Well, the congregation, let me invite us this morning to open our Bible to the book of Mark. We are in chapter 14, Mark chapter 14. Our text will begin on page 1580 in the Pew Bible, 1,580 in the Pew Bible. We've come now to this next text beginning at verse 43. considering the arrest of Jesus, and there are important matters to consider here, not only in terms of his ministry, but it's outworking in the life of the church and the Christian today. So with confidence then, beloved, as believing that this is entirely God's word, let's read beginning in verse 43 at Mark 14 and verse 43. Just as he was speaking, Judas, one of the 12, appeared. With him was a crowd armed with swords and clubs sent from the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the elders. Now the betrayer had arranged a signal with them. The one I kiss is the man. Arrest him and lead him away under guard. Going at once to Jesus, Judas said, Rabbi, and kissed him. The men seized Jesus and arrested him. Then one of those standing near drew his sword and struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his ear. Am I leading a rebellion, said Jesus, that you have come out with swords and clubs to capture me? Every day I was with you, teaching in the temple courts, and you did not arrest me. But the scriptures must be fulfilled. Then everyone deserted him and fled. A young man wearing nothing but a linen garment was following Jesus. When they seized him, he fled naked, leaving his garment behind. Well, thus far this morning, beloved, God's rich, perfect and glorious word, we believe, what he has said, but let's ask the Spirit's help this morning that this, his word might be applied to our hearts and our lives show the reaction. Let's pray now asking his help, shall we? Our Father in heaven, we are so very thankful for your word given to us down through the ages, inspired by your word, preserved by your providence so that we might take it up and read. But Lord, now we ask for that help which the Spirit only can give. that you would enable your people to hear, oh Lord, give us open ears, to receive, Lord, give hearts that are softened, to understand, Lord, please work in our minds to grasp these things, that faith would be born but also nurtured. Lord, receive our petition and please answer us by your powerful spirit for the glory of Jesus Christ, we ask it in his name, amen. Well, dear congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ, it is good and helpful for us to see what this supper before us this morning cost, what this supper cost our dear Savior Jesus. That cost to him includes the events of our text. How do we think Jesus responded to these actions against him? even though he had just told his disciples, that's where we were not too long ago, had just told his disciples that they would all desert him. Now they actually do it. And his betrayer, his betrayer came up and gives him the kiss of death. How incredibly painful and offensive are these things? We know them so well that they really sometimes don't get a hold of us in the offense, the blatant and amazing offense that these things are. So in terms of that, and if you received the preparatory devotional and the call last Sunday, if you received the call to prepare, how did you do so? How'd it go? Have you been repenting of sin? Have you pondered the holiness of God and in reflecting upon the unbelievable holiness of God, did you view your own life and say, no, there is still sin in me? How have we committed, the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ in this postmodern day, how have we committed to put sin to death? You see, we are the ones so richly blessed by the Lord. But he is the one so terribly treated by those in our text. The question then which we must ask this morning is this one. Which actions from us show that we are amazed at what Jesus here does for us? What actions flow from that amazement? You see, beloved, and this is in your bulletin if you wanna follow along in the sermon handout, the arrest of the Lord and desertion of his followers amaze us, the recipients of his salvation. The arrest of the Lord and desertion of his followers amaze us, the recipients of his salvation. Well then, beloved, from the text, first of all, the arrest begins with a warrant from the highest Hebrew court. This text is Jesus against the world. No one stands with him. But of all of those against him, The ones we probably at this point, the ones we probably at this text don't think too much about are the members of the Sanhedrin. Now you might be asking, well, what's the Sanhedrin? Well, it was the highest Hebrew court of the time. It was primarily a religious court made up, look at verse 43, of the chief priests, the teachers of the law, and the elders. And what we need to understand about our text is that all of those who now descend upon the Lord Jesus Christ with swords and clubs in hand, led by Judas, they all come under the orders, the warrant issued by the Sanhedrin for his arrest. Now, does this shock us? When we begin to think about religious figures, religious people, now even the religious elite, does this shock us? The very men who should have been steeped in the scriptures, they should have known incredibly well God's word. They should have understood that the Messiah was promised and that he had arrived and here he is, the King of Israel, the Lord glorious. But no, they are the very ones to write the order to have the Son of God arrested. Notice again from the text, it's very clear, the crowd with Judas was, verse 43, notice the word, sent from the religious leaders. The ones who walked among the people with the flowing robes, who wanted everybody to think about them, that they were the, quote, holy ones, ordered the capture of the holy one. Now, stop