Matthew 26:17-25 - The Betrayer

Matthew, the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 26.

Matthew 26 · chapter mention

Chapter 26.

We've been progressing through this uh for over two years now, and we're getting close to the end of this.

But as we come into chapter 26, as we did last week, and we'll continue today, we recognize that a somber darkness has fallen over the Gospel of Matthew.

Matthew's gospel now gets slower and slower.

The next two chapters cover the critical final two days of Christ's life and ends with his crucifixion.

And every single part of this is significant.

The plot to arrest Christ, his anointing for burial, his final Passover supper with his new family of disciples, his betrayal by one of those disciples, Judas, later his denial by another disciple, Peter, his abandonment by all of his disciples, his court trials, his beatings, and ultimately his death on a cross and his burial.

As Micah mentioned last week, the bulk of stories, the blocks of talks are finished.

And now we move into the action of the life of Christ.

And as with all of these stories, there are several lessons embedded in them from which we can discover understanding about who Christ is and what he's come to accomplish, encouragements for our hearts to realize that those things that he's doing are on the behalf of sinners, and also to prompt us to transformation as we find ourselves exposed in these stories.

And so this morning, as we look at Matthew chapter 26, we're going to enter into that part where Jesus begins to talk to his disciples about the Passover meal and enters into that meal with them.

Matthew 26 · chapter mention

And as we enter into this passage of Scripture, I want us to discover lessons from Jesus, from the disciples, and then finally from Judas at the end.

Let's read this together.

On verse 17, it says, On the first day of unleavened bread, the disciples came to Jesus and asked, Where do you want us to make preparations for you to eat the Passover?

Go into the city to a certain man, he said, and tell him, The teacher says, The time is near.

I am celebrating the Passover at your place with my disciples.

So the disciples did as Jesus had directed them and prepared the Passover.

When evening came, he was reclining at a table with the twelve, and while they were eating, he said, Truly I tell you, one of you will betray me.

Deeply distressed, each one began to say to him, Surely not I, Lord.

He replied, The one who dipped his hand with me in the bowl, he will betray me.

The Son of Man will go just as it's written about him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed.

It would have been better for him if he had not been born.

Judas, his betrayer, replied, Surely not I, Rabbi.

You have said it, he told him.

There are several things that we learn about Jesus in this passage of Scripture.

And one of the key things that we learn is once again, Jesus speaks and under as he understands that he is on a mission, that he's on a mission.

The Passover feast has been clearly laid out as a significant part of Jesus' life here.

His disciples ask him, where does he want to eat that Passover?

And they learn that Jesus has already made arrangements.

He sends them ahead to a place that's already ready to hear what they have to say, to get the meal together.

The owner of the house has already set up a spot for them to have this meal.

And in the middle of this, we get a little hint of this timeline of Jesus as he makes a statement, which by now we ought to recognize, which the disciples may not have understood.

In verse 18, he says, My time is at hand.

My time is at hand.

The preparations of the Passover are bringing together a collision of two contrary purposes of life.

Judas, as we learned in verse 16, is looking for a good time to betray Jesus, when he can cash in by turning Christ in.

Jesus is looking for his time when he is going to fulfill his assigned work and role under the Father's direction.

And as we see these two things coming together, it might be for us, first entering into this understanding, that things are hurtling out of control here, that there's going to be a clash of forces, one determined to go this way and one determined to go that way.

Who is going to win?

But as we read further into the Gospel of Matthew, there is not even the glimmer of hope to think that there's anything other than the knowledge that Jesus has everything under control, even his death.

And he's going to the cross in the manner prescribed for him, and he's ready to do it at the moment he's called to go there.

Early in his ministry, he's mentioned these kind of words, rebuffing requests for miracles.

For instance, in John chapter 2, he said to his mother, My time is not yet come.

John 2 · chapter mention

He says it again in John chapter 7 and verse 6.

John 7 · chapter mention

Later to a group of soldiers who come to arrest him, Jesus says to him, to them later in John 7.

He said, You know me and you know where I'm from, yet I've not come on my own, but the one who sent me is true.

You don't know him.

I know him because I'm from him and he sent me.

