Matthew 26. We are still in what I take to be Thursday of the last week of Jesus’ earthly life. They have celebrated the Passover dinner together, Jesus has instituted the Lord’s Supper, and Judas has been dismissed to betray Jesus to the religious authorities. Now, Jesus is with the eleven remaining disciples, they go back out to the Mount of Olives, and Jesus has more bad news for them. This very night, they will all abandon Jesus. 

Have you ever done something bad that you never thought you’d do? Maybe you were even warned not to do it which makes the feeling of having done it all the worse. Now, this is admittedly a more light hearted example, but when we were helping Jutty and Abby Valiquette plant a church in Salerno, Italy, we went through a lot of cross cultural training and our sending organization had given us pretty clear instructions about how to speak into social issues in public and how not to. As a rule, they didn’t want us making many public statements. And two of the things they specifically warned us about was to try and stay out of politics and LGBTQ issues (at least in a very public way) mainly because we just weren’t adequately trained at the time to helpfully speak publicly on these issues in a foreign country. But, also because the wrong move could jeopardize our visas that allowed us to be in the country. So, it wasn’t like watering down what we believe, but just being wise recognizing the minimal training we had. 

So, I was asked by some Italians if I would sit on a panel and speak to human rights issues in the prison system. This was bullseye to what I had agreed not to do. But, I said yes. Well, the next thing I know, I’m on a panel on the national Italian radio station, speaking specifically to the rights of the LGBTQ people in prison and I’m the only person on the panel who is not transgender. Now, I think the human rights of all people in prison should be protected, but I was so far out of my depth for this conversation at that time. And then there is the fact that people are going to listen to this from Milan to Sicily. When it really hit me what I was doing, I wanted to throw up, but it was too late. I was on the panel representing all of Christianity and the mics were hot. And it didn’t help that at that moment, Jutty and some of my other American friends were also realizing what was happening and they were laughing so hard they were crying. I was doing the very thing I had been told not to do and had agreed not to do. And the fact that I had been warned ahead of time and agreed not to do it made the sting even worse. And my phone was blowing up for the next 48 hours with calls from Milan to Sicily asking why I didn’t call an Italian pastor to be on that panel instead of me. 

Again, on a scale of regrets, that’s not the worst one, but I was kicking myself wondering why I made that decision. But I have sat with people who have hit the rock bottom of their addiction, people who have been unfaithful to their spouse, people who have lost their savings and almost always they say something like, “I can’t believe I’m where I am. I never thought this would be me.” All of us at some level know what it’s like to do something we never thought we’d do. 

That’s the feeling of this passage. These eleven men had devoted their lives to Jesus. Peter emphatically says that he would die for Jesus. And Jesus is telling them not only that they would all abandon him, but that it would happen that very night. And as we will see when we get to the end of this chapter, that is exactly what happens. 

So, how can this happen? What can we learn from the disciples to understand ourselves better when this happens to us? What can we learn from the disciples to maybe not make the same mistake again? I think there are two things the disciples didn’t understand, two realities that they minimized to think they would never abandon Jesus and then in just a few hours, abandon Jesus. They 1) minimized the ugliness of their sin 2) they minimized the beauty of Jesus.

1. They minimized the ugliness of their sin

We have to remember that Judas has just left. And we might feel like “now it’s the true followers of Jesus together.” The ones who will never let him down. And then Jesus says that they will all abandon him. And bless Peter’s heart, he doubles down. He says, “Though they all fall away because of you, I will never fall away.” To which Jesus says, “Truly, I tell you, this very night, before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times.” Then Peter triples down. He said, “Even if I must die with you, I will not deny you!” And all the disciples said the same thing. 

I do think they were all genuine in their statements. None of them were planning to abandon Jesus the way Judas was. But they were naive to the reality that all of us can do things we don’t think we would ever do. Actually, when we start saying “I’ll never do that!” (whatever that is), that’s when the door to real trouble opens. We are all more frail than we realize and telling ourselves otherwise is a dangerous thing. We are frail because we are sinful. Even after we give our lives to Jesus, we will still struggle with sin. 

