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I want to dig into this idea of suffering this morning. I think central to this text is this idea of whether or not we can suffer with Jesus. In 2019, I woke up one morning with some weird stuff going on with my body. I had a bunch of bruising, gross hands, and blood blisters in my mouth, and all these weird red dots around my body. To keep a long story short, I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease called ITP that had caused my body to kill just about every platelet in my body. That weekend was the beginning of one of the hardest seasons of my life. I kept it bottled up until I couldn’t any longer, but the realization that I could have been minutes away from death at any moment and I felt completely and totally healthy the whole time was the most mentally plaguing things I have ever been through. It’s undoubtedly the realest suffering that I have ever been through and I recognize that I’m young and many of you in here have experienced far more suffering than I have. What I’m saying here is that this was the first time in my adult life where I had to look around and realize that apart from hope in Jesus and being united to him everything looked incredibly bleak and hopeless. That’s because I was falling into some of the same default modes as the disciples do in our text today.

This morning we see Judas, Peter and the rest of the Disciples show that they can’t suffer with the Sovereign because they each misunderstand something unique about what it means to suffer with Jesus. While suffering is central to the human experience, it’s something that we go to lengths to avoid. It presents us with that feeling that we all know too well that things aren’t supposed to be the way that they are.

As Christians, we get to have a unique view of suffering where we know that God is taking it and using it for our good and his glory. We are being united to Christ in our suffering! It makes me think of a Charles Spurgeon quote that I heard when I was in college. He says that he “has learned to kiss the wave that throws him upon the rock of ages.” Not only that, but the Apostle Paul promises that we will rule with Jesus if we endure with him or as the King James translates it, “if we suffer with Him, we will reign with him.” Suffering with Christ and enduring with Christ is tied to our reigning with him because we are united to him in all things. We don’t receive his blessings without also being united to him in his suffering. And this is a beautiful thing. 

Maybe you are in the middle of suffering and you aren’t encouraged by this idea of God bringing us through suffering and that suffering could actually be good for you and you just want this storm to stop. My prayer is that you’d be encouraged today and also that you would remember, as my preaching professor would say, that the Father will never ask you to go through something that his Son hasn’t gone through himself. 

The disciples seem to not only have a hard time making this connection between suffering and reigning , but why that is a good thing. I think of James and John coming to Jesus and having their mom ask if they could sit at his right and left hands. And Jesus tells them that they need to drink the cup that he drinks, and they have no idea what he even means by that, but James and John think they can drink that cup. And I think we see in a similar way here, the disciples misunderstand what it means to suffer with Jesus. But suffering with Jesus is hand in glove with union with Christ. 

Does this feel like a hard pill to swallow? That suffering is producing something good? But I have to believe that it is a good thing. But suffering with Jesus, being united to him is prerequisite to us reigning with him, so not only is it good for us to suffer, it’s something that makes us even more like Jesus.

Thankfully, God is not surprised by the fact that we will have a hard time swallowing this pill that suffering with Jesus is good for us. So let’s look into our text today and see three ways that the disciples misunderstand suffering on Earth with Christ.

1. Judas can’t suffer with the Sovereign because he misunderstands friendship with Jesus.

Judas is called friend, but he definitely doesn’t act how we want our friends to act. This might seem silly. Was Judas’ issue really that he missed friendship? That might sound super reductionistic and kind of corny. I’m not trying to say that the only reason Jesus was betrayed was because of bad friends. But I do think that Judas was a self serving person first and that he wasn’t interested in what union with Christ meant. He was worried about what he could get out of being friends with Jesus. 

He was missing that real friendship with Jesus meant suffering with him. It meant going down with him to death and burial, and he couldn’t handle that if he didn’t know what he got out of it. If his status wasn’t going to be elevated, then he wasn’t interested in sticking around. It’s like he weighed union with Christ and union with the world on an unbalanced scale and the world came out on top. Judas bounced at the first opportunity where he could still get some return on investment for the last 3 years of his life.  Thirty pieces of silver is an insignificant amount of money too, especially when you consider that he worked for three years. But the questionable business move isn’t the focus here. It’s that he is willing to betray the God man who came to unite humanity to God for eternity.

