Preparing the Passover

This morning's reading is Mark chapter 14, verses um 11 through 21.

Mark 14 · chapter mention

And on the first day of unleavened bread, when they sacrificed the Passover lamb, his disciples said to him, Where will you have us go and prepare for you to eat the Passover?

And he sent two of his disciples and said to them, Go into the city, and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you.

Follow him.

And wherever he enters, say to the master of the house, The teacher says, Where is my guest room?

Where may where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?

And he will show you a large upper room furnished and ready.

There prepare for us.

And the disciples set out and went to the city and found it just as he had told them, and they prepared the Passover.

And when it was evening he came with the twelve.

And as they were reclining at table and eating, Jesus said, Truly I say to you, one of you will betray me, one who is eating with me.

They began to be sorrowful, and to say to him one after another, Is it I?

He said to them, It is one of the twelve, one who is dipping bread into the dish with me.

For the Son of Man goes as is written of him.

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

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

This is the word of the Lord.

You may be seated.

Good morning.

Thanks for joining us this morning.

My name is James Rath, and I'm the pastor here at Redemption Church Denver.

Glad to be together with you.

And uh uh looking forward to continuing through Mark at the first part of this year.

As I shared last week, we're jumping right back into Mark, which is a bit out of step with our normer our normal uh pattern of how we move through books of the Bible here at Redemption Church.

Typically we do uh Old Testament in the first part of the year, and then into the fall, we move into the New Testament.

But uh so you might have expected for us to be moving back into Exodus if you've been with us for a little while, but we're gonna have to hold off on Exodus for just a bit longer because when I laid out the preaching of Mark through this first part of the year, it worked out such that the final sermon in Mark will be the resurrection on Easter Sunday.

And you just can't miss that opportunity.

So we're gonna we're gonna go ahead and do that.

So uh this morning we are back in Mark as we were in the fall, and we are in the last section of Mark, and we are in Holy Week, as we have been for a while, but we're uh moving into today that Passover meal in which Jesus is betrayed and the uh events of his passion begin to take place.

So uh before we move into today's text, would you pray with me?

Holy Father, we praise you for your loving kindness.

We thank you that you took on flesh and that you entered the world and you didn't happen to be betrayed when you entered, but you entered the world knowing that you would be betrayed.

And that in all of the experience of the pain and betrayal that you took on, Lord, it was not for no reason, but it was to pay the price of punishment for our sins, that you that we might walk freely before you and that we might have peace with God because of the sacrifice that you made.

Lord, there is no aspect of sin that you left unturned and that you did not take within yourself, that you didn't experience.

And Lord, today we see the beginnings of that betrayal, the fracturing of your closest relationships.

And Lord, we know that we have a God who has experienced that, and that you know how to walk alongside those who are experiencing that.

So Lord, we pray that you would attend us, Lord, that we would see hope in your mercy, and that we would see uh a full trust in your providence as we look through all the pains in our lives that seem like mere happenstance.

Father, we lift up to you those who are suffering in Los Angeles, who have lost their homes.

Lord, how it might seem like as people hunt for an explanation, is there any meaning to this?

Is there any hope in this?

Um it is just a total loss.

Uh Lord, we remember that uh you are acquainted with that, and that there is no happenstance with you.

So, Lord, while that it can be hard to trust in time of uh of loss, Lord, we pray that you would equip us to trust you in that.

We lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So our story today is in is on Thursday of Holy Week, and that is the day in Holy Week in which the Passover feast is celebrated.

The Passover lamb would have been chosen just four days before, and then on the Thursday, the lamb would be sacrificed in the temple and the meal would be eaten by those gathered to celebrate uh together.

And it uh if we had preached continued in Exodus, we'd uh interestingly actually be in this exact same place in a sense, because the Passover feast is introduced in the story of Exodus.

And what happens is Moses goes to Pharaoh, he's instructed by the Lord to go to Pharaoh and explain uh that the firstborn of all Egypt will be killed if uh he doesn't let the Israelites go.

Pharaoh, of course, withholds, and then God uh gives this instruction to his people through Moses that they are to take a lamb and they are to sacrifice it, kill the lamb, eat the lamb as a family, eat it quickly.

Uh, and they are to take the blood from the lamb and they are to put it on the doorposts and the lentils of their home.

And that night the uh angel of the Lord will come and he will pass over and he will kill the firstborn in every house, except for the firstborn that are in the houses that have the blood of the lamb on the doorposts.

