Arrested and Abandoned

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My mother’s family comes from a small town in southeast Oklahoma with about 100 people, not far from Durant. And we used to go down there quite a bit in the summertime when my great-grandmother was still living. And they let us do things I would never dream of letting my children do today.

I mean, it was a different time. I know statistically, it doesn’t feel like it because we hear all these stories. Statistically, we were less safe at that time by crime statistics, but it just felt safer.

And they would let us just disappear all over town until it was dinner time. On Sunday morning, we would walk to Sunday school and meet the adults there. We could ride bikes all over town.

We would go to the post office and check the mail. We could go walk along the railroad tracks. Stuff, like I said, I would never dream of letting my children do.

One day I remember taking off on a bike to go check for Granny’s mail down at the post office, and I’m riding my bike down this road. I was by myself, and all of a sudden this big monster dog comes out of nowhere. This is one of the scaredest, I don’t know if that’s a word, scaredest times I’ve ever had as a child.

This big slobbery, it looked like it was foaming at the mouth, probably not, but just slobbery. But this big monster dog comes out of nowhere and starts chasing me down the road. So I’m pedaling faster and faster.

I’m scared out of my mind. I’m going as fast as my little legs will take me. And then I eventually end up in a ditch about a block from the post office.

And I’m screaming my head off for any, I mean, because the town was lousy with relatives. I’m yelling the name of every relative I can think of and nobody’s with me. And that made it even worse that there was nobody around to help me.

There was nobody, no adults are even coming out the post office. I’m thinking, what is going on here? I’m scared to death.

And I guess once I was in the ditch, the dog decided, I guess dogs just like to chase things. Once I’m in the ditch screaming my head off, the dog just got bored. My resident animal expert is shaking her head.

Yes, that’s exactly what happened. I guess the dog just got bored and said, oh, this is no fun anymore. And I’m still laying there in the ditch screaming.

But I was scared to death because of this enormous dog. But what made it so scary was that I was all alone. There was nobody there with me.

And it was quite a while before I’d go to the post office without one of my cousins with me after that. But that was what made it so scary, was being all alone. Not knowing how am I going to fight off this dog.

I want to talk to you this morning about a time when Jesus was all alone. And the Bible emphasizes His aloneness. Because it paints a picture for us of how as difficult and as hard as everything that he suffered was, it seems to have been worse because he was alone.

And so we’re going to be in Mark chapter 14 this morning. Mark chapter 14. If you’ll turn there with me.

If you’re a guest with us, first of all, we’re glad you’re here. But you may be wondering, okay, it’s after Easter. Why are they just leading up to the crucifixion?

It’s because we’ve been working our way through the book of Mark since mid-2021, and this is just where we are. So I was hoping it would line up where we would finish with the resurrection at Easter, but it just didn’t work out that way. But we’re going to be in Mark chapter 14 this morning as we continue this move toward the crucifixion.

And if you haven’t turned there, please do so. If you don’t have your Bible or can’t find Mark 14, it’ll be on the screen for you. But once you find it, if you would stand with me as we read together from God’s Word this morning.

Mark chapter 14, this time that Jesus was all alone. Starting in verse 43, it says, Immediately, while he was still speaking, this is at Gethsemane, like the choir just sang about. And immediately, while he was still speaking, Judas, one of the twelve, with a great multitude, with swords and clubs, came from the chief priests and the scribes and the elders.

Now his betrayer had given them a signal, saying, Whomever I kiss, he is the one. Seize him and lead him away safely. As soon as he had come, immediately he went up to him and said to him, Rabbi, Rabbi, and kissed him.

And they laid their hands on him and took him. And one of those who stood by drew his sword and struck the servant of the high priest and cut off his ear. Then Jesus answered and said to them, Have you come out against me?

Excuse me. Have you come out as against a robber with swords and clubs to take me? I was daily with you in the temple, teaching, and you did not seize me.

But the scriptures must be fulfilled. Then they all forsook him and fled. Now a certain young man followed him, having a linen cloth thrown around his naked body.