I want to double click on this word “friend” here. Because this is what really shows us that Judas had the wrong priorities and loves in this life. This word friend is used just four times in all of the New Testament. And all four uses are in Matthew’s Gospel. Three of these usages are all translated friend and the fourth is translated as playmate and it’s used while Jesus is rebuking the generation around him. Obviously, the word “friend” is translated way more throughout the New Testament, but it’s a different word for friend that what is being used in our text. 

The three uses that are being translated as “friend” seem like Matthew is communicating something to the reader that would have really stuck out in the original language. In verse 50, Jesus calls Judas friend after Judas kisses him to mark him as the one he is betraying. This might seem like a strange word choice, but when we look at when else Matthew uses this word it makes a little bit more sense.

The first use of this word for “friend” is the parable of the day laborers. Jesus is teaching about the Kingdom of Heaven and he tells a story about a master who went out to hire day laborers. Essentially the master hires some in the morning, some at 9AM, some at Noon, some at 3 PM and some right before the evening. They are all gathered together and are paid. But they aren’t paid according to how many hours they each worked, they are all paid the exact same amount.  And this upsets the ones who worked all day and they go and complain to the master of the house. They say, 'These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’ And the master responds ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for a denarius? 14 Take what belongs to you and go. I choose to give to this last worker as I give to you. 15 Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity?’ 16 So the last will be first, and the first last.”

Now I’m not explaining this parable as well as the parable deserves to be explained, because it’s not the text we are in today and Clark preached an excellent sermon on this text on January 28th of last year and you can go listen to that as a refresher. But the important thing to look at here, is that Jesus is using this word for friend to describe someone who is critically misunderstanding the Kingdom. And for this specific usage it’s again tied to someone who is misunderstanding the nature of the Upside Down Kingdom, just like Judas did. Judas and the day laborer both have no concept of the last being first and the first being last because they only care about being first on this Earth. 

The second time this is translated as friend in the New Testament is in Matthew 22 and the parable of the wedding feast. There is a King who prepares an amazing wedding feast for his son but those who were invited, did not come. So he sends servants out to bring the people who were invited, and the invited guests go on their own way and then kill the servants. The King sends an army to destroy and burn the city and then sends more servants to go and invite anyone to come to this wedding. And the wedding hall is filled with guests.

But then, and I’ll pick up in Matthew 22:11, “But when the king came in to look at the guests, he saw there a man who had no wedding garment. 12 And he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding garment?’ And he was speechless. 13 Then the king said to the attendants, ‘Bind him hand and foot and cast him into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ 14 For many are called, but few are chosen.”

So this “friend” is at the wedding, but he doesn’t understand that an invited guest needs to be wearing the right clothes. He’s misunderstanding that even though he is an invited guest, the right clothes still need to be put on. Not in a clean yourself up way and make yourself right, but throw yourself on Jesus and be covered by him. This friend was someone who didn’t belong, he didn’t understand the Kingdom, because he didn’t understand what is expected of Kingdom citizens: that they let Christ define and provide their righteousness. Again, quickly explaining this, but for more details on the Parable of the Wedding Feast go check out Brendan’s sermon from March 10th of last year. 

So when you look at where this word is used for friend throughout the New Testament, it doesn’t usually mean the same thing as`we might mean when we say, “That’s my friend.”  It’s almost always used to signify “you don’t understand what the Kingdom is…” 

And Judas is misunderstanding something too, Jesus isn’t here to elevate our Earthly lives with physical things and comforts. Jesus is on Earth to make us right with God and take us back to him. Judas experiences what misunderstanding his friendship with Jesus leads to, and when his expectations don’t align with Jesus’s reality, he betrays him and checks out. Judas is unable to suffer with the Sovereign and also has the wrong response. Instead of repenting, returning to the Lord and being restored, he kills himself. So can Judas suffer with the Sovereign? No. Because he misunderstands friendship with the King. We are often tempted to create a low expectation of Jesus by wanting things now that we think will elevate our status or our worth and we lose sight of the higher value things that Jesus really offers us, union with him.

