Betrayal & Denial

I. Introduction
A. Series on the last week of Jesus’ life. Today: Judas’ betrayal and denial by Peter
B. And I have three takeaways for us: one from Judas’ betrayal, one from Peter’s denial, and from from the contrast between the two.
C. Matthew 26:20-25 When it was evening, he reclined at table with the twelve. 21 And as they were eating, he said, “Truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me.” 22 And they were very sorrowful and began to say to him one after another, “Is it I, Lord?” 23 He answered, “He who has dipped his hand in the dish with me will betray me. 24 The Son of Man goes as it is written of him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been better for that man if he had not been born.” 25 Judas, who would betray him, answered, “Is it I, Rabbi?” He said to him, “You have said so.”
D. Matthew 26:69-75 Now Peter was sitting outside in the courtyard. And a servant girl came up to him and said, “You also were with Jesus the Galilean.” 70 But he denied it before them all, saying, “I do not know what you mean.” 71 And when he went out to the entrance, another servant girl saw him, and she said to the bystanders, “This man was with Jesus of Nazareth.” 72 And again he denied it with an oath: “I do not know the man.” 73 After a little while the bystanders came up and said to Peter, “Certainly you too are one of them, for your accent betrays you.” 74 Then he began to invoke a curse on himself and to swear, “I do not know the man.” And immediately the rooster crowed. 75 And Peter remembered the saying of Jesus, “Before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times.” And he went out and wept bitterly.
II. Betrayal – Matthew 26:21-25
A. Judas betrayed Jesus for 30 silver coins, and was punished with many woes.
B. 24 “The Son of Man goes as it is written of him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been better for that man if he had not been born.”
C. This means that when Jesus chose His 12 disciples, He chose a betrayer.
1. The earliest we are told that He knew is in John 6:70-71, right after the feeding of the 5000, when He said, “Did I not choose you, the Twelve? And yet one of you is a devil.”
2. But I think He knew from the beginning. “The Son of Man goes as it is written of him.” If the betrayal was prophesied in the OT, Jesus obviously knew it was going to happen.
D. So why would Jesus choose a betrayer? Why did Jesus choose Judas to be one of the twelve?
1. Well, it led to our redemption, didn’t it? “The Son of Man goes as it is written of him.”
2. The Son of Man goes as it has been planned, as it has been arranged.
3. Jesus came to die. His death was not a mistake. He didn’t make Judas betray Him, but I believe He chose a man He knew would betray Him.
4. Jesus choose Judas to help Him get to the cross. Judas meant it for evil; God meant it for good.
III. Takeaway from the betrayal: Jesus has chosen for there to be Judases in His church.
A. The fact is, in His infinite wisdom, God has not ordained this age to be an age of purity!
B. It is a mixed age. It is an age of blessings and graces which point to the greater age to come, but it is also an age of imperfection and curses.
C. And I’m not talking about the world, I’m talking about the church. The church is destined to have Judases, hypocrites, “false sons in her pale.” It is.
D. This age is an age of saints who reflect Christ, and it is an age of betrayers who reflect Judas.
E. The presence of hypocrites and betrayers doesn’t take anything away from the church’s importance just as Judas didn’t take anything away from the importance of the apostles.
F. Some people say that the church is in very bad shape today in that it’s not the way it was in the book of Acts.
1. But what about Ananas and Sapphira in Acts 5?
2. What about the discrimination against the Greek-speaking widows in Acts 6?
3. What about the Judaizers and the controversy over the acceptance of Gentiles into the church which boiled over in Acts 15?
4. And what about Judas?
G. God hates betrayal, but God uses betrayers.
H. And we shouldn’t be happy about it, but we do need to accept it.
1. This is why it’s absurd to leave the church because of hypocrites.
I. This is what God in His great wisdom has determined. And it’s actually good for us.
1. It teaches us humility.
2. It teaches us to care about the more important things.
3. It forces us to let go of things of this earth and put our trust in God.
4. It helps us long for a better world.
5. lt helps us to appreciate grace.
6. It teaches us to run to and put all our trust in the One who will never betray us or forsake us.
J. The secret to happiness is understanding the good of the bad. (Not the good AND the bad but the good OF the bad.)
1. It’s understanding and accepting God’s good purposes for the hard things and the bad things.
2. Maybe Jesus doesn’t want us to have such wonderful church experiences that we stop longing for the day of His return.
3. Maybe Jesus doesn’t want us to have such wonderful church experiences that we lose our ability to invest ourselves in more ordinary church life after those experiences are over.
K. If God is sovereign over the one who betrayed Jesus, don’t you think He’s sovereign over the ones who betray you and me? “They meant it for evil, but God means it for good.” (Gen.50:20)
IV. Those are some thoughts about Judas’ betrayal, not let’s look at Peter’s denial.
A. Peter did not betray Jesus, but he did deny Jesus (Matt.26:57-58, 69-75, 27:3-10).
1. On Thursday evening Peter wholeheartedly said, “I’ll die for you!” and late that same night Peter was unwilling to even admit he knew Jesus?
