WWUTT 2501 The Hour of Jesus' Arrest (Luke 22:47-53)

When Jesus was arrested, Judas betrayed Jesus into the hands of his enemies. Peter tried to protect Jesus with a sword. But all of these things took place by the sovereign hand of God when we understand the text.

This is When We Understand the Text, a daily study of God's Word that we may be filled with the knowledge of His will. For questions and comments, send us an email to whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com.

Here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe.

The Betrayal and Arrest of Jesus in Luke 22

Thank you, Becky. In our study of the Gospel of Luke, we come back to chapter 22, picking up where we left off last week. We've read of the Last Supper with His disciples, Jesus praying with them in the garden, and now His betrayal and arrest.

This is Luke 22, verses 47 -53. Hear the word of the Lord. While Jesus was still speaking, there came a crowd, and the man called Judas, one of the twelve, was leading them. He drew near to Jesus to kiss him.

But Jesus said to him, Judas, would you betray the Son of Man with a kiss? And when those who were around him saw what would follow, they said, Lord, shall we strike.

With the sword?

And one of them struck the servant of the high priest and cut off his right ear. But Jesus said, No more of this. And he touched his ear and healed him. Then Jesus said to the chief priests and officers of the temple and elders who had come out against him, Have you come out as against a robber with swords and clubs?

When I was with you day after day in the temple, you did not lay hands on me. But this is your hour and the power of darkness. And indeed they came to him in the midst of the darkness, because they feared the people, as we had read about at the start of the chapter.

Here in this passage, we have three exchanges, Jesus addressing Judas in verses 47 and 48, then addressing his disciples in verses 49 to 51, and then addressing those who came out to arrest him in verses 52 to 53.

And all through this, Jesus continues teaching and showing how all of this was to fulfill what was spoken about in the scriptures. All of this in fulfillment of what God had providentially arraigned and sovereignly ordained from before the foundation of the world.

Back to verse 47. While Jesus was still speaking, there came a crowd. Remember that he's addressing the disciples here. He was praying there in the garden. The disciples were with him. They fell asleep.

And so Jesus addresses them saying, Why are you sleeping? Rise and pray that you may not enter into temptation. And it's there addressing the disciples that then this crowd comes to arrest Jesus. Not just the servant of the high priest, not just the guard, but a crowd, it says.

And many coming with swords and clubs. Because hey, if this guy is the Messiah, if he's the one they're talking about is supposed to ascend to the throne, then maybe he's got some sort of military prowess we don't know about.

He's a fighter, so we better be ready to fight. And that's that's the way they are when they come to arrest him. Now, remember, Jesus has been praying fervently. We had read in the previous section that he was in agony and his sweat became like great drops of blood that were falling to the ground.

I was watching a video over the weekend, and I was watching this video because I've been looking for footage that I'm going to use in a future what video. But in this video, the narrator was talking about Jesus going into the garden and the image shows Jesus falling on the ground.

And the narrator says it was here in the garden that he began his atonement for sins in reference to the fact that he sweat drops of blood. Now, I knew when I was watching this that had to be a Mormon teacher, because this is what the Mormons believe regarding Jesus sweating drops of blood in the garden.

Is that is that he was atoning for our sins there? And you will see a greater emphasis put on his bleeding in the garden than you will. Then you'll see the Mormons put an emphasis on his bleeding on the cross, which is why you don't see crosses on the top of Mormon churches whenever you pass by them.

They really downplay the cross. It's not as relevant a symbol to them. It used to be that when you would search for churches online, Mormon churches wouldn't come up. Only evangelical Protestant or even Catholic churches would come up in a church search, but not a not a Mormon church.

And the Mormon church icon was a picture of the temple in Salt Lake City, Utah. Not a picture, not a silhouette of the cross. We've ever done this before. So you do a church search on a search engine and it'll give you the little markers in your town of where all the churches are and they'll all be marked by a cross will not a Mormon.

Church.

The symbol would be the silhouette of the Mormon temple. Well, now the Mormon church has moved away from that. They would rather come up in a church search. They want they actually want to be called a Christian, which is not traditionally been the case with Mormons, even their own prophets and their own presidents whom they regard as apostles have said that they worship a different Christ than the Christ of the Bible or the Christ that most Christians worship.

