Betrayed, Arrested, Denied, Mocked

When the going gets tough, what should the weak do?  Depend on God.

This past summer, Katie and I went on vacation to Yosemite National Park. We had one big hike we wanted to complete while there: Half Dome. Fourteen miles round trip, 5,000 foot elevation gain, around 12 hours to complete. As we hiked other trails the days prior, they all seemed to give us a majestic view of Half Dome. All week, the challenge that loomed ahead was in our view.

On the day of our hike, we left at 6:00 am, with food and water packed for the day and a water filtration system for filling up with river water. We hiked past two waterfalls. We hoped to see a bear. Supposedly there are bears in Yosemite so you have to keep all food locked up and out of sight, but we didn’t see a single bear. I think it’s just propaganda so that people keep the park clean.

We trained all summer for this, jogging up the bleachers at the high schools, doing strength workouts, going for smaller hikes. Around mile five, we were both feeling tired, then this girl came striding by us. She was in her early twenties and somehow she was moving faster than us but it looked like she was working half as hard! So that was pretty discouraging. About a mile later, she asked if she could hike with us because she was afraid of bears (she had fallen for the Yosemite propaganda). So Jessie hiked up with us the rest of the way.

Eventually, we started getting close to Half Dome which looks exactly how it sounds: a dome of rock. The angle is so steep that you need to hold onto metal cables to pull yourself up. As we stood at the base of Half Dome watching others go up, we wondered if we would be able to make it up. All week we had stared at this challenge and we’d hiked six miles uphill to get there, but would we be able to complete the journey?

Series Introduction
Today, we are continuing to prepare for Easter in this series called “For You.” Jesus says that everything he goes through in these final three chapters of the Gospel According to Luke was “for you.” Last week, we learned how Jesus was prepared to die for you. This week, Jesus is betrayed, arrested, denied, and mocked...for you.

Sermon Introduction
The passage for today is all about staying on the path and completing the journey. All week, Jesus has had his own Half Dome in view and now he is standing at the base of it, looking up at the task before him. Lots of people hike the six miles to the base of Half Dome and turn back. They don’t complete the journey. Jesus is feeling pressure and temptation to leave the path God wants him to go down. Jesus knows his disciples are going to feel that same pressure.

Complete this sentence for me: when the going gets tough, (the tough get going). But what happens when the going gets tough, and you don’t feel very tough? What if the going gets tough, and you feel the opposite of tough?

The big question this passage answers is: when the going gets tough, what should the weak do? When the going gets tough, what should the weak do?

We are going to break this passage into two parts, one looking at Jesus and one looking at Peter. When the going gets tough, what does Jesus do? And when the going gets tough, what does Peter do?

We’ll start by focusing on Jesus.

When the going gets tough, what does Jesus do? (Luke 22:39-53)

All week in Jerusalem, Jesus has his Half Dome in view. His Half Dome is the cross. He knows he is going to suffer and die in order to rescue others from sin and death. Jesus enters Jerusalem triumphantly on a Sunday but by Wednesday, Judas betrays him so that the religious leaders can arrest him and have him killed. On Thursday, Jesus gathered his closest twelve disciples to celebrate the Passover. During this ritual meal, they remembered how God rescued them 1,400 years earlier. But Jesus says a new rescue is about to happen and it is going to happen through his death.

That brings us to our passage for today. After the Passover, Jesus leads his disciples to the Mount of Olives in the darkness of night. Matthew and Mark, two other authors in the bible who tell this story, specify where they go on the Mount of Olives: the Garden of Gethsemane. This is a grove of olive trees that still exists today. And because olive trees live for a really long time, some of the olive trees there today are the same olive trees when Jesus was there.

In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus goes to God in prayer and he exhorts the disciples to do so as well. Jesus knows the going is about to get tough. He’s standing at the base of Half Dome and he knows the disciples will be tempted to turn back. So he tells his disciples in verse 40: “Pray that you may not enter into temptation.” Jesus told them during the Passover meal that Satan will tempt all of them to abandon him - to abandon faith in him and abandon following him.

