a pitchfork, or Al Pacino in The Devil’s Advocate. You may think he’s merely a symbolic figure representing the evil of humanity, or a creature of legend. 

But the Bible never presents him this way. The Bible teaches, in no uncertain terms, that Satan exists. If you accept that the Bible is the Word of God, you have to accept the existence of things that seem like fantasy to us: including angels and demons. And the Bible presents Satan in real terms: he is a real, living, demonic being, hell-bent (literally) on our destruction. 

Satan has always been at work—we see him in Genesis 3, lying to and successfully misleading the very first human beings. And this isn’t the first time in this gospel we’ve seen him come after Jesus himself. Way back at the beginning, in chapter 4, we saw Satan tempting Jesus in the desert.

So now, he “enters into Judas.” We shouldn’t understand this as possession, but rather influence. If you read the gospels, you’ll see time and again that demon-possessed people are looked on with compassion, and healed by Christ; but the biblical authors judge Judas very harshly.

Satan exercises influence here, but influence alone can’t do anything. (James says in James 1.14-15 that each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.) Judas is judged harshly because he was already naturally inclined to do what Satan wanted him to do.

Klaus Schilder put it this way:

“It is the peculiar majesty of Jesus that he can conquer man without man’s first approaching him. But Satan’s frailty is proved by this, that he cannot approach a soul unless that soul has first turned to him.”

That’s what that big term we saw earlier—theological compatibilism—means. We are free to act in accordance with our nature. Satan influences, and what does Judas do? He did exactly what Satan had put in his mind to do, not because it was impossible to resist Satan, but because he wanted to do it. He was, as John said, “was a thief, and having charge of the moneybag he used to help himself to what was put into it” (John 12.6). Satan gives him an idea, or perhaps makes an idea he already had a little harder to resist…and Judas gives in. 

V. 4: 

4 He went away and conferred with the chief priests and officers how he might betray him to them. 5 And they were glad, and agreed to give him money. 6 So he consented and sought an opportunity to betray him to them in the absence of a crowd. 

Luke’s Theological Storytelling

So it seems pretty straightforward, right? 

Satan tempts Jesus’s disciple to betray him, and it works like gangbusters—not only is Jesus betrayed, but he’ll be arrested, and charged, and tortured, and convicted, and crucified. Satan wins this round. He scores a big victory.

But we have to remember what Luke is doing here.  

As we’ve said several times since the beginning of this series, Luke (who wrote this gospel) isn’t just a doctor and a writer. In this gospel he’s doing the work of a theologian. That is, he’s not just saying, “Here’s the stuff that happened during Jesus’s life and ministry.” He’s organizing his narrative in such a way that by looking at where and how he decides to tell specific parts of the story, we can draw the right conclusions.

In other words, his storytelling here isn’t mainly chronological, but theological.

The text just before this one—chapter 21, verses 5 to 38—is Jesus’s teaching on the Mount of Olives. 

What did we see there? 

We saw Jesus predicting the fall of Jerusalem, the judgment of God on those people who had rejected his Messiah. We saw him remind his disciples of Daniel 7, where Daniel has a vision of the Son of Man coming to the Ancient of Days—God the Son returning to God the Father—with power and great glory, to take possession of his kingdom.

The taste in our mouths at the end of chapter 21 is not one of defeat, but of approaching victory. It doesn’t inspire fear, but courage. As Jesus told his disciples in 21.28,  

“Now when these things begin to take place, straighten up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” 

In chapter 21, we are meant to remember that God is infinitely powerful, that he providentially reigns over the world he created, and that through events which seem horrible to us (like the destruction of Jerusalem), he is able to accomplish his good will, for his glory.

That comes right before today’s text.

In the text following this one—22.7-23, which we’ll see next week—we see Jesus instituting the Lord’s Supper with his disciples. He gives them the bread, and he gives them the wine, and he explains that this bread and this wine represent his body and blood, which are about to be given for them.

And in v. 22, he says this unbelievable sentence: 

For the Son of Man goes [to his death] AS IT HAS BEEN DETERMINED.

So on the one side, we have chapter 21—this amazing account of the glory and the power of God, which Christ will again receive when he goes to be with his Father; and on the other side, we have the institution of the Lord’s Supper, and this claim that the death he’s about to suffer will happen as it has been determined. 

And sandwiched between those two sections, we have Satan entering into Judas, and Judas consenting to deliver Jesus to the authorities.

Can you see what Luke is doing? What he’s helping us see?

He’s showing us that what’s happening here is not a victory for Satan, but a victory for God. Satan is not thwarting God’s plan by getting Judas to betray Jesus; he’s accomplishing God’s plan. 

I know that can be a shocking thing to say. The implications of that idea are very difficult for us to accept, because it means that, for reasons we don’t know, God sometimes chooses to accomplish his will through free and willful sins committed against him.

But as difficult as that truth can be, it is all over the Bible.

Let me give you a couple of examples. 

In the book of Acts (which Luke also wrote—it’s the sequel to this gospel), we see Peter preaching to the crowds in Jerusalem after Jesus has ascended to the right hand of God the Father. In that crowd are many, many people who were present at Jesus’s trial—they were among those who shouted “Crucify him!” to Pilate.

Early in his sermon, he says something that goes against every logical instinct in our modern brains. He says (Acts 2.22-23):  

22 “Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know— 23 this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.

Do you see it? 

Peter says, YOU—you people, listening to me at this moment, Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, YOU had him killed. You delivered him up to the Romans. You accused him of blasphemy. You did this.

There is no more horrible sin than the murder of the Son of God. 

And yet, Peter says that this was God’s plan from the very beginning. 

And we don’t just see it in the New Testament—we see it in the Old Testament as well, long before Jesus ever came.

In Isaiah 53, we have this beautiful, prophetic picture of the Messiah, the Savior God promises to send, to save his people—Jesus Christ. And Isaiah says something which will shock us to our core if we're not expecting it.

Isaiah 53, starting at verse 4:  

4  Surely he has borne our griefs 

and carried our sorrows; 

yet we esteemed him stricken, 

smitten by God, and afflicted. 

5  But he was pierced for our transgressions; 

he was crushed for our iniquities; 

upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, 

and with his wounds we are healed. 

6  All we like sheep have gone astray; 

we have turned—every one—to his own way; 

and the Lord has laid on him 

the iniquity of us all… 

9  And they made his grave with the wicked 

and with a rich man in his death, 

although he had done no violence, 

and there was no deceit in his mouth. 

10  Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him; 

he has put him to grief; 

when his soul makes an offering for guilt, 

he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; 

the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. 

When we read that Christ was “pierced for our transgressions,” and “crushed for our iniquities,” who crushed him? 

The Jews in Jerusalem did, with the help of the Romans—we’ll get to that in just a few chapters. That’s what happened—they arrested him; they tortured him; they nailed him to the cross; they left him there to suffocate and bleed to death.

And yet, that’s not what Isaiah says here. He says that Christ was smitten BY GOD. He says that the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He says that it was the will of the LORD to crush him. HE has put him to grief.

We could go back even further. We could look at Genesis chapter 3, just after the fall of man, when God tells Satan that a man would be born one day who would defeat him. “You’ll get your licks in—you will bruise his heel—but he will crush your head” (Genesis 3.15).