Those will be covered by the blood of the lamb.

And this is exactly what takes place, and there is a cry that goes up in Egypt the next morning because everyone woke up in that house, in every every in it within every household, something was dead.

Either a firstborn child or the lamb.

That was the difference.

And Pharaoh and the Egyptians then pushed them out of Egypt pretty quickly.

Well, we are on that Thursday.

This is the time to celebrate that.

God institutes the Passover meal, and he says, This is now the first month of the year, because this is the month of your deliverance.

He says, You should institute this meal to be celebrated for all time, so that you remember that you were covered by the blood of the Lamb, and that by being covered by the blood of the Lamb, I freed you from slavery, and I drew you out to be with myself.

And so they were rescued through justice against the Egyptians, and they were spared that same justice by the blood of the lamb, and that became their rescue.

And so they are to remember that annually with the meal.

And that's the meal that is to be celebrated.

It kicks off the feast of unleavened bread, but the first meal in the feast of unleavened bread is the Passover meal.

So after that, they'll have a uh they'll feast throughout the week, but they feast on unleavened bread.

And that's to remember that when they were driven out of Egypt, they had no time to let their bread rise.

They had to go right away.

Which, because of COVID, we all make sourdough now.

Or many of you do.

Um COVID and depression, two reasons that people start making sourdough.

And uh so you know about letting bread rise and um that sort of thing uh start to happen.

So they had to move with such haste out of Egypt.

And so now in our holy week in Mark, they are celebrating the same meal of deliverance.

And it's Thursday, and the disciples are wondering, uh, where are we gonna eat?

You know, it's sort of it's kind of odd in a sense, because why would they not know?

It's like Christmas morning, thinking, like, where are we gonna celebrate Christmas today?

You wouldn't typically let something like that slide.

But throughout this process, and as we m as we move through this time of Holy Week, something that we're looking at is this strange dynamic where, in one sense and at one level of reading the text, it looks like Jesus is this absolute victim, where he is baited into a situation and then taken advantage of by those who are closest to him, and that this whole crucifixion is this maximal picture of injustice that he is a victim of and that it just happens to him.

But then there's this other sense in which Jesus, throughout this whole story, is the one doing it, in which he is not having his life taken from him.

He isn't he is uh not deceived or tricked by any of the schemes that are hatched against him, but he is the one who is in absolute control of everything that's happening.

And this is the dynamic that we see take place throughout all of Holy Week because it shows us and it calls us to remember that the God who is in control of all things, down to the smallest detail, is betrayed.

Now, how can that possibly be?

Many of us have lived our whole lives trying to gain as much control as we possibly can over the relationships that we're a part of, just to ensure that we will not be betrayed.

And we think that there is this relationship between if God has this absolute control over everything, then it seems, wouldn't this actually be impossible for Jesus to be betrayed?

Well, that that's the mystery that we're getting pressed into this morning as we see that at the Passover meal itself, the betrayal is announced.

Okay, so let's go ahead and move into our text with that sort of intro.

In Mark 14, um, yeah, I think I copied and pasted wrong again.

I gotta brush up my uh Command C and Command V.

In Mark 14, uh, this will be verse 12.

It says, And on the first day of unleavened bread, when they sacrificed the Passover lamb.

So that's the first day of unleavened bread when it's you should read like when it's typical to sacrifice the Passover lamb.

His disciples said to him, Where will you have us go and prepare for you to eat the Passover?

As I explained, it's strange that there's no location.

But it also sort of tips uh the hat a little bit.

Jesus, uh one reason that he might not have shared the location that they would eat the Passover is because he wants to ensure that the Passover meal takes place.

Because as he'll explain in Luke, which we'll look at next week, when he uh they actually have the Lord's Supper, and Jesus institutes the Lord's Supper as a sacrament, offering the bread and the wine and explaining that that's his body and blood.

He says that that is something that he has been longing to do, that he has been longing to share this meal with his disciples.

And his institution of the new covenant is what he came to do.

And so he wants to ensure that this would be that that this could not be interrupted.

And Judas at this point has already made a deal with the scribes and the Pharisees to betray Jesus to him.

But he wants to ensure that this meal takes place.

So perhaps he doesn't share where they're going to eat this night because he knows that even within the twelve, there's a uh there's there's a mole in the room.