Jesus goes a stone’s throw away from them and prays this prayer in verse 42:

“Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.” (Luke 22:42)

“The cup” in the Old Testament was used as a way of talking about suffering or God’s judgment. Jesus is about to drink a cup of suffering. But more importantly, he is going to drink the cup of God’s judgment and wrath.

Do you remember the event that the Passover celebrated? It was when God went through Egypt and brought death to every household, except for the houses with the blood of the lamb on their doorpost. God “passed over” those houses and they were spared from death. But a lamb died in their place. Jesus says he is like that lamb. Jesus is going to his death to save others from their death. He is going to drink the cup of God’s judgment for sin so that others don’t have to.

This cup is Jesus’ Half Dome. It’s filled with all the poison, curse, and death of sin. It’s filled with all the alienation, estrangement, and separation that sin brings. It’s filled with all the consequences and penalty of sin. It’s filled with all the shame, guilt, and condemnation that come with rebelling against God. It’s filled with everything humanity deserves for our refusal to follow God’s ways. Standing at the base of this cup, Jesus is in distress and agony. The thought of drinking all that is deserved for our sin makes him shudder and it should make us shudder as well.

If you are a follower of Christ here today - if you have trusted in him and surrendered your life to him as your Lord and Savior - then you will never have to drink that cup. You should have to. But Jesus drank it in your place so that you wouldn’t have to. If you haven’t trusted in Jesus, the prospect of drinking the cup of judgment for your sin should make you shudder in terror and fill you with agony. God’s wrath remains on anyone who hasn’t surrendered their life to Jesus.

As Jesus prays, an angel from heaven is sent to him in order to strengthen him. In agony, he continued to pray even more earnestly as he broke into a heavy sweat. Going back to his disciples, he finds them asleep for sorrow. The reality of Jesus’ death has hit them and exhausted them. But Jesus knows they need God more than sleep and again exhorts them to pray.

But as he says this, a crowd led by Judas approaches. The moment of betrayal has come and Judas does it in the most awful way: he greets Jesus with a kiss of friendship and respect. Jesus’ disciples jump to defend Jesus and one cuts off the ear of the high priest’s servant. Jesus puts an end to it and heals the servant’s ear. Jesus heals even someone who has come to arrest him.

Then he addresses the crowd: “I’ve been teaching all week in broad daylight in the temple and you didn’t arrest me, but now you are coming out secretly in the middle of the night to arrest me like I’m a criminal?” They know what they are doing is shady because they are doing it secretly in the middle of the night and Jesus knows it too. He says to them, “But this is your hour, and the power of darkness.” For the time being, it looks like evil and darkness are having their way. But Jesus knows that God is in control.

We’ve seen what Jesus does when the going gets tough: he goes to God in prayer, surrenders to his will, and receives strength. And even when others act rashly to defend him, he puts a stop to it and undoes the damage by healing the servant’s ear. Let’s see what Peter does when the going gets tough.

When the going gets tough, what does Peter do? (Luke 22:54-65)

After Jesus is arrested, he is taken to the house of the high priest. This would have been a bigger house with an open courtyard in the middle surrounded on each side by the house. The mix of servants and temple guards who went out in the middle of the night to arrest Jesus start a fire in the courtyard to warm themselves in the coolness of Jerusalem’s mid-spring night.

Peter followed Jesus to the high priest’s house. He wants to see what is going to happen and tries to blend into the crowd around the fire. A servant girl see’s Peter’s face in the light of the fire and she tries to place how she knows him. Then it hits her. “This man was also with him,” she says. Peter responds, “Woman, I do not know him.”

A little while later, someone else sees him and points the finger, saying: “You also are one of them.” Again, Peter denies it: “Man, I am not.” An hour passes. Jesus is held in custody and questioned. Someone else recognizes Peter and says, “Certainly, this man also was with him, for he too is a Galilean.” Jesus is from Galilee and so is Peter and they recognize his Galilean accent. Peter says, “Man, I do not know what you are talking about.”

