Take your Bibles and turn to Luke chapter 22 again this morning as we continue our excursion in the gospel of Luke. Today we are looking at verses 47 through 53, addressing the idea of the impact of darkness. And by that I mean spiritual darkness. Follow with me as I read verses 47 through 53 out of the New American Standard Bible. And while he was still speaking, behold, a multitude came. And the one called Judas, one of the twelve, was preceding them. And he approached Jesus to kiss him. But Jesus said to him, Judas, are you betraying the Son of Man with a kiss? And when those who were around him saw what was going to happen, they said, Lord, shall we strike with the sword? And a certain one of them struck the slave of the high priest and cut off his right ear. But Jesus answered and said, Stop, no more of this. And he touched the ear and healed him. And Jesus said to the high priests and officers of the temple and elders who had come against him, have you come out with swords and clubs as against a robber? While I was with you daily in the temple, you did not lay hands on me, but this hour, but this hour and the power of darkness are yours. Again, we reach another, what I would call a rather dramatic section. Jesus, again, is spending this last night with his disciples. in a place where they celebrated Passover. Jesus actually celebrated the last and final Passover. All of the Passovers since then are null and void, not needed, because Jesus came and fulfilled the Passover. He was the Passover Lamb. Further Passover observances are meaningless. And so he instituted the Lord's Supper. They finally, and there was some teaching. He left, and they made their way east from Jerusalem, down the Kidron Valley and up into the Mount of Olives, which is directly east of the temple. And there Jesus was going to meet, and he was going to encourage his disciples to pray. And he himself was going to separate himself and to pray. And one of the things that we learn here is that the one who is God, the one who created us, you would think, you would think that if you're a creator and you're God, you don't need to pray. You would think that. I think that. I would think, well, if you're God, why do I need to pray? I'm the son of God. I don't need to pray to anyone, but that's, wrong. Jesus spent time in prayer. In fact, this was perhaps, this night, this time was his greatest time of prayer, his most intimate time of prayer because of what he was facing. Jesus prayed his entire life. We know that. He prayed daily. He prayed moment to moment. I suppose you could say there was never a time when Jesus was not praying. But this prayer, at this time, these prayers at this time were especially key times in his life. In fact, John chapter 17, what's called Jesus' high priestly prayer, And that's a text I would love to go into and spend some time opening up to you, because John 17 is such a great passage. Well, he uttered that prayer in John 17 at this time, during these few hours here in the Garden of, in the Mount of Olives. And so, but there are actually three separate times, if you count them, if you go through the text, three separate times that Jesus goes by himself to pray, and he comes back, and each time he finds his disciples, who should have been praying, actually he finds them asleep. Three different times. So it must have been a little bit discouraging to him, perhaps, to find his disciples that way after he encouraged them. It's always a little encouraging to me to see that when Jesus encouraged people to do things, they didn't really follow him either. So who am I to think that just because I'm a pastor and I encourage somebody to do X, Y, or Z, they're gonna do what I say? No, they're not. We're going to do what we want, right? I mean, I do that. I mean, if I'm somewhere and someone's my pastor, I may not want to do what he tells me to do. Just because he's the pastor, I get it. I get it totally. And so Jesus had that experience of having people that he was encouraging to pray, pray, pray, so that you would be victorious over the temptations you're about to face. And so what I find in this passage And here's my key thought, is that the Lord used the powers of darkness to accomplish His purpose in glory. The Lord used the powers of darkness to accomplish His purpose in glory. The darkness, that is the spiritual darkness, could not thwart the plans and purposes of God. And we see as we take this text apart, we see several points there that you find these in your outline here as we make our way through the text. The first point in verses 47 and 48 is we find the infidelity of his quote-unquote friend. The infidelity of his friend. And we are told in verse 47 that while he was still speaking, because Jesus was encouraging His, just before that, encouraging His disciples not to fall asleep. Don't fall asleep. Keep praying. While He was still speaking to them on one of those occasions, it says, a multitude came. And Luke adds the word, and behold, while he was still speaking, behold, a multitude came. In other words, it emphasizes the surprise of the moment that while they were seemingly alone in that dark place on the on the Mount of Olives, there was all of a sudden a mob, a crowd, coming at them. In fact, Luke uses the word crowd. Matthew uses the term large crowd. Different, slightly different word Matthew uses. Matthew uses a word that conveys the idea of a great number of folks coming from Jerusalem, again, down the Kidron Valley and up into the Mount of Olives, you could