Betrayal.

What an absolute privilege it is to sit here this morning in Your presence knowing You have invited me – it draws great feelings of worship, praise and rejoicing.

”Yes Ian I have desired that you be with Me and spend time communicating with Me, just as I long for each of My children’s time devoted wholly to Me. This is precious to Me and it should be equally precious to you. Think about it, the creator of the universe here in the room with you, in you, around you. Although you cannot see Me you can experience My presence in so many ways by faith. Through My word especially and through the songs of praise, but in many other ways which involve every one of your senses. Spend time in quiet just listening and enjoying My presence.”

As we read John 13:18-30 we feel we are entering an unbelievably dark episode of Jesus’s life. It is succinctly described in the last vs: 30b: “It was night”. It was surely night but symbolically it was night as well as Judas leaves to do the deed he has been chosen to do.

I am sure every reader of this blog has at some time or another experienced the pain of betrayal. Someone who you respected and enjoyed turning against you and causing you some measure of harm and pain. Once again, because of our familiarity with this story it is maybe easy to gloss over the details of Judas’s betrayal.

Think of it however. Here was one of the close-knit “inside” group of Jesus’s disciples. What had they not all experienced in the three years of Jesus’s ministry? The teaching, the fellowship and especially the love that Jesus had surely been demonstrating them as the made their way by foot around the territory. Sitting now at the table, close enough for Jesus to reach out and pass him a morsel He had dipped in the wine. Judas, accepting this intimate gesture.

Once again I was struck by Jesus’s humanity as described here. It is, as I have said previously so easy to imagine Jesus’s feelings and thoughts to be different to ours because of His divinity, however John again draws attention to Jesus mental and emotional suffering in the brief sentence in vs 21 After saying these things, Jesus was troubled in his spirit, and testified, “Truly, truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me.” So much like we would be, a perfect high priest who has suffered in every way we have so that he can understand and minister to us.

We know, of course that Jesus was aware of his impending betrayal a long time before, because of His continual references, reported in the various gospels to His impending death preceded by a betrayal. What is a timely reminder of all these events, which are depicted here in extraordinary detail, is that this was all planned long beforehand vs 18 This is to fulfill the scripture: ‘He who shares my bread lifted up his heel against Me’.

Just as you and I have been chosen before time to be adopted as children of God, so Judas was chosen before time to be THE betrayer, which set the ultimate rescue plan in motion. Maybe, like me, you may say “Was this really fair to him?”. The whole question of predestination is an enigma that we as mere mortals, looking through a glass darkly, may only understand, if at all when we go to be with the Lord. We need to focus rather on the certainty we receive from the fact that we have indeed been chosen before time, according to God’s mercy and grace for a specific purpose, which He will work out in our lives.

Once again we can only wonder at this plan of God which we are seeing being played out here in the scriptures. A plan so unique, so brilliant, yet so painful. Plenty to meditate on as we continue in this Lenten period.

May God bless you all as we draw closer to our celebration of Easter.