Well we’re back in the gospel of Luke again tonight in chapter 22. We’re making our way to the conclusion of this gospel. You can find that on page 881 in your pew Bibles. Luke chapter 22.
When it comes to Darth Vader quotes, you know some of the classics like, “I will tolerate your weakness no longer,” or, “You don’t know the power of the dark side,” or of course, “I am your father.” But some people think that the most famous Darth Vader line is, “I find your lack of faith disturbing.” That’s the one that Tim Keller used at the beginning of his 2008 bestselling book, The Reason for God: Belief in the Age of Skepticism. And that quote does capture so much of the age of skepticism and what we find in the decline in church attendance around our country and the rise of those with no religious preferences. But doesn’t it also strike a chord in our own hearts as well? Like when we struggle with doubt or when we wrestle with assurance? Or maybe our own failures, our sin, say a lot about the weakness of our faith. All too often, we find our own lack of faith disturbing.
I read in a Tabletalk devotional that began this way. “The most fundamental battle in which every Christian must daily engage is the fight to believe.” The fight to believe. And when our faith is lacking, our hope suffers. We’ve seen some of that in the last chapters at the conclusion of the gospel of Luke. Some of the things about misplaced hopes and the uncertainties about tomorrow – there’s fear, there’s deception, there’s worldliness. We find that people will fail us and the whole creation around us is unpredictable. But so are we. And we fail ourselves. We’re fickle. Our faith is fragile. We forget. We fight. We backslide. We turn away from Christ. When we think about our own faith, it might not fill us with a lot of confidence. But then there’s Jesus, and Jesus is the object of our faith. He will not allow our faith to fail. He is able to keep us from stumbling and to present us blameless before the presence of His glory with great joy. What’s that? That’s hope. That’s hope. And that’s what we’re going to look at tonight in light of faltering faith. Our outline will be this. Number one, a focus on faith. And then secondly, the focus of faith. A focus on faith and then the focus of faith.
Before we read God’s Word, let’s pray and ask Him for His help. Let’s pray.
Father, we need Your help tonight. We approach Your Word confessing that our own faith is weak. We may in fact struggle to believe and we need Your help. We thank You that our faith is a gift from You and that the Holy Spirit works it in our hearts. And so we ask for the Holy Spirit even now to work in our hearts, to give us ears to hear. Speak, Lord, for Your servants listen. We pray this in Jesus’ name, amen.
Luke chapter 22, starting in verse 1:
“Now the Feast of Unleavened Bread drew near, which is called the Passover. And the chief priests and the scribes were seeking how to put him to death, for they feared the people.
Then Satan entered into Judas called Iscariot, who was of the number of the twelve. He went away and conferred with the chief priests and officers how he might betray him to them. And they were glad, and agreed to give him money. So he consented and sought an opportunity to betray him to them in the absence of a crowd.
Then came the day of Unleavened Bread, on which the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed. So Jesus sent Peter and John, saying, ‘Go and prepare the Passover for us, that we may eat it.’ They said to him, ‘Where will you have us prepare it?’ He said to them, ‘Behold, when you have entered the city, a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him into the house that he enters and tell the master of the house, ‘The Teacher says to you, Where is the guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?’ And he will show you a large upper room furnished; prepare it there.’ And they went and found it just as he had told them, and they prepared the Passover.
And when the hour came, he reclined at table, and the apostles with him. And he said to them, ‘I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I tell you I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.’ And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he said, ‘Take this, and divide it among yourselves. For I tell you that from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.’ And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, ‘This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood. But behold, the hand of him who betrays me is with me on the table. For the Son of Man goes as it has been determined, but woe to that man by whom he is betrayed!’ And they began to question one another, which of them it could be who was going to do this.
A dispute also arose among them, as to which of them was to be regarded as the greatest. And he said to them, ‘The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and those in authority over them are called benefactors. But not so with you. Rather, let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves. For who is the greater, one who reclines at table or one who serves? Is it not the one who reclines at table? But I am among you as the one who serves.