You know, he's got uh leaky seals, and so he uh doesn't want to get taken advantage of, and he wants to ensure that this meal can happen.

And so he doesn't share until the day of where the Passover meal is going to take place, but Jesus has precise plans for where it will take place.

So in verse 13, it says, And he sent two of his disciples and said to them, Go into the city, and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you.

Follow him, and wherever he enters, say to the master of the house, the teacher says, Where is my guest room where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?

And he will show you a large upper room furnished and ready, there prepare for us.

So where are we eating tonight?

He takes two of his disciples.

We're we don't know exactly who the two are, and he gives them this strange instruction that's in one sense like very specific, and in another sense, extremely vague.

It's like it there's this hidden nature to the instruction.

He says, Okay, go into the city, okay?

You'll find a man carrying water there.

Okay, he'll he'll meet you.

And then follow, follow him.

This is like a like a Zelda quest.

Follow the man carrying water, and then wherever he enters, say to the master of the house, the teacher says, Where is my guest room where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?

And then he'll show you a large upper room and it'll be furnished and ready.

There, prepare for us.

Okay, so they walk into the city and they're looking for a man who's carrying water.

It's these strange instructions.

And another place at the beginning of Holy Week, uh, we've actually received instructions that sound like this.

They have this same sort of strangeness.

You may remember when Jesus enters Jerusalem on Holy Week, the triumphal entry, they need a donkey to ride in on.

And Jesus gives this instruction uh for how to acquire the donkey before they go in.

He says, Go into the village in front of you.

This is Mark 11.

Go into the village in front of you, and immediately as you enter it, you will find a cult tied on which no one has ever sat.

Untie it and bring it.

If anyone says to you, Why are you doing this?

say the Lord has need of it and will send it back here immediately.

And then Mark goes on and he tells the whole story.

They do go into the town and they find a cult, and then someone's like, Why are you taking that cult?

And then they say, The Lord has need of it, and they're like, Oh, okay.

Then they take, then they take the cult.

And in both of these instances, there's this strange mix of absolute control that is in a sense masquerading as happenstance.

It's absolute control, but at one level you could read it, and it's just like, well, they just happened to walk into Jerusalem, they happened to see a man carrying water, they happened to follow that man, and it happened to be the right house.

But it's not happenstance.

What Jesus, I think one of the things that Jesus is communicating in this to his disciples is that he, from the very beginning of this week, if you have eyes to see it, and you will not write it off as mere happenstance, you will see Jesus is the one who is in absolute control over this whole story.

And that's going to be an important thing to remember because there's another way to read the story, which is that as we followed these happenstance instructions and these things that seemed to just kind of work out according to the way Jesus said they would, everything spiraled further and further out of control until our Lord was arrested, until he was falsely convicted, until he was struck and we all scattered, and the holy week ended with us looking up at him on a cross dead.

And we'll wonder something back there, some detail we must have missed because something went horribly wrong.

But Jesus shows his control in the finest details.

What it's like is Megan and I have been watching the show on Apple TV called Slow Horses.

Have any of you have been watching that?

Great.

And it's uh with Gary Oldman, which is like it Zach recommended it, and I was like Gary Oldman, and Gary Oldman's mandatory, so if Gary Oldman's in it, you have to watch it.

And it's a spy thriller, is all you need to know.

Have you ever seen a spy thriller?

Yeah, now we're back.

So uh a good move in a spy thriller is is this one.

Uh the villain, or it can be the protagonist, gets arrested.

And they're brought in to the headquarters or to the prison or what, you know, that that sort of place.

And uh while they're arrested, they pull off some scheme within the headquarters.

And they have like a prison break.

Or you you know, this actually happened to Gary Oldman before in The Dark Knight, when he brings the Joker into the MCU, and then the Joker blows up the MCU.

Now it's just five of us talking.

And then he he says, the Joker wanted to be arrested the whole time.

This was his plan to be arrested.

And then they realize, oh my gosh, all of these things that we thought were just happenstance, it was actually the plan of the person who it looked like the victim of.

If you're ever writing a spy thriller, that's a good move.

And every it works on me every time.

It happens in slow horses, they get arrested.

It's just the first season, not giving away much.

And uh they're brought into the MI5 headquarters, and the bad person is like, uh, we've got you now, and they're like, ha.

We intended to be arrested here.

And it's what why is that so shocking and thrilling?