And the young men laid hold of him, and he left the linen cloth and fled from them naked. And they led Jesus away to the high priest, and with him were assembled all the chief priests and the elders and the scribes. And you may be seated.

so we have this story here where Jesus is in the garden of Gethsemane he’s with his disciples he’s praying and he’s praying father if there’s any other way let this cup pass from me we talked two weeks ago we took a detour last week and talked about evidence for the resurrection but I shared with you two weeks ago that I had I had come to a different understanding of what he’s praying about with the cup and and asking that it would pass from him Jesus was not asking not to be crucified Jesus here is showing his aversion to the separation that’s coming from God because he had already promised that he was going to die it had been prophesied he was going to die what he’s talking about here is the separation between himself and the father that’s going to come when he takes responsibility for the sins of mankind Jesus was willing to die for us but if there was any other way Jesus didn’t want to be separated spiritually from that fellowship with the father so he’s prayed if there’s any other way let this cup pass from me nevertheless not what I will but what you will he’s willing to go he’s willing to endure this for us he gets up he finds the disciples asleep a third time and says that’s it let’s go the betrayer is coming it’s it’s time for this so judas and and his minions show up in the in the garden it was apparently a mixture of temple guards and Roman soldiers.

They show up in the garden ready to take Jesus. I’ve wondered for a long time, why is it that Judas had to identify Jesus? Because a lot of people knew who Jesus was.

We see from the fact that they brought lamps with them, they brought lanterns, torches, whatever they called them. They brought those with them. It was dark in the garden.

Also, if there were Roman soldiers in the mix, they would not have been as familiar with Jesus as the temple guards would have been. And so they’re in the dark. They want to make sure they’ve got the right guy because if they arrest the wrong guy, Jesus gets to slip away and their plans fall apart.

So they needed somebody to make a positive identification. Judas does that. He brings them in.

He says, Rabbi. And that’s not just a title. He’s identifying Jesus as his teacher.

It’s not like today where, you know, I listen to three or four or five preachers’ podcasts on a regular basis. In their day and age, you had one person that you sat and listened to, one person that you modeled your life and your teaching after. That was your rabbi.

And so he’s saying here, rabbi, he’s identifying Jesus as you are my teacher. And he’s walking up to Jesus with this intimate gesture of friendship, this kiss on the cheek, and he’s using that to identify Jesus and to betray him. They try to lay hands on him.

The other gospels tell us some extra details here, that Peter is the one who drew the sword. He lopped off the ear of Malchus, who’s the servant of the high priest. And Jesus puts a stop to it. Like, Peter, put that away.

We’re not doing that here. He heals Malchus, puts his ear back on, and tells him, I’m the one you want. Take me.

And so they take him into custody. His disciples scatter, just like he said they would. He told them, I will strike the shepherd and the sheep will be scattered.

We studied that a few weeks ago. This is exactly what Jesus said would happen. The Bible also tells us there’s a young man nearby who almost gets swept up in it, and he flees for his life.

There’s been some speculation that that’s actually Mark himself. We have no way to prove that, but I like to think that it’s Mark. But if I get to heaven and God says, oh no, it was Bob, not that Bob, but somebody else, okay, I’m not going to be shocked by that.

But I like to think in my mind that it was Mark. The question came up in one of our Sunday night discussions about this young man being naked, and I said, we need to talk about this because there’s an appearance after the resurrection where it talks about Peter being naked, and so you may be wondering, why is everybody naked in the Gospels? The word there in Greek is nukatos, which means it has a whole spectrum of meaning that means you’re less than fully dressed.

It can mean everything from they don’t have a stitch on to just they’re in their underclothes. Like you might strip down to an undershirt if you’re working outside and it’s hot. So it doesn’t mean everybody’s running around naked as we would think about.

Somebody probably heard the commotion of them trying to arrest Jesus and got out of bed with just his bedclothes on and threw a sheet over himself to go check it out and almost got swept up in the commotion. And he was so scared, he left the sheet behind because they grabbed onto the sheet. He wasn’t worried about his sheet.

He was just getting out of there. And so at this point, that helps us see the chaos that was going on, the confusion that was going on, the fear and the panic that were going on. And in all the fear and all the panic and all the chaos, all of these people who were close to Jesus, they fled and left Jesus there by himself.