You are those who have stayed with me in my trials, and I assign to you, as my Father assigned to me, a kingdom, that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.
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. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.’ Peter said to him, ‘Lord, I am ready to go with you both to prison and to death.’ Jesus said, ‘I tell you, Peter, the rooster will not crow this day, until you deny three times that you know me.’
And he said to them, ‘When I sent you out with no moneybag or knapsack or sandals, did you lack anything?’ They said, ‘Nothing.’ He said to them, ‘But now let the one who has a moneybag take it, and likewise a knapsack. And let the one who has no sword sell his cloak and buy one. For I tell you that this Scripture must be fulfilled in me: ‘And he was numbered with the transgressors.’ For what is written about me has its fulfillment.’ And they said, ‘Look, Lord, here are two swords.’ And he said to them, ‘It is enough.’”
The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the Word of our God endures forever.
A Focus on Faith
This is different, isn’t it? Jesus has faced opposition before. He’s faced opposition from the Pharisees, from the scribes and the chief priests, but this time the opposition is coming from His own disciples. It’s coming from Peter and it’s coming from Judas. They were the ones who have been with Him. They left their homes to follow Jesus. They’ve listened to His teaching. They’ve seen all the great things that He has done and they have spent close moments of table fellowship with Jesus like the one that we see them enjoying here in this passage. Jesus says in verse 15, “I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover meal.” That phrase, “earnestly desired,” in the Greek is “epithumia epethumēsa.” It’s the same word twice; it’s repeated twice for emphasis. It’s like in the Old Testament when we read things, verses that say things like, “I will surely have mercy on you,” or “He shall surely live.” Those verses literally say, “I will with mercy have mercy,” or, “Living he shall live.” It’s a Hebrew grammatical device called an infinitive absolute. And what Jesus is saying here is that He has a strong desire to eat this meal with His disciples. In fact, the King James Version actually picks it up quite well. The King James Version says, “With desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you.” He strongly desires to do this.
It’s because these are His brothers, these are His closest friends; these are His disciples. And they’re about to turn on Him. Judas is going to collaborate with the chief priests and the officers in order to betray Jesus in the absence of a crowd. And Peter, despite his objections to the contrary, he is going to deny three times that he even knew who Jesus was, and all of that before the night was over. This is faith in the crosshairs. And what we read in these verses are as chilling and as sobering as anything we could ever read. Verse 3 says, “Then Satan entered into Judas.” Verse 31, “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you that he might sift you like wheat.” I’m not sure that we even know what to do and to make of those verses. We can say, we can explain it the best that we can – that there is an enemy of our souls that seeks to destroy us, and while that is true, we are each responsible for our own sinful desires and for the hardness of our own hearts, and at the same time, Satan cannot do anything to harm the people of God beyond anything that God allows. There’s mystery. There’s mystery in those verses.
What we can say is that Jesus here in this passage is facing opposition from His own disciples and the disciples are, in a sense, facing opposition from within their own hearts. They are experiencing a crisis of faith. On the one hand we will see that one of them, the whole time, has had a counterfeit faith, but on the other hand there is one whose faith is authentic and who will stand up to the trial that he goes through and puts Jesus through. And in fact, we find in the last verses of this passage that we read that the things are only going to be getting harder for Jesus’ disciples. And you notice where He tells them to take a moneybag and a knapsack and to get a sword. He’s indicating, He’s using it seems to be metaphorical language to say that what’s coming is going to be difficult and you need to be prepared for what is coming ahead of you. And it seems like they don’t really understand it. They say, “Here are two swords. Is this enough?” And Jesus says, “Enough,” as in, “That is enough of this,” and they carry on in the night. These are the challenges that are on the horizon for Jesus and His disciples.
