The Greatness of Heavenly Power

“Betrayed”

(Matthew 26:47-56, Preaching: Pastor Stephen Magee, October 26, 2008)

Matthew 26:47-56 ⁴⁷ While he was still speaking, Judas came, one of the twelve, and with him a great crowd with swords and clubs, from the chief priests and the elders of the people. ⁴⁸ Now the betrayer had given them a sign, saying, "The one I will kiss is the man; seize him." ⁴⁹ And he came up to Jesus at once and said, "Greetings, Rabbi!" And he kissed him. ⁵⁰ Jesus said to him, "Friend, do what you came to do." Then they came up and laid hands on Jesus and seized him. ⁵¹ And behold, one of those who were with Jesus stretched out his hand and drew his sword and struck the servant of the high priest and cut off his ear. ⁵² Then Jesus said to him, "Put your sword back into its place. For all who take the sword will perish by the sword. ⁵³ Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels? ⁵⁴ But how then should the Scriptures be fulfilled, that it must be so?" ⁵⁵ At that hour Jesus said to the crowds, "Have you come out as against a robber, with swords and clubs to capture me? Day after day I sat in the temple teaching, and you did not seize me. ⁵⁶ But all this has taken place that the Scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled." Then all the disciples left him and fled.

Introduction – Remembering the final week

Eight months ago I preached a sermon from the opening verses of Matthew 21. It is important for us to remember that though we have already spent these many weeks looking at these six chapters, these things happened within about one week. It was not just any week. It was the most important week of human history. It began with our Lord and His disciples coming into Jerusalem as Jesus was exalted by some of the people as the Davidic King. It ends with Jesus exalted by God as the resurrected Son of David, the great King and Head of the church in this age, and the Lord of the Resurrection age to come, the King of a kingdom that men could never produce.

During this week, Jesus did and said many things. He stirred up a major controversy in the temple, He taught about the current leaders of the scribes and the Pharisees, He taught about the great struggles coming in what would be the gospel age, He spoke of the final Resurrection temple that would be revealed in the people of the age to come, and He gave His final parables about the judgment that would one day come upon the earth. Then He instituted the Lord’s Supper on the occasion of the final Passover, and He experienced the deep grief of His resolve to take upon Himself our sin as He went to the cross. As He finishes His time in the Garden of Gethsemane, we find Him serene; He is calm, in control, and at peace after the deep grief of that brutal hour of prayer. In the verses before us today, He is met by a close friend, a man who will betray Him in person. He is ready. Everything will now take place.

The one I will kiss (47-50)

The close friend who will betray Him is Judas Iscariot. We know so little about Him. When we are first introduced to this man in Matthew 10, the only detail we are given apart from his name is that this is the one who would betray him. Earlier in this chapter we learned of his plan with the chief priests. Judas took the initiative in this matter, and he received a prepayment for his services. We learn in the account of the upper room prior to the institution of the Lord’s Supper, that Jesus was well aware that Judas would betray Him. After the betrayal, at the beginning of Matthew 27, we learn that Judas changed his mind and brought back the money to the chief priests and elders, but it was too late. This is the sum of what we know about Judas from Matthew’s gospel, except that he was one of the twelve, there with the others in all of the events that have taken place in those three years of Jesus’ public ministry and private instruction of His disciples. He was a close companion and a familiar friend.

In the other gospels we are given a few more details. We know from Luke and John that Satan was somehow united with Judas in the disciple’s acts of betrayal. We also read in John’s gospel that Judas was the keeper of the funds, and that he used to steal money for his own benefit. John also says that Judas had a good idea of where Jesus would be that night. He had often come there with the other friends of Jesus. He went to get the band of soldiers to bring them to that place in order to fulfill this plan to betray the Son of Man into the hands of His enemies.

In Matthew and Mark there is an important detail that is interesting from the original Greek. We all are aware that Judas betrayed Jesus with a kiss, which would have been a normal familial greeting, as it still is today in certain cultures. What you may not realize is that our passage uses two different words that are both translated “kiss” in all of the translations. The first of these is in verse 48, when the plot is described. “The one I will kiss is the man; seize him.” The word here is the word for brotherly love, and it is almost always translated “love.” It can be translated “kiss,” because that would be a cultural sign of brotherly affection. The second word is an intense form of the first, and it is found in verse 49, “And he kissed him.” It is only used a few times in the New Testament. It means an increased intensity of brotherly affection and is always translated “kiss.” Aside from this kiss of betrayal, there are three other episodes where this intensified expression of familial affection is used. We find it in Luke 7 when a weeping woman kisses the feet of Jesus, in Luke 15 when a father in the parable of the lost son kisses his son with great joy upon his return, and Acts 20 when people kiss Paul after he tells them that they will never see him again. I want you to see that the kiss that Judas gave to Jesus that night was an emphatic embrace that a younger brother would give to an older brother. It was not half-hearted, at least in outward display, but of course it was a kiss of death, and a sign that will forever stand as the example of utmost hypocrisy. Jesus knows this, receives it, and instructs his one-time friend to do what he has come to do. He came to betray the Son of Man, and so he does.

