John 18:1-9 (Christ the True and better)

Thank you for subscribing to the Shepherds Church podcast. This is our Lord's Day Sermon. We pray that as we declare the Word of God that you would be encouraged, strengthened in your faith, and that you would catch a greater vision of who Christ is.

May you be blessed in the hearing of God's Word, and may the Lord be with you. If you remember back to our time throughout the Gospel of John, some of you weren't here even when we began John, and some of you have been here throughout the whole book of John.

It's been a while since we began it. I think it was December of 2019 when we began the Gospel of John. Yeah. So very few of you were here when we started the Gospel of John. But what you will have noticed is that the narrative flows in a very interesting way.

The time component of the Gospel of John is very interesting. So for instance, one of the shortest sections in the Gospel of John is section 1 through 18, verse 1 through 18 of chapter 1. It's called the prologue.

That's where God, who in the beginning was the Word, was with God and who is God, He steps out of eternity. So what's bigger than eternity? And it's only covered by 18 verses. And then John chapter 1, the end of John 1 to the end of John chapter 4 is the first entire year of Jesus's ministry.

And there's only a couple actual accounts that are given to us in an entire year of ministry. Three hundred sixty five days of Jesus's ministry is covered by just a couple chapters. This is where Jesus chooses his disciples at the end of John 1, turns the water into wine as a symbol of the prosperity and glory of his kingdom in Cana.

He cleanses the temple in Jerusalem and he enrages the elite in the city of Jerusalem. That's just John 2. John 3 and John 4 are very interesting pictures of how Jesus tenderly interacts with two different people.

And we're meant to study these two people together. One is the religious leader who should have known God. And one is the Samaritan woman who had no reason to understand the things of God. And yet it was the woman who walked away and who had faith.

And it was the man who was confounded. It was the religious leader who was confounded. Jesus even says, are you not a teacher of Israel? So that's the whole first year gone in blazing speed. A few events, a couple events are John tells us about and that's it.

Now, clearly, Jesus did much more than that in his first year. He spent all kinds of hours. He said all kinds of things. He even probably did more miracles that we don't know about. There'll be conversations that we have around campfires in the new heavens, the new earth, where they'll tell us.

John will tell us about all the things that he wanted to write. But the Holy Spirit told him not to write. The first year is gone fast. The second year goes even faster. It's only two chapters for the entire second year of Jesus' ministry.

That's chapters five and six. That's where Jesus meets the man who's been sick for 38 years. He heals him. And then the man runs to the Pharisees and tattles on Jesus. And the Pharisees now want to kill him.

It's the first Judas before the actual Judas. Heals the sick man. The Pharisees turn against him. He retreats to Galilee as the base of his ministry operations. It's there he feeds the 5 ,000. He walks on water and he goes back to Jerusalem for the Feast of Booths where the Jews want to kill him.

That's the second year in a blazing fury. Much more happened, but that's the highlight reel John shares with us. Now, the third year of ministry, time starts to slow down in the Gospel of John a little bit.

It slows down as it's nearing to go to a crawl in his final week. In the third year, it's chapter seven through 12, there's growing opposition from the Jewish leadership for Jesus. You can read it in seven, eight, nine, ten, and eleven.

That's the theme of all of those chapters is that the Jewish leadership of Jerusalem increasingly hates Christ and they are mobilizing to try to squash Jesus. This section ends, the third year of his ministry ends with the sort of the signing of his own death certificate.

Scholars universally agree that the thing, the one straw that broke the camel's back that caused the Jews to say enough, we're going to kill this man was in the raising of Lazarus from the dead. That happened at the very end of his third year of ministry.

Now, the third year does cover more events. It covers more chapters in the life of Christ, but it's still pretty fast. You've got chapters one through 12, which go from eternity to three years in ministry.

So Jesus is 33 years old. That's how fast the time has gone in John. And there's theological reasons for that, because John is not trying to get us caught up on Jesus, the miracle worker. He is not trying to get us caught up on Jesus, the teacher.

He has a plan. He has a purpose. And that is to show us Christ in his fullness so that we would believe and have life in his name. And the way that John is prioritizing showing us Christ is by getting us to the Passion Week.

That's where time almost slows down to a stop. There is more detail about a single week of Jesus's life than every other week in his life. And it's not even close. 13 through 20 is the chapters that are devoted to the single week of Jesus's life.