But they don't want that distinction anymore. They want to be regarded as Christians, too. But this is common among Mormon teaching to say that atonement began with Jesus in the.

Garden.

But Jesus was not atoning for our sins in the garden. The atonement is specifically the sacrifice of his life on the cross. Last week, I talked about this and pointed to Leviticus, where it's the life of the animal.

And there in Leviticus, it says the life is in the blood. So the shedding of blood is giving the life. And when Jesus is shedding his blood on the cross for us, he is giving his life for us as the atoning sacrifice.

Blood in the garden would not have been atonement for, as I pointed out, if Jesus just got a cut or scraped his knee or something like that, whatever he bleeds is not atonement blood because the atonement is the giving of the life, not simply bleeding.

And while he's talking with his disciples, they're having come from prayer. The crowd is on their way to arrest him while he was still speaking. There came a crowd and the man called Judas, one of the 12 was leading them.

And he drew near to Jesus to kiss him. At the very beginning of this chapter, we saw Judas conferring with the Pharisees about betraying Jesus into their hands. And it doesn't say that he betrayed Jesus for 30 pieces of silver.

We first came across that in the Gospel of Matthew. Luke doesn't mention that. But that was the price of a slave. According to Exodus 21, a slave was worth 30 shekels of silver. So Judas betraying Jesus into the hands of his enemies was as if to sell him as a slave.

It's also prophesied in the book of Zechariah that Judas betrayed Jesus for 30 pieces of silver. And it's even prophesied there in verse 13, Zechariah 11, 13. It's even said there that Judas would take the 30 pieces of silver and throw them back into the house of the Lord, which is what Judas did, did not want the money, tried to give it back.

They wouldn't take it because it was blood money now. And so Judas just throws it on the house of the Lord, just as was prophesied hundreds of years before. We can prove that, that Zechariah was written long before Judas had ever even done such a thing.

So it's amazing to see all of this prophecy be fulfilled. Now, Luke doesn't include some of these details. He's being very particular about some of these events, the event itself, but maybe not the specifics of what takes place in the event.

So we don't have the mention of the 30 pieces of silver. We also didn't have the mention of Judas going out from the Last Supper. Remember that Jesus said to his disciples, the son of man goes as it has been determined, but woe to that man by whom he is betrayed.

The hand of him who betrays me is with me on the table. That was back in verses 21 to 22. So he says that, and then the disciples wonder about themselves, which one of them could.

It be?

But nowhere in Luke's narrative did it say that Judas went out from there. We just kind of jump right into this here in verse 47. Here's Judas leading the crowd to arrest Jesus and comes forward to kiss him.

Verse 48, but Jesus said to him, Judas, would you betray the son of man with a kiss? Jesus is still prophesying about himself right here that he is the son of man. And this gesture that Judas is doing worse than simply turning him over to the hands of his enemies.

He kisses him, a sign of affection. Now, there's been a lot of speculation as to why Judas did this exactly. Surely it had to be for more reasons than just 30 pieces of silver. I like the theory, and I'm presenting this as only a theory because, again, the scripture doesn't explicitly say, but I like the theory that Judas was trying to move things forward.

He did believe Jesus was the Messiah. He was going to relieve them from the captivity of Rome. He was going to assume the throne again, or yeah, assume the throne of his father David and make Israel great again.

And then Israel was going to become that superpower and all the nations would serve them. That's what Judas was expecting Jesus to do. He was tired of all of this messing about and all these other things.

Now, Luke doesn't include this story. But remember, according to the Gospel of John, when Jesus' feet are being anointed by Mary, who comes and anoints his feet, Judas is mad about this. He's sick of this.

He's like, why? Why is she doing that when the perfume could have been given to help the poor? And of course, what John lets us in on is that Judas really just wanted the money for himself because he used to rob from the money bag.

So Judas has has selfish motives here. No question about it. But he thinks he's kind of moving things along. Let's get this going here. Let's finally we all believe you're the Messiah. So let's do it.

