I’ve never been much of a morning person. Growing up, I’d rather sleep in and stay up late, than to get up and enjoy the day. Even on a Saturday morning when cartoons came on, I would miss some of my favorites for just a few more minutes of sleep. I’m the black sheep of my family when it comes to this. My family is very much, get up early and tackle the day. Maybe this is why I’m not a very big breakfast eater. Again, I’m the black sheep in this regard. In fact, the only time I really eat breakfast is when I visit my family.
It’s my Dad’s favorite meal, and my Mom makes huge breakfast banquets, whenever we visit. In fact, one of the most rude things I ever did to my parents, happened because of my desire to sleep in, and make dislike of breakfast.
When I was in about seventh grade, I had two friends spend the night. We stayed up extremely late. In the morning, my parents thought it would be nice to take my two friends and myself out to breakfast. I didn’t want to go of course, in fact, I didn’t even get out of my bed. Undeterred, my parents took my two friends out to breakfast and I fell back asleep. When I woke up, no one was in the house. I proceeded to search for food, and it was then that I realized why they went out to eat. There was no food in the house. By the time they came back I was starving. My friends said it was the best breakfast they’d ever had, and I spent the next several hours feeling my stomach eating away at itself, before my parents took my friends home and we went grocery shopping.
I learned a valuable lesson that day, if you don’t want to miss out on something, you better be awake for it.
And that’s where we come to the Gospel of Mark today. A place where the disciples missed out on the work of God, because they were busy sleeping. So if you have your Bibles, we’re going to be in the Gospel of Mark chapter 14, starting in verse 18.
Now as we open up to Mark 14:18, we need to bring ourselves up to speed with what’s going on with the disciples.
There’s a couple of points about the disciples and what was happening in their lives, we need to know from the Gospel of Mark up to catch ourselves up. First, the disciples had been training with Jesus for roughly two years at this point. They had watched Jesus, they had listened to Jesus, they even had performed miracles in Jesus’ name. They were the closest to Jesus that anyone could be at that point.
Second, even though the disciples were the closest to Jesus, they consistently missed what Jesus was getting at. He would explain something, and they wouldn’t get it. Jesus would tell them about his death and they wouldn’t believe him. Again and again, they kept missing the points that Jesus was trying to make.
Which brings us to the final point: the disciples’ understanding of Jesus was very different than Jesus’. The disciples saw Jesus as a conquer, who would make them kings over the Romans. So whenever Jesus spoke otherwise, they chastised him for saying something that would go against their idea. It’s because of this that they missed what Jesus was trying to get across, even though they were the closest to him.
With the understanding that the disciples were the closest to Jesus, they constantly missed what he was saying, all due to their own ideas of what was about to happen, we can now jump into Mark chapter 14, verse 18.
Now we’re going to cover about 61 verses today, and the reason we’re coving so much is because as we have gone through the Gospel of Mark, our goal has been to see how the writing flows together. How the Holy Spirit is directing us to understand how the passages are linked together as an overarching message. So as we read today, we’re going to touch on different points in the passage to help us understand the flow of this section of Scripture. So let’s pick up in verse 18.
18 While they were reclining at the table eating, he said, “Truly I tell you, one of you will betray me—one who is eating with me.”
19 They were saddened, and one by one they said to him, “Surely you don’t mean me?”
20 “It is one of the Twelve,” he replied, “one who dips bread into the bowl with me. 21 The Son of Man will go just as it is written about him. But woe to that man who betrays the Son of Man! It would be better for him if he had not been born.”
Jesus and the twelve disciples are participating in the Passover of celebration, where the Jews remembered the work of God, when the angel of death passed over the people of Israel while they were in Egypt and Moses was sent to bring them out of slavery.
As they’re eating Jesus reveals to the disciples that one of them would betray him. Of course, all of them denied it. Each one responding with a question that sounds as if they are hurt, “Surely you don’t mean me?”
From there, the group’s location changes to a mountain just outside the city, and Jesus continues with these words in verse 27, “‘You will all fall away,’ Jesus told them, ‘for it is written: “I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.”’”
Peter, as is his normal response, speaks of things he doesn’t understand. “Even if all fall away, I will not.”
Jesus responds, “‘Truly I tell you,’ Jesus answered, ‘today—yes, tonight—before the rooster crows twice you yourself will disown me three times.’ 31 But Peter insisted emphatically, ‘Even if I have to die with you, I will never disown you.’ And all the others said the same.”
From there, the group moves again, this time to a garden. Jesus says, this in verse 34, “‘My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death,’ he said to them. ‘Stay here and keep watch.’”
After Jesus goes off by himself for a while, he returns and finds the disciples, that he told to keep watch, fast asleep. Saying this to them in verse 37, “‘Simon,’ he said to Peter, ‘are you asleep? Couldn’t you keep watch for one hour? 38 Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.’”
This happens two more times, with the third prompting Jesus to say, “‘Are you still sleeping and resting? Enough! The hour has come. Look, the Son of Man is delivered into the hands of sinners. 42 Rise! Let us go! Here comes my betrayer!’”
As Judas comes to betray Jesus, it says in verse 50, “Then everyone deserted him and fled. 51 A young man, wearing nothing but a linen garment, was following Jesus. When they seized him, 52 he fled naked, leaving his garment behind.”
Finally, after the sham trial of the religious leaders, we come to the final verse in chapter 14, verse 72. “Immediately the rooster crowed the second time. Then Peter remembered the word Jesus had spoken to him: ‘Before the rooster crows twice you will disown me three times.’ And he broke down and wept.”