And the vast majority of that is dedicated to the final 24 hour day. It is astounding how you in John's gospel, you sort of begin like you're on a rocket and now you're barely pedaling along like you're on a unicycle.

Not like a professional driving a unicycle like you and I driving a unicycle.

It's slow.

And in that John is showing us the point. The point is that we are to get a glimpse of who Christ is and he is showcased most fully in his passion, in his arrest, in his death, in his burial and in his resurrection.

That's what we've been leading to for four years now is to see the glory of Christ in these chapters that we're going to be looking at in the coming weeks. And these chapters are all about the purpose.

The gospel of John gets denser and denser. Maybe another example is you start off with sponge cake and now you're on biltong. If any of you know what that is, a good South African jerky. It's really thick and dense and it's pretty good.

If you don't know what it is, beef jerky is a substitute. The purpose of the gospel of John is John 20, 31. These things have been written so that you would believe in the Christ, the son of God, and that by believing in him, you will have life in his name.

You're not believing only in the water to wine Christ. You're not believing only in the one who healed the lame man in Jerusalem or the one who healed the blind man in Jerusalem. You're believing in the risen Christ, the crucified, died, buried, risen and ascended Christ.

And that's what John has been getting us to. And that is his purpose to showcase Christ. If you want life, if you want life, you cannot have it apart from Christ. That is what John is teaching us. Now, in the same way that John's gospel gets more dense and more slow as you go, he also gets more typological as you go.

We've defined that word before, but I don't take for granted that we need to define it again. Typology is what we just sang. Christ is the true and better. He's the true and better Moses, the true and better Adam, the true and better David, the true and better temple, the true and better sacrifice, the true and better priest.

Everything that's revealed in the Old Testament is a type and a shadow of who Christ is, who will fulfill all these things. Those are pictures. Jesus is the person. As we go in the gospel of John, we see these typological comparisons becoming richer and denser and more frequent so that Christ is showing us that he's not only coming to save us from our sins.

Yes, and amen. But he's doing more than that. That's the tip of the iceberg. He's saving us from our sins by becoming the one who is faithful where everyone failed before him. That's why he is the true and better.

He's the true and better everything. And today we're going to see three examples of that in our text. This is a very familiar passage. If you've been a Christian for a minute or two, even, you probably know that Jesus was arrested, that he was betrayed by a man named Judas.

Most people know, even if you're not Christian, you probably don't want to name your child Judas or your daughter Jezebel. There's a reason. These are very known betrayers. And yet today what I want to do is I want to pull back the layer a little bit.

I want to show you something that's going on under the text. On the surface, Jesus is going to get arrested. Judas is going to betray him. The high priest horde, the temple guards are going to come. Peter's going to chop their ear off, which is hashtag very Peter of him to do.

But under the surface of that is something incredible and glorious that's happening in this text that I want to show you. And I want to show you not so that our heads would be filled with theology. I don't want to show you so that you can be puffed up as you walk out of here and be like, I know typology.

I don't care at all about that. I want to show you so that you'll find Jesus beautiful. I want to show you so that you'll see him as glorious. I want to show you so that as you see and behold him like a child who stares at the edge of the rim of the Grand Canyon and is blown away by its splendor.

I want you to see and behold the glory of Christ. So our purpose today is to dive into this text so that we can worship this Jesus more fully, more passionately in spirit and truth.

Amen.

If you will turn with me to John 18. I set out to do 1 through 11, but I've decided only to go to 9, which is common for me as well. So we're going to read 1 through 9. John 18, 1 through 9. When Jesus had spoken these words, he went forth with his disciples over the ravine of the Kidron, where there was a garden in which he entered with his disciples.

Now Judas also, who was betraying him, knew the place, for Jesus had not or had often met there with his disciples. Judas then, having received the Roman cohort and the officers from the chief priest and the Pharisees, came with the lanterns and the torches and weapons.

So Jesus, knowing all things that were coming upon him, went forth and said to them, Whom do you seek? And they answered him, Jesus the Nazarene. And he said to them, I am he. And Judas also, who was betraying him, was standing there with them.

And when he said to them, I am he, they drew back and fell to the ground. Therefore, Jesus said again, Whom do you seek? And they said, Jesus the Nazarene. And Jesus answered, I told you that I am he.

