The Gospel of John Chapter 18, John 18 verse 1. When Jesus had spoken these words, he went forth with his disciples over the brook Cedron, where was a garden, into the which he entered, and his disciples. 2 And Judas also, which betrayed him, knew the place: for Jesus ofttimes resorted thither with his disciples. 3 Judas then, having received a band of men and officers from the chief priests and Pharisees, cometh thither with lanterns and torches and weapons. 4 Jesus therefore, knowing all things that should come upon him, went forth, and said unto them, Whom seek ye? 5 They answered him, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus saith unto them, I am he. And Judas also, which betrayed him, stood with them. 6 As soon then as he had said unto them, I am he, they went backward, and fell to the ground. 7 Then asked he them again, Whom seek ye? And they said, Jesus of Nazareth. 8 Jesus answered, I have told you that I am he: if therefore ye seek me, let these go their way: 9 That the saying might be fulfilled, which he spake, Of them which thou gavest me have I lost none. 10 Then Simon Peter having a sword drew it, and smote the high priest's servant, and cut off his right ear. The servant's name was Malchus. 11 Then said Jesus unto Peter, Put up thy sword into the sheath: the cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it? 12 Then the band and the captain and officers of the Jews took Jesus, and bound him, 13 And led him away to Annas first; for he was father in law to Caiaphas, which was the high priest that same year. 14 Now Caiaphas was he, which gave counsel to the Jews, that it was expedient that one man should die for the people.

We are looking at the second part of the garden of Gethsemane, where the first part concerned the sorrows of Christ and his prayer, which he prayed three times. Now, in the second part, we will consider for the time before us the arrest of the Lord Jesus. And at the outset, we need to... Look at how the Gospel of John begins, though we will shuffle between the Gospels. Gospel of John directly begins with the arrest. It begins with Christ in Gethsemane, and he is already being arrested. It completely skips the aspect of his sorrows and of his prayer. And he begins with the fact that Christ is being arrested by men. If you put yourself in the place of John, you would realize that this is a very difficult task to write by itself. Because John has presented Christ to be of God, and if you were to go in the same journey with John up to Chapter 17, he will take you to the very peak of all peaks, where he has said Christ is one with the Father. One with the Father and with the Father's glory. That is John 17, where Christ is going back to the Father, He is one with the Father and He is with the Father in His glory.

It is at that peak that John 17 ends, where John has meticulously, right from the start of the book till Chapter 17, increasingly magnified Christ. It's an extremely beautiful, magnificent picture of the divinity of Christ. And you have taken your readers all the way up a peak, where you have shown Christ with God in heaven, with the glory of God in heaven, and being one with God in heaven. It cannot be more godly than that. It cannot be more divine than that. And then the challenge is, soon after you write about such a prayer, you begin to talk of the arrest of the Lord, where He is going to be led by His own creatures, He's going to be wrongfully handled, He's going to be manhandled. How are you going to maintain and sustain the narration of the divinity of Christ? How can you in one hand talk of Christ being so much equal with God and then continue with the narration of his crucifixion, his sufferings, where he is going to be brutally treated by his own creation, he is going to be crushed like a worm.

And in the midst of that, how would you maintain the divinity of Christ? where you can't let go of the narration you have so far given of Christ being the Son of God, of one with God, with the glory of God, and on the other hand being man-handled, being arrested, being so weak, being so infirm, even to the point of the cross. That's a huge balance that you have to delicately handle. And this is the care with which John writes his record. Where he doesn't let go of the wishing that this is Word of God, this is God, this is the glory of God. He doesn't let go of the vision of the divinity of Christ. So when we are seeing the most horrible things that could ever happen to somebody, the most wicked things that should happen to Christ... which should be the last person who should be happening, it becomes glorious to see that in the midst of those sufferings, in the midst of what men did to him, there is an unchanging fact that he is still God, that he is still divinely God, that if we are able to see the divinity of God through his woeful, worm-full sufferings, that would be a glorious sight to see. And John does that. John takes care of that.

He has sustained the narrative that here is somebody who has come out of God, and he will continue to sustain it, though he is going to say that this Jesus of Nazareth is going to go to the cross. That even at the cross, or even at Gethsemane, even when he is surrounded by so many people, even when there are so many evidences of a weak Saviour, of someone who is by himself in form, who is incapable of saving himself, of someone who is not knowing things. Even there are so many evidences that one could come up and write off a messiah and say that Jesus of Nazareth is not the messiah. John makes it beautifully clear. He handles it so delicately to sustain the divinity of Christ in the midst of the sufferings. And so that's going to be our... our aim as well. When we see Christ and get Sermon on the way, when we see him being led by his creatures and nailed to the cross, we will not miss the fact that he has been in the beginning, he has been in the beginning with God and in the beginning he is God. We would not miss that fact.