and think about this for a little bit longer, because we need to counsel ourselves in this regard. Do we wonder how things got to this point with the Sanhedrin? Are the Old Testament scriptures unclear about the coming of the promised Messiah? Or rather, did they choose to ignore those promises? Like Isaiah 7, the virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son. Or Isaiah 9, for unto us a son is born unto us, a child is given who will reign on David's throne and over his kingdom. Then those are just two. There are so many promises that flow out of that, that flood up out of the old covenant. What did they hear? What did they read? What did they ignore? What about people today? What is broadly known about the Lord Jesus Christ? what is understood about who he is. Now it's true that in America at least, biblical knowledge is on the decline in the broad populace of people. What generally people understood in the 1980s and 90s is not so much well understood today as we are fully into the 2000s. But most people know something. What do they do with that knowledge? But what about those who lived around in the time of the Lord Jesus Christ? When they heard about or saw His healings, His giving sight to the blind and hearing to the deaf or raising the dead, what did they do with that? As He was feeding the thousands with just a little bit, what did they say about it? When they heard His kingdom teachings, all of this, you see, the religious elites were ignoring. For a lot of reasons we don't have time to go back into. We've been over that turf already in Mark, but they were ignoring. But we have heard. We have come this morning. Do you remember that question I asked us before we came to the reading of God's will this morning? I said, why are we here? What have we come for? Isn't it as we view that meal before us? Isn't it that we have come because of Jesus Christ? We are here this morning to say that he is my Lord, that he is my Savior, that I am found safe in him alone, in Christ alone. Isn't that our response? Isn't that why we're here? But secondly, The traitor leads the way and betrays with a kiss. Well, talk about our Lord's grief and anguish. Here comes Judas. Now, I can't imagine something. I can't envision something happening. I want to lay it out for you and ask if you agree with this would never happen sort of thinking. I get news from a family in the church that a baby boy has been born. And I delightfully, as always is the case, go to the hospital if it's a possible thing to do. And I meet the family there at the hospital. And I see their beautiful baby boy. And I say, what have you named him? And they say, well, we've named him Judas. Now, I said, I can't imagine that ever happening. Do you agree with me that that's probably very improbable? That's not going to happen. Well, why not? It's obvious, right? The very name now is a definition. It means betrayer. It means traitor. I don't know anybody named Judas now. Maybe you do and come up to me afterward and tell me if you know somebody named Judas. I don't expect there are too many. Unless they're trying to be antithetical, intentionally antithetical, opposed to Christianity. But the text says. He comes and betrays with a kiss. Why that? If you do a little study in the scriptures of the kiss appearing in the Bible, it's not infrequent. It is found regularly from Isaac on. With Jacob and Joseph and Naomi and Elisha and so many more, the kiss is a sign of love and respect and affection. Do you know that four times in the New Testament, the Apostle Paul tells us, counsels us, to greet one another with a holy kiss, not once or twice, four times. And Peter says the same thing. And so what Judas is doing here is not just a general, oh, this is my, let me think of something. Oh, let's try a kiss. It's something much more intentional, a thought perhaps placed in him by the evil who now possesses him, as John tells us. What level of betrayal could be deeper and colder than this? And remember, Judas had seen it all. Three years of intimate association with Jesus. He had seen the healings. He had heard the teachings. He watched the prayers of the Lord, a whole night in prayer often. He had seen the leadership of the Lord in gospel, biblical, loving leadership. But now this. A prearranged sign, a gross, dark, vile misuse and abuse of the sign of love, or if I can put it more bluntly, love was used for evil. Oh, dear Christian, ask again the question, what did this meal before our eyes this morning cost Jesus? How was he mistreated and maligned and grieved and pained and how much anguish came into his heart? We flatten things. I said this last week. We flatten the emotional life of the Lord Jesus Christ into, oh, nothing really affected him. He was this impervious, unable to be assailed emotional guy. He was platonic, if you like that sort of philosophical way of putting it, like the Plato is supposed to not be affected by anything. He was a stoic. He was never touched. That was all wrong. He's fully man, just as he is also fully God. What do we read when we read the text? And why am I stressing this so much? Because as Christians, we have to say we're not unaffected by the pain that sin brings into this life. We're gonna come to that more in a moment. But even beyond the grief, the horror of the sinlessness of the beautiful one being maligned and betrayed by one of his own. Did we, last Sunday, when we were asked to consider entering into a week of preparatory by self-examination, did we say, well now that's not asking too much of me, it's not. Did we say as we were going through this week of self-examination and preparatory, did we say, yes, indeed, I do have sins to confess. I have need of repenting. I do need to confess that I am not perfect. I'm not an unflawed