see them with their torches. You could see them. From the Mount of Olives, it would have been a big light of a lot of torches. You would see that there's a big group of people coming up into the Mount of Olives. You could see that clearly. The text tells us in verse 52, if you just skip down a few verses, that this crowd was comprised of different people groups. You had chief priests. You had officers of the temple. You had the elders, you had a cohort, according to John 18, which is a parallel passage, and here it is right here, in John 18, verses 1-3, when Jesus had spoken these words, He went out with His disciples over the brook of Kidron, where there was a garden. where he and his disciples entered. We've already said that. And Judas, who betrayed him, also knew the place. Judas knows the place, for Jesus often met there at one particular place with his disciples. And then Judas, having received a detachment of troops. Here's the group that's coming at Jesus. A detachment of troops, officers from the chief priests and the Pharisees that came with lanterns and torches and weapons. Another translation says this was an entire cohort of Romans, whom they had to convince the Romans. I'll come back to that here in a moment. But my point is, a cohort of Romans, if it's exactly a cohort, a cohort is a technical term, meaning about 600 troops. Imagine that. We speak of in the American military, there's a brigade, and there's battalions, and there's squads, and each one of those represents an approximate number of troops. It's a technical term. Or if we speak of a legion of Roman soldiers, in a moment, Jesus is going to talk about calling 12 legions of angels. Well, a legion is about 5,000 or 6,000 troops. Here it speaks of a cohort. So here is a large group, including perhaps up to 600 Roman soldiers. There could have been close to a thousand people in this mob. Coming down the Kidron Valley, back up into the Mount of Olives, all of them to arrest Jesus. They expected, they knew Jesus, what Jesus could do. And so they expected the worst. But to me, normally, that's kind of like killing an ant with a sledgehammer. I mean, if you're going to kill an ant, using a sledgehammer is a little bit obsessive. You don't need to use a sledgehammer. You can just take your thumb and do it. Unless it's a red stinging ant, you might not want to do that. So here is this group of people, all various groups of people, all of them drawn together to get Jesus. And verse 47 talks about the disdainful, here's a disdainful reference to Judas, and the one called Judas, one of the 12 was preceding him. Now what I've learned from reading my Bible is that the writers in the Bible are very, very restrained on how they talk about Judas. They are restrained. They refrain from mean epitaphs and mean words to describe Judas. You don't see a lot of ugly adjectives piled upon one another as the writers of the various gospels talk about Judas. They don't do that. He's always referred to as one of the 12. But yet, Judas was a traitor. Jesus was betrayed by one of his own. But the writers seem to view Judas as a tragedy. They view Judas with sadness and remorse and sorrow. The writers in the Bible are a lot kinder to Judas than other writers have been. who have written the Bible. For instance, if you read extra-biblical writings, and I found a book that talked about what some other extra-biblical writings say about Judas, I found it very interesting. For instance, There's an extra, these aren't scriptures, books, they are past scripture, they are not considered canonical or part of scripture. For instance, the story of Joseph of Arimathea, there's a book entitled The Story of Joseph of Arimathea. And it says in that book, The Story of Joseph of Arimathea, it says that Judas was the son of the brother Caiaphas, the high priest, not true. These things written in these books are not true. And it goes on to say, and he was persuaded to infiltrate Jesus' group and pretend to be one of his followers and to actually be a spy. So in the book, the story of Joseph of Arimathea, that particular writer wants to make Judas look even worse than he actually was. I don't know, maybe, or just changed the way it actually was might be the better way to put it. There's another book called the Acts of Pilate, another extra-biblical, non-canonical book. And it says that Judas went home after betraying Jesus and found his wife roasting a chicken on the fire. And he told his wife that he was planning to kill himself because he feared that Jesus would rise and kill him in some torturous way for what he had done to Jesus. His wife replied that Jesus would no longer rise from the dead than that chicken that she was cooking would sit up and crow. Of course, this is all stupid. But there are extra biblical writings that have been written about Judas. There's others too. And I had never seen those before. It was kind of fascinating to me what others were saying about Jesus. Made up stuff. Made up stuff. And so there's a lot of revisionist history on Judas, trying to make him look worse than how the Bible made him. And there's more, but I'm not going to go into all these different things. But just imagine, after Judas left the supper scene. Judas left the Last Supper. Judas says, do what you're going to do. And Judas left. Think, for the next hour or two or three, Judas was very, very busy. He had to go to the various religious leaders and say, I know where he's going to be. Now is the time to do it. And then they had to get a Roman cohort