Psalm 41 and the Love of Christ

He Loved Them to the End – Six Sermons

Part 5: “A Love that Confronts and Defeats Evil”

(John 13:18-30, Preaching: Pastor Stephen Magee, September 27, 2009)

¹⁸ I am not speaking of all of you; I know whom I have chosen. But the Scripture will be fulfilled, 'He who ate my bread has lifted his heel against me.' ¹⁹ I am telling you this now, before it takes place, that when it does take place you may believe that I am he. ²⁰ Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever receives the one I send receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me." ²¹ After saying these things, Jesus was troubled in his spirit, and testified, "Truly, truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me." ²² The disciples looked at one another, uncertain of whom he spoke. ²³ One of his disciples, whom Jesus loved, was reclining at table close to Jesus, ²⁴ so Simon Peter motioned to him to ask Jesus of whom he was speaking. ²⁵ So that disciple, leaning back against Jesus, said to him, "Lord, who is it?" ²⁶ Jesus answered, "It is he to whom I will give this morsel of bread when I have dipped it." So when he had dipped the morsel, he gave it to Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot. ²⁷ Then after he had taken the morsel, Satan entered into him. Jesus said to him, "What you are going to do, do quickly." ²⁸ Now no one at the table knew why he said this to him. ²⁹ Some thought that, because Judas had the moneybag, Jesus was telling him, "Buy what we need for the feast," or that he should give something to the poor. ³⁰ So, after receiving the morsel of bread, he immediately went out. And it was night.

What did Jesus quote from the Psalms to warn His disciples about His coming betrayal?

A: “'He who ate my bread has lifted his heel against me.” (John 13:18)

He who ate my bread has lifted up his heel against Me (18)

We have been considering together the extravagant love of God for sinners as displayed by Jesus Christ when He washed His disciples’ feet. We have seen that the love of Jesus was a love that was well-informed, that He knew that His time had arrived, and that He would be returning home to heaven, to the Father. We have seen in His actions a love that was willing to take a very low position, in order that His disciples would be cleansed. We know that this great love was not easy for His disciples to receive, because they were uncomfortable with what it required of Jesus, that He take the part of their slave – they were uncomfortable about that, but they had to go along with it, because He insisted on it as their Master. And we have found that this way of love was to be a way of life for us, that as our King was willing to be low for our salvation, we needed to care for one another in a new way.

While some of this may have been difficult, we now enter upon verses that deal with true horror and the most wicked evil. Jesus will be betrayed by one of them. He had just been talking to them about the great blessings that will be theirs in the life to come as they live out this costly love. But now He says that those blessings will not be for all of them. One of them was chosen to be a disciple, but He was never chosen for eternal blessing. This is shocking news, but it is news that is testified to in the Old Testament Scriptures. The love of Jesus for sinners will be displayed through the horrendous evil of a friend’s betrayal.

There are several psalms that are about Judas and His betrayal of Jesus. Our Lord quotes from one of them here (Read Psalm 41.) Jesus does not quote Scripture out of context. We want to understand the psalm and see how this fits into the story of God’s love and the overturning of true evil with good. The first three verses of Psalm 41 speak of how the Lord blesses the man who is truly good in His sight, and specifically states that He “keeps him alive,” and that “he does not give him up to the will of his enemies.” The first shocking fact in Jesus quotation of this psalm is that Christ, who has been declared to be well-pleasing to the Father by a voice from heaven, will very soon be turned over to his enemies, and they will be allowed to kill Him. The facts of the psalm do not seem to match His situation. The second shocking fact in Jesus’ quotation of this psalm is that the psalmist identifies himself as a sinner, and the Bible is explicit that Jesus knew no sin. Once again, the facts seem wrong here.

The next section in the psalm (v. 5-9) describes the work of enemies against the psalmist, and in the midst of these enemies is a friend, one who shared bread with him, but who now is ready to kick him in the face. The psalm ends with the statement of great faith. The psalmist knows that he will be upheld by God, and the reason he gives is, “because of my integrity.” Because of this integrity, the suffering psalmist will sit in God’s presence forever, All of this sounds right. Jesus was betrayed by a close companion. Jesus was judged to be complete in His integrity, and He would sit with the Father forever in heaven. But note this one fact: Jesus will not be alone.

This is the key to understanding the shocking parts of the psalm that seem so wrong. The good man is not supposed to die, but He does. Jesus is not a sinner, but the person in the psalm is counted as a sinner, even though he is vindicated as a man of glorious integrity by the end of the psalm. How do we make sense of those two shocking facts that seem like errors? If the Psalm is about Jesus being betrayed by Judas, and we cannot doubt that, why does Jesus die instead of live, and why is Jesus crying out in the psalm, “I have sinned against You?”