There are two ways in which we would look at this arrest. One is to look at the human side of it, of what men try to do to get Christ arrested. and the second is to look at the divine side of it as to what Christ Himself did to get Himself arrested. First of all, we'll consider how did they go about arresting. It begins with the question as, who is involved? Who is arresting Christ? The main character over here in verse 2 is said to be Judas. And it was essential that Judas be the one at the henchmen leading the people to Christ. Apart from Judas, we see this word in verse 3, a cohort. It's a Roman word for... a band of soldiers, minimum 600 people. So that's just the soldiers, a cohort. And then officers, officers from chief priests, Pharisees, the other gospels, scribes, elders, everyone send their men. The chief priests, the Pharisees, the scribes, the high priests, the elders, everyone send their men to get Christ arrested. And that's the who. Judas at the foremost and more than 600 people coming for Christ and his disciples. And immediately you will see a very disproportionate force. Why should so many people be used to arrest just Christ and 12 disciples? 11 to be precise, why should so many people be used to arrest so many, just one person particularly.

Secondly, they come with all kinds of weapons. They come with lanterns, torches, they come with swords, swords should refer the weapon that the soldiers held and those who were not soldiers who had no authorized weapon, they came with clubs or staves. They are coming out for a war. They are coming out for a bloodbath. They are coming out with full force after Christ. Judas with all the people, and they are not coming hands free. They are coming with all kinds of preparation, all kinds of armory to take down Christ and His disciples.

The third thing we see is the timing. This is not a time for anyone to be arrested. It's a time for everyone to be celebrating the Passover. And they might have been celebrating their Passover. In fact, when Judas came knocking, they had to drop their ceremonies, they had to drop their celebrations and get going because an opportunity like Judas doesn't come more than once. So, they had to stop their eating, they had to stop their celebrations, they had to stop their festivities. They dropped all of that. They are out there in the night. to arrest Christ. So that's the people, that's the weapons and third there was a strategy. Third there was a timing. The fourth there was a strategy. The strategy was that Judas is going to kiss Christ and that's going to be the sign at which Christ will be arrested. So they came with all kinds of preparations, all kinds of planning. to get Christ arrested.

We first begin with Judas. Why was it necessary that Judas should be at the helm of it? Why was it necessary that Judas commands the time and directs the force that directs, arrests Christ? Why was it necessary that Judas, with whom Christ was a, Christ lived for three years, why should Judas be involved in it? It is, it's a beautiful picture of someone like Christ willing to endure great infirmities, great emotional stresses that will one day perfect Christ or prepare Him to be our own High Priest. If you look at the Old Testament, Judas is referred in prophecies with words like, my familiar friend. He is referred with words like, my equal. He is referred with words like, my companion. He's referred with words like my acquaintance. These are the words used to describe the betrayer of the Messiah. a familiar friend, the one who is his equal, the one who is his acquaintance, the one who is his companion, the one with whom he took sweet counsel together, the one with whom they walked to the temple and worshipped God together, the one with whom they shared meals together.

In fact, the prophecies in the Psalm says that if it was an enemy or if it was someone who hated me that approached me, I would still bear it. equal, my acquaintance, my companion, that though it was a matter of prophecy, Christ endured the pain of seeing someone so close to Him, someone who is His equal, who is His familiar friend, turning His back on Him. In fact, the way Judas came and kissed the Lord... The word used in Matthew 26, the word actually means he kissed much or he kissed again and again and he kissed tenderly. That's the strong word used for the Judas' kiss. It wasn't simply a mere sign, it wasn't mere act. Here was a wicked person coming to Christ and literally kissing Christ again and again and with much tenderness, where Judas is portraying his friendship with Christ, his closeness with Christ. And for a Jewish reader, that's such bad optics that someone who is a messiah, his own disciple who has kissed him so much is the one handing him over or betraying him.

And to top it up, when the Lord looked at Judas, the Lord asked him, do you betray the Son of Man with a kiss? And I believe that would have been something that broke Judas or rattled Judas up. There is nothing that rattles somebody up when his thoughts are revealed. When Judas was profusely kissing Christ and thinking that he is fooling Christ, the Lord... held Him and said, are you betraying the Son of Man? And on top of that, the Lord said, friend, He said, friend, why are you here? You see, when somebody reveals the innermost thought of somebody, when somebody can read your mind, the most innermost thoughts, that can be very, very rattling. And we see for Judas that was extremely remorse. for he said I have betrayed innocent blood. This is how the Lord dealt with Judas.