to go with them. And all of this had to be done in a very, very short period of time. I would say those hours leading up to the arrest of Jesus were frantic hours for Jesus and the religious leaders. It was in the middle of the night. But here's their opportunity and they don't want to miss it. And so they had to get Roman soldiers to arrest him because the Jews did not have that legal ability. So somehow Rome had to be dragged into this because it was a matter of legality, and the Jews had no occupying army, and therefore Judas and the leaders of the Jewish religion had to convince the Romans that Jesus was a threat to Rome, which they did, and that Jesus was a robber and an insurrectionist, which is the same thing that is characterized Barabbas. Remember Barabbas? He was a robber and an insurrectionist, or like the idea, we would use the word terrorist today. And the same word they used to describe Barabbas, that's the same word they used to describe Jesus as they were convincing Rome, we have to go out and arrest him. He's a threat to Rome. So Rome sends or Pilate sends a cohort, perhaps up to 600 soldiers out there. And so the text tells us here in verse 47, Luke tells us that Judas approached Jesus to kiss him, And if you look there, Jesus already identified himself. So that further identification was unnecessary. But Judas had to go through with it. He had to go through with this kiss in order to fulfill his part of the deal to identify him as one of Jesus' twelve. Here's Judas, and he comes and he gives Jesus this kiss. Again, Judas, what an interesting character he is. None of us like Judas. All of us are saddened by what he did. Again, the disciples never said a cross word about Jesus, or about Judas, rather, in their writings. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, never say, use any kind of negative epitaphs or adjectives to describe Judas. But he was a heartbreak to all of them. He was a tragedy. But Judas was an individual who walked with Jesus for nearly three years, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and yet look what he did. It is possible for an individual to be this close to Jesus for a period of time and still reject Him. It is possible to hear all the words of Jesus and see all the things that he's done and still reject him. Why is that? Well, because all of us are sinners. And our basic tilt is always to choose against God and to choose ourselves. Our basic tilt is always to choose my own way, because I have a chooser within me that is prone to go against God and for me. It just always amazes me a passage like Romans 3 says, no man seeks after God. When the world is just filled with religion, Paul says, no man seeks after God. That seems to betray what I see with all the religions. Of course, people are seeking God. I mean, you've got this religion and that religion, that religion, this religion, that religion, just a gazillion different religions. And they're all seeking for a god. But it's a god of their own making. Judas was, like all of us, While he was one of the 12, he was a sinner. And he was bent because of his sin. He was depraved. And so he was going to choose against Christ unless somehow his heart was changed. And so in verse 48, Jesus said to Judas, he asked him a question, Judas, are you betraying the son of man with a kiss? Matthew 26, verse 49, where there's a parallel passage, Matthew uses a different word for kiss there. The word kiss in Matthew 26, 49, conveys the idea of a prolonged, ostentatious kind of embrace. Not just a peck on the cheek, but it's a kiss, it's an embrace. Matthew says Judas embraced Jesus. It wasn't just a sort of a peck on the cheek, it was, oh, Jesus, as he's betraying him, ah, gives him a hug, ah, Jesus. And that's how he betrayed Jesus. That is the first point that we come to. John chapter 18, verses four through six, gives us a little more information. Jesus, therefore, knowing all things that would come upon him, went forward and said to them, who are you seeking? And they answered, Jesus of Nazareth. And Jesus said to them, I am he. So here is this, in this occasion, John adds this little tidbit that the others don't ask. So Jesus says, look, I'm he, I'm identifying myself, I am he. And Judas, who betrayed him, stood with him. Now, when he has said to them, I am, literally, I am, the word he there is added. In the text, Jesus literally says, I am. He just says, when they say, are you Jesus? I am. Makes it even more powerful to leave off the he, which is what the Greek actually says. Jesus says, I am, and when he said that, the coolest thing happened. They drew back and fell to the ground. What caused them to fall to the ground? Hmm. Power with the sheer spoken word did that. If he could do that by simply saying I am, it's like Jesus doesn't need me with my glock and my sword and my club. He doesn't need me to protect him. All he has to do is speak the word, and these guys are toast, and you see a glimpse of that when he says, I am, and they just fall back. I mean, he could have quick fried them to a crackly crunch if he wanted to. Remember Cheetos? They used to have an ad saying, quick fry to a crackly crunch. That thought just came to my mind as I was thinking about Jesus and how great and powerful he is. Well, so that's the friend that followed Jesus. But secondly here this morning, we want to see the intemperance of a follower. So we move from Judas to the focus is more on Peter. Having kissed Jesus, the crowd came now, verse 49, to apprehend Jesus. Again, I