Jesus taught that sin loves darkness. It’s no surprise, then, that his betrayal and arrest would take place in the cover of night. But Jesus forces the darkness of sin into the light. His words, “you betray the Son of Man with a kiss” reveal the scandalous truth that Jesus was betrayed by someone in whom he has put his trust, someone he loved.
Jesus taught that sin loves darkness. It’s no surprise, then, that his betrayal and arrest would take place in the cover of night. But Jesus forces the darkness of sin into the light. His words, “you betray the Son of Man with a kiss” reveal the scandalous truth that Jesus was betrayed by someone in whom he has put his trust, someone he loved.
Don’t get nervous, but I have a mini pop quiz for you this morning. I’m going to list three phrases and I want you to decide whether they come from the Bible or not. Here we go: “Good things come to those who wait.” “God helps those who help themselves.” “What goes around comes around.” Have your answers in mind? Trick question! Even if you search every page and paragraph of the Scriptures, you will not find any of those phrases. Yet, it’s interesting that many of us have either said these things or thought them, right? Now, if we were talking about the philosophy of karma, these three statements fit right in. Our culture is very experiential. We base much of our life perspective on our outward circumstances. If something goes our way, we so often see it as proof of God’s love for us. Yet, conversely, sometimes things don’t go how we hoped, and we think God is punishing us in some way. Part of Satan’s scandalizing plan is to search for assurances of God’s love in all the wrong places. He uses life circumstances and our own subjective viewpoint to betray our spiritual vision. How can we know with 100% certainty that God loves us? How can you and I know without any doubt that we are friends of God? How can we know and trust that Jesus really is who he says he is?
The disciples were wrestling with those questions. Remember where we left them last week? They’re passed out, sleeping on the grass of the Garden of Gethsemane, “exhausted from sorrow,” when Jesus wakes them up and points them away from avoiding their sorrow but bringing it to God, and as Jesus is in the middle of bringing his Heavenly Father into that crucial conversation, they hear rustling. The rustling gets louder. The shadows from the torches start dancing across the olive grove. Then, their faces appear. Soldiers, priests, guards, and the disciples are thrown off-guard. Jesus stands resolute. He knew what this was about. None of this was unexpected. The chief priests had despised Jesus for a long time now, but the disciples’ eyes couldn’t look away from the man leading this group of 200-plus armed men: Judas. “It can’t be.” So they thought. Judas looks at who was once his dearest friend, his Rabbi, and he approaches Jesus to do something only ever used to show fellowship, friendship, and closeness in their culture, but Judas intends to use the gift of a kiss to betray, to sentence, to execute. As Judas approaches Jesus, it was as if time stood still, and just the two of them were there in the Garden. Jesus interrupts Judas’ intention and asks, “Judas, are you betraying the Son of Man with a kiss?” Do you see what Jesus is doing? He is trying to speak into the dark place where Judas was, “Judas, I know what you came to do, and I know where I’m going. But Judas remember I’m the Son of Man, I’m your Messiah, your Savior. This sin will be paid for.”
Judas for years had grown more and more bitter toward how Jesus handled money. Jesus and his disciples could’ve been wealthy beyond measure in Judas’ mind, but Jesus kept turning wealth away. Judas envied the circumstances of others. He longed to be in the 1%. In Judas’ mind, wealth was the only guarantee to know that God favored you, that God loved you, and that God was blessing you. Circumstances dictating certainty.
Judas’ viewpoint of life was much the same as yours and mine often is: We look to life circumstances to deliver the certainty only Jesus can give. Money isn’t the only outside source we look to for security and assurance. We look inside at our emotions too. The heart of identity crisis in whatever form that takes comes from the confused and misguided thought that self-discovery is how we’ll know what life is all about and that we can dictate who we are when only God can do such identity-giving. When we face adversity, instead of relying on Jesus who brought us to that moment, we put our certainty in our own strength or willpower. We look for circumstantial certainty, instead of Savior certainty.
But maybe your struggle isn’t circumstances-based like Judas'. Maybe it’s comparison-based like the disciples. They compared their lives with others to find unchanging principles of life. Let’s flashback to Luke 13. Two awful tragedies had occurred: a bloody massacre in the temple of God itself, and a tower falling on 18 people killing them instantly. The disciples thought, as did many in their society, there was something wrong with those people that sparked their tragic end. In their schema of life, it made sense that good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people. They wanted comparison-certainty.
They were looking for the same comparison-certainty in the Garden of Gethsemane. All this time they saw Jesus as the conqueror of Rome, not the suffering servant-messiah, and so when they see this crowd ready to arrest him, they’re ready to fight. They compared Jesus with other kings and were missing out on the certainty only he can bring. They didn’t get God’s plan and how the cross was central to Jesus. What was Peter communicating when he cut off the high priest’s servant’s ear? “This isn’t how this is supposed to go, Jesus!” Their senses were betraying their faith-vision.
To my shame, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thought that exact thought: This isn’t how this is supposed to go, Jesus. I look at the lives of the people around me and I look for certainty, maybe you do too. It’s this chaotic stressful search of comparing Facebook highlights, kids’ achievements, net worth, feelings of happiness, “having-it-together”- ness, you get what I’m saying. When we can’t find certainty within ourselves, we compare ourselves to others to try to feel like we’re okay, that we have a good life, that we are making good decisions, and that we’re on the right track. But comparison-certainty is a misnomer. We end up more lost and uncertain than before.
