Luke 22 starting in verse 47. Hear the word of the Lord. While he was still speaking, there came a crowd, and a man called Judas, one of the twelve, was leading them. He drew near to Jesus to kiss him. But Jesus said to him, Judas, would you betray the Son of Man with a kiss? And when those who were around him saw what would follow, they said, Lord, shall we strike with the sword? And one of them struck the servant of the high priest and cut off his right ear. But Jesus said, no more of this. And he touched his ear and healed him. Then Jesus said to the chief priests and officers of the temple and elders who had come out against him, have you come out as against a robber with swords and clubs? When I was with you day after day in the temple, you did not lay hands on me, but this is your hour in the power of darkness. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Father God, we come before you this morning to your word, God, where we worship you with the greatest interest, because God, here we expect that you will speak to us and with us, God, that you will help us in our temptations, that you will strengthen us against our enemies, that you will steal our resolve and help us to persevere through many trials, that you will give us the grace that's needed to live for you in this world and to glorify the Father. We thank you that you have revealed your Son to us. We thank you for the salvation and all of the blessings of our salvation that are ours in Christ. We pray that you would reveal him to us this morning. God, and that we would see him in these pages. God, that we would learn of him. We would be more faithful as we seek to follow you according to the word that you revealed to us. We pray all of this in Christ's name, amen. we come again to a scene that unfolds in the Garden of Gethsemane here on the night before Jesus was crucified. And the context here in which the scene of his betrayal and his arrest unfold, it sort of It comes in the midst of some of Jesus' teaching and his instruction to his disciples in the context of prayer, but in particular in verse 47, we see that it was while he was still speaking, the scene begins to unfold in such a way as to interrupt Jesus' very words of instruction to his disciples in verse 46. While he was still speaking the words that came immediately before, and immediately before, Jesus said, why are you sleeping? Rise and pray that you may not enter into temptation. This is often the case with us, that temptation strikes when we least expect it. And I understand this entire passage in verses 47 through 53 while narrating the betrayal of Jesus by Judas and by the arrest and this whole scene that begins to unfold with this scuffle between the disciples and the crowd of those who are wielding clubs and swords. All of this narrates for us true history, of course, and it helps us to understand what Jesus suffered there in these moments before his arrest and leading up to his crucifixion. But they also provide for us a powerful illustration of just the sort of temptations that Jesus has been warning his disciples against and telling them to pray so that they not enter into this temptation. And temptation often strikes us in this way, when we least expect it. It reveals our weaknesses and our worldliness, and so we must prepare ourselves for it. Jesus may have anticipated some of these things. He knew from the beginning who it was that would betray him, we're told in John's Gospel. Even during this Passover meal and during the institution of the Lord's Supper there, He dismisses Judas, telling him to go and to do what it is that you're going to do, after he's already told the disciples that one of them would betray him. So Jesus knows that Judas will betray him and that his arrest is imminent. I'm sure though that the disciples were shocked, they're taken by surprise, off guard. And you can see that here in the middle of our passage, how they respond in this way. but they're unprepared for what comes. Jesus has, though, told them to rise and pray, that they're not asleep on the job, as it were, that they're not overcome with a spiritual laxity and by a lack of prayer that prevents them from handling and facing temptation in a way that is pleasing to the Lord. And Luke places this event right after, really in the midst of Jesus' call to vigilance, and the interruption isn't random. I think it's, again, it's a living sermon or a real-life illustration on the temptations that we face in Christ's victory over them. And so there's some things that we can learn here about temptation. And there are several temptations, and the first of these is the temptation to betray Jesus' person. I see this in verses 47 through 48, which focuses on this interaction between Jesus and the betrayer, who is Judas. And we read these verses again. We're told that Judas was one of the 12, and this is to underscore the closeness. but between Judas and Jesus. He was not just one of the disciples. There were sort of concentric circles of disciples and those who followed Jesus' ministry very carefully and at some level were supportive of Jesus or were attracted to Jesus. We know that there was a larger group of 70, for example, who were trusted enough by Jesus to be sent out as the disciples, the 12 disciples, were sent out. So there were 70. To be among the twelve was to be in the midst of an inner circle of disciples and to enjoy a kind of friendship and familiarity with Jesus that few people had the experience of. And yet Judas, one of the twelve, then betrays Jesus with a kiss, which is a sign of affection. a sign of closeness and familiarity, and he trades this familiarity and this friendship with Jesus for 30 pieces of silver. And you think, well, what can you buy with 30 pieces of silver? I don't know, I didn't do, it's really hard to do that kind of, some people