Or we could go back even further than that—Paul says in Ephesians chapter 1 that the everything that Christ did for us, including his death for us, was God’s plan since before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1.4-6). The death of Christ was meticulously planned by God himself, before he ever created the world. 

So listen closely: what we see in Luke 22.1-6 is God sovereignly bringing every element together, so that Christ’s death would be fulfilled just as he had planned it.

We see the power and reign of Christ in Luke 21; in Luke 22 we’ll hear Jesus institution of the Lord’s Supper, saying that what is about to happen to him will happen as it has been determined. 

And between those two, we see how it will happen: through Satan tempting this man Judas to betray Jesus Christ, and deliver him to the authorities.

It is so easy to look at our world and see Satan in control. It is so easy to look at our world—and even the way the Bible calls him “the prince of this world”—and attribute to him power and authority that he does not have. Satan is the prince of this world in that he is the epitome of what has gone wrong here—but he does not reign here, Christ does. Satan can only do what God allows him to do.

So even though it’s easy to see this text as “Satan versus Jesus”, even though it’s easy to read this passage, and think, “Ooh, Satan got in a good right hook there…”, that is not what is happening.

Satan is not a threat to Christ. He’s an child getting in the ring with the heavyweight champion. 

This isn’t a fight between two nearly equal opponents. 

This is the fulfillment of God’s plan, which he preordained before the creation of the world.

Five Reasons to Affirm These Truths

Now, I want to be sensitive here, because I know how difficult it can be to hear these things, if you haven’t grown up with them. I didn’t grow up hearing this, and when I saw these things in the Bible for the first time, I had a very difficult time with it. Because it made me really uncomfortable, but at the same time, I couldn’t not see it in the Bible once I’d seen it.

That was over a decade ago. And I can tell you that this truth of God’s sovereignty over all things—including the acts of Satan and the sins of humanity—is the truth that I keep coming back to for assurance. It is the truth that brings me the most comfort, that stabilizes my shaky faith, that allows me to rest in God’s powerful hands.

Now of course, we don’t have to go that way. We could easily just close our eyes and only see the most superficial version of what happens here: Satan enters Judas, Judas goes to betray Jesus. That’s all. We could stop there.

But I believe that God inspired Luke to organize his narrative in this way to help us recognize some truths which are clearly taught in Scripture, and to remember why they are good news. 

The truths are these: God created the world, and he is sovereign over the world he created. In his providence, he actively accomplishes his will. And sometimes, for reasons he has not revealed to us, he accomplishes his will through the free, sinful choices of human beings, and even the acts of Satan himself.

But the big question remaining this: why is that good news? Why should we delight to affirm these truths?

I’ll give you five reasons. 

1. These truths allow us to stay faithful to the whole of Scripture. 

Whether we like it or not, these truths are in the Bible, and we will see them if we don’t cherry-pick, but rather look at the whole of Scripture. If we look at the whole of Scripture, we see these truths clearly taught. And affirming them—even if we don’t entirely understand how it all works—allow us to stay faithful to the whole of Scripture.

2. These truths help us acknowledge the role of Scripture. 

I know it can be frustrating to talk about these things, because they bring up so many other questions: Why did God create Satan? Why didn’t God create a world in which sin was impossible? Why didn’t he simply accomplish his will without going through all this “redeeming a fallen world” stuff?

The fact that the Bible never gives us concrete answers to those questions helps us understand what the Bible is trying to do. It’s not trying to give us a comprehensive explanation of everything that could be explained. It’s trying to focus our attention on what’s actually, truly important.

Or to put it another way (and we’ve said this before): We don’t come to the Bible to get answers to our questions. We come to the Bible to find out what the questions are.

And the main question the Bible is interested in answering, in regards to our salvation, is this: How does a holy God extend grace to a sinful people, for his glory? 

That’s what the Bible wants us to see, and that’s what these texts show us us.

3. These truths give us assurance in suffering.

It’s hard to fathom a more painful situation than the one Jesus faces towards the end of the gospels. He has done absolutely nothing wrong, ever—no sin, no rebellion against God. And yet he is betrayed by one of his closest friends, falsely accused of crimes he did not commit, publicly humiliated, tortured, and crucified. He takes on himself the sins of his people, in our place, and he is punished for those sins, in our place. The suffering of Christ is beyond anything we can fathom.

And yet, the truth we see here is that in all of that, God’s hand never left the wheel. God wasn’t surprised by these events. Remember that scene in Breaking Bad when Hank is on the toilet and found out that Walt is actually Heisenberg? Remember that face he made? God has never made that face.

This was God, fulfilling his sovereign will, exactly as he had planned it.

This is wonderful news for us when we suffer, because we know that God’s providence did not only apply to Christ; it applies to everything. In every situation, God is good, and God is wise, and God is all-powerful…and he is exercising his providence to bring about his good will in the lives of his people. 

So when we suffer, we can remember and trust that God’s hand has not left the wheel. He is good, and he is sovereign. So we can rest.

4. These truths give us assurance concerning our past and our present.

It is so easy to look at Judas and see ourselves. We see Satan entering Judas, and Judas giving in to temptation, and we can look back and remember multiple times in our past where we did something very similar. And when we see how the Bible talks about Judas, we can easily sink into despair.

Now on the one hand, that shame we feel is good and true. We were free to act in accordance with our nature—we did these things. We can’t blame it on God, and we can’t blame it on Satan. God doesn’t tempt us, and Satan doesn’t control us. 

We were free, and we chose to do what we did: we followed our sinful desires and did what we wanted to do.

And there is no excuse for that. No one can say to God, You made me do this, or, The devil made me do it. We are free to act in accordance with our nature. 

There is no excuse for sin. But at the same time, there is no sin too big for God to use for our good and his glory.

We all desperately need to hear this: if you are in Christ, then even in your failures you reflect the gospel to the world.

How?

When you fall, you own up. You confess it. Not just to God, but out loud, to other brothers and sisters who will remind you of the gospel and help you grow to be like Christ. You trust in the atoning, finished, and sufficient work of Christ for you.

And by his grace, you get up again, joyful in your Savior, and you learn to live like him.

You offend your colleague, or another Christian? You confess that sin to them, ask for their forgiveness, and put yourself back into God’s hands, trusting that the work of Christ is sufficient. Do you have any idea how incredibly strange it is in our modern world, to see someone owning up to their mistakes instead of trying to hide them?

The kids see Daddy losing his temper with Mommy? Well then, Daddy humbles himself and asks Mommy for forgiveness in front of the kids, and both of them sit down with the kids to explain to them why Mommy forgave Daddy—because she has received grace from Christ, she can give grace to Daddy. And because Daddy has received grace from Christ, he has nothing to hide, and nothing to defend.

Brothers and sisters, that preaches the gospel in ways I never could just by standing up here and talking.

And knowing that God uses even our sin for our good and for his glory should fill us with joy, and strength for holiness.

5. These truths give us assurance concerning our future.  

We saw it last week—Jesus is right now seated at the right hand of God, sovereignly ruling over his creation; and one day he will return, and restore his kingdom fully in this world, and we will reign with him forever in the new heavens and the new earth. 

The only way we can be sure of this is if God is actively sovereign over all things. If God’s providence is not at work in this world, then we can have no way of knowing that he will do what he promised to do. 

