Failure is a taste that's hard to clear from your mouth.
It can linger long after the fact, sometimes even for years
or decades. Failures can be harder to both
endure and recover from than other types of suffering.
If you're suffering from an injury or illness, it's possible
you did nothing at all to contribute to your suffering.
If, say, you have a genetic condition that reduces the
thickness of the discs that separate your backbones, there
might be relatively little you could do both to prevent injury.
There might be only so much you can do to recover from injury,
but when it comes to failure, by definition, you and you alone
are responsible. Failure can hurt more than other
types of suffering. When you fail, guilt and shame
and self recrimination layer on top of whatever suffering your
failure has caused yourself and others.
Some failures are not the kind of thing you bounce back from,
if you come back from them at all.
The speed and movement of your recovery will not be bouncy,
maybe more like clawing or crawling.
How have you failed recently? If you had to make a list of
your greatest failures, what would come at the very top?
If it's up to you to overcome your greatest failures, how do
you like your chances? What can you do about it?
Can you undo them, redo them, fix them?
This morning we continue our series in Mark's Gospel with
chapter 14, verses 12 to 31. If you don't have a Bible, you
can raise your hand and someone will bring you one.
If you don't have a Bible, like at all, feel free to take it
home, keep it, read it, come back to us and talk to us about
it. Our passage brings us to the
last night of Jesus's earthly life.
It's the beginning of the festival of Passover that we
read about in Exodus 12. Jesus knows that it's his last
night with his disciples, so he's preparing them for what
they don't know. But what he knows is immediately
ahead. What is Jesus preparing them for
on his last night with them? Their failure.
And it will be a horrible failure, but He's also preparing
them by promising them that He alone can overcome there and our
greatest failures. Please follow along as I read
Mark 1412 to 31. And on the first day of
Unleavened bread, when they sacrificed the Passover lamb,
his disciples said to him, Where will you have us?
Go and prepare for you to eat the Passover?
And he sent two of his disciples and said to them, Go into the
city, and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you.
Follow him. And wherever he enters, say to
the master of the house, the teacher says, Where is my guest
room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?
And he will show you a large upper room furnished and ready
there prepare for us. And the disciples set out and
went to the city, and found it just as he had told them, and
they prepared the Passover. And when it was evening, he came
with the 12. And as they were reclining at
table and eating, Jesus said, Truly, I say to you, One of you
will betray me, one who is eating with me.
They began to be sorrowful, and to say to him, one after
another, Is it I? He said to them, It is one of
the 12 one who is dipping bread into the dish with me.
For 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. And as they were eating, he took
bread, and after blessing it, broke it and gave it to them,
and said, Take, this is my body. And he took a cup.
And when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, and they all
drank of it. And he said to them, This is my
blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.
Truly I say to you, I will not drink again of the fruit of the
vine until that day when I drink it new in the Kingdom of God.
And when they had sung A hymn, they went out to the Mount of
Olives, and Jesus said to them, You will all fall away.
For it is written, I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will
be scattered. But after I am raised up, I will
go before you to Galilee. Peter said to him, Even though
they all fall away, I will not. And Jesus said to him, truly, I
tell you this very night, before the rooster crows twice, you
will deny me three times. But he said emphatically, If I
must die with you, I will not deny you.
And they all said the same. The passage is 3 parts.
In verses 12 to 16, Jesus sends his disciples into the city of
Jerusalem to prepare for them to eat the Passover meal together.
Then verses 17 to 25 tell us what Jesus said and did during
the Passover meal. Within that meal, Mark reports 2
main things. First, Jesus predicts his
betrayal by Judas. Then he institutes the Lord's
Supper. He transforms the Passover into
a memorial of his coming death. Then the third part, verses 26
to 31. That paragraph reports Jesus
teaching just after the Passover meal, same night, right
afterward. And here he predicts not that
one disciple will betray him, but that every disciple will
fail him. Every disciple will desert him,
and Peter in particular will deny him three times.
But that's not the end of the story.
The disciples will fail Jesus, but Jesus will not fail the
disciples. Since the text has three parts,
our sermon will have three points.