Secondly, we want to see why did other people have to be part of it. Let's look at some of the prophecies written in the Old Testament. We'll consider Lamentations 4 and verse 20. He was taken in their pits. It shows somebody lying, a snare or a pit to uphold or apprehend or arrest somebody. And Jeremiah is saying, the breath of our nostrils, the way spirit of God, the anointed of the Lord was taken in their pits, was apprehended. So in terms of optics, it had to look that way. It had to look that way that... Here were 600 people with all kinds of weaponry, all kinds of armory, with all kinds of wisdom and strategy in terms of timing, in terms of science, in terms of having a clue of who to arrest and planning. It had to look that way, that Christ all this while was escaping, Christ all this while was escaping their arrest.

But finally, they got him. that the anointing of the Lord was taken in their pits. It's David who again puts it in Psalm 22 that he has been surrounded by bulls of Bashan, by strong bulls, that he should be surrounded by people. And it was Isaiah who said, let the Holy One cease from before us, to where they want nothing more with Christ, and they had enough. So the people come with all kinds of strategy, they come with all kinds of people, they come with all kinds of weaponry, they come at the wrong time, they come with extremely disproportionate force, they come with planning and they're trying to win over Christ. In fact they've come to a major war.

Let's look at Christ's response in all of this. Let's go back to John chapter 18. John chapter 18 verse 4. That's our Lord. Jesus therefore knowing all things. It's a deliberate attempt of John to maintain the narration that here is God. He is not a victim. He is not a loser. He is not being taken by surprise. He is not going to be surprised by what people do. He knows all things. It's a frequent, repetitive narration of John, where John says, he knew that he's going to the Father who is out of the world, he knew that he has come from God, he goes back to God and that God has given all things. There are other times when he knew or he perceived that people are coming to make him king. and he ran away from there. He sent the disciples off a boat and he went to the mountain. He knew when people come for him. He knew what was in their thoughts. He knew what Judas was doing. In fact, it's written of him that when the upper room and the disciples had a doubt, the disciples didn't have to ask. He knew what was the question and he answered it anyway.

It is to talk of an omniscient person who knows all things, who knows everything that's going to befall him and he goes head along. He goes to meet the people who have come to arrest him. It talks of his omniscience where he is the one who knows all things and he's not the one who's taken by surprise. And so the person who knows all things, what do you expect of him? The last thing you ever expect of him is to go headlong, to face the accusers, to face those that are coming for him. And so he says that he went forth. Christ went forth. We read it in the other Gospels where Christ is telling the disciples, Are you still sleeping? sleep later on because the one who is about to betray is at hand, rise, let us go forth. Here is someone walking to his own death and until and unless Christ Himself said, rise, let us go forth, until and unless Christ Himself went forth to meet them, they would have never apprehended Christ. They have always tried to apprehend Him. They have always tried to arrest Him. But they only could do it when Christ Himself went forth, made Himself available in their presence.

I want to touch upon this aspect of the omnipresence of God because Christ, out of all other possibilities, He could have easily walked away from them. It wouldn't need be of Christ to even run. The disciples ran away, suddenly fled. But of Christ, if He had to run or He had to escape, it would not be required of Christ to even run, because He is omnipresent. Some suggest that when Christ came walking on water, He was using that power of omnipresence, because at one moment He is praying in the mountain, the other moment He is walking in the water. Of how Spirit took the Lord to the wilderness. of how Spirit took Philip from one place to the next place to the Eunuch, it is very much a possibility. But here is Christ who is omnipresent, who has all the power to slip away, like He has always done before, going forth, went forth, going to meet His arresters.

Here is the Lord who has come down from heaven with a face that is set to Jerusalem, always going forth, and until and unless the Lord did not lay down His life, they would not have killed Christ. Here is Christ going forth. And then the Lord also shows His great power, where they come and they mock Him and they ask Him, We are searching for Jesus the Nazarene. Jesus the Nazarene is a phrase of much mock and scorn, because it is one thing to say, for example, I am of India and I am an Indian. To say I am an Indian is to very personalise it. You could keep it as a word of honour or even might as scornfully use it and that is what the people were looking for. They were looking for Jesus of Nazarene, Jesus of a place out of which no good can ever come out, Jesus out of a place from which no prophet can ever come out, Jesus out of a place of which the prophet said that places in darkness, that those who dwell there are in darkness, took the name of Jesus so lightly, so callously, so mockingly that the Lord in their midst had to correct them. That if you're looking for Jesus of Nazarene in your mocking way, in your scorn, understand I am. I am the I Am. In one statement you have Jesus the Nazarene. And in the same statement you have, I AM coming together, that the one you're looking, the one you think so lightly, the one who you scorn so greatly is the I AM, is Jehovah God. And the moment he said his name, they all fell backwards, including Judas.