And it says they tried to seize him, yet no one could lay a hand on him, because his hour had not yet come.

He told them, he said, I'm with you a little longer.

But the time for his arrest wasn't there yet.

But now Jesus says, My time is near.

This is the time.

Just before the Passover, as John records it in chapter 12 and verse 23, Jesus said to them, The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.

This is it.

This is why he's come.

And for all those who might mistakenly think that Jesus came to be a great teacher, Jesus passes by all of his teaching statements and puts what's ahead of him still as the main reason for his coming.

He didn't come simply to be a wise man among people who need wisdom.

He didn't come as a teacher to people who need lessons.

He didn't come as a moral example to those who need a better understanding of the right pathway.

He came for this reason, this hour that's yet to come.

And it is this hour that he's chosen.

This hour where he is showing he's the master of history, his history and ours.

You see, the sovereign Lord Jesus understands that he's on a mission and he understands what that mission is about.

And he's going to accomplish those purposes, whether we can see them or not, whether we think there's forces contrary to them or not.

He knows exactly what is happening, and he knows exactly how to accomplish his purposes.

Even when there are active agents working in such a way to directly upset that plan.

God is accomplishing his plans.

He is not up in heaven fretting over the challenges that we face here.

But let's move on.

Because Jesus not only understands he's on a mission and he knows that that mission has come to the point of fruition, he leaves it completely unambiguous for all of us by linking this mission to the Passover, by linking his mission to the Passover.

And Micah explained this last week to all of us.

The Passover, that great feast of the people of the children of Israel, celebrating with a meal and a retelling and perhaps even reliving of that grand day of their deliverance from the bondage of slavery in Egypt.

And that first Passover, God instructed the Israelites, commanding them to slaughter a spotless lamb and put its blood on the doorposts.

Because when the night would come, God would send the angel of death in judgment on the houses of the land of Egypt.

And to any house, whether it was Israelite or Egyptian, there would be in that house the death of the firstborn, unless the blood of that lamb had been placed on the outside of the door.

God provided the blood of a lamb as a marker of substitution and sacrifice that would save people from an impending doom of death that would visit every household.

And so the people of Israel celebrated every year by again sacrificing a Passover, by sharing the meal together, by hearing the story again of that night in Egypt.

And with that as a backdrop, Jesus enters into a meal, this same meal with his disciples.

And instead of calling them to look back, he calls them to look forward.

And he says, This cup is my blood, which is shed for the forgiveness of sins.

There's a new meal, there's a new Passover lamb.

There's a new shedding of blood that saves.

Not one to look back to yet, but one for them to look forward to.

And we'll look at the details more of that next week.

But Jesus connects his mission to this Passover lamb that saved the people of Israel from impending doom.

When God's wrath and his judgment came in Egypt, they were safe under the blood of the substitutionary Lamb.

And here Jesus is marking himself out as the place of eternal safety from anyone, for anyone who believes on him, that the coming, impending doom of judgment would not fall on them because the blood of the Lamb covers them.

So this evening, he knows he's on a mission, and he links that mission to the Passover, and he commemorates a new symbolic meal to replace the old one, one that centers on him, and is not just for the people of Israel, but for all people throughout the whole world who might believe on the Savior.

Another thing we learn here from Jesus is that he recognizes in doing all of this, he is fulfilling Scripture.

He is fulfilling Scripture.

Later on in this passage, which we read together, in verse 24, he says, the Son of Man will go just as it is written about him.

He knew precisely what must happen to fulfill God's plan of salvation.

He knew, as the book of Revelation and chapter 13 says, that he was the Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world.

He told his disciples that this was what was going to happen.

That he was going to be delivered into the hands of sinful men and would be crucified.

Luke chapter 24, he told them, he said, Don't you realize it was necessary for the Christ to suffer these things?

Luke 24 · chapter mention

He understood that those things pointed to him, and they pointed to his death.

And yet, in the face of the full understanding of his impending death, he shows an unswerving commitment to go on.

He is determined to fulfill the divine plan that was set for him as the Son of Man.

And because of his determination, we can rest in the assurance of our reconciliation.