do, they're Bible scholars who try to come up with equivalencies between, say, 30 pieces of silver in first century, you know, ancient Near Eastern world, and in the modern day, US dollar, but it's so inaccurate and so difficult to approximate. But you just ask yourself, 30 pieces of silver, what could it possibly have bought him? Could it have bought him land? Could it have bought him a house? I mean, could it have bought him an estate, a vast estate, a vineyard, a castle, an armed guard? What could it have bought him that would have been worth trading for familiarity, this closeness with the Savior? Well, I know what it ultimately bought him. What that 30 pieces of silver ultimately secured for Jesus was his place in the farthest reaches of hell. If you're familiar with, it's a fictional work, but Dante's Inferno, and Dante describes hell for us. And in his vision of what hell is like, the very innermost circle of hell, the very bottom of things, there is the devil who is devouring Judas. That of all the people who suffer in hell, that Judas suffers most for this greatest of sins, his betrayal of Jesus for a kiss. And yet this betrayal happened well before Gethsemane. It was a betrayal of the heart. And we know that Judas was... If you remember the story of... of the woman who anoints Jesus with an expensive perfume. Judas protests this perfume could have been used. It was an expensive perfume. It could have been used to support the poor. Well, what Jesus is really thinking, we're told this, is that he's thinking that that money could have been used to support me because he used to help himself. to the moneybags, and so he was a dishonest manager of the Lord's funds, and through greed and through fraud, he took advantage of his closeness and familiarity with the Lord. He'd been betraying him all along, in other words. And so it began with a betrayal of the heart in which Judas loved Jesus only to the degree that he could exploit him for worldly gain. And for this reason, he failed to love Jesus truly. And there's a lesson here, I think, and there's a warning here. It's too late for Judas at this point, but it's not too late for those other disciples who Jesus is warning against temptation. He's telling them to pray that you not fall into the temptation that, say, Judas is about to fall into and really has already fallen into. That you're not willing to cash in closeness to Christ for some kind of worldly comfort. I didn't mean to alliterate all that, but that was pretty good. That we're not trading in our closeness and the possibility of intimacy with the Savior. He is worth far more than everything that this world could offer us. And yet Judas just trades in on this. And we're presented with this striking contrast with the betrayal, handing over Christ, but then with the kiss, so that we see really what the stakes are. You can either have one or the other, but you cannot have both. And so Jesus challenges Judas on this point. Would you betray me with a kiss? How hypocritical is that? How much of a contradiction in terms is this that you would pretend or under a pretense enjoy closeness with Jesus and yet betray him either in your heart, with your life? And it's a real temptation for all of us that we all of us have to reckon with. Do I love Jesus only for what he can secure for me with worldly comforts, with material prosperity, even for eternal comforts? And there's some people who, it's a question that's been, I think, well asked is that would you be okay with a heaven that was devoid of Christ? If you could have all of the blessings that we associate with heaven, all of the peace, and there's just eternal unending life, and there's no sickness or death, and we can live forever with all of our loved ones in a paradise, but what if Christ was not there? Could you accept that? Could you trade Christ for all of that? And the heart of the Christian has to say, truly, no, because that is what makes heaven heaven. It's not unending life that I look forward to. It's not the quantity of days, of seconds and minutes and hours and days and weeks that I look forward to. Everybody who's suffered even a little bit can tell you that that's not all it's cracked up to be. We can wish for fewer days if we suffer greatly enough, but it's not just unending days, but it's a certain quality of life. It is eternal life. It is abundant life. It's the life that can only come through a relationship with the Savior, through friendship, through fellowship with Jesus. And so Judas, he abandons this, he gives it up for a pittance. A second temptation that we find here is the temptation to bypass Jesus' purpose. We see the temptation to betray Jesus' person, and we see secondly in verses 49 through 51, the temptation to bypass Jesus' purpose. The disciples here are now tempted to step ahead of Jesus, really and truthfully. The disciples, they see the crowd. They sense the threat to Jesus. They've been anticipating the arrival of the kingdom. Jesus, from the beginning, has been preaching. Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. It is near at hand. It is coming, and it is coming soon. And you know, there have been times in Jesus' ministry where the disciples have been practically giddy with excitement about the arrival of the kingdom. When I read it, in my mind's eye, I see them sort of skipping along, almost giggling. Which of us do you think is gonna be his right hand? And they get to arguing about that, and Jesus has to rebuke them, but they're thinking about their position in the kingdom, and how things are gonna change, and the overthrow of the Romans, and God's gonna usher in this everlasting kingdom. that has been long promised to be delivered over to the Son of David. And as they see all these things coming to pass, they're practically giddy with excitement, although Jesus has time and again warned them. that the Christ must first suffer. He's done it even in our near context, in our more limited context of this very night. He has warned them about this in verse 37. 