Since we have a large number of people getting baptized soon (kids and adults), I want to say that it’s really common when someone gives their life to Jesus they think they are just done with sin. But, inevitably, you still sin and find yourself doing things that you didn’t think you would do…things that you don’t think Christians should do and often the result is that you begin to question whether you are even a Christian. 

Now, this isn’t an excuse to go and sin all you want. Paul explicitly says this in Romans 6. But, the reality of sin in our lives isn’t something we can minimize the way Peter does. And it shouldn’t be lost on us that our passage immediately follows Jesus instituting the Lord’s Supper where he says that this cup represents Jesus’ blood shed for our sins. It’s like the Lord’s Supper was preparing them for the moment they would do something they never thought they’d do. 

But instead of recognizing the reality of their sin and frailty and asking Jesus what they should do, they lean into their own self-reliance and tell Jesus what they will and won’t do. They embrace a perverted form of Christianity where we rely on our own strength and our own wisdom. They lean into a pull yourself up by the bootstraps version of our faith which is never going to go well. 

When we moved into our house, there was one thing that my mom did not like about the house. It didn’t have a backyard. There was a swamp that came almost all the way to the back of the house and my mom thought her grandkids should have a backyard to play in. So, she hired these two guys to push the swamp back and to bring in dump trucks of dirt to make a backyard. These two guys were named Lump and Tank. Now, I don’t want to be too quick to judge people by their names, but I felt like these were either going to be the best two guys for the job or the worst two. Well, it was the latter. They brought in their tractor and it wasn’t long before it was stuck in the swamp. But instead of stopping, they just revved it up more and sunk it more and more into the mud. Then they brought a bobcat in to pull it out the tractor and it got stuck. Truly, the only thing that was visible was the light on the top of the bobcat. The rest was under the mud. That’s when I realized they were aptly named because they had tanked their vehicles in the swamp and all that was left was a small lump of tractor and bobcat in the mud.Then, they brought in a crane to get the bobcat out and at one point the whole crane was beginning to tip over and I just had to walk away. I couldn’t watch anymore. 

They couldn’t admit that they were in over their heads. They couldn’t step back and consider that maybe just working harder wasn’t working. And as a result they got more and more stuck in the swamp. This is what pull yourself up by the bootstraps Christianity does. It gets you stuck in your sin because you don’t recognize the severity of your sin and you end up spiritually exhausted and confused. I love the song Come Ye Sinners. There is a line that says, “if you tarry till you’re better, you will never come at all.” This was what the disciples were doing. 

It’s no coincidence that it is in the context of Jesus telling them that he is going to die for their sins that he also warns them about their imminent failures. And it’s also no coincidence that this all happens after they were arguing over who would be the greatest in the kingdom. The minimization of their sin made them prideful and pride comes before the fall. Worldviews that don’t recognize the gravity of our sin and our deep need for the grace of God are going to make people insufferably prideful when things seem to be going well, and anxious and depressed when they are not. 

I’m going to use a Tim Keller illustration. Imagine you and buddy decide you are going to rob a bank. You’ve got it all planned out and you two go to another friend’s house and you tell him what you’re going to do. That friend has some wisdom and says, “You guys are crazy! You can’t do that! You’ll spend the next 20 years in prison!” But you two have decided that’s what you’re going to do. So you’re walking out of his house and he grabs both of you by the shirt to stop you. The shirt on your other bank robbing friend rips off and he runs out the door, but yours stays on and your wise friend pulls you to the ground and doesn’t let you go. 