But it's also important to notice that just like the
passage we studied last week, there's a sandwich construction
here. So leave aside the preparations
for Passover verses 12 to 16 as a kind of introduction.
The heart of the passage is Jesus's institution of the
Lord's Supper in verses 22 to 25.
This is some of Mark's most explicit teaching about the
significance of Jesus's death. It's one of the most important
passages in the gospel. And what's it surrounded by?
Two predictions of failure on either side.
In verses 17 to 21 and 26 to 31, the institution of the Lord's
Supper is sandwiched between predictions of betrayal and
desertion. Why is the Lord's Supper framed
by failure? It's to demonstrate the truth of
Romans 58. But God shows his love for us in
that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
God loves you despite your worst failures.
Jesus died to overcome your worst failures.
Here's the main point of the whole passage.
Only Jesus can overcome all your failures.
Only Jesus can overcome all your failures the key question our
passage answers is how how can Jesus overcome all your failures
.1 he prepares a new family. He prepares a new family.
We see this in verses 12 to 16 looking at a verse 12 and on the
first day of Unleavened bread when they sacrificed the
Passover lamb, His disciples said to him, where will you have
us go and prepare for you to eat the Passover?
Passover was a pilgrimage festival.
Lee read for us the institution of the Passover in Exodus 12,
and also the book of Deuteronomy requires every Jew who is able
to come to Jerusalem, the place the Lord would choose to
celebrate the feast. Now, Passover was a meal with,
among other things, roast lamb to symbolize the Passover lamb
who was slain and whose blood was put on the doorpost of every
Israelite house in Egypt. The lamb for the meal had to be
slaughtered in the temple, and then the meal itself, if you
came for the pilgrimage, had to be consumed within the city
limits of Jerusalem. That's why Jesus and his
disciples have to go out from Bethany, where they've been
staying to find a place in the city where they can eat the
meal. So Jesus and his disciples are
from Galilee. They're from about 160 miles to
the north. They don't have a ready made
place to celebrate the Passover. They'll have to rely on somebody
else's hospitality to provide a place for them.
But not to worry, Jesus has them covered.
We'll give verses 13 to 16 again.
And he sent two of his disciples and said to them, Go into the
city, and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you.
Follow him, and wherever he enters, say to the master of the
house, the teacher says, Where is my guest room, where I may
eat the Passover with my disciples?
And he will show you a large upper room, furnished and ready.
There, prepare for us. And the disciples set out and
went to the city, and found it just as he has had told them,
and they prepared the Passover. Now, it's possible that Jesus
had made some kind of pre arrangement with a disciple of
his who lived in Jerusalem, but if he did, Mark doesn't tell us
anything about it. I think it's far more likely
that this demonstrates Jesus's divine omniscience.
He knows all things. He knows that there's someone
who has a large furnished empty room that's free for the use.
He knows the owner will let them use it.
He knows where that man is now. He knows what he's carrying.
That man is the master of the house, but Jesus instructs his
disciples to address him. Where is my upper room?
It's as if Jesus is the master of the master of the house,
because he is. He's sovereign over all things.
He's making a polite request, but even in the way he does it,
he's indicating his authority. This is a matter of obedience
for this man. What does all this teach us?
While Jesus is relying on this man's hospitality, he's also
sovereign over it. Jesus is providing.
Sorry, this man is providing for Jesus and his disciples, but
Jesus ultimately is the one providing all of it.
Jesus declared what would happen, and it did happen.
His word was fulfilled. Jesus is the one who is
preparing a place for himself to celebrate with his disciples.
What's your guest room situation look like?
When we lived in DC, the house we were in had two guest rooms
side by side with their own bathrooms.
We called it the guest wing. It made it easy to host people
overnight, even on short notice. We could just lay out some
snacks. We had a little laminated sheet
with information. We can set it up in 5 minutes.
Poof. Now here in our house in Chapel
Hill, we actually use all of our bedrooms, so we don't even have
a guest room. So the only way someone can stay
overnight with us is if we put an air mattress on the floor of
my study. Someone has to be a very close
friend of our family for us to offer that to them or for them
try to feel comfortable accepting we don't have the
guest room anymore. Why is Jesus securing a guest
room? What is the purpose?