This whole section is the climax to all that has been happening with the twelve disciples in the Gospel of Mark. We have seen them be brought in by Jesus to be his closest disciples. People Jesus poured his life into. Who learned deeper truths from God himself. Who went out and performed miracles. We have seen them deny Jesus’ teachings, because they had their own ideas about who he was.
And when confronted by Jesus about betrayal, all of them stood firm that they would not be the one who betrays Jesus.
Again and again we see Jesus telling the disciples that there would be someone that betrays him. Again, and again they deny it. And when it’s revealed that it’s Judas, we find out, it wasn’t just one disciple that betrayed Jesus, it was all of them. All of them deserted, even though all of them said they wouldn’t.
They left the one that they had proclaimed was the Messiah. They left the one whom they followed for the past two and a half years. They left the one that they said they would never leave.
Verse 52 gives us an image of a man running away naked into the night, and it gives us a picture of just who the disciples were at that moment. Men, who had lost their facade of belief, and were now naked in their betrayal of Jesus. Judas betrayed Jesus, and the other disciples joined him by fleeing.
How did that happen? How’d it come to this? Jesus had been talking to his disciples about being on their guard for several days. He told them this when talking about looking for the end times. Jesus brought it up again in the garden in verse 34. They were not on guard when they physically fell asleep, but more importantly, they were not on their guard for the treachery in their own lives, and they all fell victim to betraying Jesus.
In my opinion, Peter’s tears are the greatest action he takes in the whole of the Gospels. Peter is one of those people that puts their foot in their mouths constantly. He speaks when he should be silent, and is silent when he should speak. This is the guy that had the audacity to tell Jesus he was wrong, when Jesus told the disciples that he was going to die.
But I believe this moment was the turning in point in Peter’s life.
At that moment, Peter’s realization of his betrayal of Jesus drowns him. Remember, Mark is writing his Gospel from the words of Peter himself. At the point when Mark pens this book, Peter has become a man who is honest with his defeat and betrayal of Jesus. Peter is honest with the fact that Jesus had told him again and again to be on his guard, but he wasn’t. Is it no surprise then, that Peter writes in his first letter to the churches, “Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour (1 Peter 5:8).”?
Peter was devoured by the devil in the moment be ran from Jesus’ side, and denied him to those who asked if he knew Jesus. Peter knows what it means to not be on our guard; to be so infatuated by what we desire, that we lose sight of Jesus. Peter was there. He felt the betrayal and the pain of it. He experienced the nakedness that it brought to him. He had been living a lie, and now that lie was stripped away from him, and he was exposed for the betrayer he was.
Peter was asleep. Asleep to the work of God and to his own deceptive heart. Just hours before Peter had proclaimed, “Even if all fall away, I will not.”
But he did.
It’s so easy for us to do the same thing. We can proclaim so loudly that we will follow Jesus! We will not fall asleep. But do we? Do we follow him when our anger gets the best of us? Do we follow when that person hurt us, and so we won’t forgive? Are we asleep, when the devil comes around? Are we asleep to our own desires that pull us away from God?
Peter eventually faced his betrayal; he realized he had been asleep, not just physically, but spiritually as well. And years later, he wrote to his fellow believers, that they need to be ready, because the devil is a lion waiting to devour those who’s guards are down, who are asleep.
But this is not what God wants for us. God does not send the Son to die on a cross, and raise from the dead, for us to fall into betrayal, for us to fall asleep, nor for us to have our guard down. God instead gives us the Holy Spirit so that when the enemy comes, we are ready. We are given the strength to rely on God, so that we may stand watch through the tiring night.
But how, how do we do this? How do we keep ourselves on guard, and awake to what God is doing around us, and in our own lives? And how do we rely on the power of the Holy Spirit to be our strength when the lion is ready to pounce?
We do what none of the disciples were willing to do at that moment, we become honest with ourselves. All of the disciples proclaimed, I will not betray. We must come to the honest answer, I am prone to betray God, I am prone to wander from him. The hymn writer Robert Robinson captures this honesty when we wrote, “O to grace how great a debtor, daily I’m constrained to be! Let Thy goodness, like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to Thee. Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love; Here’s my heart, O take and seal it, Seal it for Thy courts above (Come Thou Fount).”
The Apostle John, who was one of the disciples that left Jesus, says in his first letter, “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us (1 John 1:8).”
Honesty about ourselves is what will keeps us on guard and awake. As we look to God and are truthful with what we are dealing with, when those times of attack happen, we will not scatter, and we will not be found naked. And we won’t miss out on the breakfast that God has prepared for us.
Because we are no longer leaning on our own strength to stay awake, we are relying on God’s. We have come to place where we know we cannot not face the night alone, so we push harder into relying on God to get us through it. We realize our own lack of ability, and understand that is only by the Holy Spirit we can stand. Our bravado, our bluster, our boasting is stripped away, and all we are left with is a reliance on God.
This leads us into the challenge for this week, which is simple. Read through this section of Scripture on your own, asking God to reveal those things in your life that are lulling you to sleep, and to be off your guard. Be honest with God, letting nothing be too insignificant to hide. And then ask God to show you and give you the strength to overcome those things that would take you away from him. We need to have our confidence, not in our ability to stand, but in God’s ability to keep us standing, to keep us awake.
Let us be an awake people, ready for the work of God both around us, and in us. So that we may bring glory to him. Amen.
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