Challenges to Our Faith: Forgetfulness
Now what would we say are some of the biggest challenges to our own faith? There’s plenty of them, aren’t there? There’s prosperity and then there’s hardship. There are our sinful desires and our ongoing, repeated failures. And then there’s the incredibleness of the message about Jesus that He is both God and Man in one person, raised from the dead, the only way to salvation. There are plenty of people around us who find the message about Jesus unbelievable. And sometimes we’re not so sure ourselves. Our faith wavers. And some of the things that we find in these verses that cause our faith to waver are things like forgetfulness. We forget. We forget a lot of things. I pretty much don’t leave my house until I go through this little list in my head. Actually I say it out loud most of the time, “Wallet, keys, cellphone.” If I didn’t say that, I would forget those things all the time. And the older I get, I’ve added to it. It’s usually, “Wallet, keys, cellphone, hat, jacket,” and so on. I would forget all of those things if I didn’t say all of those things to myself or out loud. We’re forgetful. We’re forgetful people. We forget the things that happen to us just moments ago. We forget God’s authority over us. We forget His goodness to us in the past. We forget His goodness to us that we are experiencing right this minute. We forget the promises that He keeps and the ways that He has been faithful to His Word over and over throughout our lives.
I was listening to someone talk about Jewish history the other day. And this person said that to her, one of the things that sets Jewish history apart is the people’s desire not only to perpetuate their story but also their tendency to place themselves in the story. And so she said, for instance, at the Passover, when they celebrate Passover, there is a part of the meal where they tell their children the story, the Maggid. They tell their children the story of how God brought the Hebrews out of Egypt. But as they tell that story, they tell it as if they were the ones who were taken out of Egypt. They say, “We were slaves to Pharaoh and the Lord our God took us out from there with a strong hand and an outstretched arm.” And that’s why they eat the matzah or the unleavened bread, is because they are identifying themselves, placing themselves in the story of the Passover. Why is that? It’s because Passover is about remembering.
In fact, in Exodus chapter 12, the Passover celebration is called a memorial day. It’s a day to remember what God had done for them and how He had kept His promises to them. Why is that? Because they would forget. It’s because we forget. And whenever we live without the recognition that everything that we have is from God and that He is working out His plan in our lives and working out His plan in all of history, when we forget that, our faith suffers for it. In fact, I read recently that the pastor and writer, Sam Storms, he said this. He said, “One of faith’s most devastating enemies is forgetfulness and one of faith’s most powerful allies is memory.” We need constant reminders.
Challenges to Our Faith: Fighting
But we also need help saying “No” to ourselves. There’s a problem of waiting that we experience oftentimes. Verse 24 says, “A dispute arose among them as to which of them was to be regarded as the greatest.” We know what that’s like, don’t we, because we struggle to control our impulses. We struggle to delay gratification, to bite our tongues, to use self-control, to put others’ needs ahead of our own. We struggle to wait. Have you ever made a Reuben? I love making a Reuben sandwich. If you get the desire to have one, and you start to prepare it at home, you know that it’s going to be like two weeks before you can eat the Reuben because you have to let the sauerkraut or the cabbage ferment to become sauerkraut. So there’s a long time to wait from the moment you decide to prepare it to the actual preparation of it.
Now I know this is a little bit off, but this is going to sound like a sitcom, but one time a few years ago I had made the sauerkraut, had everything ready to go to make the Reuben, I went to Broadstreet to get a marble rye, and the person in front of me bought six loaves of marble rye and cleared out the whole place! And so not only did I have to wait two weeks to eat it, but then another five days until they had another marble rye. We’re not good at that. We don’t like to wait. We’re not conditioned to wait or to deny ourselves. What does James say in James chapter 4? “What causes quarrels and fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions or your desires for pleasure are at war within you.” He says, “You desire and do not have, you covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and you quarrel.” That’s what’s going on here in this passage.
