Truth For Life

Alistair Begg: If you've ever been betrayed, you know how hurtful it can be, especially if your betrayer is someone you love dearly.

Jesus knew his betrayer, but the disciples had no idea, even though Judas was a member of their core group. Today on Truth For Life, we'll hear warnings and encouragement taken from Judas' story. Alistair Begg is teaching from John chapter 13.

I think, you know, that in this present climate, with a humility of heart and an understanding of a dignity that comes through our calling and our relationship to Jesus, there is far more opportunities than we realize to take the gospel to our friends in a kindly way.

Because what Jesus is saying is that to reject that kind of appeal is to reject Christ. And if anyone rejects Christ, they will be rejecting the one who sends Christ. And the one who sends Christ is the God who loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him wouldn't perish, but would have everlasting life.

Now, to the third one, which is verse 21. After saying these things, Jesus was troubled in His spirit and testified. The staggering thing when we come to 21 here is that as readers, we know what only two of the 13 people at this table actually know.

And that is what we learned in verse three. Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands and that He had come from God and was going back to God, and that He knew, verse 11, who was going to betray Him. We're privy to that. The others are not.

And what it's important for us to grasp is that Judas had been chosen by Christ. It wasn't as if they were all going along the road and all of a sudden he was an interloper. He was hand-picked.

He was chosen by Jesus, as were the rest. For three years he had followed Jesus. For three years he had listened as Jesus taught. For three years he had seen the signs that Jesus did. And yet now in this place, as he sits beside Jesus, who has said these things, he's on the brink of sealing his eternal destiny.

And therefore we should not be surprised that after saying these things, Jesus was troubled in His spirit. The word that is used there is a graphic word. For example, it's the same verb that you find in John 11 in relationship to the death of his friend Lazarus. It's also, I think, the same as in, yeah, in verse 27 of 12, "Now is my soul troubled and what shall I say?"

Although Jesus is entirely in control, as we can see, He's already told his followers, "I lay down my life. I can pick it up again. Nobody takes my life from me. I have the power to lay it down and I have the power to take it up again." And yet here He is troubled in His spirit. It would have been impossible for Jesus to be truly human and not to be troubled.

I guess there is probably no pain quite like the heartache that comes in the betrayal of someone we regard as a good friend.

Now, Jesus has alluded to this along the way. Here in chapter 13, in verse 10, he's given hints of this, hasn't he? Jesus said to them, "The one who has bathed doesn't need to wash except for his feet, he's completely clean and you are clean," hang on, "but not every one of you." And then in verse 18, "I am not speaking of all of you, I know whom I have chosen."

Actually, back in chapter six, he had made a very straightforward statement concerning this. At the end of chapter six, Jesus said to them, "Did I not choose you, the Twelve, and yet one of you is a devil?" And He spoke of Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, for he, one of the Twelve, was going to betray Him.

So, what we need to understand is that Jesus has mastery over all these circumstances. He's not caught off guard. The fact that the disciples didn't register this should not really be much of a surprise to us, I don't think, because they didn't register a lot of what he said. They didn't register the fact that he was going to die and be buried and so on. He said that to them on a number of occasions, but they never understood. So it's hardly surprising that somehow or another that just went right over their heads. Surely they must have said, "Well, I don't know who that is. Surely, I hope it isn't me."

And so, with the word that is used here, in this statement, is that he testifies. He testifies, martyrio, which is a word that is used only every so often. And it is used more in John than in any other place. And for those of you who are interested in it at all, let me just tell you that, for example, when it says that the man that was sent from God, namely John the Baptist, he came as a witness to bear witness about the light, that all might bear witness of him, that is the same, that's the same verb. And it's the same verb actually in chapter seven when the world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify about it, that its works are evil.

So John the Baptist is testifying to the fact that he is the one who stands in front of the one who comes as the light of the world. Jesus says, "I testify to you that the world is evil." Now here we have it. And after saying these things, Jesus was troubled in His spirit and He testified. In a court of law, it would be as if he stood and said, "I declare the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. I say to you that one of you will betray me."

Verse 22, stunned silence. The disciples looked at one another, uncertain of whom he spoke. They're mystified. Now the fact of the matter is that there is nothing here or afterwards to suggest that there was any suspicion in relationship to Judas.

It might just as well have been Peter or James or John. In fact, Mark in his record says that when Jesus said this, they looked around and they said to him, "It's surely not I, is it?"

So in actual fact, the staggering thing about the horrible thing about it is that all of Judas's activity, all of Judas's interest, all of Judas's participation had proved throughout three years to be a suitable disguise to his hypocrisy.