But because we know that God is always active, that he always accomplishes his will in the world he created, we can have absolute, iron-clad assurance that he will keep his promises. That Christ is seated at God’s right hand, and that he reigns as King, and that we are citizens of his kingdom, and that he will bring us where he wants us to be: reigning with him forever, in the new heavens and the new earth.

Luke 21.5-38

The Olivet Discourse

(Luke 21.5-38)

Jason Procopio

We’ve got a lot going on in Église Connexion these days. This afternoon we’ll be having our first general assembly this year. We’ll be making some significant decisions for the life of the church and the glory of God. We’ll be electing three new deacons. We have fifteen people who will become members today. All of this is intimidating, and exciting, and I’m so grateful for it.

But for all of the good work being done, and the good things happening, none of it means anything if Christ isn’t on the throne, reigning over his kingdom and the world he created.

Now when we talk about Jesus being “seated on the throne”, we’ll sometimes unconsciously imagine that for now anyway, it’s really more of a symbolic position. But the Bible tells us that’s the furthest thing from the truth.

Christ is seated on his throne, and he sovereignly reigns over the world he created, and one day everyone will see and recognize his reign.

Today we’re going to be in Luke 21.5-38, where we see Jesus giving what is traditionally called the Olivet Discourse—his teaching on the Mount of Olives. It is Jesus’s last major teaching before his arrest and crucifixion a couple days later.

Jesus says some things here which most people see as allusions to his second coming. As the Apostles’ Creed says, one day, he will come back from heaven to judge the living and the dead. And a lot of people will read this text and immediately think that’s what he’s talking about. 

Now of course, we need to come to this text humbly: it’s an incredibly difficult text, with a number of possible interpretations. And I want to be very clear right from the outset, because I can already see the angry emails I’m going to get tomorrow: Jesus is coming back to gather his people to himself. That’s not up for debate. It’s all over the Bible, and we affirm that wholeheartedly, and with great joy.

But I would argue that Christ’s second coming is not the main focus of this text. 

He’s speaking about something more immediate than that, and he’s saying it for a specific group of people at a specific point in time.

So there are two main things we’ll do this morning. The first few minutes of this sermon are going to be a bit of a history lesson. We’re going to look at what Jesus says, and how what Jesus prophesied actually did take place. 

After that, we’re going to broaden our scope a little bit—there are echoes there of what will happen further down the line, things that directly concern us.

We’ve got a lot to see here, so I won’t be able to answer every question we have about this text, but I’ll try to be as detailed as I can with the time that we have.

Luke 21.5-7: The Destruction of the Temple

Let’s quickly remember the context. Jesus has been teaching in the temple. He has been affirming his authority, against the attacks from the religious leaders, and he has been lamenting the state in which the religious system in Israel had found itself. He talks about the religious authorities as being corrupt, and ignorant, and hypocritical—the Jewish religion in Israel had fallen under very hard times.

That’s what’s going on when we pick up the text in v. 5.

5 And while some were speaking of the temple, how it was adorned with noble stones and offerings, he said, 6 “As for these things that you see, the days will come when there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.” 

We saw this last week. What Jesus is saying is very simple: because of the sin of the religious leaders in Israel, this temple—the temple in Jerusalem—will be destroyed. Nothing will be left.

Now for the Jews listening to him, the idea that the temple would be destroyed would have been nearly unthinkable. 

Remember back in April, when the roof of Notre-Dame caught fire? We all watched it burn, and as we watched it there was this feeling we all shared: This can not be happening. 

Why not? It’s a building, after all—made of stone and wood. What made us feel like this particular building should not be subject to the same weaknesses as other buildings?

Because not only has Notre-Dame been standing for so long that we just can’t picture Paris without it, it has achieved a particular place of grandeur in the public consciousness, through its prominence in history as well as in works of art. 

In other words, history had made it so that we unconsciously saw Notre-Dame as invincible, when it isn’t.

Same thing here. This temple had been a permanent fixture in the religious life of Israel for over five hundred years, since it was rebuilt by the Jews upon their return from exile (as we see in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah). It was the center around which the religious life of the people turned, the sun in their religious solar system.

So the idea that the temple might be destroyed would have been a profoundly shocking idea for the Jews listening to Jesus, even to the disciples. The destruction of the temple would effectively mean the end of the Jewish state, and the end of Jewish worship as it had existed up to that point.

And Jesus says, “Yeah. That’s going to happen. Not a brick will be left.”

So the disciples ask the only logical question: “When is this going to happen?”

7 And they asked him, “Teacher, when will these things be, and what will be the sign when these things are about to take place?”

Luke 21.8-24: Signs to Prepare the Disciples

Now it’s important to note that Jesus answers their question. He gets them ready for it. Why does he do that?

Because these disciples have accepted that Jesus is the Christ. He is the Messiah, the Savior whom God sent to deliver his people. 

There are many, many other people who have rejected him—who would indeed have him killed just a couple days from then. So what he’s predicting will happen in Jerusalem isn’t just a random event: the destruction Jesus describes here is the judgment of God against the people who had rejected his Messiah, who were living at that time. 

Jesus is getting his disciples ready for that difficult period, so that they might stand firm in the face of it.

The first thing he says is that there will be “false Messiahs”—people claiming to be the Messiah. 

 8 And he said, “See that you are not led astray. For many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am he!’ and, ‘The time is at hand!’ Do not go after them. 

We find examples of these false Messiahs in the book of Acts, as well as in the works of the Jewish historian Josephus: people who came claiming to be sent from God to deliver the people. And Jesus says not to listen to any of them—he’s not going to come back like that.

Next, he says, there will be natural and civil unrest:

9 And when you hear of wars and tumults, do not be terrified, for these things must first take place, but the end will not be at once.” 

10 Then he said to them, “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. 11 There will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and pestilences. And there will be terrors and great signs from heaven. 

Now of course, this was nothing new. There have always been wars, and there have always been natural disasters. But in the immediate period following the life of Jesus, there were many. 

From A.D. 33 to A.D. 70 alone there was an uprising in Caesaria in which 20,000 Jews were killed; in Alexandria, 50,000 were killed; in Damascus 10,000 were killed. 

There is a famine described in Acts 11.28, which occurred in the year 44, and three other famines came in the decades following. 

One earthquake in the year 60 wiped out three entire cities in one go.

As for the signs from heaven, there was a comet which appeared during the emperor Nero’s reign, around the year 60, and Halley’s Comet appeared in the year 66. Josephus wrote in his War of the Jews that “there was a star resembling a sword, which stood over the city [of Jerusalem], and a comet, that continued a whole year” (Josephus, The War of the Jews, 6.289).

Next, Jesus says there will be persecution against Christians in the synagogues—so he’s not talking about the general persecution of Christians, but the persecution of Christians by the Jewish leaders. 

12 But before all this they will lay their hands on you and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues and prisons [Mark 13 adds “councils”], and you will be brought before kings and governors for my name’s sake. 13 This will be your opportunity to bear witness. 14 Settle it therefore in your minds not to meditate beforehand how to answer, 15 for I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which none of your adversaries will be able to withstand or contradict. 16 You will be delivered up even by parents and brothers and relatives and friends, and some of you they will put to death. 17 You will be hated by all for my name’s sake. 18 But not a hair of your head will perish. 19 By your endurance you will gain your lives. 

We see the fulfillment of this prophecy all over the place in the book of Acts. In the book of Acts, the main persecutors of Christians were not the Romans (that would come later), but the Jews. 