It’s hard to say “No” to our desires, and we see that in Jesus’ disciples. When this dispute broke out among them, they wanted to see who of them was going to be regarded as the greatest. That’s what we want if we are honest with ourselves. We want to get everything we can from the world. We want to be like the kings of the Gentiles. We want to satisfy our desires and to put ourselves first and Jesus says here in this passage, “No. You are not to be like that. Not so with you. Rather, let the greatest among you become as the youngest and the leader as one who serves.” What is Jesus doing there? He is calling for humility. And the way of faith in Jesus is one of service and sacrifice and self-denial. John Calvin says that, “The sum of the Christian life is the denial of ourselves.” And that’s hard. How do you deal with that? If I had to guess, probably not very great. And we oftentimes stumble into sin and our faith feels it and we wonder if there is hope for us.
Challenges to Our Faith: Flight
So here are the challenges that we see so far in this passage – there is forgetfulness, and there’s fighting, and then we see flight. There’s this pressure that the disciples face. There’s the third threat to faith in this passage. It’s the pressure or the persecution that is on the horizon for them. We know what Peter was like, don’t we? Peter wore his emotions on his sleeve. He was a man of extremes. He seemed to not have a filter, so he could go at one moment, as Derek referenced last week, he could go from one moment to saying, “You are the Christ,” to then saying, “Never, Lord.” He could say to Jesus, “You will never wash my feet,” and then immediately say, “Not just my feet, but my hands and my head also.” Here we have in verse 33, “Lord, I am ready to go with You both to prison and to death.” Verse 34, “I tell you Peter, the rooster will not crow this day until you deny three times that you know Me.” How could he be so fickle? Pressure will do that. He is, after all, talking about prison and death.
I was listening to a podcast the other day on the history of the crucifixion. It was just talking about the history of the crucifixion from the earliest days even to today. And the podcast came with an explicit warning with it. Now it’s not that the hosts were using explicit language, it’s just that the description of the crucifixion is so gory and violent and offensive. Just talking about the crucifixion is explicit language. And that’s what was facing Jesus. And as a consequence, that’s what His disciples were facing as well. Just think about that. How would you do in that kind of situation? I hope that I would be bold and stand strong, but I can’t say what that kind of fear would be like. I can’t imagine what His disciples were up against as they were standing with Jesus. It’s not easy to stand alone. It’s not easy to stand alone in little things; it’s not easy to stand alone in big things. And when we do that, when we attempt to stand alone, it will try our faith and we will wonder, “Is it worth it? Can we do it? Can we really stand strong through this trial and through the pressures of the culture and our peers around us?” You probably know what that fear feels like in some way. The disciples did.
The Focus of Our Faith
There’s forgetfulness. There’s fighting. There’s flight. Now look at your own faith. Look back at your faith in times of struggling with sin. Look at your faith in times of enduring trials. How do those things affect your confidence? What do they do to your hope? There’s a problem, you see, with focusing on our faith. It’s that our faith falters and our faith can be lacking and we can easily lose hope because of that. So what we need to see from this passage is not so much a focus on our faith but to fix our eyes on the focus of our faith, to fix our eyes on the object of our faith, on Jesus Christ Himself. And here’s what we find in this passage. Here is Jesus. He is at the moment, He is at the hour of His greatest need, and what is He doing? Where is His focus and where is His attention at the hour of His greatest need? It’s on His disciples.
Jesus Prepares
And I think that there are at least three things that we can see Jesus doing to help and to strengthen and to encourage, to bolster His disciples at the hour of His greatest need. It’s that Jesus prepares, Jesus promises, and Jesus prays. First, Jesus prepares. Verse 8, “Jesus sent Peter and John, saying, ‘Go and prepare the Passover for us, that we may eat it.’” Jesus arranges this Passover meal with His disciples and then He completely reorients it. He completely changes the focus of the Passover meal. He takes the bread and He gave it to them. He says, “This is My body which is given for you.” And then He took the cup. He said, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in My blood.” You see what He’s saying there? He’s saying that the Passover is about Him. That He is the Passover Lamb. That He is the substitute for God’s people. He is saying that He is the one who spares His people from the plague of God’s wrath. He is the One who is going to bring about deliverance and salvation and freedom and life. And just like the Passover was about remembering, Jesus says in verse 19, “Do this in remembrance of Me.” So Jesus prepares this bread and this wine to remind His disciples what He was going to do and to strengthen their faith because He knew that their faith would oftentimes be forgetful.
