Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

It’s a surreal experience when you’ve lived with the dread of something and the moment has finally arrived.

There’s a potentially life-altering, or even life-determining surgery, and you dread it and dread it.

And, then suddenly you find yourself kissing your family, being wheeled down the hall, and having your naked body put upon that freezing metal table.

How’s that for vivid imagery?

Or, you’ve sat at the bedside of somebody you love more than your own life, and you know that they’re deteriorating and, it’s only a matter of time, but there’s nothing that prepares you for the moment that it actually happens, is there?

You have a meeting on Monday with your boss, and you know exactly what is going to happen.

You rehearse what you’re going to say in your mind a thousand times, but when Monday comes, it’s like it happens in slow motion, right?

For Jesus, the moment has come.

He had told his disciples that He would be betrayed by someone so close to him that they dipped their hands together in the dish, and now, it was time for him to finally receive his knife in the back.

Now, He would finally be arrested.

No more dread.

No more preparing.

No more expectation.

The moment had come for him and for his disciples, revealing so much to us about his character and theirs.

God’s Word

Read

‘One of the Twelve’

“Judas came, one of the twelve...” As we come to our passage this morning, we should see no break from our passage from last week.

It’s really unfortunate that we even had to break when we did.

In actual events, there was no break.

In fact, no sooner did Jesus say arise was Judas and the posse there.

So, they’ve come to Jesus under the cover of night, and this is to be expected, since you’ll remember it’s the priority of the Sanhedrin to avoid a riot in Jesus’ arrest.

They want to be subtle and stealthy.

So, they’ve chosen to use night as a cover.

It’s the primary reason they’ve hired Judas.

They’ve hired Judas so that they can find Jesus when He’s out of the public eye to avoid a public spectacle.

As Jesus even tells them here, he had been teaching every day in the Temple if they had wanted to just arrest him.

But, they want to do so privately.

John’s account of this same story says that Judas knew that Gethsemane was a place that Jesus often went, and this is why he took the contingency there.

This means that it’s likely that he might have tried a few other places first looking for Jesus.

He may have taken them to the Upper Room first, discovered they weren’t there, and then proceeded to Gethsemane.

But, Jesus certainly wasn’t hiding from Judas and the arresters.

He was expecting them.

After all, He told the eight disciples at the gate to watch out for them, and then told the other three to go and out and greet them once the time was at hand.

“Have you come out as against a robber?”

It’s interesting who all is there.

You have soldiers and police officers who have come out with Judas to arrest Jesus.

Jesus even asks them, “Do you really need the clubs and swords?”

William Hendrikson puts it eloquently saying, “They came with torches and lanterns to seek out the light of the world.

They came with swords and clubs to subdue the Prince of Peace.”

But, honestly, you can hardly blame them.

Though Judas didn’t believe in him, he had personally witnessed his strange power.

And so had the leaders of Israel.

In , Jesus spoke in the synagogue in his hometown of Nazareth, and they became angry at his words.

They ran him to the edge of town to the edge of a cliff where they were going to throw him off and kill him, and he just passed through them.

In , Jesus in the Temple, and He tells them, “Before Abraham, I was.”

They decide they have to stone him for blasphemy.

But, Jesus just passes through them.

So, you can hardly blame them for bringing this mob.

Jesus, believe what you want about him, is a powerful, slippery dude!

“he kissed him” So, Judas identifies him with a kiss.

You have to understand that in a world without Facebook and Fox News, even celebrities were hard to recognize in the dark.

You likely had never seen their faces.

So, you needed someone that had seen them before to identify them.

This why Judas needs to kiss him first, which was a standard greeting of the time.

And, it’s the emphasis of the Judas as one of the twelve, the intimacy of the kiss at the greeting that highlights the egregiousness of the betrayal.

The closer someone is to you the more painful the betrayal is.

Benedict Arnold had George Washington’s fullest trust and had even been defended by Washington.

Washington had made him the commander of West Point, only to have Arnold offer West Point over to the British for accolades and rank.

And, here is Judas, and when they conspire together on a potential sign to identify the Son of Man, Judas must’ve spoken up and said that he would be able to show them by kissing his very face.

This was how close they were.

This was the access he had.

It was treachery of an unthinkable level.

You Will Have Your Heart Broken

I’ve hinted around a lot at Matthew chapter 10 lately, but let’s go back and read it together.

Read .

In , Jesus is warning his disciples about what is to come, but notice at the end, why does He say that it’s coming?

It’s coming because ‘a disciple is not above his teacher.’

It’s coming because He will experience it first.

It’s coming because He will be betrayed by one of the brothers.

It’s coming because he will be dragged before governors and kings.

He will be flogged, and He will be hated.

He will have to persevere.

APPLICATION: You will not live for Jesus in a broken world without having your heart broken.

For most of us, we usually begin living for Jesus with this naive understanding of what it means to be a Christian.

We’re going to love Jesus a whole lot, do some really great things for him, and then skate past all of the sacrifice and suffering part.

But, what happens when you begin to follow Jesus, what He was explaining in , what we see being illustrated in here with Judas, is that when you live for the Kingdom the world will come against you.

And, you’re going to have your heart broken by this world.

It’s going to happen.

We’re not going to make it out of this thing unscathed.

People close to us are going to hurt us.

Things around us aren’t going to go as smoothly as we want them to.

Marriage isn’t going to be as easy as we think it should be.

You know, we have a young church with a lot of young Christians, and that’s wonderful.

But, our generation isn’t very good with what we see Jesus walking through right here.

We’re not good with having our hearts broken.

We’re not good with failure.

We’re not good with things not going perfectly.

Honestly, I blame the participation trophies.

:) But, brothers and sisters, let’s remember, we’re following Jesus toward his Kingdom in the midst of a world that isn’t submitted to his reign.

They’re going to come against him.

One of the inner circle is going to hurt you.

You’re going to take some losses.

You’re being sent out as sheep among wolves, oh, but the cross is the doorway of the Kingdom, and the Kingdom is coming!

The Kingdom is coming!

And, those who persevere until the end will receive the Kingdom!

Jesus Isn’t Passive

“Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?”

For Peter, his moment to live up to his bravado had finally come.