So Jesus tells his disciples that all of these things will come before the temple is destroyed (after the destruction of the temple, there would be no Jewish councils left to persecute Christians), and he tells them this so that they might not be afraid. He will give them words to speak, and he will protect their lives, even in the face of death.

Up to this point, Jesus has been speaking in fairly general terms of things which have always happened, to a greater or lesser extent—wars and natural disasters and the like. But starting in v. 20, he gets much more specific—this is how the disciples will know the end of Jerusalem is near.

20 “But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation has come near. 21 Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains, and let those who are inside the city depart, and let not those who are out in the country enter it, 22 for these are days of vengeance, to fulfill all that is written. 23 Alas for women who are pregnant and for those who are nursing infants in those days! For there will be great distress upon the earth and wrath against this people. 24 They will fall by the edge of the sword and be led captive among all nations, and Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled. 

So Jesus is saying, “All that was written concerning God’s judgment on Israel will be fulfilled in this way. This is how the judgment of God—the ‘time of vengeance’—will come upon those who reject the Messiah: by Jerusalem being trampled underfoot by the Gentiles.”

In A.D. 70, from April to September, came the fall of Jerusalem. The historian Josephus, who was an eyewitness to these events, wrote a very detailed chronicle (over 200 pages), which is still the definitive, accepted account of what happened.

In the year 66, war broke out between the Jews and the Romans—the tensions between the two main people groups we see in this gospel finally came to a boiling point. Rome began destroying every significant Jewish stronghold, and Jerusalem was the last—the target of their greatest fury. 

Sam Storms summarizes Josephus: 

“Multitudes of thieves, Zealots, and murderers had flocked to the city seeking refuge. The city was without law and order. Chaos and anarchy reigned. The city divided into warring factions who took turns attacking each other. In one incident, more than 12,000 of the city’s nobles and leading citizens were tortured and killed by the Zealots. Those who tried to escape had their throats slit and their bodies were left to rot in the streets. Burial became impossible. Huge piles of cadavers filled the streets or were thrown from the city’s walls.”

There was not enough food for the people still living in the city to eat. People sold not only their homes, but their children, to buy food. Others tried to flee the city, but were instead captured and crucified by the Romans outside the city walls (as many as 500 a day). 

Finally, in A.D. 70, the emperor Titus ordered his troops to surround the city and prevent escape. The wall was finally breached (through a particularly horrible event I won’t describe here), and the temple was set ablaze.

Jerusalem, and nearly everything in it, was destroyed, burned to the ground, trampled underfoot by the Gentiles, just as Jesus said it would be. 

And if all that wasn’t enough, in the next verses Jesus goes even further.

Luke 21.25-33: The Crowning of the Son of Man

25 “And there will be signs in sun and moon and stars, and on the earth distress of nations in perplexity because of the roaring of the sea and the waves, 26 people fainting with fear and with foreboding of what is coming on the world. For the powers of the heavens will be shaken. 

We don’t see too much of it here in Paris, but if you go to New York, and you spend some time in Times Square, you will almost inevitably run across a street preacher wearing a sandwich board, yelling that Jesus is coming soon. And his proof will be right on his body: on the sandwich board he’s wearing, he’ll have stuck news clippings: sea levels are rising because of global warming; many nations are in chaos; an eclipse appeared in the sky two years ago… 

We’ve gotten used to hearing people associate events like these with Christ’s second coming. So when we read v. 25-26 today, many of us will immediately start making similar connections.

In other words, we have a tendency to come to this text with 21st-century glasses on. We’ll see what Jesus says to his disciples, and we’ll assume he’s talking about real-life events, that will tell us Jesus’s return is just over the horizon.

Now this difficult for us to see, but that’s probably not how the Jewish disciples listening to Jesus would have heard what he’s saying. 

Sam Storms explains it this way: “Jesus was speaking to a people saturated by Old Testament language, concepts and imagery. From the earliest days of their lives they memorized and were taught the Old Testament. Thus, when Jesus spoke to them of things to come he used the prophetic vocabulary of the Old Testament which they would instantly recognize.”

In other words, when Jesus talks about signs in the heavens, he’s not being innovative—this is exactly the kind of imagery the prophets used to talk about major events in history. (We see examples of this kind of figurative language in Isaiah 13.9-10, Isaiah 34.4-5, and Ezekiel 32.7-8, 15, to name just a few.) 

It’s kind of like when we say, “It was raining buckets.” If you say that to someone, no one is going to wonder if you meant that buckets were literally falling out of the sky. It’s part of our cultural lexicon: an easily understood word picture, used to describe just how hard it was raining.

In the same way, when Jesus uses these images of signs in the heavens and natural disasters to talk about God’s judgment on Jerusalem for having rejected his Messiah (to quote N.T. Wright), "This is simply the way regular Jewish imagery is able to refer to major socio-political events and bring out their full significance.”

But then, in v. 27, Jesus drops a bombshell: 

27 And then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. 

V. 27 is the most difficult verse in this passage, because what else could this be, but the second coming of Christ? “The Son of Man” was Jesus’s favorite title for himself; and when else would he come in a cloud with power and great glory, if not at his second coming?

But again, for the Jewish disciples listening to Jesus, that’s not the assumption they would make. These men and women would hear this sentence—they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory—and they would say, Wait a minute… He’s talking about Daniel 7.

If you have a Bible, you can turn to Daniel 7 with me (if not, I’ll put it up on the screen.)

Daniel chapter 7 describes a vision that Daniel receives of God’s throne room, and it contains one particularly significant event to which Jesus is clearly referring in this text.

Let’s look at the prophecy together (Daniel 7.9, 13-14): 

9 “As I looked, 

thrones were placed, 

and the Ancient of Days [God the Father] took his seat; 

his clothing was white as snow, 

and the hair of his head like pure wool; 

his throne was fiery flames; 

its wheels were burning fire. 

And in v. 13, God the Father, the Ancient of Days, is joined by another figure:  

13 “I saw in the night visions, 

and behold, with the clouds of heaven 

there came one like a son of man, 

and he came to the Ancient of Days 

and was presented before him. 

So let’s stop there for a moment. Already, we can see how the disciples would have heard Jesus’s words differently than we often do.

In Daniel’s vision, to which Jesus is alluding, the Son of Man is not coming to us, but to the Ancient of Days. This isn’t a vision of the Son returning to earth; this vision is of the Son coming to the Father.

And why does he come to the Father? Daniel 7.14: 

14  And to him was given dominion 

and glory and a kingdom, 

that all peoples, nations, and languages 

should serve him; 

his dominion is an everlasting dominion, 

which shall not pass away, 

and his kingdom one 

that shall not be destroyed. 

So in Daniel’s vision, we do not see the Son returning to earth; we see him returning to his Father, to receive his kingdom.

In other words, when Jesus says in v. 27, And then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory, that’s not mainly a reference to his second coming, but to his coronation as King. 

And that’s what the disciples would have heard, because they knew this prophecy well. They’d hear Jesus using this Daniel 7 language, and they would realize what he was saying: All of this—the destruction of Jerusalem, and all the signs leading up to it—will prove that I have taken my place as King. 

This is the thing so many people miss, but once you see it, you start seeing it all over the New Testament. They hear about Christ receiving his kingdom, and they assume that this will happen at his return. But that’s not where the Bible puts the beginning of Christ’s reign.