So if you seek me, let these go their way to fulfill the word which he spoke of those whom you have given me, I lost not one. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, we thank you for your word. We thank you that your word, especially the Gospel of John, as we have noticed time and time again, is a kiddie pool that the smallest child can have fun in and enjoy.

And it's also the deepest trench that the marine biologist can go down and explore. Lord, your word is accessible for every person, and yet it's so deep that we can never exhaust it. Lord, help us today as we look into another layer, a depth that is going on in this text.

Lord, help us not to use that knowledge as fodder for trivia games or for Bible trivia games. Lord, help us to, as we see and behold more depth, more glory, help us to turn around and give that through worship back to Christ.

It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen. Now, if you remember the setting, we've been in the high priestly prayer, but the high priestly prayer is a part of a unit of the Gospel of John, where we're in the final moment, the final week, and the final hours of Jesus' life.

You remember that this begins in John 13, where the true high priest gathers his disciples in the upper room and he serves to them the Passover meal. And after the Passover meal, like a true and good high priest, he gets down and he washes their feet and he anoints them for service.

To be kingdom of priests and a holy people. And after he washes their feet and he gets back up to the table, they sing psalms. They sing psalms of ascent. These are the psalms in the Old Testament that you would typically sing on your way to Jerusalem.

And they were typical to be sung as you celebrate the Passover. They were joyful psalms. They were the happiest psalms consistently in the canon of the psalms. And you would sing them delightfully as you would head up to the mountain of God to worship him.

And ironically, Jesus is singing them just before he leaves the mountain of God. Jesus is singing them just before he descends away from the temple. So the irony of the joyful songs is cast against the shadow of his coming arrest, his trial, his beating, his bludgeoning and his death.

What it shows us is that even in the darkest moment that Jesus faced, he had great joy. And if we are in him, we can have joy in all circumstances as well. Now, after that moment where they sing those psalms, Jesus leads his disciples out of the upper room.

He takes them out into the dark streets of Jerusalem, which is not a very typical thing to do on a night like tonight. You would have stayed in the upper room. You would have stayed there.

You would have worshipped.

You would have went to sleep. You would have woke up the next morning. Jesus doesn't do that. He leaves Jerusalem. He goes through the town squares, through the seats, through the alleys that take him to the eastern gate.

And then he leaves the city. He descends down the steep hill that would take him out of the city. And he crosses over into the valley on his way up to the Mount of Olives. And it's the Mount of Olives where Jesus prays this great high priestly prayer that we've been looking at for eight, nine or ten weeks.

I don't remember how many weeks we were in it. And now today, Jesus is leaving the place where he prayed and he's turning around and he's heading back down the hill to the valley. Towards Jerusalem, which I think is an astounding feature.

Because if you think about it, there's 360 directions unless you're in the military. And then there's three hundred, three thousand six hundred asthmases, right? I am getting confused. There's a lot of directions that Jesus could have went.

He didn't have to go back towards the city of Jerusalem. It says Jesus knows all things. It says that in this passage, Jesus could have turned around and fled and they would not have caught him. Judas shows up at a particular place.

He did not show up at every place. Jesus could have went any number of places to not get caught. He's doing this on purpose. He's going back to get arrested on purpose, intentionally. And the reason for that is because without the cross, without his arrest, there is no atonement for the people of God.

There is no justification for our sins. Without the cross, there's no adoption for you and I into the family of God. There's no regeneration. There's no indwelling by the spirit of God. There's no relationship that you'll ever have with your creator.

Without the cross, there is no salvation and there is no people of God. So for the joy set before him, he walked the pathway to his arrest and he did it for you. Now, that's obvious from scripture. That while we were powerless, Christ joyfully died for the ungodly.

That he was arrested on purpose, that he was pierced for our transgressions, that he was crushed for our sins, that the Lord laid our iniquity on his shoulders. That he brought the ministry of reconciliation because you and I need to be reconciled, that he no longer counts our sins against us because he went with courage towards the city and he bore our sins in his body so that you and I would be freed from all our sins.

These are explicit in the text. What's not quite explicit is what's going on just under the surface that we're going to talk about this morning. There's other reasons that Jesus is doing this. There's other reasons that Jesus is doing the things that he's doing, leaving hints like little breadcrumbs littered through the forest, because he wants us as we grow in him and as we see these things in scripture, he wants us to always be impressed by him.

