Christ Jesus and His disciples had just spent a memorable evening together. First, the Lord washed the disciples’ feet, teaching a lesson about the difference between being eternally, and thoroughly cleansed by the blood of the Lamb of God, and being forgiven for daily transgressions. Then the meal began, after which, the more specific “Lord’s Supper” was instituted. At some point Jesus pointed out that one of their group would betray Him. Several of the shocked disciples began asking Him whether or not they would be the traitor. Then Judas left and went out to meet with the priests to make plans and to collect his reward. When the Lord’s Supper was finished, the group sang a hymn and went out into the night. Most likely, it was as they walked along that Jesus gave the disciples the warm and wonderful words of John chapters 14-16.
This was the Passover season, and the city of Jerusalem was filled with pilgrims from around the world. As had often been the case, once again in Jesus’ life there was no room at the inn. So the group went out the northeast gate of the city and crossed the Brook Kidron. They then headed east over the Mount of Olives and up the road toward Bethany. Like hundreds of others, Jesus’ little band had made plans to spend the night under the stars. They went into a little garden called “Gethsemane,” where they split up to pray and eventually sleep. Judas, as one of the disciples, knew where Christ was planning to spend the night, and for forty pieces of silver, he informed the enemy where they might take Him without causing an uproar.
That brings us up to our scripture text for this morning. All four gospels tell us about Christ’s arrest, and of course they all agree as far as they go. But there is one aspect of the betrayal which John wasn’t led by the Spirit to share, so we turn to the others. It appears to me that between verses 3 and 4, Judas walked up to Jesus, grabbed his shoulders and kissed Him, probably on both cheeks. Mark 14:4 tells us, “He that betrayed (Christ) had given them a token, saying, Whomsoever I shall kiss, that same is he; take him, and lead him away safely.” After the kiss, Jesus looked over Judas’ shoulder toward the mob and asked, “Whom seek ye?”
John tells us that Judas had received a band of men and officers from the chief priests and Pharisees. Luke uses the word “multitude,” but Mark and Matthew add the word “great” – a “great multitude.” I picture a mob of at least 20 to 30 people coming for the Lord, but there may have even been more. There were temple guards along with common citizens, carrying “lanterns, torches and weapons.” Some where carrying lanterns, and others had torches on poles, illuminating the garden. And they had weapons including swords and staves – wooden sticks for bashing heads – shillalahs, cudgels. Peter had every reason, naturally speaking, to be concerned for Jesus’ safety – and his own.
Now, for the sake of our lesson, let’s forget that we usually consider ourselves to be among Jesus’ disciples. Let’s say that you will be a disciple some day, but you aren’t there yet. For the sake of this message, I want you to picture yourself among the mob with a stave in your hand. From where you are today, looking back on your life, there may have been years when you were watching others kissing the Saviour, while your heart was cold and antagonistic toward Him. For months, or years, you came to the garden, attending church, hearing Jesus’ voice, but you either didn’t care, or you actually hated the Son of God. My subject this morning is the hard heartedness of the mob – its inconsistency and lunacy. My subject is their “mob mentality.” Hard-heartedness toward Christ is groundless, sightless, thoughtless and disastrous.
To be as cold and hard against the Lord Jesus Christ, as this mob, is utterly GROUNDLESS.
At least it is groundless on one level. For three and a half years Jesus had been proving Himself to be the promised Messiah of Israel. Matthew quotes Isaiah describing Jesus’ behavior adding – “That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, Behold my servant, whom I have chosen; my beloved, in whom my soul is well pleased: I will put my spirit upon him, and he shall shew judgment to the Gentiles. He shall not strive, nor cry; neither shall any man hear his voice in the streets. A bruised reed shall he not break, and smoking flax shall he not quench, till he send forth judgment unto victory.”
There was absolutely no external reason for anyone to hate Jesus, except for the fact those people who were entrenched in their sins. Christ healed people: He raised the dead; He fed people; He forgave sinners who were repentant. And He asked for nothing in return, except for the people He blessed to go on praising and serving God. Yes, He abased the proud, but He lifted up the humble. He wasn’t a political threat, and He did nothing to anger the Romans. He loved His own nation, but He naturally censured her corrupt leadership. There were no grounds for anyone’s heart to be hard and cold, or filled with hatred, against the Lord Jesus.
