"Easter Eggs: The Hidden Stories of Easter" Week 2

Week 2 of “Easter Eggs — The Hidden Stories of Easter” highlighted the moment Jesus was arrested and Peter cut off the servant’s ear, revealing how Jesus rejected violence, healed His enemy, and showed that His mission would be fulfilled through surrender and compassion—not force.
Join us this Easter Sunday for Week 3 of the series and invite a friend! 

Website: https://mannastafford.church/

Find us on: 
Facebook:   / mannastafford  
Instagram:   / manna.stafford  
TikTok:   / manna.stafford

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to the Manna Church Stafford Podcast, where we're all about equipping God's people to change their world. We're thankful you're here, and we're praying that this message encourages you to love God, love others, and love the world more fervently than before. Now, let's get to it.

unknown 0:27

Good morning, man at church.

SPEAKER_01 0:29

How you guys doing today? Everybody good? Yes? Good, good, yeah. We can give Jesus a clap. Listen, we are in week two of our series Easter eggs. So we're talking about hidden truths in the Easter story specifically. And if you've ever tried to hide Easter eggs around this holiday, like I know my kids, we're gonna go, well, not all of them, the little ones, and I don't know, some of the middles, they might get into it too. But we're gonna hide Easter eggs. We're gonna go to Grampy and Gramisa's house and we will uh put eggs all over the yard. And if you know the kids, they like to peek through the windows and they like to look and see where the eggs are, and you know, they they want to go out and and they wanna find them and uh they want to get a head start. And it's kind of the same way with the movies that I referenced last week. I referenced a few different ones. Once you know the Easter eggs are there, you want to go back and watch it again, and you want to kind of have this aha moment. And so uh we think the Easter story is a lot like that. We believe that there are so many Easter eggs that are surrounding the big events of the crucifixion and the resurrection. They often get overlooked, they often get missed. And so um these these little pieces, they're some of the key elements of the final lessons that Jesus taught while he walked among us here on earth. And sometimes they can get overshadowed by some of the larger events of the crucifixion, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. So we really want to give you an opportunity to mine out all of these little truths that are so, so, so powerful. And so today I'm gonna do something, I'm gonna preach a little, a little differently today. I'm not gonna give you three application steps. We're gonna really unpack this specific element of the Easter story that is so powerful and it's often overlooked. In fact, um, man, you gotta really sit with this story in order to get this one. You really gotta gotta dig deep. And I love this. I was sitting on Monday night, I'm in bed next to Daniel, I'm typing crack-a-lacking away on my computer, and I look over at Daniel, I'm like, oh my goodness, I love this so much. Like, I love doing this, I love getting into the word and just finding these little details and pulling them out and sharing them. And she looks over at me and she goes, Well, that's good because you've got to do it every week. And it's your job. I'm like, Yeah, that is good. I love it. Um, but but listen, what I hope to do this morning is I want to share a lot of details of a specific element of the subplot of the night that Jesus was betrayed. And I'm gonna share with you um a couple details that I would be willing to bet 99% of the people in this room didn't know. So, in fact, I'll give you that one of the main characters that we're gonna talk about tonight. His name is Malchus. Have any of you ever heard of Malchus? Just raise your hand if you've ever heard of him. Okay, we got one, well, there's a couple people on the teaching team because they're in the room. Anybody else? Great. Well, you're gonna hear about Malchus today. Almost nobody in the room has heard about him. And so this this Easter egg, this building to the crucifixion and this specific hidden plot line, it's one of the ones you actually got to piece together from different gospels to find the whole story. So um, if you only read about this Easter egg, this specific one in isolation, it's actually gonna lead you to some really inconsistent conclusions about how Jesus wants us to live life. So we're gonna dig into it. All right. So here we go. I'm gonna give you some of the some of the plots. So it's Jesus plus the eleven minus Judas, right? Because he's already gone to betray Jesus. They're in Gethsemane, they're there with Jesus to pray. He's there for hours. He's sweating. In fact, he's bleeding so much that he's sweating. It's it's crazy. He's pleading with his father for relief, and then in the middle of the night, what we have is we have this huge turning point, which is where we're gonna focus for today. And we're gonna