If we boast only to boast in him, he wants us to see his majesty in this passage, that he is so infinitely sovereign with great providence that every facet of this account is doing something that he could, that you and I, that you and I could have never imagined.

He crosses the Kidron Valley. OK, it says that explicitly in the text. He enters a garden. It says that explicitly in the text. His holiness overwhelms these sinners to where they fall face down on the ground.

It says that.

But underneath these three things, there's something else going on that he wants to teach us. So with that, turn with me again to verse one of chapter 18. As we look at these three things, we see how Christ is truly the true and better.

Verse 18 kicks us off. When Jesus had spoken these words, that's the high priestly prayer. When he had spoken these words to God, he went forth with his disciples and he crossed over the ravine of Kidron.

Kidron is not an insignificant little valley. This valley is infused with significance. It has geographical significance. It has historical significance and it has spiritual significance. And this is not an accidental feature.

John's not just telling us that he crossed over some random valley. This is highly intentional, that it's this valley, that it's this time. This valley was sandwiched between two mountains. The mountain of the city of Jerusalem where the holy temple was at the highest point and the Mount of Olives.

This valley is in the middle of these two places. And at that time, mountains were considered places where you would go to meet with God. And valleys were places where there were death and war and disease.

Think about the significance of what's going on here. The temple, as you're walking up the temple, as you're going, you're going to meet with God. You're going to meet with and dwell with and commune with your creator.

So as you're walking up the mountain that the city of Jerusalem is sitting on, you're thinking to yourself, I am going up to meet with God. That's what the hymns, the Harel hymns are all about. I'm going up to meet with God.

And as you're walking away from the city of Jerusalem, you're going away from the presence of God. Remember, at this time, the presence of God was located explicitly in the Holy of Holies. So you were, when you left Jerusalem, walking away from his covenantally given presence.

And it's not just that mountain. Every mountain in the ancient world was a place that people believed that they got closer to God. Remember, it was a Tower of Babel. Let's build a tower to the Lord because the elevation in their mind mattered spiritually.

It's on the high places that every pagan altar is built. They don't build their altars in the valleys. They build them on top of the mountains. Because in the ancient way of thinking, you go up into the presence of God.

And in the valleys, you go down into death. Kidron had a special significance in the mind of the people because Kidron functioned as a sort of typological shield. As you left the Temple Mount, as a faithful Jew, you were going down away from the presence of God, which is what the Old Testament typifies as shiel.

When you die, you wait for the promises of God in this holding tank in Hades called shiel. The other great valley in this area is called the Valley of Hinnom. And it was in this valley where there was a continual fire, a literal fire.

Where they burned their trash and the smoke went up 24 hours a day and it stunk. Criminals were punished with death penalties by being thrown into the flames. And the word Gehenna, which comes from this Valley of Hinnom, is a metaphor for hell.

For the unfaithful who go down away from the presence of God. So you've got two valleys. You go down away from the presence of God as a faithful believer. That's sort of like shiel. You go down away from the presence of God in this Valley of Hinnom, that's like hell.

This is highly significant theological language that they're talking about with these valleys in ways that we don't really attribute to geography today. Now, there's also historical significance to this as well.

This is a famous valley. It's a valley where incredibly important things that happened to the Jewish people occurred. And there's one that's more important than the other. This is the valley where David fled from Absalom.

Absalom, his son, is trying to betray him and to take the kingdom away from him. And David flees the city of Jerusalem and he goes down into the Kidron Valley. He crosses over the Kidron Valley as his empire was falling apart and as a coup d 'etat was being enacted in that moment.

This comes out of 2 Samuel 15, 13 through 16 and verse 23. Let me show you what I mean. And a messenger came to David saying, the hearts of the men of Israel have gone after Absalom. And then David said to his servants who were with him at Jerusalem, arise and let us flee or else there will be no escape for us from Absalom.

Go quickly, lest he overtake us quickly and bring us down to ruin and strike the city with the edge of the sword. And the king's servants said to the king, behold, your servants are ready to do whatever my lord the king decides.

So the king went out and all of his household after him and the king left 10 concubines to keep the house. And all the land, this is verse 23, wept aloud and all the people passed by and the king crossed the brook of Kidron and all the people passed on toward the wilderness.