And that’s why He has provided the Lord’s Supper for us as well – to strengthen our faith; to help us remember. Sometimes when we come to the Lord’s Supper, we come to the Table and we come to the words of institution, and if it’s my turn to explain the significance and the meaning of the Lord’s Supper, oftentimes there can be a temptation for me to think, “What new can I say here? What can I say that I haven’t said before?” And yet I am surprised, although I shouldn’t be, that almost every time there is a fresh application of what the Table is there for, for us, and the blessing that it is there to minister to us.
And there are a lot of things that we could say, thinking about the Lord’s Supper, about Communion, as we see it instituted in this passage. It reminds us of the fact of Jesus’ death and resurrection, that it was an event that happened in history, that people saw it, that they touched His hands and His side. It was an event of history. And we are reminded of that at the Table. We are reminded that it is a covenant meal, as Grant talked about in the children’s devotion. That God in the covenant moves toward us. He initiates the love and grace that He extends to us. It is not based on our merit or our worth. It is His grace. And we get that at the Table. We also get something that is tangible. We taste it. We see it. We feel it. We smell it. It engages all of our senses. God is ministering to us at the Table as He has made us body and soul together, He is ministering to our whole person. And it’s for us. Jesus said, “This is for you.” We take it in because it’s for us and for our benefit. There’s more we could say about that, but if we said nothing else, isn’t this an encouragement? Isn’t it an encouragement just to say that when Jesus institutes this supper for His disciples, for us, that He understands our weak faith? He understands it. He gets that our faith is prone to falter and He makes provision for us. It doesn’t catch Him off guard. He doesn’t move away from us because of the weakness of our faith. No, He condescends to us in our weakness. He is gentle and He is kind. “A bruised reed He will not break and a smoldering wick He will not quench.” He knows the weakness of our faith and He died for us. “While we were still weak, Christ died for us.” He knows our weakness. He makes preparation for us to strengthen us in our weakness. He prepares.
Jesus Promises
And He promises. There is a promise in these verses. It’s when the disciples argue over greatness. When they argued over greatness, what do you think they had in mind? You know it could have been something so simple as who had the place of honor at the table at that very moment. Or it could have been that they had desires for what the scribes and the Pharisees wanted – the long robes and the greeting in the marketplaces and the best seats in the synagogue. Maybe that’s what they were thinking about. But if they really let their imagination run wild, if they could come up with anything that their mind could conceive of, what would they have come up with? How big could they have dreamed about greatness? Whatever it was, it was nothing like what Jesus promises in verse 29 and 30. Look at what Jesus says in verse 29 and 30. This is the promise. “I assign to you as My Father assigned to Me a kingdom, that you may eat and drink at My table in My kingdom and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” I’m not sure we can grasp all that Jesus is saying. I think He’s saying something like when His disciples argued over bread. What did He say? He said, “I give you the bread of life, that whoever comes to Me will never hunger again.” Or think about when He met the woman at the well in Samaria and she was there for water. And what did Jesus offer her? He offered to her living water, that “whoever drinks will never be thirsty again.” Water that wells up into eternal life. And even with that woman and her desire for relationships, she went from husband after husband after husband, and Jesus is offering to her something that even our best relationships offer only a pale shadow or reflection.