At that very moment, before Peter could finish his sentence, the rooster crowed. At this point, Jesus is some place where he has a direct line of sight to Peter. Jesus turns and looks at him. As Peter makes eye contact with his Lord whom he just denied knowing three times, he remembers what Jesus had said: “Before the rooster crows today, you will deny me three times.” At this, he left the courtyard and wept bitterly. The going got tough and Peter fell into the temptation Jesus warned him about.

Meanwhile, as the night drags on, verses 63 through 65 tell us that those who were holding Jesus in custody were mocking him and beating him. They blindfolded him and said, “Prophesy! Tell us who struck you!” They want him to prove he is a prophet. The irony is that this mocking proves Jesus is a prophet because he predicted it would happen. Throughout the night, they blasphemed, disrespected, and dishonored the king whom God sent to rescue them.

When the going gets tough, what should the weak do?

There is a big difference between how Jesus and Peter respond when the going gets tough. So what does this all mean for us? When the going gets tough, the tough get going. But what if you don’t feel tough? What if you actually feel the opposite of tough? What if you feel weak and needy and unable to go on? What if you have already been hiking for six miles and you are looking at the path ahead and you don’t know if you can handle it? What do you do then?

Grab a bulletin and a pen if you don’t already have one. Write these four words on it: exhausted, scared, failing, wandering. Now, circle the ones that describe a feeling you’ve had this past month. Next, put a box around the one you are feeling right now.

The big question this passage answers is: when the going gets tough, what should the weak do? The simple answer is this: depend on God. Depend on God. But let’s answer it more specifically using those four words you wrote on your bulletin.

First, when the going gets tough, what should the exhausted do? The exhausted should depend on God’s strength to keep you on the path. When Katie and I were hiking up Half Dome, we had moments where we were simply exhausted. Standing at the base of Half Dome, it was easy to wonder if we could really pull ourselves up those cables to the top.

Perhaps that is where some of you are at. Life has you exhausted: work is tiring, raising kids is tiring, sickness is tiring, commuting is tiring, fixing broken cars and broken houses is tiring. You are tired and when you look at the path before you, you don’t know if you can keep going. It requires strength you don’t have.

As Jesus stood at the base of his Half Dome, he knew he needed strength he didn’t have. So he went to God in prayer. And what did God do? He sent an angel to strengthen him. I don’t think the angel just zapped Jesus with some strength. The word “angel” means “messenger,” so perhaps the angel came to remind Jesus of his Father’s love for him and his presence with him. Perhaps the angel came to remind him of the salvation his death would accomplish. Or perhaps the angel came so he wouldn’t be alone. Suffering can feel lonely. The disciples don’t really get what Jesus is going through and they are struggling to stay awake. The angel is maybe the only one in that garden who really gets what Jesus is about to go through.

We have something better than angels. If you have surrendered your life to Jesus, you have the Holy Spirit inside you. God will remind us of his love for us and his presence with us through the Holy Spirit. But he will also send other people into our life who also have the Holy Spirit so that they can sit with us and comfort us and remind us of these truths.

Jesus shows us that when we feel weak and exhausted, we need to depend on God’s strength. We need to go to him for the strength we don’t have. Jesus brings his emotions and struggle to God and you can too. When you don’t think you can go on, God will give you power to keep on the path.

The problem is, we so often believe that we need to find the strength in ourselves for the path ahead. Or we try to find the strength in other places. Jesus goes to God and tells the disciples to go to God, but they go to sleep instead. They chose sleep instead of prayer. We can easily try to find strength, comfort, and rest everywhere except for the best source.

Take a moment and write down an area where you feel exhausted and need to depend on God’s strength.

Second, when the going gets tough, what should the scared do? The scared should depend on God’s goodness to keep you on the path. Standing at the base of Half Dome, with its sixty degree angle rock face that we had to climb up by cable, it looked pretty scary. Jessie, the girl who started hiking with us, made it about 20 feet up and said, “I can’t do this. See ya guys.” When the angle got really steep, Katie became really scared and didn’t know if she could do it.