Get to the throne. Get the Romans out of here. And let's do what has been prophesied and what you keep talking about. Bring the kingdom of God.

Let's go.

So maybe Judas thinks by selling Jesus out and giving him over to his enemies that Jesus is finally just going to break free from this and he'll take up swords and go, OK, fine, let's do this. And Judas is like, finally, you know, maybe that is his motivation.

And again, that's just a theory. But I do like that theory because we know that Judas was remorseful over what he did. He tried to give the money back, but they wouldn't take it back. And then seeing that he couldn't undo what he had just done and it wasn't going to result in what he had hoped was going to happen.

He just went out and hung himself. He had betrayed an innocent man, the very son of man. So this is Jesus exchange with Judas, even showing himself to be the one who was prophesied about. But it wasn't coming about the way that Judas expected this thing was going to go.

The Sword, the Ear, and Jesus' Rejection of Violence

And then verse 49, Jesus address with his disciples, when those who were around him talking about the disciples saw what would follow, they said, Lord, shall we strike with the sword? And one of them we know to be Peter struck the servant of the high priest and cut off his right ear.

Now, in the synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, Peter is never mentioned as being the one who draws the sword and cuts off the ear of the servant of the high priest. That's not until we get to John.

So Peter is the one who grabs the sword. This is John 18, verse 10. Then Simon Peter, having a sword, drew it and struck the high priest servant and cut off his right ear. The servant's name was Malchus.

So we get both names here in John 18, 10, that the disciple who drew the sword was specifically Peter and the name of the servant of the high priest who lost his ear was Malchus. But Jesus says in verse 11, this is John 18, 11.

Jesus said to Peter, put your sword into its sheath. Shall I not drink the cup that the father has given me? When you go back to Luke 22, what does Jesus do with the servant of the high priest? Heals his ear.

So we can take these different parts of this narrative and put it together and see clearly everything that went on here. Jesus says in verse 51, I'm back in Luke 22, again, 51, no more of this. And he touched his ear and healed him.

I believe it's the movie, The Passion of the Christ. When Malchus has his ear cut off and Jesus, who's played by Jim Caviezel, comes up and touches his ear and heals it. And then Jesus is taken away. And as they are taking him away, they beat him.

You know, he's punched, his beard is yanked and pulled out, and he's already beaten up by the time that he comes and appears before Caiaphas. But as it's showing that, as the movie is showing that, him being led away and beaten and then even appearing at trial, it will cut back to Malchus, who's sitting there on the ground in shock that he just barely dodged death because here's Peter swinging a sword, just misses his head or like the main part of his head anyway, cuts off his ear and Jesus just touches his ear and miraculously heals it.

And so Malchus is grappling with the fact that I almost just died. And then this man just healed my ear. So I kind of like that. I like that in the cinematic portrayal of it, the way that it showed Malchus.

You know that if you've been listening to this program for a long time, you know that don't really like Jesus movies because they can never do it right. But when it came to Malchus and it came to his reaction to what had just happened, I thought that was pretty accurate.

Yeah, I may have been the same way. I'm sitting there on the ground going, you know what? I'm out. We came to arrest this guy, but he just healed my ear. And so what are we what are we possibly going to be able to do to him?

We're going to put him to death and then he's going to rise back up from the dead again. Maybe Malchus has all of this going on in his head. How am I going to be a party now to arresting this man who has just healed my ear and saved me from death and his own disciples?

He didn't tell his disciples. All right, guys, now's the time they're coming to arrest me. Protect me now. No, Jesus tells them to stop. Verse 51 again, Jesus said no more of this. We know from Matthew 26, we know from Mark 14.

Jesus discouraged his disciples from fighting any longer. He went willingly. This was what he had been telling them that he was going to come to Jerusalem and he was going to be arrested and he was going to be put to death.

But I'm coming back on the third day. But they still don't understand any of that. Peter is trying to go out swinging quite literally. But again, as I mentioned with Judas, Peter probably also had this expectation.