human. I'm a Christian who's still on a path. I have sins and habits and patterns of sin in my life still. Did you say that? Do you agree with that this morning? If I asked you all right now to raise your hands, if you agree that you have sins still in your life, would you be willing to raise your hand and say, yes, it's true about me? Now, I'm not going to ask you, but would you? I have need of the Lord Jesus Christ. Is that true of you? You see, as we face his supper this morning, let's make sure that we first face him in honesty, in humility, in the confessing of our own sins and repentance over our own betrayals, because he will have mercy on all who confess and repent. Well, thirdly, then, we come back to this issue of his emotional life as a real man. Jesus is offended as the scripture is fulfilled. Now, the betrayer, verse 44, had arranged a signal with them. The one I kissed is a man. Arrest him and lead him away under guard. Going at once to Jesus, Judas said, Rabbi, and kissed him. Now, after that, things move quite rapidly. Verse 46. The men seized Jesus and arrested him. At the same moment, it seems, one of those standing near drew his sword and struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his ear. We're told by John in John chapter 18, verse 10, that it was Peter who had sword in hand, and it was a man named Malchus who had his ear cut off. All of this happens almost simultaneously and very rapidly, and all of it is of violence. All of it is of violence, darkness, wickedness. And that is especially true when we ponder again just for a moment how utterly pure and holy is Jesus Christ. The Heidelberg Catechism asks us about the suffering of the Lord Jesus Christ. We just dealt with that section a week or so ago, and the catechism reminds us that His suffering included, of course, the cross. That's the primary moment, the apex of it. But His suffering was His whole life long. Why does it say that? Let me ask you how you would answer that question if I say to you, when you're watching TV and somebody takes the name of the Lord in vain, do you wince? On a TV show, if people are misusing God's name as a common swear word, does it bother you? If you're watching a show and a murder is portrayed and it gets quite graphic and you see things that you wouldn't have seen 20, 30, 40 years ago, does it hurt your heart? Since I hope we're saying yes about those questions, how do you suppose sin impacted the holiest one? If we're kind of hurt a little bit, and I hope we're hurt a lot by such things, how would Jesus have received gross, vile behavior, including being seized by wicked men and arrested and watching a man have his ear cut off in front of him Is Jesus offended? He says it. Verse 48, am I leading a rebellion? The expected answer to that question must be no. He's not leading a rebellion. But you've come out at me with swords and clubs to capture me. I was with you every day teaching in the temple courts. You didn't arrest me. But the Scripture has to be fulfilled. So there's a sense in his full humanity of the weightiness, the grievousness of what is happening to him. It is, in a certain sense, beating him down. Now, he was already wrestling with his father in the garden. Remember how the scripture portrays it, in prayer so much that the drops of sweat were like blood flowing from him. Didn't cover that because it's not in Mark per se, but that's what was going on in the Garden of Gethsemane in his prayer. His disciples had already left him, not awake and keeping watch in prayer, but rather sleeping, and now it only grows worse. And if you scan ahead, verses 53 and following, All the way into the middle and last part of chapter 15, you will see that it is unrelenting. That is the grief and the agony and the horror that falls on the Lord Jesus Christ only gets worse and worse. But what about? Here. When he says verse 49, but the Scriptures must be fulfilled to which Scripture do you suppose he's referring? Let me mention three. First of all, I believe it's right to say that he has in mind Isaiah 53, 12. Isaiah 53, 12, and he was numbered with the transgressors. This is a fulfillment of that part of Isaiah 53, and Isaiah 53 has many fulfillments throughout all of this process of his arrest and mock sham trial and crucifixion. And I think there's another one we ought to say, of course, we'll come to this again in a moment, but Zechariah 13, seven, we mentioned that before, when the shepherd is struck, the sheep flee, which happens here. The scriptures must be fulfilled. Verse 50, everyone deserted him exactly was prophesied. But I think perhaps beloved, there's another one that we wouldn't maybe necessarily think of that is indeed primary in its fulfillment here. And it's another text in Isaiah. It's 5.20. Jot that down because it has so much application. Isaiah 5.20, woe to those who call evil good and good evil. Because you see again, He is not leading a rebellion. He is rather bringing in the Kingdom of God. which action of his is the very best news. Why do we call it the evangel, the good news, the gospel, the work of the Lord Jesus Christ? It's the greatest good, and it has been called here by the religious leaders, the Sanhedrin, all connected with them, the greatest evil. That's what they call his work. And so too today. When people mock the Lord Jesus Christ and Christianity, they may not realize what they are doing, but they are calling the greatest possible good the greatest evil. Why do they, the Sanhedrin and others, call it good that Jesus is arrested, the greatest act of evil leading to the cross? And so, church, what does this spiritual food before us strengthen us for? That is, what do we need this renewal, this spiritual energy to accomplish? Pause for a moment and ponder something. The form