And so we see by the end of the evening that Jesus was all alone. As difficult as what he went through was, not just here, but over the next 18 hours or so, As difficult as it was, it might have been marginally better had he had somebody there for moral support. But we see in verse 43 here that he was betrayed by Judas, one of the twelve.

And if memory serves, at least three of the gospel writers emphasize that Judas was one of the twelve. Now, we know that, but they say that again there in this place, that he was one of the twelve because what they want us to understand is that Jesus’ arrest was instigated by part of his inner circle. This wasn’t just some random guy who said, yeah, that’s Jesus.

I heard him preaching crazy stuff in the temple. This is one of Jesus’ closest followers. They have been together constantly for three years.

And this is the guy that turns on Jesus and betrays him. And as I pointed out already in verse 45, when he identified Jesus to this force that had come out to arrest him by kissing him, it was a sign of friendship. But here he was using it for betrayal. We look at things like this and they strike us as even more wrong than they would be otherwise.

because somebody is using closeness as a tool of betrayal. I remember watching a documentary about the Secret Service in East Germany, how they would even, on occasion, when they had somebody that they didn’t trust that was critical of the regime, they would get one of their agents to marry that person, to fake the whole relationship and marry that person. And when those files were opened after the fall of the Berlin Wall, there were people that realized, wait, I’ve been married to a Stasi agent for 20 years. This person that I trusted more than anybody, they were just sent there to spy on me.

It’s been a lie this whole time. I mean, imagine opening the files and getting that realization. That’s essentially what’s going on here with Judas.

He comes to Jesus as one of his closest friends, one of his followers who’s been there day in, day out for three years, and he comes to him and uses this sign of friendship to send Jesus to his death. When his disciples do try to help just briefly, they make the situation worse. We look at what Peter did when he attacks the servant of the high priest with a sword and he chops off his ear in verse 47.

That does not help the situation. As a matter of fact, that’s when Jesus says, stop it. We’re not doing this.

And Peter, we sometimes want to give him credit for that. I’ve gone back and forth. I tell you, sometimes we’re too hard on Peter.

Sometimes we’re not hard enough on Peter. Acknowledging that I could very possibly be just like any one of those guys. So I don’t want to stand here and say I’m morally superior to them.

But Peter, for all the credit we give him for wanting to defend Jesus, and I’m sure there was some motivation of love for Jesus and not wanting to see him taken, I can’t help but question whether Peter was still trying to prove his loyalty after the conversation with Jesus where he said, you’re going to deny me just like all the others. And Peter’s still here trying to prove, no, no, I’m better than the others. I love you more than they do.

And so he’s the one that takes out the sword and makes it worse. Jesus has to stop him, it tells us in Luke 22, 51. He tells him in Matthew 26 and John 18 to put his sword away before he does any more damage.

And by the way, if you haven’t picked one up at the doors there and there, we have the grids that I put together where you can see, as we’ve done all the way through the book of Mark, you can see the details where the Gospels complement one another. They do not contradict each other. They complement one another.

And the more I’ve dug into that through this study in the book of Mark, the more convinced I am that the Gospels don’t contradict each other, that they tell a harmonized story. But we see these details in the other Gospels of Jesus saying, put that away. We’re not doing that.

Stop before you make it worse. And even Peter, in this burst of courage, says, I’m going to defend him. I’m going to fight back.

Even Peter is going to be gone shortly because by the time we get to verse 53, it says they’ve all gone. And he’s headed off to see the chief priest by himself. Once it becomes apparent that Jesus is going to allow himself to be arrested, Verse 49 tells us, I was daily with you in the temple’s teaching, and you did not seize me, but the scriptures must be fulfilled.

When he says the scriptures must be fulfilled, he’s saying, take me, this is what the scriptures say is supposed to happen. When they realize that he’s going to let this happen, in their minds, he’s just going to roll over and let it happen, they checked out, they were all gone. Verse 50 says, they all forsook him and fled.

And that’s where Mark includes the story of the young man who flees partially dressed. He was just there seeing what was going on apparently. But he was in such a hurry to get out of there with his life that he didn’t care what they ripped off of him.