But this doesn’t have to be the story, the rest of the disciples have the initial wrong answer to the question, “can you suffer with the Sovereign?” but they end up having the right answer and suffering with Jesus.

Let’s look at Peter… initially he is unable to suffer with the Sovereign, because he misunderstands Jesus’s power.

1. Peter couldn’t suffer with the Sovereign because he misunderstands the power of Jesus.

Peter is a disciple who I resonate with. He gets it wrong a lot, but you can’t say he isn’t passionate while he’s getting it wrong. But the beautiful thing about Peter is that he gets repentance right and goes on to do some really amazing things for the Kingdom of God.

Peter has the wrong response here though, we can’t miss that. And we know that this is Peter because John’s gospel tells us so. But, Jesus is not pleased that Peter whips the Sword out and goes Rambo on the High Priest’s servant’s ear. And he tells Peter that those who live by the sword will die by the sword. And explains to Peter that if swords needed to be used in this situation, he could call down thousands of angels from Heaven that could defend him with sword if that’s what he wanted.

Peter doesn’t recognize that everything happening to Jesus is happening exactly how it needs to be. By misunderstanding Jesus’s power, Peter shows that he misunderstands the Kingdom of Heaven. He thinks that it will be built by worldly power. And nothing crushes worldly power like a dead king. So he thinks that he is being a good citizen in God’s Kingdom by defending Jesus by the sword, but Jesus explains that he is totally misunderstanding the power dynamics in the Kingdom of Heaven. 

I do feel like we should be cautious to not go to the complete other side of where Peter is right now. This passage, specifically Jesus telling Peter to put his sword away and that those who live by the sword will perish by the sword is often an argument for Christian pacifism. And I think that this is an unhelpful application to take from this passage.

Christ is choosing to not be violent in his arrest. It should be noted that in Luke’s Gospel Jesus tells them in the upper room to bring their swords. There were only 2 sword with them and Jesus said that two is enough. There is a big difference between a sword for protection and living by the sword. We can, and should, use violence when needed to fight evil. We can, and should, defend our families, we should be fighting for the protection of widows and orphans. For those who have no one to defend them, it is good and right for the Christian to step in and fill that role. 

But Jesus is deliberately showing that he can suffer, so that we can live and it doesn’t have to be by the sword. This was not what Jews had expected the Messiah to be. If the Messiah was going to die, maybe it would be by the sword, that way he would at least be dying with some honor and bravery. But instead, the Messiah is being killed in the most humiliating way! The upside down Kingdom strikes again…

 Peter expected Jesus’s power to look different than it really did, he had bought into a lower expectation of Jesus instead of who Jesus really was, and he takes the wrong direction out of that. Suffering with the sovereign does not mean taking up the sword for the sovereign. That may be how servants of the earthly high priest handle things, but it’s not how it works for the kingdom of priests that serve a Messiah who came to die for his enemies should handle things. 

So we need to be cautious that we are fighting for and defending the right things and not just things that help us retain power and make us feel like we are the strongest kids on the block. Peter was fine staying with Jesus when he thought that might be an earthly King, but when Jesus went quietly to be crucified Peter wasn’t able to handle what it meant for him. He and the other disciples have the wrong response but for slightly different reasons.  

1. The other disciples couldn’t suffer with the sovereign because they misunderstood Jesus’s purpose.

Jesus is arrested in the Garden, under the secrecy of night and not in the temple where he has been teaching everyday. Which I think shows so much cowardice from Jesus’s enemies. So Jesus is arrested and all the disciples scatter from Jesus in the Garden. They all come to terms with this feeling of “whatever this is, is not what we thought it was, and we are in danger.” What they miss is that to be in danger but united with Jesus is the safest place that anyone can be. And they miss that because they don’t understand what Jesus came to Earth as a man to do.

