The Fulfillment of Scripture

Published by Stanley Pouw in 2015 · 7 June 2015

We are looking tonight through the eyes of Matthew, who along with Mark, Luke and John, record this section that deals with the betrayal and arrest of Jesus Christ. It brings into focus the plan of Judas. Bethlehem gave the world it’s most loved and respected person, Jesus Christ. And a little town called Kerioth, 23 miles south of Jerusalem, gave the world its most despised character, Judas.

Jesus on Thursday night, before the celebration of the Passover with His disciples, said that one of them was a betrayer, identified Judas, and then sent him out to do what he was ready to do. And after he was gone, they celebrated the Lord’s Supper, and Jesus taught them and prayed to the Father on their behalf. After that He, with the eleven remaining disciples, went to the Mount of Olives, to a place called the Garden of Gethsemane. And there the Lord entered into prayer as Satan came in three waves of temptation against Him, but He was strengthened by an angel, and resolutely ready to die on the cross.

While Jesus was praying, the disciples were sleeping instead of praying. After the third time of prayer, He came back to the sleeping disciples and wakened them, because it was the time of His betrayal. He knew that there was a mob of people coming toward the garden, led by Judas. First there is the coming of the mob, then the kiss of the traitor, then the defection of the disciples, and finally the triumph of the Savior. As we look at each of these, it will unfold in all of its reality, for it is a dramatic scene.

Verse 47, “And so Judas, one of the twelve, came and with him a great multitude with swords and clubs,” and John adds “with torches and lanterns and weapons,” “from the chief priests and elders of the people.” So we know that behind the whole thing were the chief priests and elders. They had enlisted a Roman band of 600 men, one-tenth of a legion that came along. The Jewish leaders had convinced the Romans that indeed Jesus was an insurrectionist who would lead a revolution.

So the crowd that day was an unjust mob. Jesus had done no crime. Jesus is the King of Righteousness, and to mistreat Him is utter injustice. Secondly, the crowd is also mindless. And it is so today; there are people all around the world who reject Jesus Christ simply because they see others do the same. Thirdly they are cowardly. They find strength in numbers. And then fourthly, they are profane. Their sinful hands beat on Him, plucked His beard, and pushed a crown of thorns on His head, and nailed Him to a cross. He was treated sacrilegiously.

We also looked also at the kiss of the traitor. Here, a prolonged kiss and an embrace is the sign of betrayal. Who would do that? Only one possessed of Satan himself. Jesus spoke when Judas came to Him, “Are you betraying the Son of Man with a kiss?” Luke 22:48. And Mark 14:45 indicates that Judas simply said, “Master, Master,” and kept on kissing Him. So Jesus endured this despicable kiss. And in verse 50, Jesus says to him “comrade”, no longer friend “do what you have come to do.”

Now, the mob is another illustration of false discipleship. Judas is a classic example of one who feigned love and loyalty and yet betrayed Christ. He is an illustration of wasted privilege, and he is a picture of the love of money, because there was nothing higher priced than Christ, and he sold Him for 30 pieces of silver. He is the false disciple, who loses his opportunity, who loves money more than the Son of God, and who is the hypocrite who betrays the Son of God with a kiss.

And many people today are just the same. They are many false disciples in the church. They feign loyalty and they feign love to Christ. They pretend to care, but they really don’t and they would substitute Jesus for anything else that seemed more valuable at the moment, and they do. And when they see that life isn’t going the way they thought it would, and they’re not getting out of Jesus what they thought He would deliver, they will go for something else. That is with us even here today.

Now, that brings us to the third point, which is the desertion of the disciples. Notice the last half of Matthew 26:50 again, “Then they came up and laid hands on Jesus and took Him.” John 18:12 said they were the Roman soldiers, the temple police and the Jewish authorities – they all did it together. But before they could tie Him up, Luke 22:49 says, “And when those who were around him saw what would follow, they said, “Lord, shall we strike with the sword?” Do You want to have a battle here in the garden?

