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Bible Notes - Tabernacle Commentaries
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John 18:4
Comments
Jesus knew they were approaching in the darkness. The disciples did not know. He was not surprised when they appeared. He knew exactly what was going to happen. He was in the place they expected him to be because he was yielding himself up voluntarily as a lamb led to the slaughter. They did not need to take him by force. He stepped forward from among the disciples and presented himself. ‘Whom seek ye?’ he said. It was obvious, but he is going to make them say it. They answered him as if he was a nobody – his most secular title – ‘Jesus of Nazareth.’ ‘Jesus saith unto them, I am he. And Judas also, which betrayed him, stood with them.’ Of course he did; he belonged to them. There is the scene, Christ and his disciples. But Judas, who we are told elsewhere betrayed him with a kiss, with affection.
Application
Judas is standing with the persecutors. We see that today. Sometimes, tragically, we see people who profess the Lord, and as the apostle Peter says in his second epistle, just as the dog returns to its vomit, and the sow returns to her wallowing in the mire, they go back to the world. They may insist they are still Christians, but you see them doing what the world does. You see they have gone back to all their rock music and their dances and their worldly ways. They are like Judas. It is a very solemn phrase, ‘And Judas also, which betrayed him, stood with them.’ You can tell a true Christian man or woman by who she or he stands with. What he associates with, what he does.
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