And it’s easy to rag on the disciples and say “I would never do that! How could the disciples leave my Lord?” But let’s look back and remember that just the night before they had been told that they should expect him to die and they deny and deny that they would ever leave Jesus! This isn’t something that they ever thought that they could do! I mean in this same chapter, Jesus tells Peter that he will deny him three times that very night! And Peter tells him that he would sooner die than deny him. And Matthew specifically notes that all of the disciples agree that they would rather die than deny Jesus. 

It makes me think again of the statement that I said earlier. “The Father will never ask you to go through something that he has not asked the Son of God to go through.” Like the author of Hebrews says, “he was tempted like us in every way yet without sin.” These disciples flee because they, misunderstood his purpose, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t be used by the Lord!

Jesus came to suffer as the sacrifice for his people. The disciples saw Jesus suffering and thought that their fate would be that same suffering, or worse. They didn’t understand how Jesus suffering would equip them to suffer better than they could without him. They thought avoiding Jesus and scattering from him would keep them from suffering but it just temporarily preventing them from suffering with him.

Jesus’s purpose was not to come to Earth so that his people wouldn’t suffer. But in Jesus’s coming to Earth, his people will now suffer differently than they would have before. And the disciples temporarily miss that. No matter how many times Jesus told them that he would die they still respond like they’re totally caught off guard that the Messiah would suffer, be arrested, and would be crucified.

Conclusion

Something I say every week to our students is that when you are in Christ, there is nothing that you can do to make God love you more, and there is nothing you can do to make God love you less. Through Jesus’s life, death, burial, resurrection and ascension as the God in flesh, we are united to him in every one of those things. We are baptised with him and raised to walk in newness of life. We die to ourself, we are buried with him and we are raised in him. 

When we misunderstand friendship with God, we don’t suffer with Him because we are expecting him to give us something on this Earth. It’s the essence of the prosperity Gospel. This idea of walking with God will lead you to physical blessings and if you aren’t receiving those blessings, it’s probably because you aren’t walking with God the right way.

When we misunderstand the power of God, we make short sighted decisions about what our power is supposed to look like on this Earth. We make decisions thinking that we have control of governments and rulers even though the government sits on the shoulders of the true sovereign.

When we misunderstand Jesus’s purpose, we make Jesus look like us. Instead of seeing Jesus and being made like him, we try to see Jesus and fit him into the box that we’d like for him to be in. The box that could make our life here on Earth most comfortable and easy. We trade who he really is for something short sighted and a man made low expectation of him. Yes, Jesus does show us how to live a good life and he does bless us while we walk this Earth, but more than anything, Jesus came to unite us to himself! He came so that when we suffer, it’s not suffering alone, but it is us suffering with him! When we set our minds on eternal things, we understand the right way to live and we receive help in hard times. But when we look for the earthly things first, we miss the eternal things.

Church, don’t take your eyes off Jesus and trade who he really is for what we might expect him to be. Nothing that we think we can gain in the short term is worth not being United to Christ in the short term or the long run. We are studying Hebrews on Wednesdays with the students and every week I just want them to see that Jesus is better than anything. No matter what. Jesus is better. 

Judas doesn’t get this. We don’t hear of him returning to Jesus with this contrite heart broken over what he has done. But all of the other disciples have this insane transformation that I can only credit to seeing someone who they watched be arrested, beaten and crucified come back to life. They live boldly knowing that any suffering they face on earth is uniting them to their savior even more.

It’s exactly what Jim preached about last week. When the cup of wrath has been drunk for us, we need to have no fear about what might come! The cup is empty. There is no more wrath for you to drink! We won’t be face to face with God and hear him say, “just take one more sip.” In Christ, his people will experience none of God’s wrath because all of it has been poured onto God’s Son. 

So this cup of suffering that we drink, it’s not eternal, it’s not without purpose, and it’s not because God is angry with us. The cup of suffering that we drink in this life is one that we know we can drink because we are united to Christ who has drank the cup before us.

Let’s Pray.