It's because it shows us that all these things that we thought were just happenstance were the were the plan of somebody who has an unthinkable level of control, like just this masterful level of control.

Well, that's what we're seeing here.

Is we're being forced to see Jesus has this incredible level of control.

Now, what if we press into the particulars a bit?

You know, there is something to be said for a man carrying a jar of water.

Throughout the Bible, women carry jars of water.

That's uh that's always always the example.

And so there is something peculiar about a man carrying a jar of water.

I could find two instances where it seemed like men are carrying the jars of water throughout scripture.

One is the wedding feast at Cana, when the master of ceremonies is at least in control of the jars of water as they're distributed.

We don't see someone uh uh providing them, but there's something, there's something to the preparation of a feast that seems to coincide with now men are carrying jars of water in the scripture.

And Jesus, as he's heading towards the Passover, we are heading towards a wedding feast.

It is a new covenant that's going to be established.

It is a new relationship between Christ and his people that is going to be established.

And so that's what Jesus is bringing his disciples into.

Now the other one, and this one is very strange, is in Numbers 5, in which the priest is commanded to carry an earthen jar of water.

It's these earthen jars that we're talking about in particular, not like a wineskin, an earthen jar of water, and it use it, fill it with dirt from the ground, and use it to perform this test of marital fidelity against a suspected adulteress.

And I this is one of those things where the the particulars of the test are um fill it with dirt, mix it up, the suspected adulteress drinks it, and if her stomach is distended, then she was an adulteress.

If it is, if she doesn't have any stomach pain, then she's not an adulteress.

I'm going to need a coup maybe another decade of growing in my ability to interpret and study the Bible to provide more insight into that.

But there's a but the point is, I think for our purposes, is that there's a test of fidelity.

And I think that we're walking into an evening that will have these two elements in it: a marriage, uh a covenant renewal establishment rather ceremony, and a test of fidelity for all who are there.

And we'll see that there's one in particular, and that's what we'll look at today, where that absolutely fails the test of fidelity.

But it it's it's uh it's more like a precursor to show that everyone.

Except for Jesus in this room will fail the test of fidelity.

And yet the new covenant ceremony will take place.

How can both of those things possibly be true?

That's the question that we're gonna look at.

So to wrap up this section, in Mark 14, 16, it says, And the disciples set out and went to the city and found it just as he had told them, and they prepared the Passover.

So those two disciples go out, they go into the city, and just as he had told him it would take place, they see the man with the water, they follow him into the house that he's walking into.

I I hope they talked, you know, it wasn't just like one thing, you know.

And they talk to the master of the house, and the room is prepared, and they're brought into the upper room, that famous upper room, the upper room where the disciples' feet are washed, the upper room where that glorious discourse in the Gospel of John takes place, where he prays the high priestly prayer.

Well, he tells them of the coming of the Holy Spirit, the upper room where the Lord's Supper takes place.

It was perfectly furnished precisely for the purposes that Jesus had intended for his disciples.

Now, I just want to add just like a slice of application to this because you have a couple of interpretive options for your life as well, where you can interpret things as mere happenstance.

And the way that life presents itself to us is often as just mere happenstance.

It's the way that we experience it.

But we know that there is no mere happenstance in our lives, that Christ is the Lord of all things, down to the smallest details, he is in absolute control over.

And it's almost like God uses this hiddenness, it's like a masquerade of happenstance that his sovereignty takes place within.

And so living in a life that is just happenstance, you could reflect back and you could say, you could play all of these, you know, sliding doors, alternative timeline ways of interpreting your life.

And you can think back on this one relationship and think, man, if I just hadn't, if I could have just learned to have kept my mouth shut, then I wouldn't have gotten myself in this situation, which wouldn't have led to that situation, and perhaps we'd still be together now.

Perhaps there'd still be some relationship available now.

You can torture yourself with that counterfactual way of running things.

But we know that there is no counterfactual, that the apparent happenstance, even of your life now, up to this moment, is under the absolute sovereign control of the Lord.

That it all belongs completely to him.

That includes the terror and the wonder, your sin and the sin of others.

Somehow they are within this.

And so that brings us to this question of okay, well, then how are we to respond to the life that God has laid out for us?

How are what responsibilities, what needs am I required to step into?

What problems have been uh placed right in front of me?

Uh am I somehow now outside of the plan of God, or could God meet me here with his good purposes?

Our hope, as we see this story, especially of Holy Week, this is the greatest version of this.

