Mark 14:32-42
Among the most difficult discussions that I have ever had as a pastor are those that take place when I have met with a believer who has lost a loved one to death who probably was not a Christian. I will never forget one of my first experiences like that. It was with a new church member who had lost her husband prematurely and unexpectedly. I was 20-something years old at the time. Through tears, the young widow said to me, “Pastor Greg, I don’t think he believed in Jesus. So, I don’t think he’s with God. How can heaven ever be heaven for me if he is eternally separated from God and from me?”
Although I can talk about the theology of why God punishes sin and why there is a heaven and hell, I want you to know that I have few pat answers for the very personal side of such agonizing questions. However, I have spoken with enough of you about similar situations here at LAC that you know how I approach these matters in my personal life as well as in my pastoral counsel. I usually say that after 55+ years of following Jesus, I have become increasingly convinced that God will always be faithful to who he is. And here are two essential attributes of who God is: 1) he is just and 2) he is love. God is just: He will not allow evil to go unpunished. What an unjust world this would be – even more, what a horrific universe it would be -- if evil were allow to go unpunished. God is just and will punish evil.
At the same time, God is love. God loves those loved ones who die far more than any human being ever could. Throughout eternity, we all can be assured that God never deals unlovingly with any person. So, count on it: God will be faithful to who he is – and God is both just and loving. What we don’t know exactly is how he will be both of these things with regard to particular individuals. But, we who trust Jesus can be at peace with such questions because we trust God. As Rom 3:3-4 puts it: “What if people are unfaithful? Does their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God? By no means! Although people will prove to be liars, God will always prove to be true!” Do you see it? – the fact that God is faithful offers us hope and can provide peace even when we don’t fully understand how prove to be both just and loving to sinners.
And the God who is faithful calls us as his children to be faithful people. When you meet a faithful person, you meet someone you can count on – someone who will carry through with his promises. With that in mind, one thing that God promises to do in us through his Spirit is to make us faithful. The fruit of God’s Spirit is faithfulness. Do you long for that? If so, let’s see what God’s Word says about faithfulness.
A Definition: What Faithfulness Is
The idea of faithfulness in the times of the Bible is largely the same as it is in ours. But, one distinctive part of faithfulness in the Bible is that it is closely tied to the Hebrew notion of integrity, which is when a person is the same on the inside as he is on the outside. Faithfulness is having our commitments made in the past being the same as our actions in the present. The faithful person can be counted on to keep his word.
So, faithfulness both in our culture as well as in the Bible’s is the way of life of a person who keeps commitments. It has to do both with being consistent in who you are (as God is) and in what you do (as God does). Faithfulness is integrity applied to relationships.
The faithful person will be loyal to friends, will keep his word and will fulfill his obligations. As I speak, I imagine you are thinking of a faithful person you know. It’s a person who is the same in private as in public – the same at home as at church. The same with his pastor as with his business associates. Some are saying in our society that there is a particular challenge in finding someone who is faithful because, on social media, you find people creating all sorts of false selves, i.e., trying to have people think we’re one way when we know we’re not. But we all long for a faithful friend, don’t we. We need people we can trust to be faithful to us. And we need to become those kinds of people.
Faithfulness in the Bible is often tied to making a promise and then keeping it. Lewis Smedes has written about how this quality sets us apart of human beings made in God’s image in his Mere Morality:
“When I make a promise, I bear witness that my future with you is not locked by the hand I was dealt out of my family’s genetic deck. When I make a promise, I testify that I was not routed along some unalterable itinerary by the psychic conditioning visited on me by my slightly wacky parents. When I make a promise, I declare that my future with people who depend on me is not predetermined by the mixed-up culture of my tender years. I am not fated, I am not determined… When I make a promise to anyone, I have the capacity to rise above all the conditioning that limits me. No German Shepherd ever promised to be there with me. No home computer ever promised to be a loyal help…Only a person can make (and then keep) a promise. And when he does, he is most free.”
Smedes is saying that making a promise and then carrying through with it is very humanizing. A fair weathered friend can be counted on in good times or when it’s convenient -- but not at all times. But a faithful person can be counted on in joy or in sorrow, in sickness and in health, today and tomorrow. That’s what we read about when Jesus is declared to be “the same yesterday, today and forever (Heb. 13:8).” Jesus is faithful -- and what His Spirit promises to produce in you is the fruit of faithfulness.