Remember when we talked about the ascension of Jesus at the beginning? That's what we see here—Jesus Christ lived, died and was raised. He ascended into heaven and took his seat at the right hand of the Father, where he received his kingdom, and took up his reign as King. All peoples and nations of the world serve his sovereign will, whether they know it or not.

The Father vindicated his Son’s finished work by bringing judgment on those who had rejected him, and he did it in a way that the disciples would see and recognize.

And seeing all of that—knowing that everything they’re seeing is proof that Jesus Christ is seated on the throne and reigns with power as King—should fill them with boldness. V. 28:

28 Now when these things begin to take place, straighten up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” 

29 And he told them a parable: “Look at the fig tree, and all the trees. 30 As soon as they come out in leaf, you see for yourselves and know that the summer is already near. 31 So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near. 32 Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all has taken place. 33 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. 

Can you see the impact that hearing all this from Jesus, and then experiencing it first-hand, would have on the disciples? 

Or the impact it would have, even on those who would receive and read this gospel later? Luke said in chapter 1 that he was writing this gospel to Theophilus (1.4) that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught.

This passage would have done exactly that—given the first readers of Luke’s gospel certainty concerning the things they had been taught. 

Can you imagine? Luke wrote it just a couple years before the fall of Jerusalem, and it would take a while before it made its way into their hands. The first churches who received a copy of this gospel would have just lived through everything described here. They would have surely been afraid; they would have been troubled.

And here, they have this assurance from Christ himself, saying, No—by this you can see I’m on the throne. Don’t be afraid. Be bold. Be courageous. The kingdom of God is near.

Luke 21.34-36: “Stay Awake…”

So Jesus ends with a final exhortation to his disciples (v. 34):

34 “But watch yourselves lest your hearts be weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and cares of this life, and that day come upon you suddenly like a trap. 35 For it will come upon all who dwell on the face of the whole earth. 36 But stay awake at all times, praying that you may have strength to escape all these things that are going to take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.” 

I know all this is a lot to take in. And I know that I’ve probably made some of you mad, because you’re so used to hearing that this text is all about the second coming of Christ. Let me just say, if that’s the way you interpret this text, that’s okay—this is not an issue of central importance, so we can disagree here, and still be faithful Christians.

In either case, whatever our interpretation, the question we need to ask ourselves here is, What’s the point? What’s the big idea we are meant to take away from this text?

There are three:

Jesus wants his disciples to see and fear his great power, which will be on full display at the destruction of Jerusalem.

He wants them to be thankful for his mercy, because he has given them the means to escape this judgment.

And he wants them to be ready. To stay awake. To have courage, and to be bold, and to pray.

That’s what he’s saying to this group of disciples seated around him at that time, and we have to see that: he is talking to a specific group of people, telling them, “You will see these things, and when you see these things, here’s what you should do.” 

And once we understand that—once we understand what he’s saying to the disciples there with him on the Mount of Olives—we can start to see what he’s telling us, through Luke’s faithful transmission of his teaching.

Because there is a good deal of overlap here with other things the Bible says will happen, which are still in our future. What Jesus says here gives us a foretaste of bigger events—bigger judgments, and bigger mercies—still to come. 

The Bible says that Jesus has lived, died, was raised, and has taken up his throne at the right hand of God. It says that one day, Christ will come back to renew the earth, to judge the living and the dead.

And that day of judgment will be like this day of judgment on Jerusalem, but on a global scale.

Jesus even eludes to this in v. 34-35, when he talks about “that day which will come upon all who dwell on the earth,” instead of “these signs which you disciples will see”. He’s saying that a day is coming when God’s judgment will come on all those who reject his Messiah.

And by the same token, the mercies Christ extended to his disciples, by giving them everything they needed to escape, will also be extended on a global scale. On “that day”, Christ will raise his elect and gather them to himself and glorify their bodies and bring them with him to reign on the new heavens and the new earth.

But can we be honest? It feels like that’s a long way off, right?

We often talk about the “already” and the “not yet” of the kingdom. God’s kingdom has already come, in the person of Christ…but it has not yet been consummated at his return. Christ’s authority over this world is already absolute and total…but it is not yet visible to everyone. 

So we, Christians in the 21st century, can often feel like we’re in a kind of holding pattern. 

We know Christ has received his kingdom, and we’re waiting for his return…but we’ve been waiting for a pretty long time. Over two thousand years. And no matter what the end-times predictors like to say, we have no idea when he’ll return. 

So it can be easy for us to think, Yeah, he’s not coming back anytime soon…and, quite frankly, to get bored with the wait. To become complacent. To get distracted by those things which seem more immediate, or at least more comforting.

And the same thing could have happened to the disciples in Jesus’s time. 

Jesus tells them the signs which would precede the destruction of Jerusalem, but forty years can feel like a long time. And when they see the signs—all these depressing events Jesus predicts—it could be easy to fall into a similar kind of stupor. It could be easy to think, In the face of all these real-world terrors, what difference will it really make if I stay faithful?

It could be easy for them to seek comfort and solace in the simple pleasures of life—food and drink and family and distraction—and then suddenly find themselves in Jerusalem with Titus’s armies surrounding the walls, when they should have fled to the mountains, like Jesus told them to.

So although we today are in a different situation than the disciples were, Jesus’s exhortation to them is exactly the same as his exhortation to us. 

STAY AWAKE. Watch yourselves. Don’t let yourself get distracted. Pray.

He gives us fair warning—it’s going to be difficult. It will look like everything is falling apart. We will be hated. We will be rejected. We may even be threatened. For all the good we want to do, it may feel like one step forward, two steps back.

But that feeling is a lie. Jesus Christ is King, and he still reigns today.

The cost of rejecting him is as serious as it was in that day; but the mercies he gives to his people are just as great. 

He gives us everything we need to be delivered from our sin, to not suffer judgment for our rebellion against him—he gives us faith, and he drives us to repentance, and he re-creates us in his image. 

He promises that even if we are persecuted, we are safe. Thousands of Christians around the world are persecuted and beaten and killed for their faith. But his promise to us is the same as his promise to the disciples in v. 16-18: Some of you they will put to death… But not a hair of your head will perish. 

So if you have a hard time remembering the details of everything we’ve seen this morning, here’s the message: remember Christ’s power, remember Christ’s mercy…and stay awake. 

It may feel like a long time, but in the grand scheme of history, two thousand years is nothing. You don’t know when Christ will return. 

So don’t let yourself be distracted by the cares of this life. Don’t let yourself be weighed down by the cares of this life. Don’t let yourselves fall into complacency.  

“But stay awake at all times, praying that you may have strength to escape all these things that are going to take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.”

He is powerful, and he is merciful. If we pray to have strength, he will give us strength. So pray for help, pray for strength, and stay awake. 

Luke 22.21-38

for disappointing christians

(Luke 22.21-38)

Jason Procopio

We’ve been going through the gospel of Luke together for two and half years, hearing about Jesus’s incredible ministry as told to Luke by people who were there and who saw it all firsthand.

So it can be a little disheartening to get close to the end, and to see that at least by human standards, Jesus of Nazareth had one of the least successful ministries of all time. Seriously: of how many religious leaders can it be said that in the course of about forty-eight hours, his closest followers abandoned him and those who’d been singing his praises would be clamoring for his death?