Our hope is that right where you are right now, you are not outside of the plan of God.

God can meet you there with his good purposes.

He can.

There's real meaning, there's real love and kindness, there's real opportunity for growth that he can meet you with right there, right where you are.

So you can quit running the counterfactuals.

If we had a God who was able to get us out of situations that we oftentimes we'll think of it like this: God would only actually get me out of this situation or help me through this situation if I didn't have such a hand in getting myself into it.

But when I look back, you know what?

Uh this horrible situation that I'm a part of, well, I can tell six different ways in which I I played it wrong and made it worse.

God's not going to help me with those.

No, God, if God didn't rescue us from things that we got ourselves into, it'd be like like three and a half things in your life that God that you would have a hope of God rescuing you from.

What we our hope is, what we can know in Christ is that He is absolutely sovereign over all of it.

And the hope of that is that He can meet you right where you are, precisely in the story that you find yourself in.

So don't read it as happenstance.

Read it as providence.

Learn to hope and interpret your life as the hand of Providence.

Now, the holy the meal has begun.

And the institution of the Lord's Supper has not been provided yet, but they have gathered around and they've begun eating the meal.

The other Gospels provide varying insights as to what's taken place.

So far, in John's Gospel, we would know that the feet of the disciples had been washed, another reason to bring water upstairs, and that uh they have now eaten and gathered round.

We don't know where in the discourse Jesus might be, but he brings this up in Mark 14, 17 through 18, says, and when it was evening, he came with the twelve, and as they were recl as they were reclining at table and eating, Jesus said, Truly I say to you, one of you will betray me, one who is eating with me.

Was probably a nice meal before that.

You know, the feet washing, that's it was you know, odd at first, but then it was like, well, you know, this is a one this is a wonderful picture of Christ, isn't it?

Isn't this so like him?

And Peter is, you know, so Peter.

Wash all of me.

Just your feet, you're clean otherwise.

You know, if you recall the scene.

And they're all gathered around, and the meal would have been in the middle of them, and they would have been reclining, laying down on the floor, sort of sprawled out like spokes around a wheel.

John, the disciple, would have been reclining right up against Jesus.

And Jesus has the gall to ruin the moment.

As he brings into sharp relief the reality of what stands before them, truly I say to you, one of you will betray me.

One who is eating with me.

And he plunges them into this uh terrible sort of self-reflection.

As they begin to feel sorrowful.

Now, why is it that Jesus would say this?

It's because Jesus is light and truth.

And what's strange is that Jesus says this before the institution of the Lord's Supper.

He doesn't do it afterwards.

He doesn't um go ahead and go through with the institution of the Lord's Supper while we're all together, while we're while we're all we all feel, at least there's like a everybody gets to feel like we're totally in sync here.

Instead, he it's like before he can institute the Lord's Supper, he has to bring truth into the room.

And he has to acknowledge what is the reality of who we are as a group right now.

The reality is one of you who is eating with me in peace right now has intentions to and will betray me.

This, of course, is Judas, and perhaps Judas's heart sinks, and he wonders if he'll be outed or what will it all mean.

In Mark 14, 19, it it says the response of the whole group says, they began to be sorrowful and to say to him one after another, is it I?

You know, this is such a wonderful question.

It's even like the right question, and it shows the sensitivity of the hearts of the disciples.

They say, Is it is it me?

Will I be the one who will betray you?

They all wonder.

They all ask this of their own hearts.

But you could see how it would be, it's they had experienced a whole week of attacks from the outside.

The scribes had lined up against them, the Pharisees had lined up against them, the Sadducees had lined up against them, and it that can really cohere a group.

And it can make the group think, you know, we're the ones who we're finally in the upper room, and it's finally just us, and we can recline and we can breathe easy because we we know we are the ones that have this unity with Christ.

And then Jesus says, in the room, amongst us, not from the outside, but from within the room, will come the domino that leads to my betrayal and death and crucifixion.

The one who will make the decisive blow is here with us right now, eating with us.

Mark, in a sense, unlike the other gospel writers, he really highlights and even maintains the ambiguity of the room.

In the other gospels, we it the conversation goes on and it narrows down to Judas.

Um I like when uh Peter nudges John and is like, look, you ask him.

And then it it comes out that John asks, and it's revealed that it is Judas, is the one who Jesus is speaking about.

But Mark maintains the ambiguity.

