The Betrayal

Hey everyone, this is Josh from Encounter Church

Henley, and thanks so much for tuning into our

podcast. Our prayer is that through this podcast,

you can have an encounter with Jesus that will

change your life. And now get ready for an inspiring

message from our preaching team. Hey, welcome

to church. My name is Tim. I'm one of the pastors

here. It's a joy to have you in church today

on My 20th birthday my grandfather died which

was kind of rude of him to be honest His his

mother also died on my birthday Which was kind

of rude of her as well. So no one else is allowed

to die on my birthday All right Fine. Thanks

sex. So it's actually kind of a buzzkill And

his his death was for me was one of them the

first major deaths of my life. And looking back,

it was a kind of shattering. No one really close

to me had died in my first 20 years, which was

both a blessing and it was a difficulty, because

it didn't really prepare me for the reality of

death. I was not prepared for the reality that

I would never speak to him again. I was not prepared

for the reality of grief like that. Was not prepared

for the reality that I that I would actually

lose other people and that other people would

one day lose me See my first 20 years. I'd been

really sheltered from suffering and then suffering

broke down the door And I didn't really know

how to make sense of this And I want to acknowledge

that that that's probably not the case for everyone

here Not everyone here has been sheltered from

suffering for the first 20 years of their life

But our Western culture doesn't really help us

with this. See, I never saw my grandfather's

body. I never looked death in the face. His casket

was closed. Our family did invite Steph, my sister

and I, to his deathbed and then he was just cremated

and his ashes were scattered. His ashes were

scattered in the ocean at Henley Beach South.

And this will tell you the kind of person that

my grandmother is. We did this in broad daylight.

She didn't wait for a time or a place where there

was no one else swimming around us. She just

barged out into the middle of the crowd and unceremoniously

poured his ashes out into the ocean. And so adults

and children were just running to shore to get

out of the water. So they weren't covered in

my grandfather. Where's her culture? don't deal

with death and suffering that well. It's kind

of foreign to us. In some ways, it's hidden from

us. And so when it comes, we might not actually

know, how do we deal with suffering? We might

know that pork used to be a pig. We might know

that others suffer, but we might not know that

suffering will come for us. With modern medicine,

relative global security with governmental safety

nets, it can be easy to believe that we can actually

escape the clutches of suffering. That with all

the great things of our modern age, we can kind

of set up the kingdom of God on earth where there

is no suffering, no tears, no pain and no death.

In this life, a kingdom without the king. But

then petrol hits three dollars a litre. War comes

to disrupt our lives. Sickness comes that They

can't be treated. The safety nets, they don't

catch us when we fall. What do we do then? What

do we do when suffering breaks through our Western

worldview? See, today is Palm Sunday, but we're

in the middle of our Easter series. Holy Week's

here. We've been tracing our way through the

final moments of Jesus' life in the Gospel of

Luke. And he's heading towards the cross. And

in our text today, Jesus and his disciples are

staring down the barrel of suffering. They've

partaken in the original communion and now they're

about to be tested. The rubber's about to hit

the road. Jesus takes them to the Mount of Olives

as was his custom and there he tells them to

prepare themselves for what is to come by praying

that they will not give into temptation. I wonder

why Jesus is asking them to do this. to pray

for this particularly. Because like Him, they're

about to be tested. Can they follow Him to suffering,

torture, humiliation and even death? Or will

they fail at the last turn? Jesus wants them

to pray for resolve. And He's actually praying

for this too. He leaves them and he goes only

a little way and he prays this stunningly beautiful

vulnerable human prayer Father if you're willing,

please please take this cup of suffering away

from me You don't want your will to be done not

mine He's praying because he doesn't want to

face the testing the suffering that he knows

is coming You know Jesus is God incarnate Which

means that Jesus is God stepping into the creation

he created as flesh and blood. God is with us.

God has become one of us. Which means Jesus is

fully human and fully God. And yet here we see

starkly the humanness of Jesus. Jesus wasn't

some kind of stoic. He doesn't do the job without

emotional attachment. Jesus feels everything.

And here his spirit is in agony. about what he's

going to go through. And there God strengthens

him. There he settles in his heart that there

is no other way. There he settles that the Father

has not granted his request to take this cup

of suffering away from him. And so there his

attention turns to his disciples who have really

disgraced themselves a little bit. They've let

themselves down. They have not been contending.

in prayer for strength and resolve. They've been

asleep. Shocking stuff. And as he's saying this,

one of his best friends, one of his 12 Judas

leads a mob to Jesus and to add insult to injury,

betrays him with a kiss. In Jesus' culture, you

greeted your family, you greeted your best friends

with a kiss. If you were a disciple, you showed

your honor. and affection for your teacher by

greeting them with a kiss. And it's with this

act of intimacy, this act of honor and affection

that Judas hands Jesus over to be arrested, to

tortured and to die. This is a stunningly devastating

betrayal. You know, if this was just like a work

of fiction, there would be, this would be the

climactic point. where the main character is

just devastatingly stabbed in the back by the

one he thought loyal and loving and trustworthy.