A Contrast: What Faithfulness Doesn’t and Does Look Like (Mark 14)
I want you to envision being at the Garden of Gethsemane on the evening Jesus was arrested. Jesus knew what was just ahead of him so the Bible tells us he was “deeply distressed and troubled” (14:33). I’m sure all of us have had times in our lives when we have felt a bit of this. You might be going through one now. Jesus called his three closest friends – Peter, James and John – to go with him. Like most of us, in times of great sorrow, just before a weighty task must be undertaken, Jesus did not want to be alone but needed the support of faithful friends. He only asked them to keep watch – and eventually to pray – as he walked a few steps away to speak to his Father. It’s clear from the narrative that they agreed. What happened?
The Disciples: What Faithfulness Doesn’t look Like
The three close disciples – had agreed to watch and to join Jesus in prayer. But, three times, they couldn’t carry through. They were unfaithful to their friend. In v.40, after their second failure, it’s evident they were ashamed of their unfaithfulness. But, within minutes they were unfaithful again!
Jesus’ words to the disciples in v.38 help me to understand a lot about faithlessness: “The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.” He’s saying that there saw there was something split apart in their human make-up. We’ve all experienced this kind of splitting apart in our lives. At one moment, we fully want to do something – but at the next moment the desire we once had and promised is split from what we actually do. It’s clear that the disciples’ were flawed human beings. They could not do what they had promised to do.
All week long, I’ve been wrestling with what it is about us that makes us want to do one thing – even promise people, promise ourselves and even promise God that we will do that thing – and then fail to carry through. What leads to unfaithfulness? I got some good responses about this question on social media:
- Self-centeredness – “We focus on ourselves and only on what we want in this present moment (Audrey Durden).” We get a better offer and we go for it instead of keeping our word.
- Unrealistic expectations – “People perceive that trust is violated and then walk away from commitments – even from God – completely (Carol Koenig).” These disciples had bound their hopes and dreams on Jesus being the one who would deliver them and give them success. But, in spite of the fact that he had repeatedly said that is not why he came, they still held on to those expectations. Unfulfilled expectations often become the excuse we make for not carrying through with our commitments. We think, “That person let me down so why should I do otherwise.”
- Impatience – “gets in the way of our being faithful (David Packer).” These disciples had waited so long and had given up so much. After three years, their leader seemed to have lost control of things, including his own destiny. How could they follow that kind of person anymore?
- Temptation – “Many forms exist. Food, diet, relationships with the opposite sex (Bill Zeiger).” Jesus was surely getting at a lot of this when he said our flesh is weak. How many promises have we made to stay away from sin of many kinds – only to be unfaithful when temptation comes. How did Paul put it in Rom 7:15? “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.”
So, when Jesus personally knew that the time at hand when he would go through the unimaginable weight and pain of what he would call “the cup”, i.e., bearing the punishment for the world’s sins he needed people to stand with him, to pray with him. Those closest to him said, “We’ll watch with you.”. But they did not carry through. They said yes but when Jesus wasn’t looking, they were unfaithful.
This was the disciples -- and this is us, isn’t it? This is us! We say, “This is what I’ll do” but then we don’t do it. Why? Pressures make us unfaithful. Temptations lead us to be unfaithful. Tiredness gives us an excuse to be faithful. Better offers make us unfaithful. A faithful person is supposed to be like a rock in the midst of waves that come to our friends and loved ones. That’s what Jesus asked the disciples to be. But, when the waves came, they went to sleep.
Jesus: What Faithfulness Looks Like
I simply want you to see that if the disciples felt all kinds of pressure to split apart and to be unfaithful, Jesus felt infinitely greater pressure. The description from vv.33ff of how Jesus felt in the moments before he would bear the wrath necessary to atone for the sin of the world is moving. He felt overwhelmed and crushed by what was ahead of him. He had never been without the presence of the One he called “Abba” but he knows he soon will be. Jesus would soon bear the punishment for all the sins of the world. As he would bear it, he would be absolutely alone.