Here's what it says.

In Mark 14, 20, he said to them, It is one of the twelve, one who is dipping bread into the dish with me.

He doesn't, you don't you just want to say, like, can you just say, can you just say who?

Isn't it just Judas?

But the way that Mark tells the story, he holds this ambiguity and he says, It's just one of you.

That's all I'm gonna say is that it's just it's just one of you.

He's pressing into their hearts this question of, is it me?

Is it me?

Am I the one who is going to betray Jesus?

And I think perhaps one of the reasons that might be is because Mark is Peter's gospel.

Mark is really the retelling of the story recorded by Mark, but from the perspective of Peter.

And right around the corner, that will be highlighted more than Judas's betrayal throughout this recollection is Peter's denial of Christ.

And I think what he is wanting the reader to experience and what he wants to press into us is this question of, is it I?

And that Jesus doesn't relieve that because, in a sense, it is all of them.

Judas does strike the worst blow.

But all of them will scatter.

All of them will deny him.

And so Mark in his gospel, as he's recording Peter's perspective on this, it's it's almost like he can't bring himself to resolve it onto Judas, lest the reader resolve that reality that you would deny Christ onto just some other person.

He leaves it in that tension.

And then Jesus says this in verse 21 for the Son of Man goes as it is written of him.

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

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

Two principles here.

The Son of Man goes as it is written of him.

So this first principle that Jesus lays out is my being betrayed, my being led to the cross, my being taken to my death is necessary.

It must go this way.

It can go no other way.

The Son of Man goes as it is written of him.

It's already been written.

This is in the mind of God, it must take place this way.

And then the second point is but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed.

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

So that means that the one who betrays Jesus, which we've established, it's necessary that that happen.

And it must come through someone, but the one who does it is still absolutely culpable for what he has done.

That the wickedness of that sin, though absolutely necessary, belongs to Judas.

Woe to the one by whom the betrayal comes.

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

So we see that this sin is necessary, which is bizarre, and vile, horrible, and causes the person who commits it to be guilty.

How can it be that God can say, I am the one who is in control over all of these events that take place?

I am the one who has absolute providence over all of it.

This sin that Judas commits must happen.

It can go no other way.

And yet, the one who commits it is absolutely guilty.

This is a deep mystery of our faith.

These two things, as we try and reconcile them, they are very difficult to reconcile because what we would like to say is either God didn't have control here, and so it's just on Judas.

God didn't, this wasn't written in any story beforehand.

This is just on Judas.

Because if Judas could have done this any other way, we'd ask God, could this have gone any other way for Judas?

Could he have done any other thing?

And he would say, no, it was absolutely written.

Did Judas freely choose to do it this way?

Yes, absolutely.

The decision completely goes to him.

Then you try and cross-examine again.

Okay, okay.

So he couldn't have done it any other way.

There's no other way that this possibly could have taken place.

This had to have happened.

It was written, yes, that's exactly right.

This was all mine.

Everything that takes place is completely mine and belongs to me.

100% I am sovereign, Lord over all things, in absolute control over all things.

Okay, good.

And you think God's back's against the wall.

So then Judas then did not freely choose to, you know, uh sin like this.

He doesn't, he doesn't have any guilt in sharing in the sin like this.

No, he's absolutely guilty.

It is absolutely his.

He really did this.

Now, I don't have a magic sentence that can reconcile those things.

The Bible plainly teaches them.

But one way to approach this is to consider what if it were just one of those?

What if it were just the case that God was not in control of all things, but that Judas had some sort of absolute freedom, where it was what happened here and what happened on the night that's recorded here really was just happenstance.

God's not in control.

We cannot say that this is, as it says in Acts, that this is what the hand and the what the plan and the hand of God caused to take place.

We would not read it like that.

Well, that means that all of life can only be interpreted as just happenstance.

It all just happens to go the way we hope things would go.

The promises of God are just things we we hope works out in this sort of way, but man, it can be interrupted at a whim.

It can be interrupted by you later today when you decide to tie your left shoe instead of your right shoe, and you're slower, and then that makes you late, and then you get in a car wreck, and then you miss that job opportunity, and then the it's just happenstance.

It's just happenstance.

And that means that there's technically no meaning to any of your experiences.

They're just things that happened, they happened to take place.

This is things are such as they are, because they just happen to take place.

So that means the the way that you ought to interpret your life, and the the way that you would rationally live if we lived coherently with this.