You can already see the early rumblings of this “failed” ministry in today’s text.

In last week’s text, Luke 22.7-20, Jesus gives his disciples the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. It’s an incredible beautiful moment.

And directly after that, on the heels of that incredible means of grace Jesus gives his disciples, we see not just one, but a series of actions and reactions from the disciples who are sitting at the table with Jesus. And their reaction to his institution of the Lord’s Supper is about the most disappointing reaction I can imagine as a pastor.

The disciples are there with him, sharing this incredibly important and meaningful moment with Jesus, and immediately after—not even a few minutes later, but right away—they start coming out with the strangest and most inappropriate questions you can fathom. This encourages me greatly as a pastor. Because if Jesus—the Son of God himself—had this kind of reaction when he taught, then clearly it’s not all my fault. 

Let’s go back a little bit to remind us of the context. Jesus is at his final meal with his disciples, and they are celebrating this incredibly meaningful feast of the Passover together. They’re reclining at the table, and we read in Luke 22.19: 

19 And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” 20 And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.

We saw this last week. He gave them the bread as a symbol of his body, which would be literally broken for them in just a few hours; and he gave them the cup as a symbol of his blood, which would be shed for them. He told them that this meal is a sign of the new covenant he is establishing with them—he would soon present himself as the perfect sacrifice for his people; he would provide for them the fulfillment of the covenant. 

It was an absolutely beautiful moment.

And then things take a turn, very quickly. The first turn comes from the reality that one of the people sitting at this table with Jesus was the one who would betray him in a very short time.

Betrayal (v. 21-23)

So you see that at the end of v. 20, there are no end-quotes. Jesus says, This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood, and apparently without pause, he says (v. 21):  

21 But behold, the hand of him who betrays me is with me on the table. 22 For the Son of Man goes as it has been determined, but woe to that man by whom he is betrayed!” 23 And they began to question one another, which of them it could be who was going to do this. 

Apparently Jesus himself wanted to highlight the first “disappointment” of this moment, saying that as beautiful as this moment was, it was bittersweet. Judas, who had already met with the religious leaders to betray Jesus, and who would do just that in a few hours, was sitting there with them.

It’s sobering to realize that this is Judas’s first (and last) Communion. 

We could wonder why Jesus would have let Judas participate in this Communion, knowing what he was about to do. But we should remember that no one is worthy to come to this table with Christ. None of the disciples should have been given this gift. 

And Judas’s presence there with Jesus and the other disciples only accentuates the painful fact that Christ’s betrayal was to come from within—from someone with whom he is close, whom he loved.

When Jesus says, “Woe to that man by whom [the Son of Man] is betrayed”, it’s a lament: he knows not only what’s about to happen to himself, but what will happen to Judas afterward. It’s a profoundly sad moment, and it is that moment that kicks off all the others.

The next disappointment we see here is the ego of the disciples.

Ego (v. 24-30)  

24 A dispute also arose among them, as to which of them was to be regarded as the greatest. 

So try to imagine this scene. They are celebrating the Passover together—the most sacred Jewish feast. As we saw last week, the Passover was a feast to remember the faithfulness of God toward his people. 

In the middle of the Passover feast, Jesus gives them this incredible picture of the bread and the cup, which represent the sacrifice he was about to give for his people: his broken body, and his shed blood. This is the fulfillment of the Passover—God continues to show his faithfulness to his people in sending them a Savior.

And just on the heels of that, these idiots are trying to one-up each other. Maybe they were recalling the times when Jesus sent them out to preach the gospel and heal, and they start comparing notes. Or maybe they’re just comparing their relative strengths and weaknesses—surely some of them were more naturally gifted than others.

Whatever the actual content of their discussion, apparently their one-upmanship had risen to the level of an actual dispute.

I hear Jack do this with his little buddies all the time. 

“Did you see how high I kicked the ball? It was ten feet over your head!” 

“Yeah, but when I did it, it was fifty feet over your head! I’m the best!”

“No, I’m the best!”

“No, I’M the best!”

Now with Jack and his friends, that’s understandable, because they’re seven. That’s what kids do.

But these are grown men. They have been following Jesus around for three years. They’ve seen him act, they’ve heard him teach, they’ve benefitted from his sanctifying presence. And they’re still being derailed by ego.

So reading this, I would expect Jesus to act like I usually do when I hear Jack doing that with his friends: I scold him, because arrogance is unbecoming, and because it’s embarrassing to have your kid talk like that.

But Jesus doesn’t do that. He doesn’t get angry; he doesn’t scold. He takes the time to course-correct. He actually affirms their desire to be great, but says that if you want to be great, here’s how you go about it.

V. 25:

25 And he said to them, “The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and those in authority over them are called benefactors. 26 But not so with you. Rather, let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves. 27 For who is the greater, one who reclines at table or one who serves? Is it not the one who reclines at table? But I am among you as the one who serves. 

So Jesus does two things here that are just brilliant. 

First of all, he shows them what true greatness is—it’s not posturing and domineering like every bad human leader ever. It’s service. It’s putting yourself below the ones you are supposed to lead. And it’s brilliant because no one naturally hesitates to follow someone who serves others well.

The second brilliant thing he does is remind his disciples that he is the ultimately great one they all want to be. He says true greatness shows itself in service; and then reminds them of what they should have remembered all along—that I am among you as the one who serves. 

They’re arguing about who’s the greatest—and the answer is, as always, Jesus. They have never seen Jesus do anything but serve those he leads, which makes this dispute utterly ridiculous.

And yet, not only does he teach them rather than scold them; he shows them an unbelievable amount of gentleness and grace.

V. 28:

28 “You are those who have stayed with me in my trials, 29 and I assign to you, as my Father assigned to me, a kingdom, 30 that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel. 

In other words, he doesn’t condemn them for their ego. He doesn’t condemn them for their pride. In some sense, he knows they’re still children in their thinking.

Rather than condemn them, he gives them a kingdom—a place at his table, a role in his kingdom. And a substantial role at that: the role of being judges of his people, alongside him.

And the way he says it is absolutely fascinating—he affirms the fact that they have stayed with him in his trials…despite the fact that in just a few hours, one of them would betray him, another would deny him, and the rest (all but one) would abandon him. He treats them as he knows they will one day become, not as they actually are today.

Just as he does for us all.

On to the third disappointment: the naïve overconfidence of Peter.

Naïve self-sufficiency (v. 31-34) 

31 “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, 32 but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.” 

So this starts off in a fascinating way. Peter doesn’t say anything; Jesus rather addresses him. And he says something that once again reminds us of what we saw a couple weeks ago, when we talked about Satan and Judas.

If you ask Christians who reigns over our world at this very moment, today, a lot of them would say, “Satan.” When pressed on this, they’ll say, “Just look at the state of this world. Clearly Satan’s the one pulling the strings.” 

If that sounds surprising to you, it shouldn’t be; someone said something very like this to me just a couple weeks ago, and it’s far more common than we think.

But in verse 31, we see that whatever power Satan does have is in fact very limited.

Jesus tells Peter, “Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat.” In verse 31, both time the word you is used, it’s plural—Satan demanded to have all the disciples. 

If any of us heard God say that to us, we would reflexively gulp—the idea that Satan himself has personally singled us out for attack is a terrifying one.