read it from three different perspectives, and there are actually some differences in the three different perspectives that we're gonna read. So you're gonna see that that this betrayal moment, three of the gospels, particularly that we're gonna go through, they just have different accounts. And so um a lot of people, and this might make you uncomfortable that I'm reading through some differences in the Bible, it might make you uncomfortable. This is actually good because if you actually talk to detectives or cops or anybody in the in the justice system, in fact, I got the blessing this week, I got to go up and share some of this with um about 20, 25 attorneys and officials from the Department of Justice. We just did a little Bible study on Friday, it was really cool. And so we were talking about this story from a legal standpoint, and one of the points was if everybody's story is exactly the same after a crime or an incident, it's a huge red flag. It's actually not something that reinforces the strength of the story, it makes the detectives or the investigators think, you know, these guys probably collaborated beforehand. They all talked about the story and then they shared it. And so they're trying to make sure that all the details line up. It just matches way, way, way too closely. So the fact that there are differences in the story actually give us a lot of confidence because they don't invalidate each other, they actually interlock. And you're gonna see exactly how they interlock. And so, what I want to do is I want to read this and give you the interlocking details of three of the writers, and the reason is because Matthew and Mark are very, very similar. So we're not gonna read Mark, we're just gonna read, we're gonna start in Matthew. And here's where we are. Matthew is an eyewitness of this, okay? He was there on the ground. You need that when you have a crime, when you have something that's committed, because we're gonna talk about how one of Jesus' guys was a criminal. Only sword fight you see in the New Testament. It's kind of crazy. All right, Matthew, chapter 26, starting in verse 47. This is what it says. It says, While he was still speaking, this is after Jesus gets done praying, he's sweating, he's telling the disciples, why couldn't you even pray with me for one hour? While he's still speaking, Judas comes, one of the twelve, and with him a great crowd. So we don't know how many, we just know a great crowd. Another one, another account we'll read says crowds, so we know it's just a lot of folks, with swords and clubs from the chief priests and the elders of the people. Now the betrayer, Judas, had given them a sign saying, The one I will kiss is the man, seize him. And he came up to Jesus at once and said, Greetings, Rabbi. And then he kissed him. And Jesus said to him, Friend, do what you came to do. Then they came up and they laid hands on Jesus and seized him. And behold, one of those who were with Jesus stretched out his hand, drew his sword, and struck the servant of the high priest and cut off his ear. It's crazy. This is a crime. This is a big crime, it's a big deal. So let's let's stop and let's read Luke's account. Luke was not an eyewitness. Luke was actually the beloved physician. He wrote the gospel of Luke, he wrote Acts, and so he's given us an account that he likely heard from some of the other apostles. It doesn't make it any less biblical, any less accurate, but we're gonna read through this. So we're gonna pick up in verse 44. It says, But Jesus said to him, Judas, would you betray the Son of Man with a kiss? And when those who are around saw what would follow, this is the difference, they said, Lord, shall we strike with the sword? Do you want us to go to town? You want us to fight? And one of them struck the servant of the high priest and cut off his ear. So if you think about this moment, this is a tense, tense moment. Because everybody's blood has got to be boiling right now. This isn't just Jesus. It's it's the night. Jesus is tired, his guys are tired, Jesus is covered in blood because he's been sweating blood. He's exhausted emotionally, physically. His disciples have just woken up out of a sleep because Jesus said, Hey, you couldn't even pray with me for a little bit. Their best friend, their leader, the guy that they love has just chastised them. And then you see Judas, and they're like, Oh my goodness, he just told us somebody was gonna betray him earlier at dinner. And here's the guy. This is it. It's happening. And it's not just Jesus who's getting betrayed. All right? It's not just him, it's all of the disciples. Every single one of them are being betrayed at this moment by Judas. There's gotta be this internal struggle that the guy who's drawing his sword, we don't have his name yet, we'll get his name later. The guy who draws the sword, we we gotta know that he's like dealing with this. Somebody that you've lived with for three years, you've served alongside, you you've done all the hard stuff with. He's betraying you and he's