I'll give away the ending.

What I'm trying to show here is that yes, we are brought into this apparent paradox of the absolute sovereignty of God and the culpability of sinful man.

But what I want to show you is that being brought into this paradox is the only livable place.

That although you say this doesn't seem like it's possible, it's the only way that you can live as a person is to embrace this reality.

So it's either just happenstance, you interpret your life, and you say none of it has any meaning.

I'm just here because of happenstance.

And if you were honest about it, you would say, you know, I can't I can't even tell what what cause is related to what effect that I want to happen later.

You know the butterfly effect?

Where like a butterfly flaps its wings in Japan and there's a hurricane in Florida.

That's what I think that is.

And then it's like, well, how do you trace the reality?

So then what decision do you make next?

When do you just if you're if you're dancing on the edge of that type of meaninglessness and entropy, you you ought to be paralyzed.

And you should live in this crazed way because nothing is meaningful.

It's it doesn't really matter anyway.

That's what it means if God is not in control of all things, if God cannot look at at everything and say, mine, just right where I put it.

Happening just as I intended it to happen.

It means if your life now, if with the problems that you're facing, that means that he would to say that the God who is not in control of all things would meet you there is that he'd show up and he'd be like, oh, look, I'm as surprised as you are.

You know, back there, I had some expectations.

That when you followed the man who was carrying the water, that he wouldn't trip and the water would break everywhere and you'd spend the rest of the day.

So now we're really in a pickle together, but I'm very clever and I know all sorts of things.

So I'll be able to figure out a way to get here.

He instead, what it means, what it means for the Christian is that when God meets you in all the happenstance of your life that you are in right now, the hope that you have is he shows up and he says, right where I expected to meet you.

All perfectly in accord with my good purposes, which I have promised to realize, and they will be eternally realized.

So that's what it would be, that's why it is necessary that God be in control of all things.

You cannot function as a person.

You would never be able to make a next step if you were rational with yourself.

Now, but does that mean that then no person is really culpable for any of the decisions that we make?

Because one way of reading that is then how can God bring a charge if this was all in his divine plan?

Well, one way to approach this is to consider it in, we'll take it out of the God frame and we'll put it into like a biological frame.

Because Christians are not the only ones with a problem of determinism and justice.

If you were to consider, uh actually in the early 2000s there was this um sort of trend, like a philosophy trend.

And it actually made its way into the legal sphere.

And people were trying to do philosophy, uh, they were calling it practical philosophy, which was like philosophy by experiments, like neurological experiments.

Now, I think this is a bad idea.

Philosophy is an armchair discipline.

And it I I think it needs to stay an armchair discipline.

That's where it does its best work.

Uh we don't need empirical evidence or data in philosophy, but they were trying to do this.

And what they were trying to demonstrate in the legal realm was that certain people had a neurological makeup that compelled them to commit the crimes that they had committed.

And so they were biologically determined to commit these crimes.

And so because they were biologically determined to commit them, we cannot say that they had any moral culpability in them.

And so what that means is there is no reality of justice for those people.

And so if it is, and you can see why they're pressing this, there's there's no hope of justice taking place for somebody who has no moral culpability for something.

And you could push this, and eventually it's one of those things where it's like, okay, how far are we going to push this?

Is it isn't everything nested within biology?

And then if everything's nested within biology, then is there ever isn't everything fundamentally determined and I have no choice in the matter for anything?

And if everything is fundamentally determined and I have no choice in the matter for anything, then wasn't it inevitable that I spoke this sentence?

You know, and then here, and then we're all just, what are we?

But that's unlivable.

Because you know you've you've had people do things to you, and you would step back and you'd say, that was wrong.

That was that was wrong that I was treated that way.

And I I know that it's foolish, and it's me continuing to live as a fool and put myself in a position to only be further and further taken advantage of unless I treat them as though they have moral responsibility for the actions that they take.

You know you must live like that.

And so while the truths of our faith press us into this apparent philosophical paradox, what I'm hoping to show you is that it is the only livable place where you can see there, why does it, why does this injustice feel so bad?

It's because this life feels meaningful.

Well, why does this life feel meaningful?

Because it was written in the mind of God, and it will be eternally meaningful.

But then how how can there be this, how can there be any uh uh moral responsibility for us uh as agents as agents in it?

Well, that's the way that God made the world.