think at this very split second, I think his disciples were confident now that they're laying hands on Jesus. I think the disciples thought, they assumed, that once this started, Jesus was going to do something to quickly vanish his enemies, as he could do. I think his disciples thought once they lay hands on Jesus, Jesus is going to just beat the snot out of them. Well, it didn't happen like they thought. That was their expectation. And although Luke doesn't name this one impulsive disciple as described in in verses 49 and 50. Well, verse 49, they said, Lord, shall we strike with the sword, verse 50, and a certain one of them struck the slave of the high priest and cut off his right ear. Well, Luke doesn't name him because when Luke wrote this, Peter was still alive. But That's a little ahead of myself here. But Peter, excuse me, the apostle John tells us in chapter 18 that it was Peter. Now when John wrote his gospel, John wrote his gospel 30 years after the death of Peter. John wrote his gospel around 95 AD. Peter died under the Nerorian persecution around 65 AD, about 30 years before that. So John, when he writes his gospel 30 years later, felt free to name it Peter. Didn't matter anymore. It was Peter. He's not going to be embarrassed. He's with the Lord now. And so John tells us it was Peter. Luke does not do that. You see that reference in John 18, verse 10, where we are told that it was Peter. And there are hundreds of people all there armed with clubs and swords. So it's really kind of stupid for Peter at this time to draw his sword and start whacking away at the heads of some of the people closest to him. But I think Peter did that. It doesn't tell us this, but I think Peter was expecting Jesus to act with some kind of divine power and to wipe the, he was emboldened. Standing next to Jesus, Peter was emboldened. He could do anything. He could do anything. And so I think he felt free. And he aimed at the head. And we found out later from the Gospel of John, it was this guy named Malchus, who was the slave of the high priest. And he went for Malchus's head and just got his ear. Malchus moved his head just in time to only lose his ear. Jesus then reattaches the ear of Malchus. We learn that. And in verse 51 of Luke 22, Jesus said, look, stop. No more of this. No more flaying your swords all around. And he touched his ear, his ear, Malchus's ear, and he healed him. I think there's, well, Jesus goes on. He says in verse 53, kind of gives the reasons here. While I was with you daily in the temple, you did not lay hands on me. But this hour and the power of darkness are yours. So. Jesus reminds them here, but I'm getting ahead of myself here, but I think Jesus provides reasons in other places that We should not show aggression against our enemies in these kinds of circumstances. Because Jesus on another occasion said, all who take up the sword shall perish by the sword. Peter, if you take up the sword, you're going to die by the sword. Or what I really like. is over in Matthew's gospel, Matthew 26, here, I love this, I slightly touched on it a minute ago. Jesus said to his disciples, do you not think, see, Luke doesn't say this, but Matthew does, do you not think, Jesus said, that I cannot now pray to my Father and he can provide me with more than 12 legions of angels? Here are these nearly 1,000 people who have come out to arrest me. I can call right now 12 legions of angels. Do you do the math? A legion is 5,000. Again, talk about killing an ant with a sledgehammer. I would have liked to have seen that just to see it. It would have been a cool sight, but it was bad timing. Jesus, you know, the one who spoke I am and drops people in their tracks also says I can call 12 legions of angels. So that's why I hope you and I can get to the place where we don't fret over life's problems because we have a powerful God who can do exceedingly, as Paul says in Ephesians, He can do exceedingly abundantly beyond all that we ask or think. So Jesus demonstrates that he's committed to go through with this no matter what, even unto death. That takes me to my third point here, which I kind of started to get ahead of myself. We see the incrimination of his foes. We see in verse 52 what I call the irony of their hostility, verse 52, Jesus said to the chief priests and the officers of the temple and the elders who had come against him, have you come out with swords and clubs as against a robber? In other words, they were aware of who Jesus was and what he could do, and they knew that what they were doing was in the dark of night. They expected the worst. They brought the biggest and meanest guns they could bring. The mob plus a bunch of Roman soldiers, we're going to get this guy and nothing's gonna stop us. So they bring this mob, including the Roman soldiers. Their actions were clearly the actions of people who were mildly afraid of what Jesus could do. Because they knew, they had heard, if they had not already seen, they had heard of the miraculous power of Jesus. And so they thought, we're gonna be reliant on sheer numbers here to go and get Jesus. We're just going to outdo him with sheer numbers. Again, not realizing that their sheer numbers to the Son of God is a pittance. It's a spit in the wind for someone who can call 12 legions of angels in a heartbeat. Again, man has these ideas, these grandiose ideas. We're going to bring a cohort of Roman soldiers and a mob, and there's no way he can get out of that. Oh, yeah? He can call 12 legions of angels. So their hostility, the