He was gone. And the purpose of all of these details, the purpose of all the details, Mark, Matthew, Luke, John, they could have all told us Jesus was arrested. Judas betrayed Jesus and he was arrested.

Their reason for giving us all these details is to emphasize, to highlight the fact that Jesus was all alone. He was completely abandoned by his followers. Now, they kind of followed at a distance, but as we’ll see in coming weeks, those who were there didn’t want anybody to know they had anything to do with Jesus.

At this point, he had no one left but the Father, and even that fellowship is about to be interrupted when he goes to the cross. So we need to understand how utterly alone Jesus was, and I think how much that complicates what he’s about to go through, the extra weight that that puts on him to have to not only go through all that he’s about to endure, but to do it alone. And that’s made all the more remarkable by the fact that Jesus had plenty of opportunities to escape this, but he refused to do it.

He refused to escape. Jesus had numerous opportunities. At any given point, he could have stopped this.

He knew when he went to Jerusalem that he was going to be crucified. He could have chosen back then, I’m not going to Jerusalem, I don’t want to do that. Have you ever been in a situation where maybe it’s some social obligation or something you’ve got to do for work and you don’t want to do it, and so you start finding reasons not to do it.

We’re real good at that, aren’t we? Some of you just don’t want to admit it. He had every opportunity.

He could have said, I’m not going to Jerusalem, but he went anyway. The disciples said he was determined. His face was set in stone to go to Jerusalem.

He could have stopped this at any given moment leading up to this. Even in this moment that we’re looking at, here in the garden as they come out to arrest him. When we go back to verse 42, where we were a couple weeks ago.

Jesus gets up from prayer the last time and says, let’s go out the betrayers at hand. He knows Judas is on the way before they can probably even see Judas, and he doesn’t take the opportunity to slip out the back. If somebody’s coming for me with torches and pitchforks, and I know about it, I’m probably going to slip out the back way.

He doesn’t do that. He was able to subdue the guards on his own. There’s an account in John chapter 18, where when the guards get there, and it’s not recorded in the other gospels, and I think it’s they’re telling the story quickly, and John often comes back later and says, hey, there’s some details that the other guys left out that I think are important.

You need to know this. So John tells this story in John 18 about how when they show up with the soldiers, Jesus, and after Judas kisses him and all of that, Jesus asked the soldiers, who is it you’re looking for? And they said, Jesus of Nazareth, and he said, I am he.

And I don’t fully understand what happened. This is one of those places in the Bible that I believe it, because it’s in there, but I can’t fully explain to you what happened. Jesus says, I am He, and they just sort of collapse.

They fall backwards in fear, apparently. My best explanation of that is that maybe the power of the words, I am He, that He’s, maybe they’re shocked because they didn’t think He was going to so openly claim to be the Messiah, or maybe it was the power in the words, I am, because we know that the name of God, just like he told Moses, is I am. Maybe it’s just the power in that utterance, but there’s something about what Jesus said to them, I am he, ego I am me.

He said it to them and they fell backwards. When we realize that Jesus is God the Son, the second person of the Trinity who spoke the very universe into existence, there is unlimited power in Jesus. He could have spoken the words and made them not only fall down, but stay down, and yet he volunteered to go with them.

We see in verse 47 here where it talks about Peter chopping off the man’s ear. We see that the disciples were willing to fight. Jesus could have staged an uprising right there, and he could have swept himself into power.

At least back on the previous Sunday, the crowds were with him. Maybe not the crowds from Jerusalem, but there were a lot of Galileans in the crowd for the Passover. He could have done something right there, swept himself into power.

There we go, messianic kingdom, just like they were all looking for. They were willing to fight, but he stopped them. The guards came with these weapons that he said were not necessary.

He said, you could have come and taken me at any point. I’m not here to fight. The scriptures say this is what’s supposed to happen, so let’s do this.

He had numerous opportunities to step away from the cross, and he didn’t do it. Do we understand why he did that? He wasn’t just trying to set a good example.