God is the type of creature who can be creature, excuse me, one heresy.

God is the type of being who can be uh who is sovereign in such a way, he is he is so sovereign that he is able to create creatures that have real freedom, not the illusion of freedom, but have real moral responsibility and culpability and accountability.

Okay, so now that we've seen that, I've got to start to hurry.

What I what I want us to see is that Christianity puts us in the only livable place, which is life is really meaningful and there is such a thing as justice.

But the there's this other question, which is Jesus is saying here that he will be betrayed.

How is it that God, who is in control of all things, could be betrayed by his creature?

You know, if if uh um if when AI rises up against all of us, I don't think we're going to be able to say like um like uh it'll be like things got haywire and it went bad, but we won't be able to say this is a betrayal.

This is a betrayal.

Because we don't have that type of a relationship with this thing that we've created.

It's just like a tool.

You know, we might say it jokingly, like I hit my uh thumb with a hammer while I'm nailing a nail, and say, oh, the hammer betrayed me.

No, the hammer didn't betray me.

It had no moral culpability in the event, uh so far as we know.

And it there so that's a um the way that God could be betrayed by his creatures is in order to, you don't, you don't betray from the outside, you betray from within the relationship.

The way that God could be betrayed by one of his creatures is if he, of his own accord, entered into a relationship with us, so that we could know him and love him and enjoy him.

And we were the type of creatures that were made to be in a relationship with God, such that the fullness of our heart satisfaction is only found in being in relationship with our creator.

But that's no risk for our creator.

He could have made us that way, and there's no opportunity for betrayal, but he made us that way, and then he enters into covenant with us.

He enters into covenant with Adam.

I'll be your God, you be my people.

There's a tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Don't eat from that tree.

If you don't eat from that tree, a promise of life.

If you eat from that tree, death.

And within the confines of that relationship, you know what's possible?

Betrayal.

And that's precisely what took place.

That within the confines of the relationship that God of his own free will entered into with us, we betrayed our creator.

Now, how does Jesus experience this betrayal here?

He is the one who organizes the meal and invites them in and says, I am entering, we have this fellowship together.

And in that context, he provides the space for his betrayal to take place.

Now, why would the creator put themselves in the situation where they could be betrayed by the creature?

Do you see why Jesus has done that?

It was because of the unsearchable riches of his kindness towards his creatures.

Because in their betrayal of him, he would take on the punishment for their sins.

He would experience the depth of betrayal, the worst parts of it.

He would be treated as though he were the one who committed that first betrayal in the garden.

And he would bear the fullness of the punishment for that betrayal against God.

He would experience and receive in his body as a person the wrath of God against that sin and against that betrayal.

But that would be the fullness of the punishment that would be required.

And what he gives to those people who he has entered into covenant with is the freedom of his grace, saying the punishment that you deserved for betraying me has been fully satisfied.

And that now I give to you the fullness of my righteousness freely given to you, so that now you have peace with God.

Jesus puts himself in the position to be betrayed and all the strangeness of the dynamics that that requires.

So that we might have peace with God.

That's why Jesus puts himself there.

It doesn't just happen to him.

It was absolutely his design.

The sins that we commit against him are truly wicked and vile.

But Jesus, in his sovereign grace, has atoned for them so that when we come to him, we are freed.

This is the depth of the love of our Creator, who would enter our own vile happenstance, so that we might be freed for our purpose, which is to love and honor and enjoy him forever.

How deep the Father's love for us.

So are there any questions today?

I skipped last week.

Why did God's plan specifically require one of the twelve to betray Christ?

Oh man, what a what a big mystery.

I think it had to come into the the the closest proximity, lest we think that there is some pure aspect left in the world of where the good guys were.

And if we just and then maybe we could just create another one of those, some pure place in the world where just the good guys are.

And I think Christ brings this right into his story, this betrayal right here, so that he's showing in the in the clearest terms, just like in the narrative itself, the only way of salvation, the only good one is Jesus.

The only hope is him.

And so he receives the fullness of the glory.

It is not that he was the one who was able to, I mean, he was probably a pretty good disciple maker.

One of his own betrayed him.

This is true of our hearts.

You cannot think that you'll be able to carve out there's some little place in your own heart that's not corrupted by sin.

There is no such place.

Your only hope is Jesus.

He has done it.

You must look to him.

This is our only hope.

And this is what he institutes in 1 Corinthians 11.

He says.