Because it's not dependent upon our energies, it's not dependent upon the degree of our faith, it's not dependent on the strength of our holding on, but rather that we have a savior who was determined to go.

And because he set his face toward Jerusalem, realizing what was there, we can rest in the reconciliation that comes through him.

Listen to what the scriptures say of this committed love of Jesus, our Savior.

While we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.

Rarely will someone die for a just person, though for a good person, perhaps someone might even dare to die.

But God proves his own love for us that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

How much more then, since we have been justified by his blood, will we be saved by him from his wrath?

For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of his son, how much more, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life?

And because of all of that, Paul says, we can boast in God through Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we've now received this reconciliation.

We already have placed upon our very eternal soul, paid in full, owned by the Master.

We are His.

Jesus knew He was on a mission.

He connected that mission to the Passover.

He did that because he knew precisely what his mission was about.

It was a fulfillment of scripture that spoke of his sacrificial substitutionary death.

And the last thing we learned from him here is that he knew nothing would thwart God's plan.

Nothing was going to set God's plan aside.

Verse 26 or 24, the Son of Man will go just as it's written about him.

Woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed.

Judas did what he wanted to do.

He did what his evil intentions directed him to do.

But in the middle of all of that, God was triumphing over him by using his evil desires and his evil actions for the purposes of accomplishing salvation for the world.

Last week Micah walked us through the passage that detailed the chief priests and the scribes and the elders meeting together at the palace of the high priest, plotting to trick Jesus and ultimately kill him.

And Judas coming alongside of them and giving them a little bit of oil in the engine, showing them how it could run.

At first glance, you might think that Jesus is just some innocent victim to all of these plots and all these schemes.

But that's not how the New Testament describes it.

Peter on the day of Pentecost stood up in Jerusalem and he said, Men of Israel, hear these words.

Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested by God to you by miracles and wonders and signs which God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know, him being delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God, you have taken by lawless hands and have crucified and put to death, whom God raised up, having loosed the pains of death because it was not possible that he should be held by it.

Peter doesn't say that Jesus was delivered by the wicked machinations of the high priest, a pernicious betrayal of Judas.

He attributes his arrest, his trial, and execution to the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God.

Who's sovereign here?

God the Father.

God the Father who decreed at a particular point in time to make good use of evil people, to make good use of their evil determinations, to make good redemption for people, those who wanted to kill the Redeemer.

This is why the Apostle Paul can say to us, we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to his purposes.

God's purposes in Christ ultimately led to good.

And there will be no day in heaven in which we see with unveiled eyes the scan and scope of God's plan.

There will not be a single moment where we'll say, I don't yet understand it.

We'll see it as it is and we'll affirm it for the good that it is, and we'll recognize out of all of it, this gracious God has brought good out of evil.

If he were not sovereign, we could have no hope of ultimate victory because there would be always something, maybe even a little molecule, that's going to knock one more and another and another until the events of God's purposes are destroyed.

There's not a single particle in the universe that is outside of his plan and purposes.

Some lessons from Jesus about him, about his coming to save.

There's some lessons also to learn here from the disciples.

We see them here, and they're not a pretty sight.

When you piece together all that happened on that fateful night, when you look at what they did in John and Mark and Luke, in addition to what Matthew writes here, you discover that these men are a cohort of, yes, committed men, most all of them, but confused, self-centered, and self-assured.

It took them a long time to really understand the truth about Jesus and about themselves.

Jesus had been preparing them for this moment.

He had been teaching them time and time again that this day was coming, that his mission was going to be like the Passover, that it would include his death, that it was a fulfillment of scripture.

He told them, Matthew 16, from this time on, Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem, and it'd suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests, and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed.

He's told them that.

Matthew 17, when they came together in Galilee, he said to them, The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into the hands of men, they will kill him, and on the third day he will be raised to life.

Matthew 20 and verse 18.

We're going up to Jerusalem.

And they should say, We know, we know, we know.

You told us.

They don't hear it.

The Son of Man will be betrayed to the chief priests and the teachers of the law.

They will condemn him to death and will turn him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified.

These prophecies, Matthew 16, Matthew 17, Matthew 20, grow in their content.

He tells them about his death and resurrection in 16.