The connection between the one Servant of God, and the many He represents before God, is the key for us in understanding Jesus, understanding the Bible, and understanding why you and I have hope of peace with God now and forever. The foot-washing, cross-bearing love of Jesus is not content simply in Him being at the right hand of the Father forever, otherwise He would not have bothered to be visit us at all. Jesus wants us to be with Him in heaven, not because He needs us, but because He has determined to love us; not because we are perfect, but because His love is. Therefore, He came as a sinless man, and He declared Himself a sinner because He had determined to be sin for us, and so to take our sin upon Himself, and to atone for that sin. To do this, He, the truly good Man, had to die rather than live. This was all part of the plan of God. It was part of the horror of that plan that He would be betrayed by His close companion. For Judas, this was evil. For God, this was deep love. There is a reason they are finding out about Psalm 41 now. It is being told to them as part of the great story of the love of God through Jesus.

The apostolic church, the Son, and the Father (19-20)

God is a great expert in working the evil of men and angels into His good purpose. Naturally the betrayal of Jesus by Judas was to be one of the greatest shocks that the disciples would ever face. Not only that, Judas would seem for a moment to be the one who got his way. He was to be the agent of betrayal, and he succeeded in doing what he was to do. By quoting Psalm 41 at this key moment before Jesus sends Judas on his way to do what he will do quickly, the sovereign ruling Son of God is establishing the fact that He knows what is happening here, and He is helping His disciples to see three things rightly.

First, Jesus is the Messiah. He is the divine “I-Am” who alone could come as the sin-bearer for us. Second, these men who will be apostles are being sent out by Him as messengers of One who should have lived according to His own righteousness, but who died that we might be counted as righteous in Him. He would send them forth not with the embarrassment of the cross, as if something had gone wrong, but with the message of the cross that could never again be separated from the message of Him and the message of what would be the Christian faith. Third, anyone who would receive Jesus, His message of cross-love, and His messengers of the cross and resurrection, would be receiving the Father, and would have an end-of-Psalm 41 secure hope of dwelling forever in the presence of God.

And it was night (21-30)

The rest of the passage is the troubling story of what happened around that table before their companion Judas left to do his anti-Christ work. Jesus tells them the fact that one of them would betray Him. There was a lot of surprise as people looked around and said some things, and somehow Peter signaled John to ask Jesus for the identity of the betrayer. Jesus quietly told this gospel writer the truth that it would be Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, by giving him a piece of bread, again in fulfillment of Psalm 41. The disciples did not all know this at that moment, but John knew. And he wrote it down here for you to read. And I am sure that those men thought about Judas for the rest of their lives. There would have been plenty to say. John puts it this way: “And it was night.” It was an evil night.

There is something important going on here concerning love. Love does not exist in the denial of evil. Love confronts and defeats evil with good. Evil fits into the sovereign plan that God has for good, His sovereign plan for the love of the cross. The betrayal of Jesus by Judas is not a last minute addition to the sovereign purpose of God. It is clearly part of His plan, even recorded for us in the psalms. God has a powerful enough plan of love for us, that it includes a full awareness, not only of the evil around us, but much more significantly of the evil within us.

The call to turn to God goes out to all who hear the words of Jesus from the beginning of His ministry: “Follow me.” Some hear these words with a conscience that can no longer feel. They will not follow. They will not believe. They have been met by the Word of God, but they will not hear and receive Jesus.

But some have been created for a different purpose. Though they were fit objects of God’s wrath, just like Judas, and just like all of mankind, they have become the beloved of the Lord. They hear the warning of judgment and the call to repent and believe. Their consciences are awakened to the fear of God. They resolve by the power of Jesus’ love to turn away from sin and to trust in His perfect obedience as the Passover Lamb. The blood of that Lamb has been applied to their hearts, once as hard as granite, and now the Spirit has enabled them to breathe the air of heaven. Suddenly life has begun where there was only stone-cold spiritual death. This is what the blood of Christ has done for us, defeating our evil, paying our debt, and bringing us love in such a way that we could live.

Though there is much night all around us, and though we have had far too much night within us, a new light has dawned by the power of the One who washed His disciples’ feet. Evil has been defeated through the cross. Love has won our hearts and our lives. It is only a matter of time now till we inhabit a world of the fullest love. Be troubled with the great Son of God over the hardness of hearts that will not take heed to gospel warnings. But then rejoice with Jesus that your heart need not be in that number.

1. How do the Psalms help us to understand the betrayal of Jesus?

2. Why was it important for the future apostles to know this?

3. Why would the Son of God be troubled in His Spirit?

4. What is the spiritual usefulness of the account of the events and words surrounding the departure of Judas?