But there is one other thing. The natural heart – the soul with which we come into this world – is naturally antagonistic to the Holy God. The Lord Jesus could have been speaking to any crowd anywhere when He said to the Jews, “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do…” Because of the sin our earliest ancestor, we all come into this world spiritually dead. Our spiritual hearts are like stones – adamantly opposed to the Lord our Creator and King. This mob which came to arrest Christ arrived with hearts harder than granite. It didn’t matter how good, or righteous, the Lord was, they came with swords and staves based on other grounds – the ground of their own wicked hearts.
The hardness of their hearts was groundless, and it was THOUGHTLESS.
Could any of these people follow a simple line of logic? Could they see that if one thing was true then other things must also be true? Were there any who could do the math? One plus one equals two?
Nicodemas, one of the rulers of the Jews, was an exception to the wicked rule of those rulers. He was not one of the mob who came to take Christ that night. Probably, he was not there because he had come to the Lord much earlier. “The same came to Jesus by night, and said unto him, Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him.” At that point, Nicodemus didn’t understand that Jesus was God the Son. But he was right in regard to those miracles which Jesus did. And he was smart enough – and blessed of God sufficiently – to connect the dots.
Jesus may have performed hundreds of miracles during His short ministry. There were healing miracles – lepers, blind and paralyzed people – fevers, bleeding disorders and so on. There were miracles of a more temporal nature – food, water into wine, calming storms, even cursing unfruitful fig trees. There was raising Jairus’ daughter, the widow’s son and Lazarus from death. Some of His miracles were open to the public, but some were private, like money in the mouth of a fish. Who else had been doing these things lately? Those men in the mob refused to think about these things, because their hearts were hardened toward Him.
Near the end of the Gospel of John we read, “And many OTHER signs truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book: but these are written that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of god, and that believing ye might have life through his name.” The “signs” to which John refers were the Lord’s miracles. Those miracles, when blessed by the Holy Spirit, were designed to take softened hearts to faith in Christ. Unfortunately, hard hearts are thoughtless, unreasoning stones. It doesn’t matter how great the miracle, or how personally someone is touched, miracles alone do not melt hard hearts or save sin-filled souls. “If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.”
That mob which came to arrest Christ, had not considered what the Lord had been doing before their eyes because their hearts were determined NOT to make that consideration.
And speaking of eyes, hard hearts are blind; they are absolutely SIGHTLESS.
I don’t know how you feel about it, but in one way this arrest of Christ makes me chuckle. After hard-hearted Judas kissed the Saviour, the Lord looked toward the mob, asking, “Whom seek ye?” He knew exactly Whom they were seeking, but He asked the question anyway – twice. Perhaps it was to create an avenue for the disciples to make their escape. “They answered him, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus saith unto them, I am he.” “If therefore ye seek me, let these go their way.”
Then, “as soon then as he said unto them, I am he, they went backward, and fell to the ground.” Some think only the people closest to Christ fell over, but the Bible doesn’t make that distinction. I think that everyone of them were knocked backward. But what knocked them all down? Does the Bible say there was a huge gust of wind that rushed past its Creator pushing the men down? Was there a blast of thunder, and the sound wave knocked them over? Was there an earthquake which toppled people and trees alike? You can think what you like, but I think that it was just the will of Christ. I don’t read of the Lord using any special means to make them fall. It was simply His will. When the Son of God says “kneel,” we kneel. When Christ says “prostrate yourselves before me,” we fall on our faces. And when it is His will that we fall over backward, His thought is our command.
What is funny to me about all this is that these hard-hearted people couldn’t see God’s power even when it was in their faces and knocking their legs out from under them. I wonder if Judas was also knocked down? The Bible doesn’t say. But whoever they were, they immediately jumped back to their feet, retaking their menacing stance. How many lost their weapons and dropped their torches and lanterns? It must embarrassed some of them to have to bend back over or scramble around to find them again. But more importantly, how many decided right there and then that they had been on a fools errand? How many left for home when their eyes saw first hand the power of the infinite Son of God? We aren’t told that there was even one who left – proving, once again, the stubbornness of the hard heart.
I’ve give this message the title: “Mob Mentality.” By definition “mob mentality” is psychological phenomenon where individuals within a group somehow become united in their behavior, emotions, and beliefs. By definition those individuals substitute their personal judgment for group conformity. And that leads to impulsive, irrational, or even destructive behaviur they wouldn’t typically do alone. They are usually driven by a desire to belong to the group or they fear being ostracized by the group. These people were a mob and they collectively possessed a “mob mentality.” In this case the mob was going to attack and arrest Christ, no matter what their eyes might have beheld.