Well, you can’t go rob the bank, but the other guy does and, sure enough, he gets caught and he goes to prison. When you go to visit him in prison, what do you do? What is your attitude? Do you say, “You idiot! What was the matter with you?” No. You say, “Man, I should be in that prison with you. I can’t believe I’m not in there with you. The only reason I’m not in there is because of the mystery of grace.” Can you feel superior in any way to that person? If we really believe in the breadth of sin in this world, the depth of sin inside us, and the radical nature of grace, we couldn’t possibly look down on anyone else. Any group of people that, if it weren’t for the gospel coming into your life, you would look down on at best and hate at worst. 

Understanding our frailty, our sin, starts a process of re-humanizing us. The first step is seeing that Jesus didn’t come for the strong, but the weak. He didn’t come for the healthy, but the sick. We start by recognizing that we can’t do it on our own, we can’t pull ourselves up by the bootstraps, we can’t succeed through our own self-reliance. That kind of thinking is in direct opposition to the cultural narratives we hear today. But that is the first step toward spiritual health. But, it doesn’t stop there. Then, we have to have something more attractive, something more beautiful to live for. The disciples weren’t just minimizing their sin, they were also minimizing the beauty of Jesus. 

1. They minimized the beauty of Jesus

They minimized the beauty of Jesus in two ways. First, they didn’t see the beauty of Jesus’ sovereignty. Even though they are all going to deny him, none of this surprised Jesus. I do think Jesus gives them this warning with great sadness, but not with any surprise. And Jesus shows that this is no surprise when he quotes Zechariah 13. 31 Then Jesus said to them, “You will all fall away because of me this night. For it is written, ‘I will gstrike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.’ - Matt 26:31. 

What is about to happen in the disciples denying they even know Jesus was prophesied in the Old Testament. All of it!! Not just that the sheep will be scattered, but that the shepherd will be struck. And this is really important because the eleven disciples were not the first to minimize their sin and God’s sovereignty. That’s kind of the main problem in the Old Testament. And it was so bad that by the time of the prophet Ezekiel, God actually removed His presence from the Temple. The Temple ceased to be the meeting place between God and man and instead became a building of self-righteous religion. 

When I was early on in seminary, I took a class on Biblical Theology with D.A. Carson who is a world renowned theologian. My final paper was on the theme of the Temple throughout the Bible and I correctly wrote that God removed his Spirit in Ezekiel, but then I wrongly wrote that His Spirit returned in Zechariah. And I can still see his handwriting on my paper in big letters “DID NOT HAPPEN!” 

God’s Spirit didn’t return to the Temple in Zechariah, Zechariah was prophesying a whole new Temple. Zechariah is prophesying the return of God’s Spirit through a new Temple and he’s prophesying this one event, the return of his Spirit, in two different ways: a positive look at it and a negative look at it. In the first half of Zechariah, he frames this return positively. This is good news for Israel. He’s going to return to His Temple after being out with His people in exile. That’s the first half of Zechariah. The second half is a negative framing of the same return. His return will come at great cost. The shepherd being struck and the sheep being scattered.

But, this scattering has a double meaning. The disciples will scatter that night as they deny Jesus, but in a short amount of time, they will be filled with the Holy Spirit and powerfully scatter to the nations with the gospel. This verse Jesus is quoting is the transition point that launches the kingdom out from the Jerusalem Temple out into the world. So, the good news is that the Son of Man has come with his kingdom in power. The bad news is that the kingdom is coming through Jesus’ death and resurrection. And this is what the disciples couldn’t wrap their minds around. Jesus became the new Temple. This is why John says that the Word dwelt with us. That word is literally tabernacled. Jesus was the new meeting place between God and man. And that temple must be struck down. God the Father would strike God the Son on the cross. God the Son would willingly go to the cross for the glory of God and love for us. In the words of Allistair Begg, “The Father doesn’t coerce the Son unwillingly and he Son doesn’t try and secure from the Father a salvation He was unwilling to provide.” 

This is the sovereignty of God on display. He sees our plight and he takes the penalty of our sin on Himself. He said he would do this before we even saw our need for him and long before any of us were even born. This was Jesus’ plan all along.