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. And so he's speaking as he has spoken about His purpose in coming, which is not to bring the sword. It's not to, with violence and through the use of force, to usher in this kingdom and its fullness and its finality. But He's come, first of all, not to judge those who stand opposed to God and His will and His kingdom, but to bring mercy, to bring salvation, to seek and to save those who are lost. The disciples, time and again, as Jesus time and again seeks to make this purpose of his very clear, they time and again misunderstand to the point where you have to wonder, do they willfully misunderstand? Peter has already been rebuked. We know, not from Luke, but from John, that it's Peter here who's the one that cuts off the ear. I don't think he was aiming for the ear, by the way. I think he was aiming for the neck. And so we have a great mercy of God, first of all, that in God's prominence, he missed the guy's head, missed his neck, and only took off his ear. And then secondly, that Jesus, in mercy, restored, or Peter would have been executed. Perhaps all the disciples would have been executed, along with Christ. But that wasn't God's will, and it's not God's will for His disciples to take up the sword. We read in verse 49 that when those who were around Him saw what would follow, they said, Lord, shall we strike with the sword? But here's their mistake. They don't wait for the answer. They don't wait for the answer. And how often is that the case with us? Our temptation is to bypass Jesus' purposes and to assert our own will. In our own wisdom, we think that we know best about any number of things. First and foremost, God's purpose is in bringing His kingdom to pass. And what is God doing today in his church and through his ministers and through his people and his churches? How is he bringing the kingdom to pass? And it's not in the way that the disciples assumed. We see here in verse 51 of them, struck the servant of the high priest and cut off his right ear. Peter cut off the right ear of the bond servant of the high priest. His name was Malchus, we're told in John, this servant. And so you have one here who is essentially a slave of the high priest. And Peter has a mind to kill him in order to bring the kingdom into existence. completely at odds with the reason why Jesus came, which is to take men like Malchus who were slaves and to proclaim to them freedom and to bring them salvation, not freedom from their bond servitude or their slavery to the high priest Caiaphas, but to bring them freedom from their sin. They miss this and rather seek to accomplish God's will in their way rather than in God's way. And this has been a temptation down through the ages for Christians. It's a temptation for each of us, I think, too. We know generally what God's word requires. We know God's law. We read it week by week in our Lord's Day services. And so we know what God requires. And we long and we ought to long for there to be righteousness. in the world where there's unrighteousness. And we long, we ought to long for there to be worship where there is now even only idolatry. Around the world, across our land, there's idolatry. And we ought to have a zeal that idolatry be repented of and be quashed and that the true worship of God be established and that people from every place under heaven Every language, every nation, every tribe sing praises to God. And they discontinue their obstinate rebellion and begin to obey God from the heart according to His word, His law. But how we bring this to pass matters a great deal. And the Apostle Paul says that we wrestle not against flesh and blood. We wrestle against spiritual powers of darkness in the heavenly places. There's spiritual warfare that we are up against. It's not just physical warfare. It's not just conflict between humans, but there's real spiritual warfare, and it requires spiritual devices and spiritual power and spiritual means in order to take hearts that are captive to the evil ones. and to darkness and to sin, and to bring them freedom. And it takes the gospel of Jesus Christ. And we have an example of that here in verse 51, because Jesus said, no more of this. He makes his will known, and if only they had listened to him to begin with. But then he does this, he touches the man's ear and he healed them. And so he illustrates that this is his purpose, to bring healing, to bring salvation, to show mercy, There's a third temptation here in our text, and it is the temptation to belittle Jesus' power. Verses 52 through 53, the temptation to belittle Jesus' power. We read here, then Jesus said to the chief priest and officers of the temple and elders who had come out against him, have you come out as against a robber with swords and clubs? You know, there's a fear in them. They have a certain degree of fear of Jesus. I don't think there was anything particularly impressive about Jesus as far as his stature, the disciples are not, we're not talking about, he's not walking around with a Roman legion, although he does say that if it were his will he could call legions, six legions of angels to his side. And yet as far as external appearances, he's walking around with a ragtag group of fishermen and tax collectors and all of these people that are sort of these ne'er-do-wells who are borderline outcasts or certainly they don't have high status in Israel. And Jesus says, you could have taken me at any time. But there's a certain degree of fear that if they'd attempted to arrest him during the day and in the temple, that there'd have been a civil unrest. And so they take him at night. And yet perhaps they