Well, right after the question of Luke 22:49 was asked, guess who acted? Verse 51 says, “And one of them struck the servant of the high priest and cut off his right ear.” Matthew, Mark and Luke don’t tell us who it was. But John tells us who it was. “Why did John tell us?” Because the gospel of John was the last one penned many years afterwards, and it was safe to say who it was then. The earlier writers Matthew, Mark, and Luke don’t want to identify Peter, because he will experience difficulty for using a sword against the Jews and the Romans.

John also tells us whose ear was cut off; his name was Malchus, and he was an important person, the adjutant to the high priest. Now, Peter was not going for his ear; he wasn’t that good with a sword, he was going for his head, but he ducked. Peter’s idea was, “We’ll just take them all on.” Well, whatever gave Peter such boldness? You see, when the whole mob came into the garden, as soon as Jesus went out and said to them, “I am He,” they all fell down to the ground. So Peter thought, “If I get into trouble the Lord will knock them all down anyway.”

Furthermore, it was just part of his nature to react rather violently. Where did he get a sword? Luke 22:38 tell us, “And they said, “Look, Lord, here are two swords.” And He said to them, “It is enough.” Now, some people think what the Lord meant was “that will be enough to win the battle,” but obviously that’s not what the Lord meant, because the Lord said to Peter as soon as he used his sword, “Put it back.” What the Lord meant was, “Look, that’s enough, we are not into physical swords.”

2 Corinthians 10:4 says, “For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds.” Christianity makes no advances by earthly weapons. Any so-called earthly holy war in the name of Christ is utterly unholy. The Kingdom of God does not advance with fleshly weapons, only with spiritual weapons, tearing down the dominion of Satan that rules and reigns in the hearts of men and women. And so Peter is out of sync with spiritual reality there.

Remember what Jesus said in John 18:36 to Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.” Spiritual battles are never won with military power. In John 18:11, “Jesus said to Peter, “Put your sword into its sheath; shall I not drink the cup that the Father has given me?” And then the Bible says Jesus touched and healed the ear of Malchus and gave him a brand new ear.

That is the only miracle recorded in Scripture where Jesus heals a fresh wound, so it is unique. It is also very insightful because there was no faith on the part of Malchus. The miracles of Jesus were sovereign miracles. Sometimes there was faith, sometimes there was not. This guy just stood there, lost his ear and the next thing he knew, he got another one. It wasn’t a question of his faith, it was a sovereign act of Christ.

So why didn’t the Lord allow a war? Three key words will unfold these reasons. Number one, the word is fatal. Verse 52, “Then Jesus said to him, “Put your sword back into it’s place. For all who take the sword will perish by the sword.” That is reason number one! What Jesus is saying is this: people who use a sword for personal acts of violence will be punished with execution. That goes right back to Genesis 9:6, “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed.” Our Lord out of His own mouth advocates capital punishment.

That is God’s divine law for the preservation of the sanctity of human life. In Romans 13:4 it says, “But if you do wrong, be afraid, for the government does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer.” A Christian has no right to take a life. We are not talking about self-defense, and defending yourself from someone who is trying to kill you or those around you. We are talking about an act of vengeance against someone else.

Secondly, it is not only fatal, but it is foolish, because of who Christ is. Notice verse 53, “Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?” More than twelve legions is more than 72,000 angels. Do you know how powerful one angel is? Well, in 2 Kings 19, there was only one angel who killed 185,000 Assyrians all by himself, so just think what 72,000 angels can do. God is all powerful, that is foolish.

So if God wanted to defend Jesus, He certainly could. And so even when governments do things that are unfair, and people do things that are unfair in the name of the government, we have no right to use a weapon. If the Lord wants to deliver us, He can deliver us. And then there is a third reason, and that’s the word fulfillment, in verse 54, “But how then should the Scriptures be fulfilled, that it must be so?”

Jesus has to be taken captive. Jesus has to be led away like a sheep to slaughter quietly, as it says in Isaiah 53:7. It has to be like Psalm 41:9, that My own familiar friend has lifted up his heel against Me. It has to be like Zechariah 11:12, that I be betrayed for 30 pieces of silver. It has to be the way Psalm 22 says, with all the events of the crucifixion. It has to be like Jeremiah 23. It has to be like Zechariah 13:1. It has to be like it was all prophesied.