You know, it's terrible the songs I have in my head, but "and your eyes are a thin disguise." That's the Eagles. I don't know why I have these things in my head, but anyway, "and your eyes are a thin disguise." You look out, he can look out on an enemy. He was able, he was able to play the game, he did it masterfully.

He was there for all the talks. He was present for all the miracles. And I shouldn't say that I'm surprised at all, and I don't think you will be, that it is Simon Peter then who is immediately wanting to know names. Give me names. One of the disciples whom Jesus loved, we take it it was John, was reclining at the table at Jesus' side. So Simon Peter motioned to him to ask Jesus of whom he was speaking.

Imagine the scene, right? So they're, they're, they are, they're in a U-shape with, there's a table here and there's a U-shape of them all around, going like this. And their feet are all sticking out at the back, they're not sitting up at a table, but in a, in a meal like this, they would be on their left-hand side, leaning on their left-hand side, able to eat with their, with their right.

And if, as I think it may well be the case, Jesus had actually said to Judas, "Judas, I want you to be close to me tonight." Let's imagine at least that Judas now is on his left-hand side, which would be a place of honor for him to have Jesus on his right. And if John is in such proximity, the chances are that he's on Jesus' right.

We don't know where Peter is, but he always gets in on the action in any case, and so somehow or another, he says, he says to John, he says, "Hey, who is it? What's, we got a name?" So John, he asks Jesus. So the disciple leaning back against Jesus, so if, if John's here and Jesus here, he says, "Hey, who is it?"

Nobody else knows about this. They're whispering. Jesus answered, "It is he to whom I will give this morsel of bread when I've dipped it." So when he had dipped the morsel, he gave it to Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot.

And in doing so, he unmasks Judas as the traitor. The chances are that in a meal like this, from the little that I have read, and it is little, there would be occasions where it would be a gesture of kindness or of friendship to give somebody from the meal a token of affection.

And if that is actually the case, then we assume that he who loved his own and loved them to the end and chose them every single one of them, gives now to Judas a token of his affection. And with that, a further opportunity for Judas to climb down from the position that he has taken for himself, because in this one last lingering moment, the destiny of Judas is actually in the balance.

Will he accept the gesture of friendship? Will he turn from the path that he has set for himself? Answer, no. His course was set. And you will notice what it says that after he had taken the morsel, Satan entered into him.

At the beginning of the chapter, it was that Satan had put into his mind these things, put in his heart to betray him. And so now with a word of direction on the part of Jesus, He says, "Well, what are you going to do? Go ahead and do it quickly."

Now, notice. No one at the table knew why he said this to him. Nobody said, "Well, there you go. We knew he was a bum all along. We knew he was a con man." They didn't. That's the thing about hypocrisy. That's actually the scary thing. The scary thing is how close you can be to the action. Proximity is no indication of reality.

If one of the Twelve, called out by Jesus, elect to not salvation, but elect to the responsibility and privilege of being a disciple, can do this, then surely it makes all of us sit up in our seats. It does me.

And some thought maybe Judas, because he had the money bag, was going to go out and do some gesture of kindness, give it to the poor. So after receiving the morsel of bread, he immediately went out, and it was night. The vast contrast between, "You're only going to have the light for a little while," said Jesus. "Believe in the light while you have it." Judas heard that. Judas knew that. Judas turned his back on it and walked away.

Now, it is now night, and I'm conscious of the fact that it's night. So, let's just make, let me just make a couple of closing observations. One from Ryle. He says, "On all the coasts of England, there is not such a beacon to warn sailors of danger as Judas Iscariot is to warn Christians."

And that's the point. How close to Christ we might appear to be and yet not be His. Also, to recognize that the betrayer emerges from the core group. He's not somebody who, you know, just shows up every so often and is on the fringe of things. No, he's, he's, he's in the core group.

Thereby making clear to us something that we need to pay attention to, that we shouldn't be surprised if we find hypocrisy and false professions of faith in the church. I mean, if you've got it in the disciple band, isn't that what Paul was saying when he took leave of the Ephesian elders in Acts chapter 20? He says, "You better take care of yourselves, fellows, and watch over the flock that's in your charge, because after I leave you, from among your own self, there will arise those who will draw people away after them." That's what we discovered in Jude. The problem in Jude wasn't a theoretical problem. It was a real problem that these people were present within the framework of things.

Yeah, not to alarm us to the point of being entirely freaked, but it ought to remind us, as Calvin said, that the church, despite all of its attempts to become a pure church, membership interviews, all the things that we may seek to ensure that everybody is in and understands and so on, the church is always a mixed multitude. It's always a mixed multitude.