Both Jesus and the disciples here are facing

a testing. Jesus faces the grief of a devastating

betrayal by one of his best friends, the fear

and humiliation of his impending torture and

the suffering of his impending death. And the

disciples. the disciples face the crisis of their

master and teachers' arrests, torture and death,

and how they will respond to being known as the

disciples of a convicted enemy of the state.

And in responding to the testing that is to come,

Jesus calls them to contend in prayer, which

is, you can now get that on your water bottle.

Thanks, Charlie. Look at that, contending in

prayer. Beautiful. Wow. I don't know why I said

that, sorry. But Jesus calls his disciples to

contend in prayer. But Jesus himself gives us

a master class in contending in prayer. The disciples,

again and again, they fail to imitate their teacher.

But as we see both requests for the cup of suffering

to be taken away for, that there'd be another

way and that the disciples would not give into

temptation are left unanswered by God and possibly

even unasked by his disciples. God does not deliver

Jesus or the disciples from their suffering.

And my friends, it's highly probable that he

will not deliver you either. We are all tested

in this life. We all suffer in one way or another.

We all have a cup of suffering to bear. We all

have a cross to bear. Maybe you already know

the taste. Or maybe you've been spared up until

now, as I once had. But I think we all have a

cup of suffering. Pain and sickness, mental illness,

shame, humiliation, betrayal, rejection, abandonment,

regret, estrangement. Poverty, unemployment,

homelessness, oppression, injustice, loneliness,

helplessness, powerlessness, grief and death.

We cannot escape the cup of suffering. All of

us will taste it eventually. But here's what

really matters. How will you respond to it when

it comes? Do you run from the suffering? Do you

run to new places or new people? Do you stuff

it all inside and pretend the cup of suffering

is not there before you that its taste is not

already in your mouth? Do you resist suffering

on principle? Rejecting the very premise of it

or do you follow the example of Jesus and Imitate

him as his disciples failed to do on the night.

He was betrayed This is what Jesus does is he's

staring down his own cup of suffering He prays

the cup of suffering away He contends for it

in prayer. He says, Father, if you're willing,

please take this cup of suffering away from me.

But he chooses, get this, he chooses then in

faith to drink it anyway. Yet I want your will

to be done, God, not mine. You know, I've had

personally a very hard four years. My own cup

of suffering has never been so real or apparent

to me. It's almost like the 20 years of not having

it is catching up. And all this time I realise

that I've been praying two -thirds of Jesus'

prayer. Lord, if you're willing, please take

this cup of suffering away from me. Yeah, I want

your will to be done, except for here, here and

also there. In those places, I would like my

will to be done, please. And this year I realised

that I was missing one third of that prayer because

I did not trust God's will for my life. And that

it could actually be better than my own will

for my life. I could release most things, but

I discovered there were still things I found

difficult to release to God's will. Things that

I personally could not abide. And I discovered

in that... potential lack of trust in the depths

of my heart, because it's easy to say, hey, I'm

a pastor, I trust God with everything, but it's

easy to say, hey, not your will, but mine be

done, but yours be done. But it's way harder

to actually watch your will for your life, die

a painful death, and to trust. It's harder to

actually accept the suffering. It's harder to

actually drink the cup. It's easy to say and

it's hard to do. And it forced me to answer this

question. Did I trust? Did I really, really trust

God? Did I trust Him that like Jesus my cup of

suffering could actually bring glory to God?

Did I trust Him that like Jesus my cup of suffering

could actually bring life and light to those

who are in the darkness? Did I trust Him that

like Jesus my cup of suffering could actually

be for ultimate good, even if it was not comfortable

for me. Almost, mostly, but not completely. You

see, moments like this, that happens a lot in

our life where we're challenged in our faith,

when we realize yet another way in which we have

fallen short of the glory of God. There lies

within it, these moments, an invitation. If you've

been around here a while, you've probably heard

me say that to you. There's an invitation within

it. Just take another step into deeper relationship

with Jesus into deeper trust into deeper love

of God And so in total honesty while I was on

holidays in between all of the many books that

I read so good I wrestled this down with God

I Took to him my dreams my fears my grievances

and my hopes and I laid them before him and I

hashed it out with him Until I could say the

whole prayer of Jesus and actually mean it. Father,

if you're willing, please take this cup of suffering

away from me. Yet I want your will to be done,

not mine. Whatever that means, whatever that

takes, God, I trust you. I wonder today, do you

trust God? Maybe you're new to church or new

to faith and the idea of getting out of the driver's

seat of your life and handing it over to God

is really, really scary. Or maybe church is old

hat for you. And like me, you're happy for God's

will when it's beneficial, comfortable, convenient,

when it makes you feel good about yourself. But

you have some complaints where God's will for

your life pushes you, stretches you, challenges

you, wounds you. forces you to change, forces

you to hand over your will for your life, forces

you to let some of your dreams go. If you're

new or old to this, I'm convinced of this. The

essential ingredient to navigating the cup of

suffering in your life is trust. It's trust,

trust in prayer. Trust that God is actually good.

Trust that God actually wants your best, your

ultimate best. not your comfort, and trust that

it's actually safe to put your life and future

in God's hands. Do you actually believe that?