How many times in your life did you come to church, hearing the voice of the Lord in some message? Did you ever see the Lord heal some sin-sick soul? Were you ever knocked to the ground by a Bible verse – perhaps not even the one the preacher was highlighting? But you immediately jumped to your feet again, with anger at yourself for falling over? Somehow you had accepted the common idea that this kind of religion is a waste of time. You and I have been in the mob, and perhaps for years we were infected with their mob mentality.
Standing nearby and watching all of this was disciple Peter. Knowing the atmosphere in Jerusalem at the time, and realizing the danger Jesus was in… Forgetting that the Lord had often told the disciples that He was willingly walking into that danger… And ignoring the fact that Jesus had said, “He must go to Jerusalem,” and He must die… Ignoring what he had been taught, Peter had earlier procured a sword. Maybe he picked it up at a pawn shop. Maybe it was a black market sword. Even after seeing that Christ was fully in charge over every aspect of the evening… He pulled his sword out and swung it as hard as he could at the nearest mobster, cutting off the man’s ear. Or was he swinging at Judas who ducked and the blade hit Malchus? Probably not, but who knows. The man’s right each was chopped right off, and immediately there was a significant amount of blood. I am told that there is a major artery running past the ear – the posterior auricular artery. People can quickly bleed to death if one of their ears is cut off. Did Malchus deserve to have his ear amputated? It might be argued that he deserved much more. But the gracious Saviour, the Creator of ears and the restorer of lives, immediately reattached the ear and stanched the blood.
But did Malchus even thank the Lord? Did he turn on his heels, telling his neighbor that he repented of all this wickedness? Since we aren’t told anything more, I’m going to assume he pushed forward in his wickedness despite the miracle which had blessed him. Hard hearts are groundless, thoughtless and sightless lumps of stone.
But hard hearts are also DISASTROUS things to carry around.
Perhaps we know that we shouldn’t go swimming with lead weights in our pockets. And bungee-jumping with backpacks full of books is not a good idea. Despite the lunacy, we all walk a tightrope over hell, with an enormous lead weight in our soul, until such time that the Lord graciously removes it.
When Paul was laying out the reasons that we need the Lord Jesus Christ, the Saviour, he said in Romans 2: “Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man.” Malchus had been knocked to the ground by the power of God. And he had his ear chopped off, and blood was gushing out the side of his head, but Jesus reattached it. And still Malchus, with all the rest of his mob, moved forward in their arrest of the Saviour. “Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man.” “Despisest thou the riches of (God’s) goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance? But after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God; who will render to every man according to his works.” “After thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thyself wrath.”
A hard heart is more dangerous and disastrous than any cancer. We are constantly being told to fear cancer, get blood tests for cancer, screen for cancer. But if a semi-truck hits your car and sends your hard heart lost into eternity, you’re still dead – for eternity. So Paul and other Bible penmen warn “Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God. But exhort one another daily while it is called to day; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin” – Hebrews 3. Jeremiah reminds us, “the heart is deceitful and desperately wicked, who can know it?” That cold and unresponsive heart of yours may be saying, “Go ahead and crucify the Saviour.” It could be saying, “Look at how many of your neighbors are here with their torches and lanterns, swords and staves.” “Crucify Him, Crucify Him. We will not have this man to rule over us.” Beware of the hardened heart.
Is there anything which can soften these hard hearts? Were there any in this mob of Israel whose hearts were eventually melted? I don’t know for sure, but there are scriptures which give me hope. Ezekiel 36 uses language about the nation of Israel which can be applied to individuals, even to Gentiles. Please turn to Ezekiel 36:21 – “I had pity for mine holy name, which the house of Israel had profaned among the heathen, whither they went. Therefore say unto the house of Israel, Thus saith the Lord GOD; I do not this for your sakes, O house of Israel, but for mine holy name’s sake, which ye have profaned among the heathen, whither ye went. And I will sanctify my great name, which was profaned among the heathen, which ye have profaned in the midst of them; and the heathen shall know that I am the LORD, saith the Lord GOD, when I shall be sanctified in you before their eyes. For I will take you from among the heathen, and gather you out of all countries, and will bring you into your own land. Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you. A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them.”
If you still possess a heart that is hard toward God… If you still refuse to relinquish what you think to be your will to the Lord, but which is really just part of the mob mentality. If you look at Christ’s miracles, and especially the salvation of people around you, and you have been struck by the Biblical truth… Then I implore you to turn over and crawl if necessary to the feet of the Saviour. Those feet have now been scared by the nails which Held him to the cross. But He still stands, and He stands willing to forgive those who come to Him in repentance and faith. He will take your heart of stone and He can give you a supple and willing heart. Won’t you repent of your sin and put your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ?