Reading Assignment: Matthew 26:31-56
Main Idea: The Arrest of Jesus
Truth: God's word always comes to pass.
Overview:
1. Prophecy
2. Prayer
3. Arrest
4. Non-resistance
5. Fulfillment
Prayer:
1. Thank Jesus for His obedience to the will of the Father.
2. Commit to resisting temptation with prayer to become willing both in spirit and body.
Transcript
Let's pray and we’ll begin.
Our Father, thank You for this morning. Thank You for giving us life and breath and everything we need for this day. We worship You. We bow before You. We are Your creatures, but more than that, we are Your sons through faith in Christ. And we look to You as children looking to their Father, seeking instruction, guidance, and grace. And we pray that You would help us this morning and grant to us another fresh perspective from Your word. So teach us this morning. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
The next reading assignment is Matthew 26:31-56. The main idea is Jesus’ arrest and the central truth I want to draw out is this: God's word always comes to pass. With Jesus' arrest comes the scattering of His disciples. Matthew very carefully presents the section to show us that this is the fulfillment of Scripture. And Jesus intended to fulfill this prophecy of Scripture. He understood the will of God and pursued carrying it out. The key verse is found in verse 56, where Jesus says, “But all this has taken place to fulfill the Scriptures of the prophets.” Jesus was describing His arrest and the scattering of the disciples. Then Matthew concludes, “Then all the disciples left Him and fled.” With this remark, Matthew highlights for us that God's word always comes to pass. The passage before us has five parts to it. First, there is the prophecy of Scripture. Then there is a time of prayer in Gethsemane. Then there is the arrest and then non-retaliation by Jesus, though there's retaliation by Simon. Finally, there's the fulfillment of prophecy.
So, first: prophecy. See verse 31, where Jesus said to the disciples, “You will all fall away because of Me this night, for it is written, ‘I will strike down the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered.’” That prophecy comes from Zechariah 13, and Jesus is fully aware that the Messiah, the shepherd, will be struck down; and that His followers, His sheep, will be scattered. But Jesus doesn't stop on this rather discouraging low note. He tells them immediately afterwards in verse 32: “But after I have been raised, I will go ahead of you to Galilee.” Jesus already accounts for His resurrection and the future gathering together of His scattered sheep. This is a word of great encouragement to the disciples. But of course, this is very dissatisfactory to Peter. He very quickly responds, “Even though all may fall away because of You, I will never fall away.” Peter has a great deal of machismo. He is very sure of himself, sort of as a man's man, and he thinks that he has what it takes to stick with Jesus, no matter what the opposition. But Jesus tells him, “Truly I say to you that this very night, before a rooster crows, you will deny Me three times.” This is a shocker for Peter. So he reaffirms his commitment to Jesus, and says, “Even if I have to die with You, I will not deny You.” Matthew tells us that “All the disciples said the same thing too.” None of the disciples, including Simon Peter, really knew what was coming. They just thought that they were man enough to handle whatever came their way. But of course, no one is man enough to handle the kind of intimidating opposition they were about to face. No one is that courageous, certainly, not them, not until the Holy Spirit has empowered them on Pentecost day. Well, that was the prophecy and the reaction of the disciples to that prediction.