But we should remember this. Just like in the case of Job, before Satan could do anything to the disciples, he had to ask for permission. He had to get the green light from God; he demanded to have them. He couldn’t just take them.

Now in v. 32, the you goes from plural to singular—Jesus tells Peter, I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.

There’s a lot of grace in what Jesus says here, but Peter apparently doesn’t hear it—nor does he hear the exhortation to take care of his brothers. (Not yet, anyway.)

Jesus tells Peter, When you turn again, strengthen your brothers.

And what Peter hears is, You’ll turn away from me, and you’ll have to turn back.

And apparently he’s a little insulted at the idea that Satan could do anything to make him turn away. Not because he thinks Satan isn’t strong, but because he’s quite confident in his own abilities to resist him.

V. 33:

33 Peter said to him, “Lord, I am ready to go with you both to prison and to death.” 

This shouldn’t surprise us—Peter is the loudest disciple. He’s the one who always has an idea, the first one to get up and get moving on whatever task is at hand. He’s the brave one. He’s Luke Skywalker in The Empire Strikes Back: not quite finished with his training yet, but still confident he can take on Darth Vader and rescue his friends, even though he’s not remotely up to it. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about and haven’t seen The Empire Strikes Back, shame on you. Go see it.)

There is no doubt in Peter’s mind that whatever these fools do, he’s not going to turn. He’ll be right by Jesus’s side, fighting with him.

But Jesus gives him a reality check—things are about to get a lot worse than you think, and you will not resist the temptation to fear.

V. 34:

34 Jesus said, “I tell you, Peter, the rooster will not crow this day, until you deny three times that you know me.” 

Peter may not have believed him at this point, but he would soon.

The last disappointment we see is a lot simpler, and I can’t think of any better way to describe it: the disciples just don’t get it. 

Incomprehension (v. 35-37) 

35 And he said to them, “When I sent you out with no moneybag or knapsack or sandals, did you lack anything?” They said, “Nothing.” 36 He said to them, “But now let the one who has a moneybag take it, and likewise a knapsack. And let the one who has no sword sell his cloak and buy one. 37 For I tell you that this Scripture must be fulfilled in me: ‘And he was numbered with the transgressors.’ For what is written about me has its fulfillment.” 38 And they said, “Look, Lord, here are two swords.” And he said to them, “It is enough.” 

On two other occasions in this gospel (9.3, 10.4), Jesus sent out his disciples to preach the gospel, and to bring no provisions with them. He told them to do this because he sent them out with all of the power and resources he had given them, and their proclamation of the gospel would be so bold and empowered that their hearers would provide everything they needed.

But now, with his arrest, trial and death imminent, the nature of his ministry was about to fundamentally change.

We talked in our home group a couple weeks ago about why the religious authorities didn’t just hire someone to kill Jesus in the street. Jesus wasn’t followed around by the Secret Service; an assassin with a knife could easily do the job. So why go through all the rigamarole of arresting him, and getting the Romans involved, and setting up a public trial? 

And at least part of the answer is that they wanted to make a public spectacle of Jesus. They wanted to show the people that the power and authority of the religious leaders and of Rome herself were against this man. They wanted to convince them that this Jesus was not the good man they thought he was, because good men are not condemned and crucified.

It was going to work brilliantly. Jesus knew that in just a few hours, the crowds which had accepted him were about to turn against him. 

So from here on out, going out in the name of Jesus was going to be a dangerous endeavor. 

He tells them to take their money, to take a bag with them, and to buy a sword. We shouldn’t take this to mean that they should arm up and literally get ready to fight back (cf. John 18.10-11), but rather, that they should be ready to go through a profoundly difficult period of time. This was going to get worse than any of them were expecting, because, as he said in v. 37, quoting Isaiah, he was about to be numbered with the transgressors.

Surely the disciples picked up on his reference, but they just didn’t get it. They clearly didn’t understand just how bad it was going to get. And to prove it, they get hung up on one particular detail.

“Sword? Hey, we’ve got two swords! Don’t worry, we’re ready.”

Many commentators have noted that when Jesus says, “It is enough,” he’s giving the ancient Israel equivalent of an eye-roll: “You’ve got to be kidding me.” 

The weight of this meal could not be overstated. They’ve celebrated the Passover, this most important of Jewish feasts; he has given them the sacrament of Communion, foreshadowing (in pretty unsubtle terms) his own death for them. 

He’s telling them that their lives are about to fundamentally change forever, that he’s literally about to be killed, that everyone who has seen him as a teacher sent from God is going to count him as a common criminal, worthy of death… 

And this is how they respond.

With betrayal… With a fight about who’s the best among them… With spectacular overconfidence… And with incomprehension, and attention to a stupid detail that wasn’t the point at all. It’s not so much that it’s sinful; it’s just that they are so focused on the wrong thing that they find themselves waylaid by completely insignificant details.

“We’ve got it! We’ve got two swords, not just one! We’re good!”

And Jesus says, “Okay, that’s enough.”

Hope

Now can we just acknowledge that this does not bode well for us? 

Think about it. These guys were hand-picked by Jesus himself. They had been literally living with the incarnate Son of God for three years. They’d had thousands of conversations with him. They knew what he smelled like. They knew what he looked like when he cried. They knew what he sounded like when he laughed. They knew what he liked to eat. They’d seen him preparing meals, and talked with him while they walked from place to place, and seen how he reacted to insult and to praise. They’d seen him mourn the death of a friend, and celebrate at a wedding. They’d heard every teaching we have recorded in these gospels, and many more, in his own voice. 

These guys knew Jesus in a way that you and I have a hard time imagining.

So reading this passage can be pretty unsettling, because if these men would act this way after all that time spent getting to know the Son of God, then what hope could there possibly be for us?

We’ll know the answer to that question if we pay attention to what we see here, and which we’ve seen in the previous texts.

In v. 37, Jesus cites Isaiah 53—the chapter in which we see Isaiah’s prophecy of the suffering servant, who was crushed by the will of the Lord, wounded for our transgressions. He’d said long ago that it would happen this way.

In v. 22, Jesus reminds the disciples that the Son of Man goes [to his death] as it has been determined...

As strange as it may seem, all of this—from the betrayal of Judas and the actions of Satan to the most ridiculous, immature and prideful sins of the disciples here—is exactly what God had planned.

And God’s plan was working itself out so that Jesus would be numbered among the transgressors—why?—in order that he might bear the sins of his people and make intercession for them (as he said in Isaiah 53.12), and as he had just finished showing them minutes before:

This is my body, which is given for you… This cup is the new covenant in my blood… 

On the cross Jesus Christ took on himself all the sins of all his people—even such silly, immature and prideful sins as the disciples display here. 

And that’s what he was getting at in v. 28-30, when he says, “I assign to you, as my Father assigned to me, a kingdom, that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom.” No matter what the disciples actually were at this point in time, Jesus acts toward them according to what they will be. 

Out of this frankly shameful and thick-headed group of men, Christ founded his church. Peter, who shows a shocking lack of self-awareness here, and who would deny even knowing Jesus in just a few hours, would, in just a little over a month, stand up on a roof and preach a sermon after which 3,000 people would come to faith in Christ. All but one of these men would go, and bring the gospel to the nations, and plant churches, and be the motor through which God’s Spirit would make known his glory to the ends of the earth.