2. Was Peter phony? Was he insincere? Was he actually a closet coward? No.
3. I think something happened to Peter in between those two moments which disheartened him, which drained Peter of his fight? What was it that happened?
4. Peter let Jesus down, because Jesus had let Peter down. (Repeat)
5. When did Jesus let Peter down?
a. It happened just a few hours after Peter protested that he would never deny Jesus. the fateful moment was when Judas showed up with armed soldiers & Jewish leaders and gave Jesus a kiss.
b. You remember! When they tried to arrest Jesus, Peter jumped into action. This was His moment! The time had finally come and he knew what to do! His zeal, along with the divine power of the Messiah, were enough to conquer the enemy and establish the messianic kingdom!
c. So Peter pulled out his sword and began to fight, cutting off a priest’s ear in the process.
d. Here was Peter – doing exactly what he had said – willing to die for Jesus.
e. And it’s what happened at that moment which deflated Peter. Jesus stopped him. “Put back your sword, Peter.” (Matthew 26:47-56) And then he healed the priest’s ear (Luke 22:51).
6. That’s when the disciples left him and fled. The next morning Jesus explained to Pilate (Jn.18:36), “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would fight to defend Me. But my kingdom is not from the world.”
7. Peter knew how to use earthly weapons like swords and intimidation and pressure and coercion. But he wasn’t so good at using spiritual weapons like speaking the truth of Christ in love, like trusting the Lord in the face of danger, like blessing those who curse you, like praying for those who persecute you, like forgiving your enemy, like turning the other cheek.
8. That kind of weapon is FAR more powerful than the weapons of the flesh! And someone who takes up those weapons is showing MORE courage and less fear than using swords or guns.
9. Later, of course, Peter saw that the problem was not Christ’s but His, and He wept in regret (Lk.22:61-62). And Jesus not only forgave Peter but called him back to ministry (Jn.21:15-19).
B. But there’s another dimension to this. Anybody who knows the Proverb “Pride cometh before a fall” (Prov.16:18) knows it was inevitable that Peter was going to deny Jesus after he so emphatically said he wouldn’t. “Even if everyone else falls away, I will never fall away... Even if I must die with you, I will not deny you!” (Matthew 26:33-35)
1. You can see in Peter’s words that he felt strong. But his sense of strength was unfounded.
2. When God withdrew His strength from Peter, there was no strength left.
3. Just a few hours before Jesus had said: “Apart from Me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5)
4. But Peter had to learn that lesson the hard way.
V. Takeaway from the denial: Sometimes God allows us to mess up.
A. Often, Jesus allows something hard to happen in our lives and we feel like He’s let us down.
1. We feel like we’ve honored Him and instead of being blessed for it, we get crushed.
2. And usually that’s when we let Jesus down. “What good is it to serve Jesus if He’s going to treat us like that?” The problem, of course, is that we think we know better than Jesus. We think we know what’s best better than He does.
3. We thought we were strong in faith but it turns out we’re not.
B. “Lord, I am ready to go with you both to prison and to death.”
1. Doesn’t that sound like a godly statement! I’m sure everyone else in the room was impressed – except Jesus. None of the others thought at the time that it was an evil statement!
2. Satan is so subtle. He can make sin look so godly. He can make poison look so healthy.
3. We admire someone with a can-do attitude. But have you ever thought about the potential sinfulness of a can-do attitude?
4. There can be so much pride in “I have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back...”
5. Paul says it this way in 1Cor.10:12: “Let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall.”
6. When we say, “I shall never be moved,” (Ps.30:6) we set ourselves up for a fall.
C. Sometimes we think we’re strong and God needs to humble us. So He removes some of His power from our lives. He allows us to stand on our own for a moment and we quickly collapse.
1. And then it becomes obvious that in ourselves we have no strength, but need God’s.
2. Peter was confident in his own faith, not realizing that on his own, his faith was nothing.
3. God allowed him to fall in order to help him grow.
4. And God allows us to fall in order to help us grow.
5. I can look back at many of my failures and see that I needed to fail. I needed to be humbled. I needed to see what I was made of, and see that Christ was my only hope.
6. God gave us this story of Peter so that we could correctly interpret things when failures and crashes occur in our lives.
D. After his denial, Peter remembered the word Jesus had spoken: ‘Before the rooster crows, you will disown me three times.’ And he went outside and wept bitterly.” (Matt.26:75)
1. A few chapters earlier, Jesus had told His disciples that in order to get into the kingdom of heaven a person’s pride had to shrink down to fit through the eye of a needle (Matt.19:24).
2. And as Peter traveled from the place of boasting to the place of weeping bitterly, inside he was going from having a camel-sized ego to being humbled enough to fit through the eye of a needle.