And then in verse 56, Jesus says it again, “But all this has taken place that the Scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled. Then all the disciples left him and fled.” And the “all” is what He said back in verse 31, remember? Jesus said, “You will all fall away because of me this night.” And they all fled out of fear. The Lord let Himself be tied up, and now they were afraid. And even though the Lord in John 18:8 asked those Romans and those leaders to let the disciples go, they knew they could come after them too.

But there was one guy who did not run away. Mark 14:51-52 say, “And a young man followed him, with nothing but a linen cloth about his body. And they seized him, 52 but he left the linen cloth and ran away naked.” That is the only place he is ever mentioned, just a young man who cared about Christ. Why did the Lord put that little incident in there? It may be an indication that if the Lord let this man to escape, He would have had some deliverance planned for the disciples as well, if they had been faithful, right?

Let us look at some signs of a weak disciple. First, they were unprepared. They confused good intentions with strength. They were overconfident and they didn’t take to heart the promises of John 13 to 16, given them that very night. If they had listened to His prayer in John 17, as He prayed for the Father to keep them, and if they understood that all power was theirs, and anything they need they could ask for and they would receive, that would have strengthened them. People defect when they are weak in the Word and they are weak in prayer.

Secondly, they were impulsive. They acted on emotion rather than revelation. They did not think through what was right. They just reacted totally impulsive, with no sense of what was going on and what would be the proper reaction. Many Christians who are unprepared, who are not in the Word, and who don’t spend time in communion with God do not sense the heart of God for a given situation. So they react to their impulses and their feelings only. If you are a victim of your own anxieties, you are going to have problems.

The third thing is that they are impatient. They cannot wait to see what wonderful thing God would have done. There are many Christians like that, and all of us from time to time are like that. We often take the easy route of escape, and we bring reproach upon the Savior because we are not up to the task. And if we endured it, we would see the delivering hand of God, and give Him glory and praise.

Furthermore, they are carnal. That is, they are dependent on their fleshly power, their fleshly weapons, and when they lose their fleshly weapons and their resources, they don’t know where to go. They don’t know what it is to believe. So we could say in summary that weak disciples are inconsistent. They promise all kinds of things, they just don’t deliver; like so many of them today.

So let us look now, in contrast, to Christ Himself. We see the triumph of the Savior and His majesty. You could look at a scene like this, and it could look like something that tears down Christ’s glory, something that robs Him of any majesty. But on the other hand, if you listen to it carefully, through the words of the Spirit of God and the heart of Matthew, you see just the opposite. It’s in spite of all of these things that you see the triumph of Christ.

Here you can see the triumph of Christ in His confrontation with the crowd. Sometime when Judas comes to kiss Christ, something remarkable happens. Note that in John 18:4-6, “Then Jesus, knowing all that would happen to him, came forward and said to them, “Whom do you seek? 5 They answered him, “Jesus of Nazareth.” Jesus said to them, “I am he.” Judas, who betrayed him, was standing with them. 6 When Jesus said to them, “I am he,” they drew back and fell to the ground.”

Almost a thousand people fell and hit the ground. Who do you think is in control here? Jesus was not a victim for a moment. The fact that they were allowed to stand back up again was because He allowed them to. And then He asked them again in verse 7, “Who do you seek?’ They said, ‘Jesus of Nazareth.’ Verse 8, ‘I told you I am He. If therefore you seek Me, let these go their way.’” Jesus was working out His disciples’ deliverance. The amazing thing is that He had total control of that mob.

There’s another scene that shows us Jesus confronting the crowd, verse 55, “At that hour Jesus said to the crowds, “Have you come out as against a robber, with swords and clubs to capture me? Day after day I sat in the temple teaching, and you did not seize me.” Jesus is saying to them, you know that you would have taken Me anytime in the temple if you had a good reason, but you didn’t because you knew you had no right to do this, and you feared the people.

And they were being led by Satan. Even as Jesus faces the crowd, it is God who controls it all. So where are you? Jesus said in Matthew 12:30, “Whoever is not with Me is against Me.” Do you stand there with the triumphant Savior, willing to endure whatever comes along? You are somewhere that you know and God knows. Let us pray.