What is he going to do in that room?
He's preparing a place where he will form his disciples into a
new family. Here's how we see that in the
text. The Passover was a family meal.
It was celebrated family by family, household by household,
just like the Passover lamb was. The blood was spread over every
household. Now the instructions for the
Passover in the Old Testament in Exodus 12 that Lee read to us,
those instructions assume that the head of the household hosts
the meal. There are even explicit
teachings that the head of the household, typically the father
of the family, would lead through at the very end of the
reading. We heard Exodus 12/26/27.
And when your children say to you, what do you mean by this
service? You shall say it is the
sacrifice of the Lord's Passover, For He passed over the
houses of the people of Israel in Egypt when he struck the
Egyptians, but spared our houses.
The Passover was a family meal. Who is Jesus going to celebrate
with? Not his earthly family, but his
disciples. It's a radical departure from
normal 1st century Jewish practice.
It's making a profound statement.
He's showing that these disciples are his family, and
he's in the process of forming them into his family.
In his Last Supper with his disciples, Jesus is going to
transform the Passover meal into the Lord's Supper.
In so doing, He's going to make a new family meal for a new
family. The church is not a family of
families. The church is a family.
These disciples will fail him, but Jesus will ensure that they
are and remain his family. The church is a family of
failures. The church is a family of people
who trust in Jesus to forgive their failures.
The church is a family of people united by the experience of
knowing that Jesus grace and forgiveness are deeper than all
of our worst failures. Just as Jesus prepared a place
for his disciples to feast with him then, so he does for us now.
It's the local church. One of the joys of being in a
church plant is you don't even have to remind people that the
church is a people, not a place. It's obvious this church is not
the gym of Creekside Elementary. The church is the people who
commit to each other to fulfill the Christian life together.
Jesus has prepared a place for us to feast with him.
We experienced that especially in the Lord's Supper.
That's the family meal he's given us, which of course we'll
celebrate right after the sermon.
The same Jesus who hosted his Last Supper with the 12
disciples in that upper room in Jerusalem hosts our family meal
with him here and now. Every time the church celebrates
the Lord's Supper, it's as if we all return together to that
Upper room in Jerusalem. Jesus meets with us.
Jesus hosts us. Jesus proclaims his dying love
for us yet again. A good friend of mine in
Iceland, of all places, pastors a church called Upper Room
Baptist Church. Sweet and fitting name for a
local church. But this isn't the only place
that Jesus prepares for us. He's also gone before us into
his Father's presence to prepare a place for us with Him there
forever. He is right now preparing a
place where we will all celebrate the Messianic banquet
with Him in God's forever Kingdom.
How does Jesus overcome your worst failures?
How can he? It's because He is able and
willing to prepare a new family. He forms a new family around a
new family meal. He prepares a place for us, and
He prepares us to be His people. Here's another key message from
these verses that just couldn't be clearer.
That'll help us transition into the rest of the passage.
Just when it seems like events are going to get the better of
Jesus. Just when it seems like all of
His plans and His efforts are going to fail, Jesus's words and
actions show us that he is fully in charge.
He's sovereign. He's in control.
He goes willingly and readily to his fate at the cross.
None of this will take him by surprise.
His eyes are wide open. He sees and knows more than
anybody else in the whole story. There's no hint of desperation
or futility. He acts with sovereign freedom
and authority. Jesus is not failing.
Instead, He's setting in motion a rescue plan that's been
ordained from all eternity to deliver every single one of his
people from all of their worst failures.
That brings us to point #2 He promises fulfillment and
forgiveness. He promises fulfillment and
forgiveness. We see this in verses 17 to 25.
Look at verses 17 and 18. And when it was evening, he came
with the 12. And as they were reclining at
table and eating, Jesus said, Truly I say to you, one of you
will betray me, one who is eating with me.
Jesus and his disciples are now together in the upper room,
eating their Passover meal. It would have lasted for several
hours, with different scripture readings and Psalms being sung
throughout the meal. But Mark doesn't report all
those details. That's not what he's interested
in. Instead, he focuses on 2 pieces
of teaching that Jesus gave. The 1st is that one of the 12
disciples, someone who's there in the room with him, is going
to betray him. Now here's another instance of
Jesus's divine omniscience, his knowledge of all things.