Jesus is the Messiah. There's no way he's going to be taken captive or even that he's going to be put to death. So all of this becomes a shock to all of them. And we know from other accounts that the sheep were scattered.

The rest of the disciples ran away as Jesus was arrested and taken away to trial. They did not understand. They did not get what was happening here. But they would understand it later. Remember Jesus saying to Peter, Satan has demanded to have you that he might sift you like wheat.

But I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers. Now, as far as Luke's narrative goes, when we get to chapter 24 at the very end of what we've been studying here in this gospel, Jesus will open their minds to understand the scriptures and then they're going to get it.

They're going to get all of it. And the Holy Spirit will even come to them and teach them more. So what they don't understand now, they will understand later. Jesus said to the chief priests and officers of the temple and elders who would come out against him, if you come out as against a robber with swords and clubs, when I was with you day after day in the temple, you did not lay hands on me.

Now, the reason Jesus is pointing that out is basically to say, why are you coming here with swords and clubs? I was teaching in the temple. Did you see any weapons among us in the temple? Did you see me trying to rouse a crowd to fight?

Do you have any indication at all that I was going to respond with force here? And yet you're coming with swords and clubs as if you're coming out against a robber. What have I done? What have I done in my life and in my ministry?

He's calling upon them to examine what he has taught and what he has done. Have you seen anything in my ministry that would otherwise indicate to you that I was going to respond with force? I think both the disciples and the crowd that have come to arrest Jesus have the same expectation.

They do think Jesus is going to respond with force, which is why Peter was willing to take up a sword and respond with force. But that is not the way the kingdom of God is going to come in. It was not going to be by the sword.

It's very sad, very unfortunate that I see a lot of these men online, young men, they're cosplaying as crusaders and they think that Christianity or a Christian nation is going to come about by way of the sword.

We're going to take up arms and we're going to fight and we're going to drive out these enemies and we're going to make America great again. You've heard that slogan for the past decade or so now. There are actually professing Christian men that think this, that we're going to make a Christian nation by force.

And that's never been the way that Jesus has said his kingdom would advance. It's through the preaching of the gospel. The apostle Peter, who would learn his lesson after this, by the way, he would even say in his own epistle that when Jesus was reviled, he did not revile in return, but he entrusted himself to him who judges justly.

And we're expected to do the same. We don't revile those who revile us, but we respond with love and with peace. The weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, as the apostle Paul said, but they have divine power to break down strongholds.

We're talking about the sword of the spirit, the word of God, the message of the gospel. That's what has the power to conquer people and change them from enemies of God into citizens of the kingdom of God.

This comes about through the preaching of the gospel. It does not come about by force. So may these people out there suddenly have it in their heads that we're supposed to be ushering in a new kingdom by force.

May they be humbled and recognize the word of God has far more power than their little weapons that they think that they will be using to advance the cause of Christ. Jesus says to those who have come out to arrest him, the end of verse 53, but this is your hour and the power of darkness.

This is your hour, meaning this is what has been prophesied about. You are doing this now. Not when I was publicly right there in front of everybody in the temple. You're doing this now because it is by the sovereign plan of God.

But it's also, Jesus says, the power of darkness. So if this is by the hand of God, how can it also be the power of darkness? We'll remember what Peter will later preach in Acts chapter two. This Jesus delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God.

You killed by the hands of lawless men. So it is by God's plan that this is supposed to happen. But the people who are doing it are by no means guiltless. They will still have to answer to God for betraying the son of God.

But all who believe in him, even if they had participated in this crowd, all that would turn from their sin to Jesus Christ would be forgiven and live. And we have the forgiveness of sins through faith in Jesus Christ.

We have citizenship in his kingdom. So though we will die in the body, we will live forever with the Lord in his perfect, imperishable kingdom. Heavenly Father, we thank you for what we've read here. And I thank you for sending your son, Jesus, to die for our sins.

May we recognize all of these things that have come to pass by your definite plan. And part of your plan even was to bring us into your kingdom through the hearing of the gospel. May we be strengthened to share the gospel with somebody else so that they too may come to know of the Lord Jesus Christ, put faith in him and live.

It's in Jesus name we pray. Amen.

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