Then comes the next scene, which is the scene of prayer. Verse 36 says, “Then Jesus came with them to a place called Gethsemane (which is on Mount of Olives), and said to His disciples, ‘Sit here while I go over there and pray.’” Now this location to which they went was very intentional on Jesus’ part. John tells us in John 18:2 that this was the place where Jesus often met with the disciples. Jesus went to Gethsemane because this was a well-known location to Judas. This is the place to which he would naturally lead the mob to arrest Jesus. So they were there at Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives. And Jesus takes a moment to go away from the disciples to pray. He takes with Him His three closest disciples, Peter, James, and John. So verse 37, “And He took with Him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee (that's James and John), and began to be grieved and distressed.” This is what He told them: “My soul is deeply grieved, to the point of death; remain here and keep watch with Me.” In that most dark time, Jesus sought friendship and the prayer support of His closest disciples. This was His greatest time of need. Up until this point, as we learned in John 13 through 16, Jesus overlooked His own needs to comfort His disciples. After having taken care of them, then He addressed His own needs and sought their help toward that end. For the first time, Jesus seeks their support. But of course, the disciples fail to deliver. Verse 39, “And He went a little beyond them, and fell on His face,” and He started praying, and He prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me.” The cup is a metaphor for the wrath of God (often depicted in the Old Testament), and Jesus is saying that if it were possible for God's elect to be redeemed apart from His satisfaction of the wrath of God in their place, Jesus was seeking for that alternate way. But of course, there was no other way. Even then, Jesus concludes His prayer by saying, “yet not as I will, but as You will.” Jesus continually sought the will of His Father, even amid the painful challenges ahead. I find this so striking that Jesus always practiced what He preached. He taught the disciples to pray, “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” and this is exactly what He is doing. This is a kind of leader and shepherd we have in Christ. Jesus yields His human will to the Father’s divine will to wholly submit Himself to whatever it is that God wants. Then Jesus comes back to the three disciples, and He finds them sleeping. But at this juncture, Jesus is no longer seeking prayer support from them. He's actually seeking out their good. He calls them to resist temptation with prayer, and He tells them, “the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” When He says this, He doesn't mean to give them an excuse for their prayerlessness. What He means is to call them to mortify and control their flesh. The flesh is like a mule that is stubborn and unwilling. But it is a beast that can be disciplined and tamed into submission. This is, of course, what Jesus did with His flesh. Jesus had a human body like everybody else. He became tired like everyone else. He became hungry and thirsty and irritable like everyone else. And yet He learned to control His flesh and bring it under submission to carry out the will of God. His human spirit and His human body were both willingly submitted to the will of God. And Jesus was calling the disciples to do the same. He knew that in their hearts they wanted to do the right thing and stand by Jesus; but their flesh was weak, and until the flesh has been brought under control, they would not be able to do that which they desire to do in their spirit. At this juncture, Jesus goes away again to pray, and He does this two more times, altogether three times, saying the same things again in His prayers.
Then finally the scene of the arrest arrives. In verse 45 Jesus says to the disciples, “Are you still sleeping and resting? Behold, the hour is at hand, and the Son of Man is being betrayed into the hands of sinners.” Jesus knew the betrayal was at hand even as He had predicted it earlier in verses 21 and 25. The time for it has now come and the betrayer has arrived. Jesus then makes this remark, “Get up, let us be going; behold, the one who betrays Me is at hand!” Now, at first pass, this might sound like “Let us flee from here” or “Let us go away from here” to avoid the arrest, but actually the meaning is the opposite. According to John 18, Jesus actually went out to meet the mob who came to arrest Him. The sense here is that Jesus called upon the disciples to go meet the mob. This means Jesus went headlong into His arrest. This is how Jesus sought to fulfill the will of God in His body and His human spirit. He is strong both in body and soul, and uncompromisingly committed to the will of God. Then Judas shows up, betrays Him with a kiss, and they laid their hands on Jesus and seized him (verse 50).
At this juncture, Simon Peter attempts to retaliate. He wasn't ready to be arrested, but he was ready to fight, and so he draws out a sword and he swings it toward the slave of the high priest and he ends up cutting off his ear. We learn from John 18 that Jesus healed this man who is named as Malchus. But here, Jesus calls Peter to stop his retaliation. He says, “Put your sword back into its place; for all those who take up the sword shall perish by the sword.” Now some have wrongly taken this remark to mean total pacifism, i.e., to never fight in a war or something like that. But of course that's false because the Bible gives room for just war. In the economy of God, the government is given a sword for this very purpose, to uphold justice and righteousness on the earth. But that is not to be the business of God's people. The Church of God does not bear the sword; the government does. In any case, Jesus tells Peter to put away the sword. Then Jesus declares that He refuses to retaliate, because this is all the will of God. He says, “do you think that I cannot appeal to My Father, and He will at once put at My disposal more than twelve legions of angels?” What Jesus means is that He has the power of heaven behind Him, but He will not wield that power to resist the arrest, because this is the will of God. You see, this is the extent to which Jesus has subdued His flesh and submitted Himself entirely to the will of God. You see, His human spirit and His human body were both totally submitted to the will of God, and thus He willingly gave Himself to the mob to be arrested by them.