I'm about to read includes these words. We'll come to the form in a minute, but I want to read ahead. Listen to these words, which I'll read again in a little bit. Our Lord promises, moreover, that as we eat the bread and drink the cup, we are fed with his crucified body and shed blood. To this end, he gives us his life-giving spirit, through whom the body and blood of our Lord become, now listen, the life-giving nourishment of our souls. Now that's a particularly Calvinistic, phrase. It comes from Calvin's understanding of what happens at the Lord's Supper. And I want to ask us if we understand the significance of that for our Christian walk. Why do we partake of this supper? We say, well, to remember what he's done for us. Yes, indeed. But isn't it more than that? This supper you see nourishes us. It fills us with spiritual nourishment, but I ask you again, for what? Unto what end? For what goal? To what purpose? Well, beloved, it is from the text, the purpose of spiritual battles. for doing battle with those words and actions and structures of society and culture that flow from the pit of hell that are so rampantly overtaking the world today, doing battle in the gospel. The supper is then in part for the goal of standing strong when the world calls the actions of biblical Christians wicked. And they are doing so in greater and greater measure of frequency. Do you know that when you speak about a biblical issue of ethics or morals in our culture today, you are more likely than you were 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago to be called some negative name of a variety of categories. Because you say, the Bible says this, and I believe this. Somebody's going to say about you, O-U-R-A, and then fill in the blank. Why is that? Another question is, where do we find strength to stand strong? The answer is from the Lord, who's promised to strengthen us. When the world is calling wicked good and calling good evil, the Christian wants to say, no, good is good, evil is evil, and I'm not going to change at all on what I believe about that. For that, dear Christians, We need strength. The strength of his word. The strength of the word which guides our distribution administration of the sacrament. We need Christ. Well. Fourthly. Everyone deserted him. The author to question mark. Look at verse 50. Then everyone deserted him and fled. A young man, verse 51, wearing nothing but a linen garment was following Jesus. When they seized him, he fled naked, leaving his garment behind. Again, the fulfillment of Zechariah 13, seven. When the hard times came, those closest to him did not stay, they ran. So what is the cost? of following Jesus, and who's willing to pay it? Now, I didn't ask you to raise your hands earlier, and I'm again not gonna ask you to raise your hand, but if I asked you to raise your hand, those willing to pay the price of following Jesus, how many of us this morning would do that? The answer to that question, by the way, in the text leads us to a strange consideration. of the young man who runs away without clothes. He had only a linen garment wrapped around him. They tried to grab hold of him by grabbing that linen garment. They ended up only holding the garment. He escapes. There is a tradition of interpretation that says this young man who fled naked is Mark himself, who will later, by the Spirit, pen, be the author, humanly speaking, of the book of Mark. This may well be true. It is known historically that that man, Mark, who will later write the book, lived in Jerusalem, part of a wealthy family. It is also likely that it was his family's house, Mark's family's house in Jerusalem, where Jesus and his disciples in the upper room celebrated the Passover. Well, then we asked the question if if that is true, what would be the point of Mark mentioning his own desertion of the Lord here in the text? Well, I think it is to say. That all fled. Everyone abandoned him. Including me, says Mark, the author of the word by the Spirit. When what was required? Was fidelity. To stand fast. He flees even when that fleeing, abandoning required the abject humility of fleeing naked. Truly, Jesus was despised and rejected by men. But we. Are here this morning. To say. I don't reject him. especially if we take repentance seriously, if we take faith seriously. That is, we don't run away and deny him. And I would encourage us, beloved, to consider that as we face the issues that will come to us in this week. As we believe all that he says and desire to follow him in all righteousness, we will say, no, I'm going to stand fast when the trials come. And what I just said, is exactly why we need this supper. Because we're weak. We run away faster than we think we would have. We deny him quicker than we imagined we could have. We need the supper of our Lord. We need to eat and drink so that we will remember all that he did for us. And by this supper, we are spiritually fed. I say it again, beloved. We are nourished in our souls for the hard times that are coming. Beloved, his work amazes us. And now we will be nourished by that very work of Jesus. Amen. Let's pray. Well, Father in heaven, we thank you so much for the richness of your word and its application to believers every place in every age, including us. Now. We ask Lord that you would apply by the Spirit this word to us that we may find so many rich applications as has been hinted at now, Lord. Lead us to wrestle with these things. To find comfort in Jesus. and the strength, as the Apostle Paul would put it, to stand. We ask for help now in Jesus' name, amen. Well, beloved, just before we come to the table of our Lord, let's stand again and we'll sing using our red songbooks, turning to page one, sorry, 246, our red songbooks, 246. There is a fountain filled with blood.