Alexander White says that, “Our love is cold and our faith is small and weak for a lack of imagination.” Our faith is weak for a lack of imagination. Just consider all of those things that we think we can’t live without – money, sex, drink, approval. We’ll do whatever we can do to indulge our desires and our appetites in the moment and those desires, whatever enjoyment comes from them, only lasts for a moment and it’s gone. Jesus promises to us something much, much better. He promises to us the blessings of the kingdom. He promises to us love and joy and peace and life and satisfaction. Those things which the stuff of this world, they promise, but they can never deliver. Jesus promises and He will provide beyond anything that we can imagine.
Jesus Prays
Then there’s one last thing. Jesus prays. “Simon, Simon, Satan demanded to have you that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail.” Peter had no idea. He had no idea how weak his faith was. He had no idea the level of spiritual threat that he was facing that night or how easily his faith would falter. But Jesus did. And Jesus prayed for him. Jesus prayed that his faith would not fail. That’s how sufficient a Savior Jesus is. And He not only offers to us forgiveness and reconciliation with God, not only does He make a way and bring us into a relationship with God and make a way to heaven, but He gets us all the way home. He’s a perfect Savior from the first until the last. And when we don’t know what to pray, Jesus prays. And when we are loaded down by worries and by fears, Jesus prays. And when we doubt and we want to give up, Jesus prays. Romans 8:34, “Who is to condemn? Jesus Christ is the one who died, more than that, who was raised and who is at the right hand of God interceding for us.” And so Peter was safe. He was safe from the assault of Satan because Jesus prayed for him. And we’re safe too.
Do you see what a big difference that makes? We can focus on our faith, and we need to examine ourselves and to have proper reflection, but our faith can be so lacking. Or we can look at the focus of our faith, we can look to the object of our faith, to Jesus, and we see that Jesus provides helps for us in our faith, like the Lord’s Supper. And He makes promises to us beyond anything that we can imagine. And He prays for our salvation to the very end. You see, it is Jesus who provides the confidence and the certainty of our faith. It is Jesus who gives us hope.
Andrew Bonar, in 19th century Scotland, he wrote a diary which was later published. And we find in his diary that he oftentimes wrestled with whether he was a Christian or not. It was around the time of his nineteenth birthday that he wrote things like this. “May 11. The clearest impression I ever felt of what it would be to have eternal separation from God. May 31. My birthday is past and I am not born again. June 7. I sometimes think I may be believing, but yet I do not want forgiveness of sin to be above all other things desirable. I rest upon my prayers and feel anxiety about being holy, set free from the power of sin, as if that were the way to salvation. July 12. I have not received Christ into my heart. I feel the deepest grief. I wept when I got home just from feeling the misery of not being in Christ.” But then it was sometime later that year that he said he had the first beam of joy. And he wrote about it. He wrote about the marks of faith in his life. He wrote about self-denial. He wrote about confession of sin. But even in all of that on December 26, it says that he met with his pastor who admitted him as a communicant, admitted him to the Communion Table, and he asked him some doctrinal and experimental questions. And then Bonar wrote this. He said, “I see that when I dwell anytime upon myself and think upon my attainments, my heart is not profited. But whenever I get a sight of Christ’s love, my heart is full of life then.” “Whenever I get a sight of Christ’s love”, his heart was full of life.
This passage, this Gospel, is about getting a sight of Christ’s love. And Andrew Bonar could focus on his faith. And with it came doubt and uncertainty, but when he focused on the object of his faith, when he focused on Jesus, there was life and hope. Do you see Jesus’ love for you in this passage that He prepares, He promises and He prays that your faith would not fail? That is the way to life. That is the way to hope. Look to Jesus tonight. Believe and have hope.
Let’s pray.
Father, we thank You for Your Word and for the message about this perfect, sufficient Savior that You have given to us. We are undeserving, we are unworthy, yet we rest in Him alone for our salvation. Would You keep us and protect us and fill us with joy and life and hope, for Your sake, for Your glory. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.