betraying your teacher. And you had no idea, we'll cover that a couple weeks from now. You had no idea that it was him. It's gotta be so hard. We'll find out that Peter is actually the one who does this, and we know that Peter's a pretty impulsive guy. He makes a lot of impulsive moves, some of them really, really dumb, some of them really, really good. And in this moment, he takes action, and it's not just a little bit of action, it is violent action that Peter takes. And it's at this point the entire Easter story that we know and love and we we share for weeks leading up to this and after this, we always talk about because without Easter, there is no Christianity. All right? It just doesn't happen. At this point, though, everything could have taken a different turn. Everything. Because if you imagine, you guys, any of you who've been in a fight before, and if you haven't, that's great. But if you have a fist fight or a combat fight, you know there is a point where it it turns. There's a point where tensions rise, and then all of a sudden, somebody throws a punch, somebody fires a shot. You've seen it in movies where you know Braveheart, and he's like, hold, hold, and everybody's waiting, and then once it starts, you can't put that genie back in the bottle. So the logical result of this should be all the disciples dead, some of the crowd dead, Jesus dead, everybody dead, the city erupts in riot, it's crazy, it's pandemonium. That should be what happens here. The Easter story doesn't happen. The advance of the church doesn't happen. All these things because of an impulsive move by one of the apostles. I think we miss how significant that this could have been. This is a miracle, actually. This is a miraculous move. Verse 51 in Luke 22, Jesus said, No more of this. Everybody's throwing blows, swords are coming out. Jesus stops it on a dime, and he touched his ear and he healed him. Total power move by Jesus. But if you think about it, everything that he had spent his entire life on earth, everything the Father had set in motion for thousands of years, what he had just spent the evening praying about, laboring over, what he'd worked all this time for, he was not about to let it get derailed by a moment of impulsiveness. We'll go back to Matthew. Jesus said to him, put your sword back into its place, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword. This is a this is a pretty key verse in the Bible. And it's it's one of the verses that a lot of people use to support a pacifistic approach to the worldview that they have. I personally am not a pacifist, and I think I'd love to explain why this verse doesn't say what a lot of people think it actually says. Because the context is super important. And I know we got a lot of servicemen in here, so you probably had this verse thrown at you a couple times. Well, you're living by the sword. You're gonna die by the sword, right? Context super important. I'm gonna take you back. So last week we're in Gethsemane, right? The place where Jesus bled. Just a few hours before this, they're at the Passover dinner. And Jesus is kind of giving them the last little nuggets before he goes away, and everything changes for them. All right? And this is actually what he tells them. It's in Luke 22, starting in verse 35. Really interesting passage. It says, When I sent you out with no money bag or knapsack or sandals, did you lack anything? And what he's doing here is he's referencing a time where previously in his ministry, where he was with them, he sent them out two by two. He said, Go out, I'm gonna give you some of my power, and as you operate in this power, you're gonna heal the sick, you're gonna preach the good news, you're gonna cast out demons, you're gonna do all this crazy, amazing, powerful, great stuff. And he's reminding them of this. Remember when I sent you out to do all that stuff? They're like, Yeah. And remember how I told you? Don't take a backpack. Don't, don't, don't pack a suitcase, don't bring your credit cards, don't even carry a change of shoes. Literally, get up where you are right now, leave your purses, leave your wallets, go out and do the work. Remember when I told you to do that? And I told you to go to different cities too. It wasn't like he was telling you to go to 7-Eleven or wahwa, right? He's telling them to go far away, like go and spread the good news. And he said, Don't bring anything with you. Did you lack anything? And they're like, No, nothing. He's like, Good, good, good. We're on the same page. Nothing. We lacked nothing. I'm gonna go on here. He said to them, but now, okay, but now, the one who let the one who has a money bag take it. And likewise a knapsack, and let the one who has no sword sell his cloak and buy one. That's interesting. This this seems like it's out of left field, right? This is it, this is a totally different paradigm. So that like bringing my wallet, I get. Bring in my suitcase, I get. You really telling me to take money that people have donated to us and go buy a Glock.

unknown 14:49

Right?