No one enjoys suffering. No one wants to suffer.

Not even Jesus wanted to drink the cup that was

before him. But sometimes God's ultimate will

to redeem and restore a cosmos infected by sin

cannot avoid your discomfort, cannot avoid your

suffering, cannot avoid your own personal cost.

Sometimes in order to reconcile a fractured and

diseased world back to himself, God has to prioritize

other things than our comfort. And friends, God

treated his son no differently. If God had given

Jesus an out because he was uncomfortable on

the night that he was betrayed, then we would

be stark enslaved to sin and death with no hope.

But there was no other way. Do you trust God

that he has your ultimate good as well as the

ultimate good of humanity and all creation in

his hands? The God is actually a good steward

of your life, even if you don't know the why

or the how or the what I've been really blessed

by this this little tidbit from an 18th century

Jesuit. I'm gonna butcher his name Jean -Pierre

de Cossard Wow He said this It's true that a

canvas simply and blindly offered to the brush

feels at every each moment only the stroke of

the brush It's the same with a lump of stone.

Each blow from the hammering of a sculptor's

chisel makes it feel as if it were being destroyed.

As blow after blow descends, the stone knows

nothing of how the sculpture is shaping it. All

it feels is a chisel chopping away at it, cutting

it and mutilating it. For example, if we took

a piece of stone destined to be carved into a

crucifix, we might ask it, what do you think

is happening to you? And it might answer, don't

ask me. All I know is that I must stay immovable

in the hands of the sculpture. I must love him

and endure all he inflicts on me to produce the

figure that he has in mind. He knows how to do

it. As for me, I have no idea what he's doing,

nor do I know what he'll make of me, but what

I do know is that his work is the best possible.

It's perfect. I welcome each blow of the chisel

as the best thing that could happen to me, although

if I'm truthful, I feel that every one of these

blows is ruining me, destroying me and disfiguring

me. But I remain unconcerned. I concentrate on

the present moment, think only of my duty and

suffer all this master sculpture inflicts on

me without knowing his purpose or fretting about

it. The essential ingredient in navigating your

cup of suffering is trust. It's the essential

ingredient. Friends, this is the God that you

are trusting. You see, Jesus didn't just have

a run -of -the -mill cup of suffering. The cup

is a loaded biblical word. It's a metaphor for

the righteous wrath of God against sin. God's

anger that His children use and abuse each other,

that this world is distorted and diseased by

sin, that humanity is enslaved to sin and death,

that the enemy oppresses humanity. God is mad

that His children suffer. And in the Old Testament,

the cup of God's wrath at sin and injustice is

poured out on the wicked, those that perpetrate

evil. Psalm 75, 8 says this, for the Lord holds

a cup in His hand. and it's filled with foaming

wine mixed with spices, and he pours out the

wine in judgment, and all the wicked must drink

it, draining it to the dregs. But on the cross,

the cup, God's righteous wrath against sin, was

poured out not on the wicked, not on the abusers,

the betrayers, not on the greedy and the injust,

not on the proud and the liars, not on the selfish.

and the murderers not on the basically good people

not unto you or to me but God poured his wrath

at sin upon Jesus upon his own beloved son the

world had filled up a cup with suffering and

so the Godhead the Trinity three in one drained

his own wrath to the dregs this is the God that

you can trust with your life and your future

One who has gone to this length for you, to save

you, to rescue you. This is the grace of God

for you. We call it the gospel because it's good

news. That's what it means, good news. We call

that for a reason. This is the best news. God

has made a way where there was no way. He has

rescued you from slavery to sin and death at

his own ultimate personal cost. And this is the

best news. Because one day Revelation 21 says,

That because of the finished work of Jesus on

the cross, because Jesus was willing to drink

the cup, God Himself will wipe every tear from

our eyes. That there will be no more death or

sorrow or crying or pain. All these things will

be gone forever. This is the promise of God to

us. This is our inheritance in Christ Jesus.

That the cup of suffering is only temporary.

that your cup of suffering is only temporary.

And a world without suffering or death is coming

for us. Eternal joy awaits us. I wonder, do you

actually believe this? Do you actually trust

God with your life and with your future? When

you are tested, when you are faced with your

own cup of suffering, what will you do? Friends,

take the lead of Jesus. Pray it away. But in

trust, drink the cup anyway. Let's pray together.

God, we thank you that you give us a hope and

a future. You give us a hope, you give us a living

hope in you that one day you will put everything

right. With suffering, There will be no more

suffering. I just pray that you would come. Come

Holy Spirit. Help us to know the God that we

are trusting with our lives. Help us to know

the Spirit that walks with us who is named our

Comforter. Help us Lord Jesus to actually believe

this and live this. What else are we to do God

when we are faced with the suffering in our lives?

but to trust, to trust and to pray. And God,

I thank you that in that, even in that, even

in the hard things, even in the valley, you are

with us. You are able and you are faithful. I

pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Thanks so much

for tuning into this week's message. If you felt

challenged or need prayer, we'd love to hear

from you on Instagram, at encounterhenley. or

if you're interested in how you can support this

ministry, please go to our website encounteradelaide

.com .au Thanks again for listening. God bless

you.