He knows that he's going to be betrayed.
He knows who's going to do it. But of course his disciples
don't know that, and they don't know who.
Now we're not shocked as readers, because in the last
passage we studied, we learned that Judas decided to betray
him. But we have to remember that
it's natural the disciples would be shocked.
He says one of them will betray him and he leaves the identity a
mystery. Look at verses 19 and 20.
They began to be sorrowful and to say to him one after another,
Is it I? He said to them, it is one of
the 12 one who is dipping bread into the dish with me.
Now, some people think that last saying of Jesus is identifying
Judas as the traitor, as if Judas was the one dipping his
bread into the dish at that very moment.
But I don't think that's what Mark means, particularly because
we see in the next verse, verse 21, if the identity is still
anonymous. He just talks about the one by
whom he's betrayed. But another reason is that I
think Jesus is simply highlighting the treachery of
the betrayal. It's someone who is sharing such
intimate fellowship with Jesus that they're dipping their bread
into the same shared dish. Not only that, but this specific
betrayal fulfills scripture. Psalm 41, Nine.
Even my close friend and whom I trusted, who ate my bread, has
lifted his heel against me. The disciples reaction is
natural. Their question expects a
negative answer. The Greek grammar indicates the
question is kind of like, it's not me, is it?
Now the fact that they ask the question shows that they
mistrust themselves. They have some self doubt, like
could it be me? But the fact that they ask it in
this way shows that they don't think they're capable of such
treachery. In the end, of course, none of
the other 11 disciples did betray Jesus the way that Judas
did. But each of them would fail
Jesus and fail him spectacularly.
So there's a warning here for us.
Paul puts it pointedly in First Corinthians 10/12.
Therefore, let anyone who thinks he stands take heed, lest he
fall. Don't overestimate your
maturity. Don't underestimate how badly
you could fail. Instead, examine your heart
regularly and rely on God's grace every day to keep you
walking faithfully with him. Now even this act of betrayal
was part of God's plan of salvation.
It fulfilled God's eternal plan. It fulfilled the scriptural
promises of how that plan would come about.
Verse 21 Jesus says for 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. This is what I mean when I say
that Jesus here promises fulfilment, not that this will
be a fulfilling fate for Judas, just the opposite in the most
extreme way possible. When Jesus says it would be
better for him if he'd never been born, he's saying that
Judas's punishment will be far worse than death.
He's saying that Judas will be punished everlastingly, and that
will be an aggravated punishment, the heightened
punishment for betraying the Son of God Incarnate.
Judas is responsible for his evil.
God will hold him to account for his evil.
At the same time, Judas's act of betrayal was part of God's
eternal, divinely ordained plan to save his people.
Jesus says for the Son of Man goes as it is written of him,
written where in the Old Testament scriptures.
Here I think Jesus especially has in mind Isaiah 53.
The suffering servant part of that passage opened our service
in verse 21. Here Jesus uses a Greek verb
that means betrayed that also has nuances of being handed
over, delivered over. That same word is used in the
Greek translation of Isaiah 53, the very last verse where the
servants life is handed over, delivered over, betrayed into
death. Verse 8 of Isaiah 53 says by
oppression and judgement he was taken away.
Judas is the one setting that oppression and judgement and
taking away into motion. So Judas's betrayal was
prophetically ordained in Scripture.
God's Providence over that act neither cancels Judas's freedom
nor removes his responsibility. These two things are true at the
same time. 1 is deeper than the other, but they both hold
together. Judas handed over Jesus to the
authorities. God handed Jesus over to death
for our sins. Next, Jesus turns his disciples
attention and ours to what His coming death means.
Why did Jesus die? What did His death accomplish?
That's the focus of verses 22 to 25.
In these verses Jesus selects 2 parts of the Passover meal,
unleavened bread and a cup of wine.
And he gives them a whole new meaning as signs of his coming
death. Start with verses 22 to 24.
And as they were eating, he took bread, and after blessing it,
broke it and gave it to them, and said, take, this is my body.