David is king of Jerusalem at this point. He is being betrayed by someone that he loves and he's fleeing by crossing the Kidron and his servants are going with him. What does this remind us of? The true king, Jesus, who is being betrayed by the one that he loves in this very moment, who is crossing the Kidron Valley as the true king, David, who is going to not have his kingdom taken away from him, but who is going to get it and receive it.

His associates, his people follow along with him. And in the David story, if you remember the end of the story, the father's son dies by being hung from a tree. What happens at the end of Jesus's story when Judas betray him, the true father's true son is hung and a curse is put on him on a tree.

Jesus is showing us what's about to happen in this passage. He's saying, I'm being betrayed. I'm the true king and I'm going to give my life for the people. I am better than Absalom. I am better than David.

I'm the one who is going to die for the sins of my people. And in so doing, I'm not like David who fled. I'm going to run towards it. I'm not like David who tried to avoid being captured. I'm going to get caught.

I'm not like David who is suffering for his sin. If you read the Absalom narrative, it happened because of David being a lousy father. Christ is suffering innocently. David feels like he's losing the kingdom.

In this situation, Jesus is gaining the kingdom. David is losing control of his empire. Christ is establishing and building an empire that will never end. Unlike David who lost men in the battle, Jesus said, I've lost none.

And unlike David who lost his son, God, the father gave his son for you. And he was not lost and he did not stay dead. He is the true and better David. Just by crossing the Kidron Valley, he is alerting the Bible student who knows something about the Kidron Valley.

Oh, he's making a connection back to David. He's showing us what's getting ready to happen. He's going to be the one who dies upon the tree. He's showing us in this passage, just by entering the valley, he's showing us something.

The second thing that I want to show you is that he's also appealing to the garden. Look at what it says. Verse one and three, verse one through three. And when Jesus had spoken these words, he went forth with his disciples over the ravine of the Kidron, true and better David, where there was a garden in which he entered with his disciples.

Now, at that time, if you were a faithful Jew and you heard about a garden, you would have thought about the best garden, the typical garden, the prototypical garden, which was Eden. It would be like if you're from Mocksville, North Carolina, and someone told you about a river and you're like, it's the Yadkin River, that muddy, nasty waterhole that I love so dearly.

This is the garden. It's not just a garden. It is the garden. And if Jesus intentionally crossed the Kidron Valley to show them that he is the son who's going to die upon a tree, then do we not also believe that he enters into a garden on purpose?

Isn't it interesting that Jesus's ministry begins in a wilderness and it ends in a garden? He's arrested in a garden. He's put in a garden tomb. The very first person who sees him mistakes him for a gardener.

Why?

Because he's the true and better Adam. This is talking about the reversal of the old Eden, the Eden that fell into sin. This is about the redemption and the purification of everything that was lost. Jesus is redeeming the garden.

You remember in the old garden, Adam failed the test. What does Jesus do?

He passes it.

In the old garden, Adam brought sin and death. What does Jesus do? Bring purity and life. And not just spiritually, Jesus will bring life spiritually to all his people when he rises from the grave, but he also does what God does in the garden.

You remember God bends down in the dirt in Genesis 2 and he crafts Adam and he breathes life into him and he becomes a living man? Peter, in his Petrine-like way. Mike Tyson's the ear off of Malchus.

And what does Jesus do? Like Yahweh, God in the garden, he takes the ear and puts it back. Almost like he's making a new ear. He's the true and better Adam and he is God, the same God that showed up in the garden.

In the old Eden, this is fascinating. When Adam sinned, God kicked him out of the garden for his own good because sinners can't live in the presence of a holy God. And one of the things that he did to protect Adam was he installed cherubim at the entrance with flaming swords.

What is it that Judas and his horde come looking for Jesus with? Torches and weapons. Isn't the irony fascinating? That God puts flaming swords to keep Adam out, now the sons of Adam come with flaming swords to kill their God.

Tell me that's not intentional. When we sinned, we brought a curse upon the land. One of the evidences of the curse upon the land is the thorns that came up from the ground. Isn't it fascinating that all the sons of Adam shoved thorns down on Jesus's head?

The irony is rich here. Isn't it interesting also that Adam failed in front of a tree and it was Jesus who succeeded at the tree? They came to nail the living God to a tree of death because in God's providence, he wanted to bring you and me to the tree of life.