He tells them about his betrayal in 17.

He tells them of the involvement of the Gentiles and the mocking and the beating and the crucifixion in chapter 20.

And then in Matthew chapter 26, he says this the Passover is two days away, and the Son of Man will be handed over to be crucified.

Matthew 26 · chapter mention

In all of human history, every culture, every place, every century, no event has had any greater significance or been more specifically prophesied than this moment.

This drama is the very turning point of history and is the very center of Christianity.

And when Jesus says, My time is near, what do we hear from the disciples?

Nothing.

Not a word.

Except Peter thinks he's going to be the best.

I think I'm going to be right next to Jesus when his kingdom comes.

Hey, Peter, what's it going to be like, first loser?

And they argued and they bickered right in the middle of this meal.

Who is going to be the greatest among them?

Did they know that this was Jesus on a mission?

Prophesied by Scripture?

Connected to the Passover?

As a wonderful picture of their life eternal?

Sure didn't seem like it.

They're obviously committed to Christ.

They obey him when he instructs them to get the Passover together.

They don't resist him.

They describe, when he describes himself as their teacher, they're willing to go along when he says, go tell the owner of the house, the teacher wants to have a place to have the Passover with his disciples, and they're happy to be called his disciples.

When they come into the room and Jesus takes up the position of the head of the household and directs the meal, well, they're happy to have him be the lead there.

They're definitely committed to him.

But mingled in this commitment is this utter dullness of spiritual understanding.

It leads them to argue and to bicker with one another about who's going to be greatest among them when Jesus assumes his place in the kingdom.

And so while they're acting out foolishly, perhaps in the middle of their conversation about it all, Jesus interjects, I tell you the truth, one of you is going to betray me.

That just hangs in the air for a minute.

And they begin to say to one another, surely not I, Lord.

We don't know to what extent they might have doubted themselves, or to what extent they really were looking for assurance.

But Jesus doesn't immediately reach out toward them and just say, Look, now calm down, most of you.

He doesn't do that.

Rather, he makes a repeated statement.

Well, that's all of them.

They've all dipped their hand in that bowl with Jesus.

This isn't making it any more comfortable at all.

It's one of you.

And now they're starting to get exceedingly sorrowful, Matthew describes it.

And maybe just with a little bit of brokenness in their voices now, instead of that haughty, high-mindedness that they had when they were measuring each other up about who was going to be greatest.

Now maybe there might be a humble crack in the voice.

Lord, is it I?

Or as some might have said, surely not I.

Maybe it didn't crack at all yet.

Perhaps, perhaps for the first time, and not yet fully, they're beginning to understand the capacity in their own hearts for betraying the Savior.

Maybe they're starting to realize that they should fear their own worst tendencies instead of trusting their high position.

And they had every right to do that if this was indeed what was happening.

Because in the next hours, Judas was going to go away.

And the soldiers would come and arrest Jesus.

And when they came, most all of these men will flee to save their skin.

Peter will hang around for a while, but he loses his medal and he denies even knowing Jesus.

And here's the lesson.

All of us are just like this.

There's not a single one of us who isn't.

We are this mashup of godly commitments and foolish impulses, and they both course within our veins.

The disciples, please tell me it's not not me.

Please tell me that I am not the one.

They might have expected a negative answer, but they craved an assurance.

And as much as they were horrified at the thought, they were learning through the pauses of Christ and the ambiguities that hung in the air that this was a moment for self-examination.

The greatest master of the Baroque period was John Sebastian Bach.

If you disagree, you can be wrong.

It's okay.

One of the most elaborate and sophisticated pieces that he wrote of all the hundreds that he did was St.

Matthew's Passion.

It's coming up nearly on its 300th anniversary.

This powerful piece of music is three hours long, and it's well worth every minute of it.

Soloist in dialogue with a chorus accompanied by a full orchestra.

The lyrical text of St.

Matthew's Passion is based on a poetic rendering of the story of Jesus' betrayal, his suffering, his crucifixion, his death, and burial according to the Gospel of Matthew.

If you're able to get an English translation of that, you'll be provided with a theologically thoughtful and emotionally commanding interpretation of these final days of Jesus' life.