SPEAKER_01 14:49

Like, that's the equivalent. If we're if we're just trying to parallel this with our current modern day experience, nobody none of us are gonna carry a sword around, right? But he's telling them that. If you don't have a weapon, go buy something. Buy a weapon. This seems like a really odd thing for Jesus to say. I'm gonna go on. He says, For I tell you that this scripture must be fulfilled in me, and he quotes it, and he was numbered with the transgressors. So you've got to do this because this scripture is gonna be fulfilled. He was numbered with the transgressors. For what's for what's written about me has its fulfillment. And they said, Look, Lord, here are two swords. And he said to them, It's enough. Alright. So let me unpack this a little bit. Because this seems like contrary, you've got a few different perspectives on different verses, and I want to help synthesize this. So a lot of people will misinterpret this passage and say, it is enough. They'll say, it's because they needed swords to fulfill the prophecy. Okay? And that's that makes sense. They're saying that the Romans need to consider him a criminal, they need to consider him a threat, particularly a threat that's worthy of the death penalty. So that's why he's got to have swords. And he's got to be numbered with the transgressors because he's carrying around weapons. Here's some of the problems with that. Weapons were allowed in the Roman world. They were allowed. People were allowed to carry around weapons. You could actually defend yourself up to um uh mortally wounding somebody if they attacked you with a weapon during the day or if they attacked you at night without a weapon. You could do that in the Roman world. So these weapons, it it wasn't, it wasn't like they were outlawed for them to actually have them. Also, I would say this when Jesus went before Pilate, think about this, did Pilate consider Jesus a threat? He didn't actually. Pilate was actually willing to let Jesus go. Pilate was like, you're you're just a dude who's out doing ministry. Yeah, sure. He was more worried about the dream his wife had or a riot that might start than he was about Jesus being a political or military threat to him. So Jesus being numbered with the transgressors had nothing to do with them having swords. Two swords was not a big enough threat to the Roman Empire that it was going to cause them to bring him in and be like, man, we gotta put it, we gotta put a stop to this. That's not what he was necessarily saying. The other thing, I think it's also a little bit ridiculous to consider, um, when you read this passage, a lot of people think that they just found these two swords. Oh, here are two swords, let's grab them. Remember the context. Context is important. They're at this house that somebody prepared for them. They're eating in somebody else's house. If you came to my house and I had my gun safe sitting there, and and you're with a teacher that I love and respect, and all of a sudden you're like, he says something about, hey, if you don't have a glock, go buy a glock, and you're like, Well, look, Jake has a gun safe, let's take his guns. Would any of you be okay with that? You wouldn't, right? So it's a little bit ridiculous to assume that they're in this house and they just say, Look, here are two swords that belong to this guy, let's just take them. What's more likely, and what I think is actually the correct way to read this, is they already had stuff in their kit that they were carrying around. Jesus wasn't taking inventory. He didn't need to know, like, like, okay, how many how many beans do we have? How many bandages do we have? How many weapons do we have? It just was part of the stuff that they carried. And they said, Well, we actually have two swords with us. He's like, Yeah, that's enough. That's enough. The reason that it was enough is because the swords were going to be a practical necessity after the prophecy was fulfilled. The swords themselves weren't a part of the prophecy. Just like the knapsack and the and the money purse, those two things weren't for the prophecy. He's saying that in line with, hey, you're gonna need some things in the future that you didn't need before. One of the things you're gonna need is you're gonna need money because people aren't going to be as generous as they were before. You're gonna need to have a suitcase because it's gonna be a little rough. You're not gonna be able to find a clean shower. You're not gonna be able to find a nice place to sleep. So you're gonna need a suitcase, a knapsack. And oh, by the way, people, because you're numbered with the transgressors, because you're a believer, you're gonna be numbered as a transgressor because nobody's gonna like you. So you're gonna need a couple weapons to protect yourself every once in a while. You don't need weapons, we're not arming a militia. He doesn't say that. Don't don't give weapons to everybody. He's saying, like, there's 12 of you. Yeah, get a couple swords. That's enough. That's enough. And and and make no mistake, I'm not trying to suggest that um that we go out and we fight all the time. That's not our role. That's that's actually not our faith. In fact, if you go back and read in Matthew, I believe it's in chapter 10, Jesus goes through this long um, this long diatribe of talking about all the terrible things that are gonna happen to Christians. He says, look, people are gonna hate you. Mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers are gonna turn you over. You're gonna be