And he took a cup. And when he had given thanks, he
gave it to them and they all drank of it.
And he said to them, This is my blood of the covenant, which is
poured out for many. When Jesus says that the bread
is his body and the cup of wine is his blood, he is not speaking
literally or physically. Instead, he's saying that these
two elements, bread and wine, are signs of the new covenant
that he is inaugurating through his death.
It's like when God says to Abraham in Genesis 1710, This is
my covenant. Every male among you shall be
circumcised. It's not that circumcision,
strictly speaking, is the covenant.
Instead, it's a sign of the covenant.
It's not that the bread, strictly speaking, is his body.
It's a covenantal sign of what the giving of his body is going
to achieve. So here Jesus identifies the
bread as a sign of his body that's about to be broken on the
cross for his disciples. He identifies the wine as a sign
of the blood he's about to shed in death to redeem all his
people. In 1st century Judaism, to talk
about blood being poured out was a way of speaking about violent
death. The disciples should have been
able to recognize from Jesus's teaching that he was Speaking of
his coming death as the suffering servants.
Not only that, but Jesus speaks specifically of his blood of the
covenant. That phrase exactly echoes
Exodus 24, eight, where God makes a covenant with his people
on Sinai. There were blood.
There was blood from animal sacrifices that was sprinkled
both on the people and on God's altar, symbolizing His presence.
That act of sprinkling blood on both the people and the symbol
of God's presence showed that God was being united to his
people through the blood of a sacrifice.
Jesus's death will now be the blood sacrifice that unites God
to His people forever. It's clear that Jesus is
inaugurating a new covenant. That's why he gives us new
signs. And what are we meant to do with
those signs? We're meant to take them into
ourselves, to take and eat, to take and drink, to show faith in
Christ, to show that you're receiving Christ.
How can Jesus overcome all your failures?
Your worst failures are your sins against God.
And the worst part about them is that they are offensive to God.
They're an affront to God. A true self Perception starts
not only with recognizing that you've failed, it then goes
deeper to recognize those failures are sins.
They're objectively wrong. They're against God's own
character, His goodness. They're out of accord with Him,
which is what makes them wrong. Then the next step of a true
self knowledge, it comes in realizing my biggest problem is
not the way I've heard this friend.
The way I've made a mess in my family, the way I've failed in
at school or in my job. My biggest problem is that I
have made God himself my enemy. My biggest problem, my greatest
failure, is that He deserves everything from me.
And I've given Him the opposite. I've spat in his face.
I've turned away from Him, I now see and am undone by the
consequences of my sin for my relationship to God.
If you know that, if you feel that you are now ready to turn
from sin and trust in Christ, if you understand that's your
deepest problem, then what God did in sending His Son into the
world now makes all kinds of sense.
He came to live a perfect life. He came to teach about the life
God requires from us and the life God provides for us through
Himself. He came to heal.
He came to live. He came to die.
He came to die as a sacrifice. He came to die to bear the
punishment our sins deserve. He came to die to pay the full
price for all of the failures, including the worst failures of
all those who had turned from sin and trust in Him.
And then he rose from the dead to show that death doesn't get
the last word on Him. Death doesn't get the last word
on anyone who trusts in Him. How can Jesus overcome your
greatest failures? It's through his death on the
cross. It's through obtaining
forgiveness is through holding out a now perfectly clean sheet,
a perfect record of righteousness to everyone who
turns from sin and trusts in Him.
The only way to overcome your greatest failures is to let
Jesus do it for you by turning from sin and trusting in Him.
Matthew makes this point of Jesus teaching explicit in his
recounting of the Last Supper. For this is my blood of the
covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of
sins. That forgiveness is perfect,
that forgiveness is complete, that forgiveness is lacking
nothing. Jesus forgiveness wipes away
every failure and it can't be undone.
Jesus forgiveness is the only way to clear your conscience
from the haunting stain of your worst failures.
Jesus forgiveness is the only way to throw off the heavy
burden of your worst failures. Jesus's blood, and only his
blood can do it. What can wash away my sin?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus. So what is the Lord's Supper?
It's the main point of these verses 22 to 25.