Bach is inviting us into the deep experience of the glory of God in the Passion of Christ.

He takes some poetic license from time to time, some of it just scripture, but from time to time he enters in with poetic license to give us insights into what might have happened.

And for a moment, he enters into the thoughts of the disciples who have heard these words from Jesus, one of you will betray me.

And this is how Bach writes it.

And I think it's exactly how we should receive it.

Lord, is it I?

It is I.

My hands and my feet bound in hell.

The scourges and the fetters, all that you endure.

This my soul is earned.

That's why Jesus had to go to the cross.

His teaching, his miracles would never be enough to rescue us.

Because it's not just ignorance and it's not just moral weakness, it is sin that we need saved from.

The wages of sin is death.

And we all sin, not just Judas.

And we're all liable to death.

You see, the weakness of the men at the meal is the reason for the meal, right?

And the sins of the men at the meal require the death of the host of the meal.

If any of us are to be redeemed.

In the middle of this confused jumbling together of pride and shock, and maybe the first crack of humility in the hearts of these men is a lesson we should listen to again and again.

There's one more to learn from the betrayer.

While they were eating, Jesus said, I tell you the truth, one of you will betray me.

And interestingly, the disciples didn't leap up and point in unison at Judas and say, Here he is.

Not a single one of them did that.

Apparently, he knew how to cover his tracks pretty well.

He looked, he looked the part.

And while they were asking the question, is it I, is it I, is it I?

Surely not I, surely not I, Judas rings in with his voice.

Maybe to, you know, hide himself by joining in the reply of the others, seeming to be as distressed as they are over the accusation.

But Jesus' reply to him is pretty direct.

You have said it.

You have said it.

And if you don't believe me, you can ask Konstantinos, but in the Greek it's basically a way of saying, you're the one.

You're the one.

It's you.

And at that point, Satan entered him, whereupon Jesus said, Do what you do, do it quickly.

And Judas did just that.

He betrayed his Lord.

And from that point forward, every indication of this man, every mark of this man is never said without it being connected to his betrayal.

When he's called into the apostolic band in Matthew 10, and we get the list of those that are called, Simon the Zealot, Judas Iscariot, who also betrayed him.

Mark 3.19, Judas Iscariot, who also betrayed him.

Luke 16, 6.16, Judas, the son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor.

John 6, he was referring to Judas, Simon Iscariot's son, one of the twelve, because he was going to betray him.

That one moment marks the whole cast of his person for the rest of eternity.

And this is why in verse 24, Jesus says, woe, woe to this person.

The Son of Man will go just as it's written about him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed.

It would have been better for him if he had not been born.

In Acts chapter 1, they talk about Judas and they speak about his betrayal as fulfillment of Psalm 109.

Acts 1 · chapter mention

And Psalm 109 is about this person, this wicked person who repays David evil for his good.

And here is the son of David by this one person being paid evil for his good.

And in the middle of Psalm 109 is this imprecatory prayer against this wicked person who has repaid David and the son of David evil for good and hatred for love, who falsely accused him.

This imprecatory prayer curses this betrayer with a short life, curses him with the destruction of his family and of his property, curses him with the wiping out of the very memory of this man and the loss of any hope for forgiveness.

And these curses come as an act of poetic justice because Psalm 109 and verse 17 says, He loved cursing.

Let it fall on him.

And since the betrayer's sins and those of his family would never be blotted away, but always remembered.

This is why Jesus said it would have been better for him if he had never been born.

Judas becomes that one person for whom birth turned out to be more of a curse than a blessing.

Let me go back to Bach for a moment in his imagination of Saint Matthew's Passion.

For a moment he brings us to Judas Iscariot's mother.

An interesting perspective.

What might she have felt had she been able to see this moment?

Listen to Bach as he expresses the possibility of her mourning.

Lead on, dear heart.

The child you raised that sucked at your breast, threatens to murder its guardian, for it has become a serpent.

Later on, Bach expresses the thoughts of a knowing witness to the arrest of Jesus.

Innocent Jesus.

While guilty Judas walks away free with the coins jangling in his money bag.

Listen to that witness through the voice of Bach.

They lead him away.