don't fear him enough. They think they can catch him in a moment of weakness, and then by their own power, they can control him, they can arrest him, they can put him to death and be done with this problem. Jesus admits that they do have a measure of power. He says in verse 53, when I was with you day after day in the temple, you did not lay hands on me, but he says here that this is your hour and the power of darkness. It's as if Jesus is saying, this is your time for now. You have power over me for now. And the mention of an hour I think it suggests, if we look at the way that this language is used throughout the Bible, to refer to God's sovereignty over everything that comes to pass. So that time, really, in an ultimate sense, time is the unfolding of God's purposes. So frequently God speaks of time, and we can almost translate that and add the word appointed time, because all things are happening according to God's plan and according to His purpose. And so just to name a few of these examples we have, even in just the Gospels and Matthew, concerning that day or hour, no one knows, not even the angels of heaven or the Son, but only the Father. Speaking of the hour of Jesus' second coming, it's an hour, a time that is delimited. It's been put on God's calendar. He knows it's been appointed. He says also in Matthew, Therefore you also must be ready for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect. An hour that might as well be any other hour to us because we don't expect it, but it is a very definite hour as far as God's timing is concerned. And we have other references to this. For example, in 1 John 2.18, children, it is the last hour. And as you have heard, the Antichrist is coming. So now many Antichrists have come. Therefore, we know that it is the last hour. Jesus speaks about his second coming in this way. He also speaks of his death in this way. Jesus, he said in John 4, 21, Woman, believe me, the hour is coming. I'm sorry, I misread. Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come. And so this is at the wedding in Cana, Jesus is asked to turn the water to wine. And he said, my hour is not yet coming. So he's speaking about the hour of his being revealed to Israel, the hour of his public ministry, the hour which will culminate in his death. So the use of hour frequently has to do with an appointed time, that it unfolds and it comes to pass according to divine initiative. It speaks to us of divine sovereignty. And Jesus says here, this is your hour. You hear now how what he's saying is, it's your appointed hour. That in God's providence and under God's sovereign control, you have been allotted a time and this is it. But don't get used to it. It's your time for now. Don't rejoice in it. Yes, you have power. It is the power of darkness. But know this, that the power of darkness will not triumph. And ultimately, what we're going to see is just in just a few days, the power of God will triumph over the power of hell and sin and death as Jesus is raised by the power of God. And it's by that same power that God has victory over the power of darkness. And so these people, they have a measure of fear, but they badly underestimate the power of Jesus. They belittle Jesus' power. And it's a temptation for any of us because of the appearance of things, which is so often not the reality of things. Especially when we look at Jesus in his earthly ministry, he comes in humility. He's born in a feeding trough, in a manger, and in all his life he grows up in relative obscurity, in poverty even, and his ministry is not impressive by and large. And his death is ignomious, and it's shameful. It's a criminal's death. And so it's very easy to belittle Jesus and to overlook him and to think very little at all of Jesus, but it would be a temptation to do so. And we would be underestimating Jesus' power. And so we must not fall into these temptations or enter into them as Jesus warns his disciples. And if we're not to do that, then we must pray. We must rise and pray. We must be vigilant. We must watch out. Keep a watch over our souls and pray often and in a spirit of absolute dependence upon the Lord that we not fall prey to any of these temptations or enter into them. but rather stay true to the Lord. Jesus gives them this instruction just before these powerful illustrations of the kinds of temptations that they might fall into. And in short order, each one of them will fall away into temptation. And yet Jesus will restore them and Jesus will empower them with his Holy Spirit that they might not fall away ultimately, fall away from the faith, fall away from him. Let's pray that God would do the same for us. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Father God, we do thank you for the warnings in scripture every bit as much as we thank you for the blessings and the promises that you give to us in scripture. We look forward to the blessings and we pray that you give us faith to believe them, to believe the promises. But God, for the warnings, we pray that you would give us a proper respect for these warnings. That we would have a sense of the dangers that are out there dangers to our souls, dangers which come from the world, from real personal spiritual evil. Indeed, we wrestle not against flesh and blood. Help us not to count sinners as our enemies, God, whom you came that they might have good news preached to them. That is your purpose. But God, help us to be mindful of the very real enemies that we have, the temptations and the dangers, the toils and the snares. We pray that you would keep us, guard us. God, that you would help us to persevere in our faith until that hour that you have appointed for your coming again, when you will come in power and glory with legions of angels. and with your saints to inherit your kingdom. We pray all of this in Christ's name, amen.