And all of this took place to fulfill the Word of God, and Jesus knew it. This brings us to the final section on the fulfillment. Jesus declares, “How then will the Scriptures be fulfilled, which say that it must happen this way?” He also said to the crowds who came to arrest Him, “Have you come out with swords and clubs to arrest Me as you would against a robber? Every day I used to sit in the temple teaching and you did not seize Me. But all this has taken place to fulfill the Scriptures of the prophets.” Jesus declares this to those who came for His arrest. At this juncture, all the disciples then fled. So as we began in verse 31 with the prophecy and in verse 56 we conclude with its fulfillment. God's word always comes to pass. And of course, Jesus is uncompromisingly committed to carrying out the will of God. This is our Lord. He is wholly obedient to the will of His Father revealed in Scripture, even unto death. This is because this is what it means to be a man of God. And Jesus was the epitome of a man of God. Therefore, Jesus endured, He denied Himself and He gave Himself up for our redemption. This was the objective of the Scripture to be fulfilled, to bring about the redemption of God's people. You see, Jesus was able to do all this because He subdued His flesh and He submitted Himself wholly to God. And thus He accomplished the will of God to save them from their sins. This is so astonishing.
And this leads us to some prayers. Number one, we can thank Jesus for how He denied Himself and literally took up the cross for our redemption. He suffered the wrath of God, drank the cup of God's wrath, in our place. He did this so that we would be freed from our sins and that we would possess eternal life. How awesome and gracious is Jesus our Lord! Secondly, Jesus called the disciples to watch and pray to resist temptation Since the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak, they needed to be strengthened against the flesh. This shows us how much we must also discipline our body and submitting it under the will of God. The Bible tells us over and over again to mortify the flesh, to put to death the desires of the body, to buffet one’s own body and make it his slave so that it will do what God wants him to do. We all know that the Christian life is not a life of ease, but it is a life of arduous effort and diligence. Self-denial and taking up the cross are not automatic, easy, or natural for our sinful selves. But Jesus has given us His Holy Spirit so that we can find strength in Him to follow in the footsteps of Christ. He alone can empower us to do that. These are things that we can certainly pray about. So with that, let me close us in prayer.
God. Thank You for Your dear Son. There's none like Him. He is the true man's man. He willingly gave up His body to accomplish Your will to redeem us from our sins. Thank You for Your precious Son. How much You must have cherished Him. How much it must have pained You to see Him suffer in our place. And yet this was all Your plan, so that our sins would be truly paid for by this innocent, righteous, and perfect Son of Yours. Thank You for this immeasurable price of our redemption. Thank You for the precious Savior whom You sent for us. We also hear the words of Jesus, that we must pray and resist temptation. We have learned that we must not only be willing in our spirit, but also willing in our flesh. And I pray that you would give us all the help and encouragement and strength to use these bodies of ours, the bodies that are naturally like a stubborn mule, to be put in service to Your purposes. Thank You for the precious words of Jesus and His encouragement to us. Thank You that for every moment of our weakness, Jesus went to the cross with strength to pay for all the ways in which we were foolish, weak, and lazy. We thank You that Jesus bore all our iniquities on the cross to redeem us, that we would pursue the new life in Him. How we love and praise You for the gift of redemption which You have given to us in Jesus Christ! We bless You this morning. Thank You for Your word. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
All right, thanks, everyone. Lord bless You, and we are done for this morning.