But many people push through their fear because they know what awaits them at the top: a beautiful view that takes your breath away. The problem was, while we went through the scary part, none of us could see the beautiful view. We just had to trust it was there.

As Jesus looked down the path, he saw the cup of suffering and judgment he was about to drink on behalf of all humanity to save us from that fate. So he went to God and asked if it was possible that this cup be taken away. But he also said, “Not my will but yours be done.” Jesus surrendered himself to God’s will. He surrendered himself to God’s path for him.

There are going to be many times in life when the path we are on is scary or what we see coming is scary. Or it might be scary because we have no idea what is coming. If only we knew, we could control it and plan it. But when life is scary, we need to trust that God’s will for our life is the best plan for our lives. The path may be scary and we may not be able to see the beautiful, breathtaking view to where God is leading us, but we need to trust that he is leading us there; he is leading us to a good place because he is a good God.

Katie and I have really been challenged with this as we have walked the path of infertility and adoption. We both fully believe God is powerful enough to make us pregnant and give us a baby. We both fully believe God is powerful enough to make a successful adoption happen. So the question is: why didn’t he? Why didn’t he allow us to get pregnant? Why didn’t he make our adoption last fall end in success? Why did he let us go through such pain and hardship? Why did it end with empty arms and aching hearts.

The lie we easily believe is that if God is powerful enough to stop bad things from happening and he doesn’t, then he must not be a very good God. He must not care very much about us. But when the path is scary and painful, we need to believe that God’s plans for us are better than our own. We need to believe that even if God never gives us what we think he should give us, that his plan for our life is better than our plan.

The truth is God cares about you more than you care about you. We need to trust that God’s version of our life is the best version of our life. We need to trust that what God wants to do with our life is better than what we want to do with our life. The best version of your life is the version where you have the most of him. So he will do whatever it takes to give you more of him and sometimes that means giving you less of other things. Even when the path is scary and all we are doing is staring at the face of the 60 degree rock surface we are climbing up and how much is left to go, we need to trust that there is a grand vista at the top. It may not be the vista we thought, but it’s the vista we truly need.

Take a moment and write down an area where you feel scared and need to depend on God’s goodness.

Third, when the going gets tough, what should those who’ve failed do? Those who’ve failed should depend on God’s grace to put you back on the path. Katie and I made it to the top of Half Dome and back, but what if we hadn’t? What if we were like Jessie and we were too scared so we turned back?

Jesus knew Peter would get too scared and would turn his back on Jesus. Yet Jesus prayed for him and told Peter that he would be restored and would actually strengthen the rest of his disciples.

Whenever we watch movies based on true stories, Katie loves seeing the comments at the end of the movie that tell you where the people are today. Imagine the TV screen is black and the details about Peter begin to fade in.

John’s gospel tells us that after Jesus is resurrected, he appears to his disciples a number of times. On one occasion, several of the disciples, including Peter, are fishing on the Sea of Galilee. Nighttime was the best time for fishing, but they caught nothing all night. As the sun began to rise, Jesus shows up on the shore and tells them to try the other side of the boat. They throw their net over and bring in a huge catch. Peter yells out, “It’s the Lord!” He jumps in the water and swims to shore. When the other disciples get there, they find that Jesus has started a fire. He tells them to bring some of the fish and he cooked them breakfast.

After a while, Jesus asked Peter a question: “Do you love me?” “Yes,” Peter answered. Jesus said, “Feed my lambs.” Jesus asked him a second time: “Do you love me?” Peter answered, “Yes.” Jesus said, “Tend my sheep.” Jesus asked a third time: “Do you love me?” Peter answered, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep.”

It was around a fire near the break of day that Peter denied Jesus three times. Now around a fire near the break of day, Jesus asks Peter three times if he loves him and gives him a job: take care of the other disciples. You see, Jesus died for failures like Peter. Jesus died for failures like you and like me. Our love for Jesus is going to be tested and sometimes we aren’t going to act like we love him at all. We are going to have moments, days, and weeks when our lives look nothing like someone who loves Jesus. But if we were able to be perfect, then Jesus wouldn’t have had to go to the cross.