Where can certainty and assurance be found? Where can Jesus and God be truly known? What is the unquestioned path to heaven? There is only one place where it can be found. But here’s where our human logic betrays us. We can’t find the certainty we long for on our own. Certainty must find us, and he has.
With a brawl about to break out, Jesus sees the scandal Satan is enacting, and he stops him dead in his tracks by doing something radical. Something that betrays logic. Here he is the almighty Son of God who could call down infinite legions of angels and wipe all his enemies off the face of the earth, and instead, he says, “No more of this!” And he touched the man’s ear and healed him.” He loves his enemies. He shows where true certainty is found: Him and his Word. Darkness is reigning at this moment but it wouldn’t last. The certainty of Jesus’ triumph is never in doubt. Jesus’ patience, his control, and his healing show how different Jesus’ plan is. Who he is isn’t karma-based, it’s grace.
There’s something beautiful about how Jesus handles this. Think about Judas. Jesus always knew the betrayal Judas would do against him, and yet we see the certainty of Jesus’ love in that he never stopped reaching out to Judas. He knew Judas’ end but he never stopped lovingly approaching him in word and action, to turn his heart back to the Lord. Now some would say, “That’s illogical, why do you keep reaching out, Jesus, when you know Judas will keep on refusing and rejecting you?” He keeps reaching out because that’s who Jesus is. No one is a lost cause for him. It’s Savior-certainty, the constant, unchangeable, compassionate grace of our God.
Jesus illustrated that in his parable of the fig tree in Luke 13. For years, the farmer kept coming back to this tree over and over and it never had fruit. He’s ready to get the chainsaw out and cut this waste of space, but the vinedresser says, “Leave it alone for one more year, and I’ll dig around it and fertilize it.” You know what this parable is saying? It’s saying: Jesus in his grace has certain and changeless patience for you. When you and I get caught up in trying to prove what only grace can give. Jesus sends life circumstances to point us back to his Word. His Word causes a change of mind, repentance, a confessing moment, and a trusting heart. Life circumstances change, emotions swirl, and things come and go, but one thing will never change: the selfless, self-giving, self-sacrificing, saving grace of your Jesus. It’s Savior-certainty that gives you joy even when you don’t feel happy. It’s Jesus whose “never-giving-up” type of love tells you that you’re forgiven, you’re family, and you will always belong to him. It’s grace found in God’s Word that directs our thirst for certainty away from self back to the Son of God. Jesus’ patience and powerful grace are there too when we are convicted by the sin of looking to comparison-certainty.
Maybe we haven’t heard of a tower falling on our friends, but we all saw the damage of Hurricane Ian, or the tornados that just came through our country, or the school shootings, and it’s easy to think, “God is punishing our country for our sin.” But the reality is, Jesus already took all of God’s punishment we deserved for our sins. He nailed our sins to the cross. Finished. Done. Forgiven. So then why does God permit these effects of sin to happen? To show us where the only true certainty in this dying world is: The cross. When God takes away something, it’s not to hurt us or to lead us to question everything in life. He gives and takes so that we cling to the only thing that lasts beyond death itself: grace. This is where the gift of older, experienced Christians come in, and our church family has no shortage of these gifts. I can’t tell you how thankful I am to Jesus having sat down with Christian soldiers of the faith in their 70s, 80s, and 90s and hear these women and men talk about how some of the darkest and hardest moments of their lives were some of the best blessings Jesus ever gave them. Those moments were blessings because they cleared the uncertain clutter of life, and the clarity of Christ broke through.
Jesus’ patience and persevering grace for us turn our minds and hearts back to him, the certainty of what God has said that will remain forever, and so we stop looking to circumstances and emotions to give us what only God’s grace can.
So how does knowing the certainty of the cross affect how we process and go through the uncertainties of life? It takes the pressure off and reminds us that our emotions and logic will betray us at times, but Jesus’ unchanging words of grace and promise will never fade away. Knowing the crystal-clarity of grace, leads us to look first to God when a big decision is weighing on us, decisions like: Should we have another baby, what medical plan should we use to treat a-fib, how will I adjust to the new place we moved to, how will I handle the disconnect in our family. Grace leads us away from trying to find answers inwardly or outwardly, and instead, the Holy Spirit puts his Word on our minds and hearts. We open the certain Scriptures and we realize who is always in control. Just like Jesus was always in control in the Garden of Gethsemane even when our human senses wouldn’t think so, he is in control even if it feels like life is stacked against us. But the certain reality is that we have Jesus at our side. We are always in a position of strength because Jesus will never leave us, and he has won the war. It’s certain! We are not victims. We are victors through Jesus! That’s a fact!
My dear family, let’s run to the certainty of the Scriptures. Let’s never let life circumstances betray what our hearts of faith know to be true! Jesus has won! Grace is ours! We’re not alone! We know who we are! We trust and we know what God’s Word says is true, and you know what that word says about you, “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!” That’s Savior-certainty, and all God’s people said, Amen!