That is our hope. And it is just as sure, and just as steady as theirs.

Because in addition to all of that, for all the knowledge the disciples had of Christ at this point in the story, for all the depth of their friendship with him, we can still know Christ better today than they did at that moment. 

At that moment, they could see Jesus and hear him and be in the room with him. But afterward, after his death and resurrection and ascension, Jesus would send the Holy Spirit to his disciples, and to all of his children—including us. 

So we don’t just get to know Christ; the presence of Christ lives in us through his Holy Spirit.

Out of this really shameful group of men, Christ founded his church.

And like this really shameful group of men, Christ has sent his Spirit to live in us.

So although we too are a group of shameful men and women, we have a great hope.

If we’re reading this text today, it’s very possible that we are freaked out right now, because we totally identify with these guys. 

Have we betrayed him? 

Yes. We do it every day. We sin against him—we forget him, we run to idols, we mock him with our lives—every day. 

And yet, he still invites us to his table—and unlike Judas, who would die around the same time as Jesus, we get to keep coming back to the table. There is no “woe to that man by whom he is betrayed” for us, because that’s done. He’s already gone to the cross. 

And because of that, he invites us—no matter the betrayal—to repent of our sin and return to him.

Are we prideful?

Did you guys see that Kanye West released his first Christian album on Saturday? I felt like I needed to address this because at least some of you will be wondering what to do with it.

I spent some time with Kanye yesterday; the album is called Jesus Is King. I was very skeptical about this: anyone who’s followed him for any amount of time knows that a lot of what he says can come off sounding a bit off the wall.

But I have to say: the album is pretty good. Not just musically—we wouldn’t expect anything less from him—but even in terms of the content. 

Let’s be clear: it’s not perfect. Even Kanye himself said, “I’m not a theologian; I’m a recent convert.” By his own admission, the content of the album reflects the faith of a brand-new Christian who is still ignorant of much of the Bible. This is not what we would call gospel-centered music. It’s very superficial, light on doctrine and heavy on churchy jargon. And some of the old persona he’s spent so much time building over the years is still present. 

But in the album, he goes much further than many contemporary Christian artists in being ultra-explicit that for all his faults, he wants Christ to be the Lord of his life. So in that respect, it’s refreshing to hear.

What was just as interesting to me was an interview he gave with Beats 1 at the same time the album dropped. It was a long interview (some of which I’ve already seen misquoted by Christians who want to write him off), but there was one moment in particular that was interesting. It was the moment when his famous pride reared its ugly head again. 

He said God is “using him to show off,” taking an artist like him and converting him so radically before the eyes of the millions who watch to him. The kicker came when he said (and I quote): “I am unquestionably, undoubtedly, the greatest human artist of all time. There's not even a question anymore at this point. It's just a fact.” 

Now just to be clear: that’s a terrible thing for a Christian to say. No doubt about about it. It’s the kind of statement that makes you put air-quotes around the word, as in, Kanye West says he’s a “Christian” now.

But I didn’t read that quote so that we could say, Whew! Thank goodness! Kanye’s faith is clearly phony, we can all go back to our lives now.

I read that quote to show that what Jesus said in v. 25-30, he said to guys who were acting exactly like Kanye. What he said in that interview is the quintessential modern version of the disciples, arguing over who among them is the greatest.

And how did Jesus respond? 

Not by calling them out on their pride, but by telling them he was giving them a kingdom.

He taught them with gentleness and grace.

He reminded them of his life, which showed that the greatest is the one who serves.

In the gospel, God shows us again and again how small we really are, and why that is good news.

He shows us that we are not as good as we think we are—so we are, by our nature, under his judgment.

He shows us that we could not save ourselves—so he sent us a Savior, to be our sacrifice.

He shows us that even after he sent a Savior, we did not want him—so he sent us his Spirit, to change our hearts and draw us to him and to make us like him.

Every step of the way, he is the factor for change in our lives, not ourselves.

And these prideful disciples would understand that, just a short time after. These men who were fighting for first place would soon give their lives—literally—for the One they served.

I have to say, I was skeptical about Kanye West. And no one knows what will come of his faith over the long term. But if there’s hope for the disciples, there’s hope for him too. And there’s hope for us.

Are we naïvely overconfident (and thus susceptible to temptation)? 

Absolutely. 

And if you’re not sure that’s true, here’s a real simple test: ask yourself if you pray enough. Our prayers show us just how confident in ourselves we really are, because if we really knew that we can do nothing on our own, we’d be praying all the time. We’d find ourselves constantly placing ourselves in God’s hand and asking him, with great sincerity, Lead me not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

But for a good many of us, our prayer life is probably limited to a quick five minutes while we’re brushing our teeth or while we’re in the métro, and then it’s mostly giving the Lord a laundry list of stuff we’d like him to do today.

We are wildly overconfident in our own abilities to do what we need to do on our own.

And so, in his grace, God allows us to fail. He gives us trials. He takes from us the abilities we use as crutches, and shows us that we really, truly cannot do this without him. And by his Spirit, rather than crushing us under the weight of our own inability, he encourages us to know that while we can do nothing on our own, he can give us the strength to stay faithful in any situation.

Are we waylaid by meaningless details, all the while missing the big picture?

Of course we are. 

Here’s a very simple example. You’re reading your Bible, you come across a detail that is a bit perplexing, and you spend so much time trying to figure out the perplexing thing that you completely miss the point the larger passage was trying to make. 

If someone asked you what you read in, say, 1 Peter 3, you’d think of verse 19, where it says that Christ “proclaimed to the spirits in prison”. You’d remember that because you spent so much time trying to figure out what that meant. But if anyone asked you what Peter was trying to say in that chapter, you’d totally forget that Peter was actually talking about how Christ allows us to persevere in suffering.

We get so focused on details that we forget the point.

Or here’s another example, on a larger scale. 

How many of you, after becoming a Christian, have spent hours toiling over the question, Now that I am a Christian, what is the will of God for my life? Where does he want me to live? What job does he want me to do? Who does he want me to marry?

Now of course, it’s not that the Bible says nothing about these things; it’s just that these things—where we live or what our profession is or who we marry—aren’t the main thing. 

And that’s good news, because God, in his grace, tells us the main thing. It’s not as if he has one perfect plan for our lives and leaves us to fend for ourselves and figure it out, and if we don’t—oh no, we’re missing out on God’s will.

No—he’s told us his will for our lives.

1 Thessalonians 4.3-7:  

3 For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; 4 that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, 5 not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God; 6 that no one transgress and wrong his brother… 7 For God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness.

1 Thessalonians 5.16-18: 

16 Rejoice always, 17 pray without ceasing, 18 give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

1 Peter 2.15:  

15 For this is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people. 16 Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God.

In his grace, God has told us what is essential, to keep us from being detoured by insignificant details: that in Christ, we are his people, so he calls us to live as his people, in conformity to our brother Jesus Christ.

Brothers and sisters, here’s the point of all this. 

The disciples’ story is our story; the disciples’ folly is our folly; and the disciples’ hope is our hope.

So don’t be discouraged. Learn from the disciples’ mistakes, and stay faithful. Grow in the new nature Christ has given you. Pray without ceasing, and remember he provides for your every need. Don’t be distracted by insignificant details, but remember what is essential.

We can do it—or rather, he will do it in us. If he did it for these jokers, he can, and will, do it for us.