3. And many others have taken that journey as well: Nebuchadnezzar in Dan.4, David in Ps.30.
4. It is a trip we all sometimes have to take.
E. The day I became a Christian, I remember being outraged over those who weren’t sold out for Jesus. I thought I was in a special group: sold out for Jesus. And for the next 27 years I lived in the conviction that I was sold out to Jesus but that most Christians weren’t.
1. Of course, I understand the very real danger of NOT being sold out to Christ, of being lukewarm in our faith, of being double-minded (James 1:8) and wavering back and forth.
2. But there is also an opposite danger, a danger which goes along with being sold out to Jesus, or, to put it a better way, a danger in thinking you are sold out to Jesus.
3. In short, like Peter, I discovered I was not nearly as sold out to Jesus as I had thought.
4. But it was through failures that I learned that.
F. This story of Peter is an encouragement for us, in at least three ways:
1. It shows that God is involved not only in our successes but in our failures. Often we have to fail in order to be fixed, because we can’t be healed until we see our sickness.
a. Peter was not a humble man. But by God’s grace he became a HUMBLED man.
b. And in the end Peter was so much more useful to the Lord than when he was saying, “Lord, I am ready to go with you both to prison and to death,” – though it was a painful process to get there.
c. Painful realizations are gracious gifts of God to His beloved children.
2. It shows us that the One who sometimes allows us to fall also picks us back up.
a. Jesus had said to Peter: “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail.” (Luke 22:31-32)
b. Two things I’d like to point out about this:
(1) He didn’t say, “Peter, Peter,” for in this case Peter acted like anything but a rock. Simon means listen. And Jesus says,
(2) He didn’t say, “Simon, Simon, Satan demanded to sift you like wheat, but you’ll survive with a lot of humiliation/weeping.” He said, “I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail.”
c. Jesus didn’t hate Peter for what he did. And He didn’t just receive him back, He prayed Him back. He fought against Satan to get him back. He refused to let Peter be snatched out of His hand. Peter came back because Jesus pulled him back.
d. Well, Jesus is praying for us, and fighting for us, and refusing to let go of us too.
e. And He is also supervising the extreme makeover project of making us more like Him.
3. It shows us that just because we mess up it doesn’t mean there’s no hope for us. Great Christians like Peter and David messed up big time!
a. And God allowed these big men to commit big sins and receive big forgiveness so we’ll know there is big forgiveness for us as well.
b. It shows us that there is forgiveness and restoration and usefulness even after major failure.
c. The most surprising thing in the story of Peter ought not be that he denied Jesus but that Jesus forgave him and called him to continue in ministry.
VI. Takeaway from the contrast between the betrayal and the denial: There are two very different kinds of sorrow.
A. Peter wasn’t the only one who experienced sorrow. Judas was also sorrowful for what he’d done. “He was seized with remorse & returned the 30 silver coins to the chief priests & elders.” Mt.27:3
B. Two men, both having failed the Lord in very significant ways, both facing the grief of their failure. And yet what a big difference between Peter’s regret and Judas’!
C. Don’t read about Judas’ sorrow and start wondering if maybe Judas actually repented and went to heaven. It is clear that he didn’t.
1. “The Son of Man goes as it is written of him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been better for that man if he had not been born.” (Matt.26:24)
D. So, what about Judas’ sorrow? There is a harmful, wicked, ungodly sorrow which is very different from good, godly sorrow.
E. Godly grief is a precious gift of God (2Tim.2:24-26).
1. Jesus prayed for Peter and God gave Peter godly, repentant grief over his sin.
F. Godly sorrow does not end in despair – as Judas’ did – but in the happy embrace of God’s forgiveness. (See 2Cor.7:8-11.) It is not mere self-loathing that leads to death.
G. Godly sorrow is relational. It is sorrow we experience before the living God, grieving over how we have not loved Him as He deserves – and yet experiencing His loving forgiveness for those who are broken and contrite in spirit.
H. When there is ungodly sorrow, on the other hand, only one person is present.
I. In godly sorrow, the sinner is with God. He is addressing the God of mercy and forgiveness.
1. In godly sorrow your grief GOES somewhere. It goes to God. It doesn’t just stay with you.
2. It doesn’t just get felt – it gets expressed.
J. The prodigal son did not just lay down and weep over his sins.
1. He got up and moved back to his father.
2. His grief went somewhere. He brought his sorrow into his father’s arms.
3. Remember the little speech of repentance the prodigal son composed to say to his dad? Do you remember the first word? “Father.” (Luke 15:21) That’s the first word of godly sorrow, the first word of true repentance: Father. Judas never brought his sorrow to the Father.
VII. Conclusion
A. Judas and Peter. Two enormous figures in the drama of Jesus. One big night, two big failures. But two very different outcomes, two very different lessons.
B. The two illustrate something Jesus said earlier that evening, “I am the true vine and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch of mine that does not bear fruit he takes away [that’s Judas], and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit [that’s Peter, and that’s us].” (John 15:2)