What is it? It's a new covenant Passover
meal for God's new covenant people.
Imagine you were an Israelite. You were there in Exodus 12.
You've just escaped from Egypt on the night of that first
Passover. Imagine someone you know
wandering through the wilderness, sees this huge band
of people and says, who are you? What just happened here?
You'd say something like this. I was a slave.
I was under a sentence of death. I took shelter under the blood
of a slain Lamb and God rescued me.
God delivered me along with all his people.
Now God dwells in our midst. Now God himself is with us to
guide us into his promised land where we will dwell with him
forever. If you believe in Jesus, all
that is true of you in an even deeper way.
And if you're a believer in Jesus, you've been baptized into
the fellowship of his people. All that is what you participate
in every time we take the Lord's Supper together.
That is what the Lord's Supper proclaims and holds out to you.
So as we celebrate the Lord's Supper, we look back to Jesus
death as the true and greater Passover lamb of a true and
greater exodus. But we also look forward.
Look at Jesus teaching in verse 25.
Truly I say to you, I will not drink again of the fruit of the
vine until that day when I drink it new in the Kingdom of God.
Here Jesus is telling his disciples that his time with
them is up. He's not going to participate in
normal earthly eating and drinking anymore.
But even though we call this the Last Supper, it will not
actually be his last meal with his disciples.
Instead, Jesus points forward to the meal he will celebrate with
them and us when he returns. Just as we have heard before,
often in reading from Isaiah chapter 25, on the day when God
swallows up death forever, he will hold a feast for all
peoples. That's what Jesus is pointing
forward to with this promise. On that day when Christ returns
and destroys death forever, he will host a feast greater than
anything we can imagine. So the Lord's Supper looks back
to Jesus death. It also looks forward to his
return. In that sense too.
Jesus promises fulfillment. The Lord's Supper looks back to
the fulfillment of God's plan of salvation and it looks forward
to your hearts perfect, everlasting fulfillment in God's
presence in the new creation. There are many genuine believers
who struggle with guilt and conviction that makes them think
they shouldn't take the Lord's Supper.
Now a little bit of preliminary teaching here and this is what
we confessed in our statement of faith earlier.
If you are not a believer in Jesus, you should not take the
Lord's Supper. If you haven't been baptized,
you shouldn't take the Lord's Supper, since baptism is the
front door into the church and the Lord's Supper is the family
meal. Baptism is how you commit to
Christ publicly. The Lord's Supper is how you
regularly renew that commitment. And if you're not in committed
fellowship with the local church, you shouldn't take the
Lord's Supper. The Lord's Supper is a family
meal. It's for those who are committed
to Christ and his people. So like we always say, if you're
a member of this church or another evangelical church where
the same gospel is preached. Now, if you are a believer, if
you have been baptized, if you are committed to his people and
you still struggle with guilt or conviction or shame, that makes
it hard for you to participate in the Lord's Supper.
Here's my counsel for you. The only times you should
abstain from the Lord's Supper are if you are prohibited by the
local church or you are convinced in your conscience
that you are committing sin that you are not repenting of.
I'll say that again. If you're a baptized believer
who's a member of a church, the only times you should abstain
from the Lord's Supper are if you've been removed by that
church as an act of discipline. So actually you're not a member
of that church anymore, not right now.
Or if you're convinced that you're not repenting of sin.
If it's the latter case, you should repent.
And as soon as you repent, partake.
That's one of the reasons we have time for private
confession. There are sins that you might
have become aware of and think, have I really repented of this?
I don't know. Resolve to repent of it then and
there. Resolve to obey God.
Resolve to turn from it. Confess it to the Lord.
There could well be sins where the the business you do with God
in that time of self examination flips from being unrepentant to
repentant. If that's the case and you are
repentant, partake. Calvin put this point
beautifully 500 years ago. He wrote in his treatise on the
Lord's Supper. Although some are more and
others less imperfect, still there is none who does not fail
in many respects. Hence the supper would be not
only useless, but hurtful to all, if it were necessary to
bring a faith or integrity that had no faults.