religious leaders' hostility, was the natural outworking of their depraved disposition against God. And yet God's eternal purposes and plans included their depraved hostilities and doings. They treated Jesus like a robber, like a revolutionary, an insurrectionist, a terrorist. And Jesus, in verse 53, indicts them for their hypocrisy. He says, while I was with you daily, daily in the temple, you did not lay hands on me. I was with you every day. I mean, he cleansed the temple, not just once, but twice. And they could have brought out the temple guard at that time. They never did. They never did. They could have laid hands on him when he was right there in the temple. They never did. He says that there in verse 53. You did not lay hands on me. But, verse 53, this hour and the power of darkness, he's not talking about physical darkness, he's talking spiritual darkness, the power of spiritual darkness are yours. So, there's Jesus, the man of peace and love and mercy. Clearly, day by day, he was with them in the temple, yet their response was to use deceit and to use... the darkness, the physical darkness, away from the crowds to go and arrest him with a mob because, again, this hour and the power of darkness are yours. So I come back to a passage, and I didn't put it up on the overhead, but you know this passage. I've referred to it so many times, I keep going back to it and back to it in Acts chapter 2, verses 22 and 23. Here's Peter in Acts chapter 2, a mere 50 days after the passage in Luke 22. Here is Peter, 50 days later, on the day of Pentecost, preaching. And what does Peter preach in Acts 2? Well, verses 22 and 23, Peter says this. Peter's words, he says, men of Israel, listen to these words, Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through him in your midst, just as you yourselves know, this man, Peter says, this man, Jesus, delivered up by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put them to death." Again, I love that passage. It puts everything in its proper place. that God is the One who ultimately is orchestrating even the evil events of godless men for His glory. For His glory. And I love that. I take great comfort in that. especially now, the older I get, days are getting, my time is getting less and less, because it's just true for all of us, three score and 10, I'm one year away from that, three score and 10 is 70, maybe I'll make it to 70, maybe I'll make it to 75 or 80, but the end is coming, and I can rest my head on that. on a pillow of peace because I have a God who has my days numbered and He has every situation under His control. I rest. I rest in Him. My theology, what I know to be true of God, guides my thinking. That's why it's important to get this book, the Bible, into your system and be taught rightly so that your mind can think correctly when you face the difficulties of life. We need a biblical theology. We need to understand who God is in order to respond to life's troubles and tragedies in a right way. And that's what I learned from this. I close with, what else do I learn? And we'll be done with at this point. So what? Well, number one, those in darkness, eventually find each other as allies in their hostility to God. We see that in the case of the mob that came after Jesus. Somebody as diverse as the Romans and the religious leaders and some of the other Jews, I mean, here is a diverse group, but their common drawing point is that they're against Jesus. So those in darkness eventually find each other as allies in their hostility to God. Beware of being yoked with unbelievers. Secondly, insincere demonstrations of devotion, i.e. kisses, do not fool God. Judas walks up to Jesus, and according to Matthew, just gave him a big embrace, maybe a kiss on the cheek. Maybe they do that three kiss thing. I don't know how they did that then. You see that today, they do that three kiss thing, one on the left, one on the right. I don't know, not one on the lips. Huh? Forehead, that's it, forehead. So insincere demonstrations of devotion or kisses do not fool God. He knows our hearts, he knows our hearts. Thirdly, because God does not do something, because God does not do something does not mean that he cannot do something. Just because God doesn't do something in your timetable doesn't mean that he can't do something in that particular instance. We must trust him and pray through our trials. We must trust him and pray through our trials. And fourthly, God's purposes are frequently much greater than our personal circumstances or struggles. God's purposes In fact, I would say they almost always greater. That whatever I'm struggling with, God has a bigger picture in mind. And we need to remember that he's up to something far bigger and greater than us. I love this passage. Well, next week we're gonna continue in the gospel of John as we think more of the Christmas story, we're gonna be looking at John chapter one next Sunday, verses one through 14. So you might wanna kind of pre-read that before next Sunday, but we're gonna look at John chapter one next week, verses one through 14, and consider that the incarnate God became flesh. Father, thank you for this time together. We thank you for all that you have done in the person of Christ. We thank you, Lord, that we can take a passage like this and glean from it truths that help anchor our souls in the midst of our own struggles and our own trials. I pray, Lord, that your word would touch our hearts and souls and cause us to lean more on you We pray these things in Jesus' name, Amen.