brought before councils, people are gonna persecute you really badly. It's a great sales pitch. Join this club. And the predominant mechanism he gives them to address that is flee. Avoid. Run away. We're not trying to pick a fight all the time. But there may be times where you have to defend yourself. That that's kind of this corollary that he's given us here. There may be some times, listen, you might need to, you might need to have a couple swords with you. Peter, again, gets it a little bit wrong. Because he's just trying to explain the world dynamic is shifting. And as a church, I think a lot of times we miss this. We try to operate in a world where people are very positive to Christianity. And if you don't know, things are changing underneath our feet right now, in the earth. Aaron Ren, you can look up this article, it's a great article. Uh, he's a missiologist talking about just the mission field and what the world looks like. He would argue that prior to 1994, America was a positive Christian environment where it was socially favorable for you to be a Christian. There were lots of benefits. From 1994 to 2014, we were in a Christian neutral world where it was neither good nor bad if you were a Christian. It's like, ah, it's just one of the many ideas in the marketplace of ideas. And prior to 2014, people would say we are in a Christian negative view. And it is in a dramatically different way that the church has to operate in a negative Christian space. That's where we're at right now. And you guys know it, because some of you aren't gonna invite people to come next week. You know why? Because it's not gonna be looked at favorably. You're numbered with the transgressors, you and clubs to capture mean. The disciples left him and fled. Everybody runs away. At that point, Jesus is all alone. John actually has a different account. And it's super interesting because the details that he remembers are things that were overlooked. And he doesn't, he doesn't refute the other accounts. What he does is he actually amplifies them. And so we'll pick it up, John chapter 18. Again, we're trying to piece this all together, all these Easter eggs, and find them all. John 18, verse 7. It says, He asked them again, back at the beginning here, when he's getting betrayed, whom do you seek? And they said, Jesus of Nazareth. And he answered, I told you I'm he. So if you seek me, let these men go. This was to fulfill the word that he had spoken. Of those whom you gave me, I haven't lost one. If you know anything about John, if you've read through and kind of get the tone of John, John's like the compassionate, the soft-hearted one of the apostles. So of course, what he's going to notice here is he's going to notice and remember how gentle and how kind and how compassionate Jesus was in this moment. He's not thinking about the violence as much as he's thinking about, man, I remember how Jesus was really trying to protect us in that moment. He goes on. He says, then Simon Peter, okay, all the other gospels, if you read through the synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, none of them mention him by name. John dimes Peter out all the time. He just does all the time. He's like, it was Peter. We're all saying this. Then Peter says this. In this moment, John does the same thing. Nobody else says it, but John's like, it was Peter. Peter, having a sword, drew it. He was one of the two that had a sword, drew it and struck the high priest's servant and cut off his right ear. The servant's name is Malchus. There's the name. That's who it is. Why does he drop the name? Super, super cool note. One of the reasons that he does this is because if you have names and details, it's going to stand up to cross-examination. If you just say somebody got cut that night, that's way different than saying there was a servant, his name was Malchus, and he got his right ear cut off. This is very, very descriptive. It's very specific. You can fact check this if you're in the world back there. And listen, if it doesn't check out this whole narrative, it's dead on arrival. Nobody's going to believe it. It's not going to get proliferated. The truth is, though, this has survived and withstood the scrutiny of its time and ours. It's an accurate account of what happened. Another reason, and this, again, we miss this if we don't understand the context, why I just love the word of God. Peter is the one who did this. The three synoptic gospels don't mention it. John wrote his gospel probably 20, maybe a little bit more years after the first three gospels were written. You know what had happened between the time where they wrote their gospels and the word got proliferated to when John wrote his gospel? Peter was murdered. Peter was martyred for Jesus. See, before, as they wrote this, they're protecting his identity. They're saying it was one in a group, in a dark night. Nobody could see who it was. It was just one of the guys. Now, John is saying, I'm going to tell you who it was. It was Peter who did it. And you can fact check me. It was Peter, and the guy that he struck was Malchus. And John knows firsthand. Peter, I'm going to tell you guys at this point, this is again when you think of who it was, Peter is a criminal at this point. He's a criminal. He crossed the line. If he were to strike the servant of the high priest, this would be like somebody trying to assassinate a member of Trump's cabinet. It's a big deal. And it's worthy of capital punishment. And make no mistake, Peter wasn't being surgical, okay? He wasn't like, I'm gonna cut your ear off. Peter was going for the head. Peter was trying to behead this guy. This is a violent, brutal moment. And Peter slices at him. If this happens, if this turning point doesn't get changed, the whole timeline's broken. The Acts of the Apostles dead. Peter's epistle that he wrote, done. Peter, who who preached the word that actually launched the church, doesn't happen. Thousands of people saved that lead to thousands and thousands and millions of people now saved. None of that happens. Because Peter has an impulsive moment and does something that's that's that's out of pocket that Jesus never intended for him to do. Entire arc of history. If I were Peter, I could almost see, and you guys, you probably had this happen to you, where you did something that you knew you shouldn't have done, and you just see all the plans that you had, like, this isn't gonna happen. Maybe you got sick and you're like, oh no, this is gonna mean this, this, this, and this. Or maybe you made a really, really bad choice and you see the implications of it. This means I'm not gonna be able to do this, I'm not gonna be able to do this, I'm not gonna be able to do that. Peter, I wonder if he had that at this moment. He slices off Malchus' ear and he's like, What did I just do? Jesus says, none of this, stop. Peter's like, Whoa, we're not fighting. And he thinks back. Jesus said, On this rock I'll build my church. You're Peter. You're gonna go into all the earth. You're gonna preach the gospel, the good news. And he's like, Maybe it's because I'm a martyr now, because I'm probably not gonna be doing it alive. Pilate's gonna kill me. I'm gonna die. His whole life flashing before his eyes. I think some of us we feel that way about mistakes that we've made. Jesus says to Peter, put your sword into its sheath. Shall I not drink the cup that the Father's given me? Jesus de-escalates it, he actually heals the guard. This this healing is it's overlooked, and it's actually very, very pivotal for the Easter story and for the church. Because here's what Jesus did. When he healed Malchus, he erased the evidence that a crime was ever committed. Can you imagine the scene if they were to bring Peter in? If the guards, instead of just letting him go, the guards grab him and say, You're coming with us. They bring him in, they say, What happened? They're like, This guy, we're just doing what you told us to do, and this guy shows up and he tried to kill Malchuse. He tried to chop his head off. Oh my goodness, what happened? He cut his ear off. Really? Malkus, come here. His ear is fine. What are you talking about? What are you talking about? You idiots. How are we gonna convict this guy when all of the material, the physical evidence, points to the contrary? We can't prove that he he cut his ear off. Let Peter go. You guys are making us look even more foolish than we already look. It's such an interesting thing. And what about the guy who was attacked? What about Malkus? You get cut, you think you're doing the right thing for your boss, you're you're capturing this bad guy who's trying to incite a revolt. He's been doing all this weird stuff, you get attacked, and then the guy picks up your ear, puts it back on the side of your head. How do you react in that moment? I'll tell you what he didn't do. He didn't worship Jesus. I'll tell you what the people with him didn't do. They didn't worship Jesus. In fact, what they did was the opposite. John 18, it says the band of soldiers and their captain and the officers of the Jews arrested Jesus and they bound him. This feels just like a huge plot hole to me, honestly. I think you missed something, John. Matthew, Mark, Luke, you missed something. Surely after this miraculous healing, they don't just continue to arrest Jesus. There's no way that they do that, right? There's no way. How could they sit and watch him get healed and still go through with the rest? Two things stand out to me. First one is this a lot of people pursue the miraculous because they want their faith to have credibility. They want to justify their belief, they want to give themselves and other people a reason to believe, so they want to see the miraculous things happen. And yet we see Jesus heal a man. We don't see the man stand up and defend Jesus. We don't see any of the other people around stand up and worship Jesus. And the truth is this just because you see a miracle doesn't mean you won't miss the Messiah. Miracles are not necessarily what leads you to the revelation of Him. That comes from the Lord. He gives us that revelation of who he is. It's a blessing, it's a grace from him. I think it's so interesting that there are people who refuse to see. In fact, the word says there are none so blind as those who refuse to see. It doesn't mean we stop trying. It just means that we realize that their problem in hearing the gospel, it's beyond us. It's beyond our capacity to give them. If they won't even answer respond to a miracle, how are they going to respond to us? And notice Jesus doesn't argue with them. He doesn't try to use his miracle to stop this illegal action. He doesn't appeal to their sympathy or their empathy and be like, look how nice of a guy I am. Look at what I did. He doesn't do any of that. Which brings me to the second thought that I have from this is Jesus was in full control the entire time. There was never a moment when Peter lost control. Jesus actually proved he never lost control. Jesus knew what his mission was. There was no lack of power in him in this moment. He could have leveraged it so many other ways. He could have explained to him that he's not the bad guy. Otherwise, he would have let Peter just go to town on Malchus or at least left his ear off. In fact, I think it's funny that if you read through John, John doesn't even put attention on the healing. John doesn't even say that he was healed. Because it's already common knowledge, I think, but that wasn't the point. Of all the things Jesus could have said or done, it seems like the least likely, the least productive, at least from a human perspective, was what he did to heal one of his attackers. It feels almost like he gave up, but I think that that's not what was happening, though. Jesus was on mission. He was on mission. Even in that moment, he was on mission. The plot had to continue. We're going to keep reading here in John. Verse 13, it says, first they led him to Annas, for he was the father-in-law of Caiphas, who was a high priest. Verse 15. Then Simon Peter followed Jesus, and so did another disciple. John always references himself in third person, just so you know. So this is John talking about himself. So John and Jesus, f John and Peter followed Jesus, and it says, since that disciple was known to the high priest. So get this. This is so cool in the story. It's an Easter egg you'll miss. John was known to the high priest. Malchus was a servant of the high priest. John probably knew Malchus. In fact, if you go down a little bit further, it says that in verse 25 through 26, there's a girl there who starts to question Peter and say, Weren't you with him? Weren't you one of the guys who was there that night? Didn't I see you just tonight? Weren't you one of the guys that cut off his ear? And it says she was one of the relatives of Malchus. John was so close with the high priest and his cabal of people that he could not only get in to this courtroom, he could leverage his connection to get Peter in too. So he had to be super well connected. So he knew these people. These were legitimate folks, and all of this could be fact-checked. So as I look at this, I wonder who was Malchuse to Jesus? Was he an angry attacker? Was he a violent mob leader? Was he an object of wrath, just meant to suffer? Again, Jesus, it's late. He's emotionally, he's physically spent. If this were a guy trying to arrest me, uh Justice Jake would be on full display. Right? I would be fighting in a different way. And thankfully, that is not how Jesus looks at every situation. It's not how he responds. In the midst of his grief, he has a refused request from his father, all this chaos that's happening. He gets betrayed by a man that he loved and served for years. He does something crazy. He heals a man who did nothing for him. More than that, this guy was an accomplice to Jesus' unlawful capture, his eventual torture and brutal murder. And ridicule, just such ridicule. I said last week, this is kind of where we ended, Gethsemane, it wasn't a prelude to the cross. Gethsemane, it was the decision point. Jesus came out of the moment of prayer in Gethsemane resolute on what was going to happen. Nothing was going to stop him from suffering what was about to happen. Nothing was going to stop him from that. He wasn't going to let his own grief, he wasn't going to let fear of what he was going to experience, he wasn't even going to let guards losing it and attacking his disciples or his guys trying to defend him. He wasn't going to let anything stop him from going to the cross and accomplishing the mission that was set before him. It's so amazing to me. And as I read this, one of the things I can't help but reflect on, you've got who was Malchuse to Jesus, who's my Malchuse. What are the times where I have really messed things up with a reckless or a selfish or an impulsive decision? And if you're there, I would ask you, like, how's that working out? Probably not great. When I look back at decisions that I've made, there there are times. There are times where I think back, I don't know if you guys, any of you have this, you kind of ruminate on previous life experiences. I think about some of the things I've said and done, and I cringe. Like, oh, I can't believe I said that. I don't even recognize myself sometimes. There are times where it breaks my heart to the point where I I weep. Like it it grieves me the person that I used to be. And the decisions, the poor decisions that I made. I deserve to be brought before a judge. I deserve to be punished for the sins that I've committed, for the things that I've done. I deserve it. And make no mistake, every single one of us, we deserve wrath for what it is that we've done. It's the payment. It's the only payment for sin. Any sin, every sin. Judgment and wrath. What's crazy though is if you've ever been in a courtroom, you know that for there to be a conviction, the prosecution has to present evidence. I don't know how it's all gonna play out at the end of the age. If it's gonna be like a courtroom setting, and I'm gonna stand up there and there's gonna be like a big LED screen behind me, or there's gonna be someone who's accusing me, maybe Satan is accusing me, like Jake did this, Jake did that, Jake did that, Jake did that, and he just recounts all of the horrible, awful things that I've done throughout my life. And I and now now God's like, defend yourself, Jesus. Or defend yourself, Jake. I'm not Jesus, that's for darn sure. Defend yourself. What do you have to say to all these accusations? Here's the evidence that just got presented against