Our weapons (51-52)

This betrayal is a horrible attack against the Lord. How do those who claim to love Jesus respond to it? We learn from John’s gospel that Peter is the unnamed disciple in verse 51 who cuts off someone’s ear. It is hard to say for sure what he is thinking, but there are certain things that should be obvious. Peter is willing to use the weapons of this world against those who come as agents of governing authorities bearing swords and clubs. They have swords, and so does Peter, and he intends to use his. The Apostle Paul tells us that God has given the sword to those He places in positions of authority. Sometimes we may wonder about the Lord’s providence in giving us a Stalin or a Nero. He does not explain Himself to us. Calvin suggests that bad princes are sometimes given to a city as an expression of the Lord’s judgment against that place. Paul and Peter tell us that civil authority comes from God, and that these ministers of civil power do not bear the sword in vain.

Jesus has been preaching the kingdom of God as an integral part of His message. Will that kingdom come through the power of the sword? Here is one of the first test cases, and the emphatic answer from the King who is on His way to the cross is this: “Put your sword back into its place.” His reasoning: “All who take the sword will perish by the sword.” Peter, if you want to die before your time by the sword of someone claiming some kind of authority to govern, then go right ahead, and continue to cut off ears. But Peter, I have a better plan for you, since My kingdom is not going to come through civil authorities and their powers. Put the sword away, and live to fight another day in another way. Judas might have thought that the Kingdom would come through the money of men, and Peter may have been tempted to bring it through the sword, but Jesus will bring His Kingdom through His own death.

The powers of heaven (53)

If God wanted to use some force that all men would have had to respect, Jesus could have done it in a moment. He does not need us to help Him. He tells anyone who might be interested that He has the fullness of a holy angelic host at His command. That would be quite a military force to deal with. He refers to literally thousands of angels that He could call upon. I don’t know much about angels, but I understand that some of them can defeat thousands of manly men in a moment.

These angelic fighters are one expression of the power of heaven and heaven’s God. Their day will come, but now the power of God will go forward with a different kind of program, through the death of the Messiah in accord with the Scriptures. This message will be preached by simple men and believed and lived out by simple churches for many centuries before we see angel warriors coming over the horizon in a resurrection host at the return of Christ. This is the plan of God for the Kingdom, and it has been an exceedingly difficult lesson for the church to learn over the centuries. For many years popes and emperors have thought that the way to bring Jesus to the world was through the power of civil authority. They, like Peter, need to know that if this new kingdom was coming through brute force, thousands of angels could do the job much better than we could. A soldier should be a soldier. A policeman should be a policeman. Christians can do these things, and they should do them, preferably with a good understanding of their limitations and with a commitment to do what is right. But when the church acts as church she must put her sword away, and reject all forms of worldly coercion, however subtle or blatant they may be.

The Scriptures fulfilled (54-56)

We have a different sword in our hands. We have “the word of God… living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” (Hebrews 4:12) This Spirit-filled Word is to be preached, believed, and obeyed by the church. Jesus was doing everything in fulfillment of the Scriptures; passages like Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53, and hundreds of others like Psalm 55 which even tells us about Judas. The authorities did not need swords and clubs to capture Jesus. The Scriptures would be fulfilled. Therefore, He went forward as a Lamb to the slaughter. Though His disciples all scattered at that moment, though He would bear even our sins through His death on the cross, we know now that in that moment of horrible weakness, He would be the Word above all earthly powers, a Word that we are determined to preach until angels come with a different kind of heavenly power, and Christ returns to judge the earth. When we use the weapons of this world to produce disciples for the Kingdom of God, we only betray the King of the Kingdom, who called us to follow in the way of the cross. Let us give instead a kiss of peace through the Word of life from the glorious King of the kingdom.

Questions for meditation and discussion:

1. What kind of culture might think of Judas as a hero? (See Richardson’s Peace Child re Sawi tribe.)

2. What do we learn from Peter’s actions and the response of Jesus?

3. What are the different ways that heaven’s power can be expressed?

4. Compare and contrast the power of earthly authorities with that of heaven?