But Jesus knew that he had made a commitment to his Father to die for sinful people whom God loves in spite of their sin. Jesus had made a commitment to us too -- for Jesus loves us in spite of our sin. When all the pressures came to escape those commitments, how did Jesus respond? He prayed, “Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me. But your will be done – not mine.” Jesus did not have his commitments and his actions split apart. He stayed on course.
Here’s the point I want you to see: When Jesus returned to see these sinful disciples he would soon have to die for, what did he see? They were unfaithful again. He would have to drink the cup of wrath for them but -- they were asleep. Would Jesus say, “I’m not going to suffer for such people!”?
Jonathan Edwards, 18th C pastor and president of Princeton University, reflected on this in his sermon Christ’s Agony: “Why should I, who have been living from all eternity in the enjoyment of the Father's love, go to cast myself into such a furnace for them that never can repay me for it? Why should I yield myself to be thus crushed by the weight of divine wrath, for them who have no love to me, and are my enemies? Why should I bear the eternal weight of punishment for those who cannot wait one hour with me?”
But Jesus didn’t say anything like that. He remained faithful to his Father and to us? Why? Because he will always be who he is. Jesus is faithful. Jesus is faithful to us when we are unfaithful. Faithfulness is at the center of who God is and who Jesus the Son is. So, even though the disciples were unfaithful, Jesus was ready to be faithful to die for their sins. Have you read 2 Tim 2:13? “If we are disloyal, he will stay faithful because he cannot be anything else than what he is.”
And, let me remind you, as I so often do, that you are made in God’s image. You were made to be a faithful person – to be a person others can count on, to be a person who can make a promise of fidelity and keep it. But sin has gotten in the way so that each of us has turned to our own way and become unfaithful over and over and over. But God is ready and able to change that. I declare to you today that one sure thing the Spirit of God will sync into your life is faithfulness. The fruit of the Spirit is faithfulness.
An Essential: Where Faithfulness Begins
Think for a moment about faithful people in your life. Can you think of any? I think of:
- Friends who left their business or their new university position behind when our daughter was dying.
- Brothers in Christ who called me, prayed with me, and counseled me when I was facing a racial crisis on the campus I presided over – and I didn’t know what to do. They wouldn’t leave me to be alone.
- Christian friends who wrote us, texted us, and even dropped everything to be with us when my father died this past year. I needed the support.
- A wife who has kept her vow to me to be faithful “for better or for worse” for over 38 years even though I am… me!
I want to continue to grow to be faithful. Do you? It doesn’t come naturally to us. Remember what the Apostle Paul said in Rom 7:18-19 -- “I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.”
But here is our great hope: Jesus gives us his Spirit so that we can begin to do what we cannot do in our own strength. And in the midst of his three closest disciples being unfaithful to him in Mark 14:31, Jesus gives one insight-filled phrase that will open up our hearts to the work of his Spirit in us:
“Look to the Cross” – in 14:31, Jesus profoundly says, “Look” or “Take time to see…” He was referring to what would be started when he would be betrayed. Jesus knew he must die for them if they were to have any hope. He wanted them to know this death was intentional. The betrayal and death was an act of faithful love for them – and for us! So, in a moment, I will tell you to look at what happened on the cross. Jesus instituted “communion services for his church” so that we will continue to do this until he returns. Without looking to the cross, we will continue to be self-centered and fail to depend on his grace.
Jesus was faithful to you. One major thing that is different about the Christian faith is that it is not about us earning our way to God. No, we always respond to what God did for us. When you’re confused or under pressure or feeling tempted to be unfaithful to your promises, look to the cross. In view of God’s mercy for you, offer yourself afresh to him.
It takes the Spirit of God living within to transform self-directed, pleasure-obsessed individuals like us into people who will be faithful to others as God is faithful to us. We cannot produce the fruit of faithfulness on our own. But what we cannot do, God's Spirit can -- and will. What he will do is help you to grow in faithfulness – for the fruit of the Spirit is faithfulness.
As you get ready to receive the elements of communion, I leave you with the testimony of our church member Lisa Liou that is published on the blog of Intervarsity Christian Fellowship:
I’ve come to realize that, though I would like to be successful in every area of my life, if I were really forced to choose, I’d rather be faithful. I would like to say at the end of my life that I have been a faithful spouse and faithful mother, faithful to the work I have been given, to the relationships in my life, to my neighbors, to the poor, and, ultimately, to my relationship with Jesus.