you. There's so much evidence for my guilt. What's crazy to me though is even in my worst, most impulsive moment, that doesn't disqualify me when Jesus comes in. Jesus, he steps in the room because see, I'm 100% certain that I'm guilty, and I'm 100% certain that he is innocent. And what he did for Peter by erasing the evidence, it wasn't an acquittal, okay? An acquittal just means that you're not guilty. You're found not, you didn't do anything wrong. You're not guilty. Jesus doesn't just acquit us of our sin, Jesus atones for us. He actually takes the punishment because if you look at this story, the person who should have been going to the court, the person who committed a crime and should be hanging up on that cross between the two thieves was another criminal named Peter. He tried to assassinate somebody in the high court, the height of the aristocracy. And instead of that, Peter runs away, is able to lie about his affiliation with Jesus. Jesus says, I'm gonna erase the evidence that you did anything wrong. And not only that, I'm gonna hang in your place on the cross and bear the burden that you should bear yourself. And that is the same thing he does for you and me. He erases our sin and he bears the rightful punishment that each of us should have. And I'm gonna tell you, if that doesn't bring you some level of gratitude for our Lord and Savior, I don't know what will. There's a verse, I want to read this to you. It's Psalms 103, it's such a good passage. And this is how we need to think about this Easter story. This is this is why this Easter egg is so good. It's so good. This is what happens. Psalm 103, verse 10, it says, He doesn't deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love towards those who fear him. For as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us. As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. Jesus loves you so much. He's gonna remove your sin as far as the east is from the west and never touch. If you've never thought about that, I just encourage you this next week, like think about what he's done for you. If you're a believer, just sit in it a little bit. Like, man, Jesus, what have you done for me? I'm not asking you to wallow in guilt. It's not guilt, it's gratitude. There's a there's a sorrow that actually leads to death. This is in 1 Corinthians. And there's another sorrow that leads to repentance or change. It's called godly grief. I remember I had somebody ask me one time, how long do you think I should feel guilty about my sin? And I said, I don't know. And he was like, I think I should just, once I sin, I'm I'm move beyond it. And I thought about it and I was like, no, I think forever. He said, What? I said, forever. I should always feel that. I never want to forget the guilt that that that was supposed to be mine, not because I want to wallow in it, but because I'm so grateful for a savior who delivered me from the punishment that I am supposed to receive. So I want to pray for us today. Go ahead and bow your heads. Lord, thank you, Father, for the atonement. Thank you, Lord, that just like you removed the evidence of Peter sin, you remove the evidence of our transgressions, God. As far as the East is from the West, you remove it from us, Lord. God, I believe that there are people here today who have transgressions that they need to recognize your atonement for. They need to accept your atonement. If that's you, man, the word's really clear. It says if you confess Jesus as Lord, if you repent of your sins, And confess with your mouth that he's Lord, you will be saved. And so what I want to do today is just give us a chance to do that. If you've never accepted that, if you're the one that's still gonna have to stand before the judge and receive the judgment, man, I want to give you a chance to let Jesus step in and take that for you. Because he wants to, he's willing to. It's the mission he came for. So we're all gonna say a prayer today. And I'd love for you to just bow your heads with me and say this prayer. Every single one of us in here. Say, Jesus, I need you. If you're online, say this with me too. Jesus, I need you. I repent of my failures and flaws. And I surrender to you now. I know you lived, you died, and you rose again. All with us in mind. Come into my heart, save me, forgive me, remove my guilt, and lead me in Jesus' name and his authority. If you could do me a favor, just with your heads bowed, just for one more second, if you said that prayer today, for the first time, or maybe the first time in a long time, I think that there's a almost like a cementing of a decision when we take a little bit of a step in the physical. You may have said it in your heart, but I'd love for you to just do me a favor, just slip up your hand if you're like, yep, that was me. I said that prayer. I meant it today. Yep, yep. Anybody else? Yes, yes. Anybody else? Just make this make this step towards Jesus. Be like, Jesus, I need that atonement. I need that. Yes. Yes. Mana Church, can you do me a favor? Can we all stand? Can we all stand? Can we just give Jesus a clap?

SPEAKER_00 46:18

Thank you for listening to the Mana Church Stafford Podcast. If you would like to connect with us, you can find us on the web at manastafford.church or download the Mana Church app to listen to our new episodes as they become available. Make sure to subscribe to our podcast. We would also love to meet you in person. If you are local, our services take place each Sunday at 10 a.m. We pray you have an amazing week and we'll see you next time.