No, if we were not weak, subject to unbelief, and an imperfect
life, the sacrament would be of no use to us, and it would have
been needless to institute it. For if we offer as an excuse for
not coming to the Supper that we are still weak in faith or
integrity of life, it is as if a man were to excuse himself from
taking medicine because he was sick.
The Lord's Supper is medicine for the sick, not a prize for
the perfect. The Church is a family of
forgiving failures. The Lord's Supper is a meal for
forgiven failures, and it holds out that promise of forgiveness
to us again and again. Don't let your failures keep you
from Christ, whether past failures, present failures, or
failures you fear you will make in the future.
Instead, let your failures drive you to Christ.
And don't let your failures keep you from the Lord's Supper.
Instead, make them drive you to the Lord's Supper.
How can Jesus overcome your greatest failures?
By His death that fulfilled God's plan of salvation and His
death accomplished perfect forgiveness for all who trusts
in Him. One day His death will secure
for us perfect fulfillment in God's presence forever.
Jesus accomplished the forgiveness and even the
restoration of disciples who would deny and forsake Him.
Point #3 He predicts failure and restoration.
He predicts failure and restoration.
That's what we see in verses 26 to 31.
Look at verses 26 and 27. And when they had sung A hymn,
they went out to the Mount of Olives, and Jesus said to them,
You will all fall away, for it is written.
I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.
Here Jesus predicts not betrayal by one, but desertion by all.
When Jesus trial and death come, his disciples are going to leave
him. They're going to abandon him.
They're going to run and hide so they don't have to suffer with
him. This too will fulfill scripture.
Here Jesus quotes Zechariah 13 verse 7.
Similar to Isaiah's suffering servant.
This is another prophecy of a suffering Messiah.
Now what's the striking strike? The shepherd.
It's Jesus being put to death. And when he is, when he needs
his disciples the most, they will run for cover.
They'll all forsake him. Jesus's trial and death will
create a new trial for his disciples.
It will put more pressure on their commitment to Christ than
they've ever had to deal with before.
Brother or sister, be on guard against spiritual presumption.
Be on guard against thinking that because you haven't sinned
or struggled in a certain way that you never could or never
will. Be careful not to think I would
never do that. One reason to guard against that
kind of presumption is that new seasons bring new challenges.
New trials bring new temptations.
Getting married, having a child, losing your job, your health
taking a turn for the worse. Someone close to you suddenly
dying. When God ordains new seasons or
trials for you, you'll struggle in ways you never even thought
about, never given a second thought to.
You will fail in ways you never even thought about until a new
trial smacked you in the face. The disciples have been
remarkably consistent throughout Mark's gospel in failing Jesus.
It's one of the key themes of discipleship throughout Mark's
gospel is how regularly they fail to understand, fail to get
it, fail to do what Jesus would have them do.
But when Jesus death comes, they will fail him worse than ever.
This will be their greatest failure.
But look at verse 28. Just the first word.
This is still Jesus talking. This is very next word.
It's just like the glorious phrase in Ephesians 2.
Four. But God, we were all dead in
sin, children of wrath, but God. Verse 27 The shepherd will be
struck, the sheep will be scattered.
Is that it? Will their failure be permanent?
Are they just done with Jesus? Will their desertion prove to be
a failure that is final and fatal?
No, their failure won't get the last word.
Jesus's resurrection will. Verse 28.
But after I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee.
Jesus will rise from the dead, and he will reunite with his
disciples. They'll come join him in
Galilee. The risen shepherd will regather
his scattered sheep. Judas will betray Jesus to
death, but God will raise him from the dead.
The disciples will forsake him, but he won't forsake them.
The disciples will deny him, but Jesus will restore them.
The disciples will scatter from him.
Jesus will regather them. The disciples desertion won't
get the last word. Jesus restoration will.
The disciples faithlessness won't get the last word, Jesus's
faithfulness will. The disciples failure won't get
the last word. Jesus is all conquering love.
Will this one verse, verse 28, so short, it's easy to miss how
important it is. I kind of missed it when I was
studying the passage early in the week.
It didn't properly jump out of me until part way through my
study. And then I went, wait a minute.
This is just as important as their failure.
This is reversing the whole thing.