Then, second, they minimized the beauty of Jesus’ faithfulness. He says in verse 32 “But after I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee.” This is the great promise of the passage. Yes, he is going to die, but he will go ahead of the disciples to Galilee. They will see him again. Even after they have been faithless to Him, He will be faithful to them. But it seems like the disciples only hear the bad news and don’t even engage with this great news. 

And we should give them some sympathy here because we do the same thing. We have all these great promises in Scripture, but when the bad news comes, it’s so hard to see them and even harder to feel them. When we are delivered devastating news about our loved ones, about our health, about our finances, it’s easy to see the bad news, but not the good promises. Or, when we do something that is more terrible than we thought possible, it’s easy to feel the shame and hard to see God’s goodness to us in the pain. But, if we have eyes to see it, it is often in the shame and pain that we can feel God’s faithfulness to His promises most acutely. 

Think about how you drink a glass of water in the evening and don’t think too much about it. But if you drink a glass of water after walking for hours through the desert, you appreciate it so much more. Or a child who takes for granted that his parents are around…until the electricity goes out…or he gets lost at Disney…or he gets bullied at school. The same thing is true with God’s promises. He will be faithful to us even when we do things we never thought we’d do and in those moments, we feel the beauty of His faithfulness all the more sweetly. 

But when Jesus says he is coming back to his people, he’s not just saying that he’s going to only the eleven at Galilee. This promise is for all of us. After the resurrected Jesus was with his disciples for forty days, he says that he must go away. But, that his departure was good for them.  7 Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for hif I do not go away, ithe Helper will not come to you. - John 16:7

When Jesus ascended into heaven, he sent his Spirit to indwell each of us who believe. And do you know what that makes us? Temples. God’s meeting place with men is now us. This is why Paul says to the Corinthian church, “You are God’s temple.” And that ‘you’ in the DSV, the Deep South Version of the Bible, if it existed, would say ‘y’all.’ This is the fulfillment of the promise in Zechariah. The Father has stricken the Son, the disciples scatter, but God the Spirit brings them back and then the gospel scatters to the world. We are drawn to Him, not with an external law, but an internal call. 

The role of the Holy Spirit is what has been called a spot light ministry. He puts a huge spotlight on Jesus in our hearts. If you think about us as cattle on a plain. God doesn’t have a fence to keep us in, he has a pure well to draw us near. And he promises that nothing will ever separate us from Him. No chaos going on outside of us will separate us from him and neither will the sin inside of us.

So how does this change the way we live this life? It changes the things that we think we are capable of and it changes the things we think God is capable of. It shows us that we are worse than we thought AND that we are more loved than we could imagine. Every other worldview says do these things and you can be accepted by God. That’s the religion of self-reliance. It’s the bootstrap Bible and that will always sink us into the mud. As long as we think we need to make ourselves beautiful to be accepted by God, we will be stuck in the ugliness of our sin. But when we see that it is the beauty of God that makes us beautiful, we will have the power of the Holy Spirit to understand our sin and begin to beat it. Only the Christian worldview says God set His love on you and took on the ugliness of your sin on the cross to make you beautifully righteous in His eyes. Then, our fight against sin is not to earn God’s love, but to bask in it more. That’s how we fight sin. Not by the bootstraps, but by the beauty of Jesus. Seeing something, someone, more beautiful and attractive than our sin will ever be. 

Some of you are here today and you’re exhausted. You’re exhausted from working under your own strength and Jesus is offering you the strength of His Spirit. Some of you have made decisions that you can’t believe you’ve made. You may feel like there is no way out, but there is. Jesus says, “Lo, I am with you always.” Our bad decisions have real consequences in this life, but Jesus is promising that He will be with you through them all, that He will be with you in the pain, the embarrassment, and the fear. That He will sustain you with joy, hope, and even purpose. And that through the power of his Spirit, you won’t scatter like the disciples before the resurrection, you will be a part of scattering the gospel wherever God has called you just as God said. This is why the last words you hear at every Sunday service is “Church, you are sent.”