He wasn’t trying to get himself martyred to start a movement. What did he tell Zacchaeus his purpose was in coming here? The Son of Man is coming to seek and to save that which was lost. what did he tell his disciples just a few hours before when he handed them the wine he said this is my blood what did he say the purpose of it was to be spilled for the for many for the remission of sins Jesus entire purpose the reason why he refused to take any of those opportunities the reason he was so determined to go to the cross was for you and me because there was no plan b for you and me to be right with a holy God each of us has sinned and I know we may look pretty good if we compare ourselves to other people.

You know, I’m not Hitler. I’m not Pol Pot. I’m not Charles Manson.

You know, I can compare myself to other people and look pretty good. But God’s standard is absolute sinless perfection. If we look at the law, if we look at God’s standard as a you must be this holy to enter in sign, we can’t ever get up to where that hand is.

See, each of us has disobeyed God. Maybe in our words, maybe in our actions, maybe in our thoughts, our attitudes, But we’ve all disobeyed God and the Bible calls it sin. And we as a society think, why can’t God just chill out and be okay with it?

Because God is holy. God by his very nature is sinless. God can’t just accept our sin.

Some of you are going to go have lunch at a restaurant after church today. Be kind to those who take care of you, by the way. But some of you are going to go have lunch.

And they’re going to bring you a plate of food. How much gunk scraped out of the garbage disposal are you going to be okay with on that plate? Is 1% garbage disposal stuff and 99% food on the plate, is that acceptable?

Are you good with that? No, we want 100% garbage disposal gunk free. I’m sorry, some of you are going to remember that.

I’m going to remember that when I sit down to eat and I may have trouble eating. But I’m trying to make a point. We don’t want that.

It’s offensive to us. God, by His very nature, looks at our sin the same way. And it is offensive to him.

And God’s not going to be okay with even 1% of it. It has to be paid for. It has to be punished.

And to ask God to be okay with our sin is to ask God to stop being God. And he can’t do that. There are some things God cannot do.

And that’s one of them. Our sin had to be dealt with. And you and I can never do enough good to undo that sin.

We don’t get extra credit for doing what we’re supposed to do. It’s just what we’re supposed to do. There’s a penalty for that sin.

And it’s either on you and me to just accept the penalty, which is eternity separated from a holy God, or Jesus had to come and pay for that sin. And I think it’s important that we understand that because I keep seeing stuff on the internet talking about how God had to die to save us from what God was going to do to us. And it’s not what God is going to do to us.

It’s what our sin does in separating us from a holy God. And Jesus Christ was the one and only acceptable sacrifice. There is no plan B.

If there was another option, then the cross was a mistake and God does not make mistakes. And so he came to the cross. He was determined no matter what it cost him, even if he had to go alone, even knowing that he had to go alone, Jesus willingly came to the cross because it was the only way that you and I could be forgiven.

His sacrifice was just as much voluntary as it was necessary. He had to be betrayed. He had to be forsaken.

He had to be abandoned. He had to go to the cross alone to fulfill the promises that God had been making for thousands of years. And that was the only way that you and I could be forgiven, was for him to suffer everything that he suffered.

He did this to show his love for us. He not only went to the cross, but he did it alone at any time he could have checked out. But he loved you that much that he was willing to endure all of that.

And he offers forgiveness. He offers salvation. All those sins we’ve talked about.

And I don’t have to give you a list. The Bible says the law of God is engraved on our hearts. We have an innate knowledge to some extent of right and wrong. And there are certain things we know are wrong.

Now, ultimately, the Bible is the standard. But even if you don’t know a lot about the Bible, there are certain things we know are wrong, and we do them anyway. And we’re all guilty.

And so our conscience tells us that we’re guilty before a holy God. The answer is not be good, try harder, go to church, give money. All of those things are fine.

But the answer is not any of those things. The answer is to trust in Jesus Christ. The fact that he shed his blood and died to pay for your sins. The fact that he rose again three days later to prove it, to prove that he wasn’t just some guy who got himself killed while saying he could forgive us, but he actually rose again from the dead in the same body that was crucified to prove it.

And if you trust in him, if you believe that, then you trust his promise that he’s done everything necessary to save us and you simply ask God for his forgiveness because Jesus has already paid for it.