He's bound.

Has lightnings has thunder vanished in the clouds?

Open your fiery pit, O hell.

Wreck, ruin, engulf, shatter with sudden force this false betrayer, this murderous blood.

Bach catches with that strong emotion and passion the terrible significance of this ultimate disloyalty against one to whom absolute loyalty was due.

Much like Adam, in the cool of the evening, after the first act of disobedience, God calls to him and says, Adam, Adam, Adam, where are you, Adam?

And Adam only continues to cover and to shift blame.

You see, this wasn't just a pronouncement of woe.

It was a warning shot across the bow of Judas.

Could he have heard it?

Could he have arrested himself and fell to the ground in the midst of his companions that evening and said, It is high.

It's me.

I was doing this.

We'll never know.

Because Jesus' warning was left unheeded and only hastened Judas' desire to fulfill his evil purposes and to run out and to make it happen.

In this supper, symbolizing freedom, is a man here shackled in sin.

Here in this supper of celebration is a man full of sinister motives.

In a supper symbolizing the bond of family, is a man about to betray his master.

In this supper that is meant to express honor and respect is a sarcastic, is it I?

What a terrible thing it is to betray the Savior.

Judah spent three years in close association with the only perfect man who's ever lived on this earth.

And yet he turned his back on him, gave him up to be murdered.

I don't know what it was that drove him that direction.

Scriptures tell us that he kept the money purse of the disciples and stole out of it.

Some hungering for money, maybe wanting an exalted position when this expected conquering Messiah would grant him some reign over something.

But as Jesus progressed on his mission, as he said it was, of going to Jerusalem and being captured and crucified, this man became increasingly aware that none of those things that he hoped for were going to come.

There wasn't any money going to come his way.

There was no position going to come his way.

And so he did what he thought was right, to betray Jesus Christ.

And there's millions of people doing just that today.

Let us remind ourselves that it's possible to be quite close to Jesus Christ, to sit in a Christian church, to listen to godly, doctrinally correct sermons, to hear good Bible teaching on the radio, television, internet, on your phone, to have Christian parents and Christian friends who have walked consistently with strong testimonies of the gospel of grace and yet fail to love the Savior.

And to never reach the point of making a personal commitment of Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.

To be so close to Christ and yet lost.

That is the tragedy of Judas.

And it would be just a great tragedy if it was going to be true of you.

Army to be so close and yet never in.

C.S.

Lewis warned us.

He said, We're too busy playing with our mud pies to understand the significance when someone invites us to the seaside to have a vacation on the beach near the ocean.

He said, It's not that our desires are so great.

He said they're too small.

We're bound up with these little mud pies when the whole ocean could be before our very eyes.

I invite you to the Savior.

If you're here today and you don't know him, he's made it clear why he's come.

He's come not just to sort of tell you to shake up your life and do better.

Let me show you how.

He said that his hour was connected to the Passover.

And the only thing the Passover was was a death of a lamb that stood as a substitute for others, so that they might not receive the condemnation of judgment when the angel of death passed by.

To give his life for sinners, not friends yet, but sinners.

So come as a sinner to the Savior.

Don't clean yourself up and think he needs you better before you can come.

Come to him as you are, accept him as your Lord.

Embrace Him.

And may it be said that the moment of your death was far greater than the moment you were born.

Let's pray together.

Our Heavenly Father, Lord, as we enter into this last evening of Christ before the crucifixion, we find ourselves filled, captured by all that took place on that eve.

The tension is in the air.

Confusion is in the air.

Betrayal is in the air.

But so is love, a determined love, to press through the confusion, to press through the tension, to press through the betrayal, to press through to fulfill your divine purposes.

We thank you for a Savior who was not thwarted by confused men or evil men or anything.

He was not waylaid in his mission.

Because we celebrate him not as a man who went all the way to the cross but could not fulfill it.

We glory in the one who went to the cross and suffered it and died and yet conquered death itself through the resurrection.

And we say, Glory be to God for our Savior Jesus Christ.

Hallelujah.

Praise be to him who reigns above, to God and to the Lamb who sit upon the throne.

Let honor and blessing and power and glory and dominion be forever and ever.

Amen.