The problem is that we believe our failures are greater than God’s grace. We believe that our sin, our guilt, and our shame are more than God can handle. If you are in that place, you need to believe the good news that God’s grace is greater than all of your failures, all of your sin, all of your weakness, all of your guilt and shame. Jesus died for failures so don’t let your failures define you. Let God’s grace define you.

Take a moment and write down an area where you feel like you are failing and need to depend on God’s grace.

Fourth, when the going gets tough, what should the wandering do? The wandering should depend on God’s compassion to keep you on the path. There was only one way to get up Half Dome: you had to hold onto metal cables and pull yourself up the steep rock face. Everyone says: do not leave the cables. Don’t go outside of them for a picture or to explore. If you do, it will be dangerous. You also aren’t supposed to climb up during bad weather because you are 5,000 feet above sea level on a bare rocky surface holding onto metal cables. You become a human lightning rod slipping and slide on a smooth rock surface.

There have been a handful of people who have died climbing up Half Dome but all of them except one were when people went up during bad weather or when the cables were down. One person has died when the cables were up in good weather, but he was alone so no one knows what happened.

Sometimes we are like Peter. We wander off the path and we get ourselves into trouble. We get ourselves into dangerous situations by not listening to God’s guidance. We need to be rescued and restored. Jesus knows what it feels like to be tempted to leave the path. The book of Hebrews tells us that Jesus was tempted in every way we are yet was without sin. In this passage we see Jesus struggling with the tough road ahead and wondering if there is another way.

You’re not alone in your struggle to stay on the path. Jesus knows it’s hard. Jesus knows there’s pressure. Jesus knows what it’s like to have Satan fighting against you. Jesus knows what it’s like to stand at the base of a tough climb and wonder if you can do it. That means Jesus can empathize with you and show you compassion. God took on flesh and now he can really say, “I know how you feel. I have felt it.”

But so often we believe God has no compassion or tenderness toward us. He’s just a rule enforcer. “Suck it up. Get with the program. If you’ve wandered off, that’s your problem. Fix it.” But you can see God’s tenderness in how he meets Jesus in his struggle and how Jesus meets Peter in his.

Take a moment and write down an area where you feel like you’re wandering and need to depend on God’s compassion to keep you on the path.

What should we do?

As we climbed the trail to Half Dome, we met many people along the way: the birthday girl turning 50, Jessie, the mother-son duo, the Brazilian sisters. Even though we were strangers, we formed a bond with them and encouraged each other to keep going when we were tired or scared and felt like we couldn’t do it. We hoped the people we met would make it to the top then looked for them up there and celebrated with them.

In life, the going will get tough. We’ll feel the pressure and temptation to leave the path or turn back. You need other people on this journey. You can’t do it alone. We need to Live as Family so that we can bear one another’s burdens and keep each other on the path when the going gets tough.

This week, invite someone into your burdens. You wrote down areas in life where you are exhausted, scared, failing, or wandering. Invite someone into those. Ask them to pray for you. If you are in a Gospel Fluency Group, share it with them this week. If you aren’t in one, get together with someone this week or call someone and ask for help. Don’t try to handle it on your own.

Conclusion
As we close, think of the people God has put in your life. Do you know someone who’s exhausted? Do you know someone who’s scared? Do you know someone who feels like a failure? Do you know someone who is wandering? Write their name down.

Wouldn’t it be good news for them to hear that God can meet them right in the middle of being exhausted, scared, failing, and wandering? They don’t need to clean themselves up or get their act together. They just need to finally admit that they need God and cry out to him. That’s the gospel: God rescues exhausted, scared people who are failing and wandering when they call on him. And he does it through Jesus.

During this final night of Jesus’ life, he faces the power of darkness that betrays him, arrests him, denies him, and mocks him. As he stood before his Half Dome, he went to God for strength to carry the plan of salvation to the end. And he did it for you. But this is only the start of the climb. Because he knows drinking the cup of our judgment on the cross is coming. This too, he will do for us.