Mark's Gospel Part 26 - Christ, Our Lonely Saviour

Andrew Grey continues this series from Mark's Gospel.

This sermon is from Sunday 27th July 2025.

The bible reference is Mark 14v43-72

Transcript

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Please open up your Bibles to Mark's Gospel. Mark chapter 14. I'm going to read from verse 43 down to the end of the chapter. And then I'll pray and preach. So Mark 14 and verse 43. Let's listen to the true and living word of God. And immediately, while he was still speaking, Judas came, one of the twelve, and with him a crowd with swords and clubs, from the chief priests and the scribes and the elders. Now the betrayer had given them a sign, saying, The one I will kiss is the man. Seize him and lead him away under guard. And when he came, he went up to him at once and said, Rabbi, and he kissed him. And they laid hands on him and seized him. But one of those who stood by drew his sword and struck the servant of the high priest and cut off his ear. And Jesus said to them, Have you come out as against a robber with swords and clubs to capture me? Day after day I was with you in the temple teaching, and you did not seize me. But let the scriptures be fulfilled. And they all left him and fled. And a young man followed him with nothing but a linen cloth about his body, and they seized him, but he left the linen cloth and ran away naked. And they led Jesus to the high priest, and all the chief priests and the elders and the scribes came together. And Peter had followed him at a distance, right into the courtyard of the high priest, and he was sitting with the guards and warming himself at the fire. Now the chief priests and the whole council were seeking testimony against Jesus to put him to death, but they found none. For many bore false witness against him, but their testimony did not agree. And some stood up and bore false witness against him, saying, We heard him say, I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and in three days I will build another not made with hands. Yet even about this their testimony did not agree. And the high priest stood up in the midst and asked Jesus, Have you no answer to make? What is it that these men testify against you? But he remained silent and made no answer. Again, the high priest asked him, Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed? And Jesus said, I am. And you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of power and coming with the clouds of heaven. And the high priest tore his garments and said, What further witnesses do we need? You have heard his blasphemy. What is your decision? And they all condemned him as deserving death. And some began to spit on him and to cover his face and to strike him, saying to him, Prophesy. And the guards received him with blows. And as Peter was below in the courtyard, one of the servant girls of the high priest came, and seeing Peter warming himself, she looked at him and said, You also were with the Nazarene, Jesus. But he denied it, saying, I neither know nor understand what you mean. And he went out into the gateway, and the rooster crowed. And the servant girl saw him and began again to say to the bystanders, This man is one of them. But again he denied it. And after a little while the bystanders again said to Peter, Certainly you are one of them, for you are a Galilean. But he began to invoke a curse on himself and to swear, I do not know this man of whom you speak. And immediately the rooster crowed a second time. And Peter remembered how Jesus had said to him, Before the rooster crows twice, you will deny me three times. And he broke down and wept. Thanks be to God for his word to us today. Let's pray. God, our Father, we thank you for our Saviour, the Lord Jesus. We thank you for his sufferings, grievous, holy, precious, of which we have just read. We ask for ourselves, for the first time or the unteenth time, that you would help us to behold Jesus. And we pray in his name. Amen. Do you like being on your own? Some people like being on their own. They crave peace and quiet, a bit of solitude. But there is an aloneness that no one desires. The aloneness of being abandoned. Having people around you, maybe, but people who are there as enemies, not friends, trying to hurt you, not have fellowship with you. Some of us know that. Today's passage shows us the aloneness of Jesus. What I've just read, it's part of a bigger section in Mark's Gospel. It runs from chapter 14, verse 1, down to chapter 15, verse 15. This bigger section is actually quite hard to split up. We're preaching it in four sermons, but it's really one flowing narrative telling how Jesus moved unstoppably towards the cross. Do you remember it begins with his anointing at Bethany? And then the Passover meal. Actually, this whole section has the clock ticking in the background towards Passover. And at that last supper that Jesus ate with his disciples, he taught them that there was a new Passover coming. Alongside it is the betrayal by Jesus and the prediction of Peter's betrayal. And then we find Jesus in Gethsemane as he prays, remove this cup of suffering, of judgment. Yet, Father, not what I will be done. And all the way through, Mark, in his gospel, he simply describes what happened. He just gives us the facts very simply, very starkly. He uses a bare minimum of words. There's no explanation, there's no interpretation. And it is deeply powerful. In our passage today, verses 43 to 72, we listen in as the conflict between the Lord Jesus and those Jewish leaders who would hand him over to the Romans, who would in turn crucify him, or as that conflict comes near its end. And our passage, I think, it shows us something special, something distinct, which is the solitude of Jesus at the end of his earthly ministry. Very simply, very obviously, Jesus was left alone. So in verse 43, we're still in the Garden of Gethsemane. And it is deeply powerful what happens next. We look at the systematic rejection of Jesus, his descent into suffering and towards death. And he is alone in his suffering because he is rejected by all and everyone. So to begin