He's not just promising failure, He's promising A glorious
restoration. This verse really sets out the
plot for the rest of the gospel after Jesus death and even a
plot that goes beyond what the gospel explicitly tells us.
Mark doesn't narrate every single detail of this happening,
but we know it happened because Jesus said it was going to
happen. How does Jesus overcome his
disciples greatest failures? How can he overcome your
greatest failures? He predicts failure and
restoration, and he restores by the power of his resurrection.
We see one more prediction of failure in verses 29 to 31.
Peter says to him, even though they all fall away, I will not.
And Jesus said to him, truly, I tell you this very night before
the rooster crows twice, you will deny me three times.
But he said emphatically, if I must die with you, I will not
deny you. And they all said the same.
That's Peter for you. Always confident, sometimes
right. Peter didn't know his own heart
as well as Jesus knew Peter's heart.
In this instance, what Jesus knew of Peter was worse than
what Peter knew of Peter. And the other disciples shared
in the same error. They all pledged their dying
allegiance to Jesus. They would prove spectacularly
wrong. They wouldn't show loyalty to
him in death, instead only he would show loyalty to them in
his death. Brothers and sisters, we should
learn from Peter and the other disciples not to be spiritually
self confident. We should learn to be suspicious
of our own hearts. We should beware the treachery
of our own hearts. As the Puritan Thomas Manton
said, the world and the devil may trouble you, but they cannot
hurt you without yourself. No enemy can hurt us so much as
we hurt ourselves. Therefore, if we would take
revenge on them that hate us most, we should begin with our
own hearts. Jesus always knows you better
than you know yourself. Sometimes what He knows about
you is worse than what you know about yourself.
But brothers and sisters, we should take comfort from the
fact that sometimes the opposite is true.
It is possible to be harder on yourself than Jesus is.
It is possible to be wrong about yourself by being too severe on
yourself. If that sounds like too good to
be true, let me prove it to you from Scripture first.
John 319 and 20. By this we shall know that we
are of the truth and reassure our heart before Him, for
whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart
and He knows everything. What First John is saying is
that sometimes your conscience keeps assaulting you for a sin
that really is a sin, but the God is forgiven.
Sometimes even your conscience assaults you for something that
you think is worse than it actually is.
You think you're worse off spiritually and morally than you
actually are. First, John is saying that God
knows better than you, and sometimes what he knows is
better than what you know. In every case, no matter what
you know or don't know, God's grace can overcome all your
failures. Jesus's forgiveness is
sufficient to wipe out the record of all your failures.
Peter himself offers us proof of this.
Peter's threefold denial is singled out in the gospel,
probably because Mark is taking down Peter's own testimony.
Peter comes out worse than any other disciple.
But just as with all the disciples, Peter's personal
failure isn't the end of his story.
Peter is spectacularly wrong about himself, and Peter fails
Jesus spectacularly. But Jesus gets the last word.
Mark 16 testifies to Jesus resurrection, which we've just
seen Jesus predicting again in verse 28.
Mark 16-7 pairs with verse 28 of our passage.
It's the second to last verse of the Gospel.
An Angel tells the women who witnessed the empty tomb a
message from Jesus that they are to pass on to the disciples.
Mark 16/7. But go tell his disciples and
Peter that he is going before you to Galilee.
There you will see him just as he told you.
Peter sinned extra, and Peter got an extra word of assurance
and comfort and restoration. To paraphrase the line from a
trip lead track, when have you ever heard a story about a hero
dying for the villain? When have you ever heard a story
about the God of the universe dying for a bunch of failures?
When have you ever heard a story about love stronger than death
and grace stronger than the worst things you've ever done?
If you trust in Christ, no failure of yours will ever be
final or fatal. No past failure dictates who you
are or what you can become. No failure, past, present, or
future determines your future. The same Jesus who restored
Peter holds out his all, conquering forgiveness to you,
the blood of Jesus. That is enough to pay for
Peter's sin of denying Jesus is enough to pay for all your sins.
What can separate you from God's love in Christ?
Not tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or
nakedness or danger or sword or failure.
Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you
for your plan of salvation that is all powerful through the
blood of Christ. To overcome our worst failures,
we pray in Jesus name, Amen.