And when we think about the impact of Satan's activities, the Bible is given to make sure that we're alert to these things. Paul writes to the Corinthians, he says, "Let us not be foolish and ignorant of Satan's devises." "Don't be ignorant," he says. "Don't be so stupid as to walk around with your mouth open and assume that that you're beyond all these things. This could never be the situation." "No, no," he says, "you shouldn't do that."

Now, what happened while we don't have time to work our way through, but again, he put it into his heart in verse two. In verse 27, he entered him, whatever that means. The deed was now done. And so James, when he writes about the impact of this, says, "Resist him, and he will flee from you." Well, how do we resist him? Well, we resist him firm in the faith. We arm ourselves with the armor of God. We take, we don't take ourselves too seriously. We're not just skeptical about the affairs of the world. We're skeptical about our own hearts. We know the wickedness of our own hearts. We know the potential that we have for wandering and for failure and for messing up, and that reality then is there in order to say to us, "Come on now. Get a hold of yourself. Resist him in the power of the Holy Spirit." That's why James is so helpful on this. Just don't open, don't open your mind, Alistair, to folly, to foolish, godless thinking. Do not read books about it. Do not watch movies about it. Do not include it in the purview of your existence. Do not open your mind to trash.

And at the same time, do not entertain thoughts of sin. Do not play with sin in your mind. Do not play with the idea in your mind. For we have a roaring lion, seeking to devour. And don't, whatever you do, make light of the devil's designs, because it is impossible to read this without realizing that Satan is influential in this drama. However, and with this I will close, he is influential in the drama, but Judas is still responsible for his choices.

God is sovereign over all of these events. And the fact that God overrules the evil that bad men and women do, as he brings his purposes to pass, does not make their actions any less evil. For Judas, the momentum of sin had become irreversible. He's an illustration of the tragedy of Romans chapter one, and God gave him up. Jesus said, "Go out and do what you're going to do."

But here's the thing that I want to finish with. God is using all the dark forces of chaos that are going on in Jerusalem in this context, as it comes to the crucifixion. All of the malignancy, all of the treachery, all of the animosity, all of the reviling of those who ought to have known better and in many cases did know better. All of that, for which all men are responsible, God was using all of that chaos in order to fulfill his purpose from all of eternity.

You say, "Well, that's so hard for me to get my head around." It's supposed to be. But here's the point. The God who was doing that over all the chaos of the Passover in Jerusalem is the same God in Christ as an ascended Lord and King who is using all of the chaos, malignancy, animosity, and reviling in the present context of the unfolding drama of our lives at this point in the 21st century. He is in control. The Lord God omnipotent reigns. It doesn't always seem so, but it is so. He wasn't taken by surprise then, and He isn't taken by surprise now. We can trust Him.

We can't trust ourselves. We can trust Him. But then if we have good friends around us, then when we know that we can't trust ourselves, maybe a good elbow in the ribs, maybe a good arm around the shoulder, maybe a good promise of prayer, maybe something to say, "Hey, stay in the race."

Alistair Begg: You're listening to Alistair Begg on Truth For Life. Alistair returns shortly. If you've ever considered joining the team that brings Truth For Life to you each day, let me encourage you to make today the day when you come alongside us and support the distribution of Alistair's teaching by becoming one of our monthly donors. We'll add a USB drive to your welcome package today. It's called "15 Years of Favorites," and it contains a collection of more than 200 of Alistair's most popular sermons. The USB is yours when you become a Truth Partner. Signing up is quick and easy, and you choose the amount you'd like to give each month. You can set up your Truth Partner giving securely online at truthforlife.org/truthpartner, or call us at 888-588-7884, and we'll set it up for you over the phone.

As a Truth Partner, you'll receive a copy of Alistair's hardcover daily devotional. You'll gain access to special Truth Partner-only teaching from Alistair recorded at his speaking engagements, and you'll receive monthly letters from Alistair where he shares what's on his mind. Truth Partners are also invited to request the books we recommend each month as our way of saying thanks for your partnership. Right now, we're featuring a new booklet by Michael Reeves called "Come, You Weary: Enjoy Christ's Comfort."

Ask for your copy when you become a Truth Partner, or when you give a one-time donation at truthforlife.org/donate. And now here's Alistair to close.

Alistair Begg: God moves in a mysterious way. His wonders to perform. He plants his footsteps in the sea, and He rides upon the storm. Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, but trust Him for His grace. Behind a frowning providence, He hides a smiling face. Blind unbelief is sure to err, and try his works in vain. God is His own interpreter, and He will make things plain. Lord, help us to trust you unreservedly, we pray, in Jesus' name. Amen.

Alistair Begg: Thanks for studying the Bible with us today. I hope you'll enjoy worshiping with your local church family this weekend, and then join us Monday when we'll explore the feature that should distinguish every Christian community from the surrounding culture. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth For Life, where the learning is for living.