So Jesus is not just the true and better David, he's the true and better Adam as well. He is the one who will restore everything that's broken in you. And bring you back into relationship with God. He's telling us this in his footsteps.

Often we get theology from our lips where I say to you, he's the true and better David. Jesus is saying it with his sandals. And the way that he walked to the Kidron Valley and the way that he entered into the garden, he's reminding us that he's the true and better Adam.

The last point that we see in this passage is that he's also the very God who came down on Sinai. You remember Mount Sinai? That great mountain where God mediated his covenant with man, where all the sinners were encamped at the base of this mountain waiting for the law of God to come because the law was good for them and was supposed to make them fruitful and to multiply.

And you remember when when God spoke and it was so insatiably holy that the people heard it as rumblings and volcanic quakings and they hit the ground, their faces hit the ground and they said, Lord, don't speak to us, speak to that man Moses, which is really a way of, it's a hateful posture towards him.

God, you're going to kill us, kill him.

God, we're afraid of you.

There you go.

This one, the passage continues like this in verse four. So Jesus, knowing all the things that were coming upon him, he was not confused about what was about to happen. He's doing it on purpose. He's doing it on purpose, even in the way that he walks.

And he went forth and he said to them, whom do you seek? And they answered him, Jesus, the Nazarene. He said, I am he.

I am.

Amen.

And Judas also, who was betraying him, was standing with him so that when he said to them, I am. They drew back and they fell to the ground. Therefore, he asked them a second time, whom do you seek? And they said, Jesus, the Nazarene.

Jesus said, I told you, I am he. Jesus has just left a mountain. Sinful men are surrounding him, and he's giving them the tetragrammaton, it's not, it's not, there's no R, the tetragrammaton. It's the four letter word for God.

I am that I am. That's the tetragrammaton, Yahweh. And the people hit the earth and they tremble. This is exactly what happened at Mount Sinai, where God leaves the mountain of heaven. He comes down and he dwells upon this little hill called Sinai with the sinful people surrounding him who would betray him and who would worship golden calves in spite of him.

And when he speaks, they hit the ground and he says his name, I am that I am. And they can't hear it. They can't bear it. Jesus is showing us that the same God who set Mount Sinai to a quaking like Mount Vesuvius is the one now standing in their presence.

He's proclaiming that he's God. And that's really important because if he's the true and better David who's going to bring us into a king, well, he better be God, because when he dies, the kingdom is going to fall apart just like it did with Solomon.

And he better be God if he's promising to bring us back to the garden, because only God can bring us back into true fellowship with him in the true garden with his son. He better be God. And he's showing us here when he says, I am, he is saying, I am God.

We've seen it seven times now. And don't quote me on this, but I think this is the eighth time that Jesus has proclaimed I am. Every time it's with a referent. I am the resurrection of life. I am the bread.

We read that in John six. I am the water. Here there is no referent. It simply is I am. I am that I am. I am your God. And the sinful men standing in front of him could not bear it. The only way that they could arrest Jesus is that he let them.

That's it.

And he left them for a purpose to call all of us to him. He's the better David. What does that mean? That means brothers and sisters, that you are now in a better kingdom than David could ever produce.

That means he is a better king than David could have ever been. That means that if he's king, then you're his servants. That means what he says goes. That means all authority in heaven and earth now belongs to him.

So that if he says that you do it, if he says that you believe it, he's your king. You're his citizen. You're in a kingdom and you cannot be taken away. Remember John six. No one can snatch them out of my hand.

All who are going to come to me, come to me by the father's will. No one can take them from me. Brothers and sisters, if you serve Jesus, the king, you can't be lost. You're in a kingdom that will never end.

We right now have one foot in the world, one foot in heaven. We live in a kingdom that will end. As much as we think sometimes that America will continue on, it will die the death of every empire. But the kingdom of Jesus Christ will never end.

And that is your primary citizenship. I care nothing and I don't care if the FBI is listening. I don't care anything about my citizenship in America because I'm a citizen of heaven. I'm thankful that I live in this country.

Don't get me wrong. But my primary citizenship is in the Lord's country, in the Lord's kingdom. And that means more to me than anything. And I hope it means more to you than anything because he is the better king.