The Arrest

Order of Service

• Call to Worship — Psalm 96:1-9
• Hymn — Psalm 96
• Prayer of Invocation
• Confession of Faith — Apostles' Creed
• Scripture Reading — Joshua 9:1-15
• Hymn — Come, My Soul, with Every Care
• Pastoral Prayer
• Offering
• Prayer of Preparation
• Hymn — God, Be Merciful to Me
• Sermon
• Hymn — Come, Ye Sinners, Poor and Needy
• Benediction — Philippians 1:9-11

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Sermon Title: The Arrest

Scripture: John 18:1-11

I. The Control of Jesus

A. Jesus enters the Garden of Gethsemane having just completed the High Priestly Prayer of John 17, now ready to receive the cup from his Father

1. In Gethsemane Jesus prayed that the cup might pass; by John 18:11 he is prepared to drink it — calmness in the valley of sorrow comes through prayer in the midst of anguish
2. The Via Dolorosa (the sorrowful way) begins here; like the pilgrims in Psalm 84:5-6 who make the valley of Baca (weeping) a place of springs, Jesus sanctifies and seasons our own valleys of trouble

B. Jesus comes forward voluntarily — he is not a fugitive scattering in fear but freely acquiesces to the Father's mission (John 18:4)

C. The Greek verb for Judas's betrayal ("gave up") is the same verb Paul uses in Romans 8:32 — "he who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all"; Judas is responsible for his sin, yet it is simultaneously the Father giving the Son up for us

D. Jesus continues to care for and protect his disciples even in his arrest (John 18:8-9)

1. This fulfills his word in the High Priestly Prayer: "of those whom you gave me I have lost not one" (John 17:12)
2. Every provision God gives his people in this life is a token of the ultimate provision secured in Christ — there are no small provisions for the Christian
3. Jesus alone must be arrested and crucified so that his disciples might go free; he and he alone is our substitute — we did not recite "he and all his disciples suffered under Pontius Pilate"

II. The Fear of the Soldiers

A. Two groups of soldiers are present: Temple Police (servants of the Sanhedrin) and Roman soldiers, the latter deployed in extra numbers because Passover pilgrimage created risk of Jewish nationalist uprising

B. Judas was essential to the authorities because he could lead them at night to the private, frequented garden — likely a walled enclosure — without causing a public uproar among the Passover crowds (John 12)

C. When Jesus says "I am he" (egō eimi), the soldiers draw back and fall to the ground (John 18:6)

1. Egō eimi echoes the Divine Name given to Moses at the burning bush (Exodus 3) and is used throughout John's Gospel as a self-designation of Christ as the great I AM
2. Falling prostrate before divine revelation appears repeatedly in Scripture — Daniel, Ezekiel, and John himself in Revelation 1:17
3. What is unique here is that the soldiers fall before the humiliated Christ — not before a vision of glory but before the one about to be crucified; from arrest to cross it is God in the flesh being mistreated

D. The whole house of Israel and all humanity is implicated — Acts 2:36: "God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified"

1. As we sinned with Adam in the garden, so we sin with these authorities in Gethsemane
2. The 17th-century hymnwriter Johann Heermann captured this: "Who was the guilty? Who brought this upon thee? Alas, my treason, Jesus, hath undone thee. 'Twas I, Lord Jesus, I it was denied thee; I crucified thee."

III. The Misguided Zeal of Peter

A. Peter draws a sword (likely the Roman short sword concealed under a garment) and strikes the high priest's servant Malchus, cutting off his right ear

1. The short sword was used for stabbing, not slicing — Peter was most likely going for the killing blow and Malchus turned his head
2. Luke 22:51 records that Jesus immediately healed the ear; John focuses instead on Jesus's rebuke

B. Jesus's rebuke — "Put your sword into its sheath; shall I not drink the cup that the Father has given me?" (John 18:11) — echoes his earlier correction of Peter: "Get behind me, Satan, for you are not setting your mind on the things of God but on the things of man"

C. The contrast between Jesus and Peter is stark

1. Jesus is cool, calm, and collected — he arrests the soldiers with his response
2. Peter gives the soldiers exactly what they expected: a zealous Jew ready to fight, like the Maccabean revolts
3. When the church responds to opposition with the same weapons the world uses, the otherworldly gospel is soiled and made common

D. Peter's sword-swing is not courage but fear of man, which will be fully exposed in his three denials later in the same chapter

1. Zeal out of fear of man sees God through the enemy — God and the Bible become unintelligible apart from the enemy
2. Zeal out of fear of God sees the enemy through the lens of God: "Shall I not drink the cup that the Father has given me?"
3. Fear of man produces frenzied, unpredictable, ultimately cowardly behavior; fear of God produces the calm courage of Christ

E. Application: Scripture calls us to be watchful, to admonish one another, and to warn against conforming to the world (Romans 12:2) — but this must flow from fear of God, not fear of man

1. Our Father spared not his own Son even while we were his enemies (Romans 8:32); that is the ground of a Zeal that pleases God
2. Christ-like zeal brings springs in the valley of Baca — it transforms the valley of trouble and weeping rather than simply mirroring its violence