with, he is finally betrayed by Judas Iscaliot, one of the twelve, after three years of teaching and companionship and friendship. And in the garden he comes to him with that sick parody of friendship, comes and kisses him to identify him to the guards. Verse 44 simply calls Judas the betrayer. Then Jesus is arrested by the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders. Now, who were those people? Each held an office in the Old Testament Church of God. The priests called to oversee temple worship and sacrifice. The scribes, their job was to bring truth out of God's word, to apply God's word to the lives of God's people. The elders, their job to rule over God's people. And their betrayal, their rejection of Jesus, it was as deep and bitter as Judas. They should have welcomed the Messiah they claimed to be waiting for. Next, verse 50. A short and simple sentence. And they all left him and fled. So Jesus' followers, they all abandon him to his fate. And then Mark gives us those strange couple of verses, verse 51, 52. This young follower of Jesus. Maybe it was Mark himself, we just don't know. He's wearing a simple cloak or toga, and he would rather be left naked than be caught together with Jesus. He was so scared of following him, so ashamed of being found with him. And then Jesus comes before the highest court of his own people, verse 53. What evidence can we find that will allow us to kill him? Or rather to hand him over to the Romans who had authority to kill him. And this place, this court, it should have been full of God's law and God's truth. And it's a travesty of justice. The lies, the false witness, the testimonies which disagree and clash. In a minute, we'll come back to Jesus' words and Jesus' silence. Let's see what happens before this council. They condemn him, they spit on him. But then in this terrible irony, they blindfold him and strike him and call on him to prophesy. This one who had prophesied it all. They should have received him as Lord and God, yet the guards received him with blows. And all the while, out in the courtyard, there is Peter. Imagine Peter. He's by the fire, there's a group of people, and he is spotted, spotted by a servant girl. And just as Jesus predicted, hear his words, I do not know this man. And we remember those protestations of Peter earlier in the chapter. I will not deny you. Yes, Peter, you will. If we were to go briefly on into next week's passage in chapter 15, we see Jesus before Pilate, the Roman ruler, this weak and unjust man, and then the crowd who would rather save the murderer of Arabas and prefer to crucify Jesus. So the Lord Jesus, he is abandoned by men, he's abandoned by all men. Everyone falls away. Every human love and loyalty comes to nothing. So this is the Lord Jesus who lived his life to serve and to bless others, and at the end of it, he is utterly alone. Yes, there are people around him, yet he is completely alone because he is surrounded by traitors and enemies. When a person begins to learn the Christian faith, maybe you've got a friend with whom you are trying to share the gospel, a friend you're hoping to bring to church. They might have a whole bunch of different ideas about the Christian faith, about Jesus, about following Jesus, and about the death of Jesus. More than anything else, they need to see this. There is a reason why the Lord Jesus came and suffered and died alone. It was not a terrible accident. It was not primarily an example to copy. The Lord Jesus, the culmination of his life and ministry, was to be left alone, to be abandoned because of the deep and the eternal plan of God. Jesus was left alone to fulfill the plan of God. The death of Jesus, it was not a terrible accident, nor was it that Jesus was unwittingly being swept along in the plan of which he knew nothing about, as if he was a puppet. Far from it. We see revealed to us here what the whole Bible teaches us the plan of God, the united plan of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Jesus' plan. And it is consciously in the mind of the Savior, even as every single human support and fellowship is stripped away. And that's why, look at verse 49, he says those words, but let the scripture be fulfilled. Let the scripture be fulfilled. So the plan of God, it was purposed in the mind of God, the counsels of the triune God in eternity past, which together with my Father and my Spirit we have purposed and which we recorded in the Old Testament. Let it now come to pass. Let it happen, this plan, let it be actioned. There are many scriptures that Jesus would have had in mind when he said that sentence, let the scripture be fulfilled. Many would have been in the psalms. The Lord Jesus, in a godly Israelite home, he would have grown up singing those psalms in the family home and in the gathered worship of his people. Now just think on that for a moment. They were the psalms that he authored. So here is God the Son, through whose Holy Spirit the scriptures are given. But they were psalms too, which in Jesus' sinless human nature, from infancy onwards, he would have sung and been shaped by. A faithful and obedient king who is nonetheless surrounded by strong bulls. A company of evildoers encircled him. That's what he would have read and sung. Or Psalm 55, it tells of a prayerful king who is brought to the brink of death not by an enemy, but by a friend. A treacherous friend, someone you might call a Judas. He would have sung of my companion, my familiar friend. We used to take sweet counsel together. Yet this man stretched out his hand against me and he violated his covenant. Now, what must it have been for the Lord Jesus to go through life and ministry knowing that this was coming? We mustn't imagine that in any way it was an easy thing for Christ to suffer. How grievous it was that our faithful Lord should be left alone and betrayed. Yes, the eternal and glorious plan of God, foretold in the scriptures, the scriptures which shaped the Lord Jesus into the perfect and obedient Savior that he became. And now, willingly, she says, Let my scriptures be fulfilled. It's a wonderful thing, brothers and sisters. It's a wonderful thing to have a Savior who suffered in this way, who embraced suffering in this way. Truly, he can sympathize with us if we have ever tasted of abandonment and betrayal. Some of us have, I know. We really have. And he really knows. It is wonderful that he understands our pains. And yet, he experienced a forsakenness that we will never have to enter, which we can never, ever know. Because the plan of God was not just for the Christ to be abandoned by men. Jesus' abandonment is being left alone. It climaxes on the cross in his cry of dereliction. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And even here, even in our reading, even in Gethsemane, the Savior begins to taste the cup of God's wrath. That terrible mystery that the Father loves the Son, and that the Father must reject his perfectly faithful son. And even here it begins, we see him, as it were, on his way down, down into the depths of suffering. In our passage, he hasn't yet reached the bottom, but he is on the way. And it is all entirely willed by him. Do you remember earlier in the chapter? We wonder at his obedience to the Father. This cup of suffering, this cup of your judgment, I will drink it. He is faithful to the plan of God. He wills his own descent. He brings it about. And doesn't that show us something about the foolishness of opposing Christ? Just think about those enemies of Christ. They were wicked, but they were also foolish to imagine, you know, as those Jewish leaders did, as Pilate did, that they could somehow destroy the Son of God. It's like in Narnia, isn't it? The witch and her minions, they imagine that they have defeated Asman as they take his life on the stone table, and they have no conception, no conception of what in his book C. S. Lewis called the deeper magic. And what scriptures would simply say is the everlasting plan of God. So these men they gather together against the Lord's anointed in sinfulness and in folly. And what do they achieve? Precisely what the Lord had planned. But this plan of God, this unique work that Christ alone can do, he must do it alone. He must do it alone, just him. Not him and us, just him, entirely on our own. Where do we fit into a passage like this? Well, it shows us in our weakness. We look at all of those people around Jesus, opposing him or running away from him, and we see in them a bit like a mirror. A mirror to our natures, a mirror to our sinful souls. We are with the disciples, we are with Peter, we're with the chief priests, we're with the Romans. By nature, we are those who reject and oppose and betray. Consider too what the Lord Jesus said and what the Lord Jesus didn't say as he descended towards the cross. He cried out in the garden, didn't he? He cried out from the cross. But in these mock trials to which he was subjected, he was silent. So look at verse 61. But he remained silent and made no answer. And it was just the same when he came before Pontius Pilate. It was as if he was meekly giving assent to his fate. Did you think, as we've read through the passage today, it seems like Jesus is out of control, that things are being done to him? And it seems especially summed up in his mute silence. Now, why is this so? Well, remember what he said. Let Scripture be fulfilled. It must be so. And surely in his mind is Isaiah 53, verse 7. He was oppressed, he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth. Like a lamb that's led to the slaughter, like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opens not his mouth. It's the suffering servant, isn't it? It's unmistakable, and it's now all coming to pass in the life of Jesus. The suffering servant, of whom it is said it was the will of the Lord to crush him. He has put him to grief. And did you notice the words that he does speak at his trial? You see them in verse 62. They are just enough to seal his fate, but they are also a declaration of resurrection power. He affirms, yes, I am the Christ. I am the Son of God. The Old Testament knew of a divine son, the revelation of the Trinity. It's not a surprise to careful readers of the Old Testament. He says, I am the Son of Man to whom authority is given, and I will be vindicated. That's what he says to those who judged and condemned him. You will see me, he says. Verse 63. And he's speaking to those false teachers who sent him to the cross. They would see him, see him come in clouds of judgment to destroy them. So there is warning here. The warning, this abandoned Christ becomes the resurrected and the glorified Christ. He doesn't stay in solitude and weakness. And there is, as ever, a choice: repent and believe, or else be destroyed. But as we close, this abandonment of Jesus, that's what we are considering today. The Lord Jesus in his solitude, his abandonment, his aloneness, this suffering servant in this particular aspect of his work of suffering, most of all, in it, he is giving himself as a glorious gift of love. In his rejection, in his abandonment, here is all of the Christian's hope. He is abandoned that we might have fellowship with him. Alright, so be to our Saviour. Let's bow our heads and lead us in prayer. Lord Jesus Christ, we bow before you with humble gratitude. We bless you for your kindness and your wisdom and your power. That you should take on a frail human nature, that you should experience sufferings and judgments which were entirely deserved by us. We pray for ourselves, we pray for a growing and a fresh sight of all you have done for us. Pray that it would humble us, make us honest about our own weakness and sin, so that we bring us joy and boldness as we rest with all of the glorious things you give us through your forsakenness. We praise you as our risen and ascended and ruling King and Lord. Thank you that you are even now vindicated, pouring out grace, and one day promising to return to make all things new. By nature we find ourselves like those disciples, full of timidity and fear. Thank you for your Holy Spirit who reveals these things and who dwells in us. And we pray for grace to do better than we are able in repenting, believing, and following you along the way. Amen.