Now tell me, how would they ever pull this off? If they can't even stand the very mention of the name of Christ, how can they ever... ever accomplish Christ to be crucified. If by his very mere mention of the name brings them to their foot, brings them to their ground, how in the world will they ever succeed in putting Christ to the cross? And this is just the beginning of the display of his power. You see in the midst of this scuffle there was Peter who came and who wanted to be a savior for Lord Jesus. who wanted to save the Lord Jesus from the hands of the wicked one. And to Peter the Lord said, shall I not ask my father and won't he give me twelve legions of angels, where one legion is thousand, twelve thousand angels at my disposal. Wouldn't the father give me twelve thousand angels? Here is the math, as someone put it. One angel in the Old Testament is said to have killed 185,000 people. One angel. Imagine the destruction that 12,000 of them can do. To get that number correct is almost 2.2 billion people.

That's the amount of destruction 12,000 angels can do. And the Lord is telling Peter, put your sword back. Do you doubt the amount of power at my disposal? It's 12. thousand legions of angels. That sword is so useless. Put it back. He has a name that brought the people down to the feet and he has angels at his disposal ready to finish them. And in the midst of them he again shows his wonderful power by healing the people. By healing the servant whose ear was chopped, where it has never been heard of, it has never been seen before. Before their own eyes they see a broken ear coming back to one's face as if it was never chopped off. Can you see greater power than this? where you fall back, where you see an ear being joined, where you see someone commenting and saying, I have 12,000 legions of angels. Now forget the angels. The Lord said, if I ask the Father... where he is saying, I am with the Father, I have the authority to ask the Father.

Now how can you pin someone down who is with the Father? How can you arrest someone down? How can you take him to the cross? How can you crucify him? How can you kill him if he says, I ask the Father? Can you bring someone down who says, I am with the Father? When the Lord Jesus told the disciples that, you may all leave me but the Father is with me. where Christ had gotten them near display of his omnipotence. You see, it was not disproportionate on the people or the humanity side to hire 600 people to arrest one. The disproportionate thing is on the other side where you have your infinite power. Infinite power at his disposal, with God, with him, and just mere puny worms like 600 men on the other side. It is this power at hand. And so the people come with all kinds of strategy, they come with all kinds of wisdom, they come with all kinds of weaponry, they come with all kinds of planning to do it at the wrong time, they come with all kinds of signs, and most probably the sign with which Judas tried to kiss the Lord, it never worked. That's why it's not even mentioned in the Gospel of John.

Judas might have kissed the Lord, but at the end of the day, the Lord went forth. and met his captors. It was the Lord who was allowing Himself to be led by His creatures. It was only this one way that the Lord could be arrested, that the Lord could be held by wicked human hands. In the beauty of all of this is the question that the Lord would ask His captors. He says, Who do you seek? He asked it two times. Whom do you seek? It's a question that's ringing throughout the whole Gospel of John. A question where the Lord is looking for people that seek Him. He meets the disciples of John the Baptist and He asks the disciples, what do you seek? And we see Philip the next day coming to Daniel and saying, we have found, we have searched, we have got Him. But the Lord is offering Himself. And it shows another beautiful picture where man with all his prowess, with all his power, with all his wisdom, can try to reach, can try to search, can try to find, can try to grope God, but will never be able to find God, will never be able to apprehend God. Here is light and the darkness does not apprehend light.

That they can never arrest Him, they can never get their hands on Him, until and unless Christ comes down and says, where a cohort of people with great wickedness, with great sinfulness comes to arrest the most holy of holiest, to lay there wicked hands on someone so pure, where the same God who would not leave somebody who touched the Ark of the Covenant unworthily, the same God who would ask people to stay away from the mountain on which he comes, that is the distance he demanded from the wicked sinners. Here is He allowing all of that liberty, all of that restrictions going away. And He comes to His captors, He comes to those that hate Him with utmost hatred and says, whom do you seek? Here is the One offering Himself. Here is the One coming for those that are seeking Him, those that are searching for Him.

In fact the only mention of the very first act of God... in the Bible after man sinned, was God seeking, God coming to the garden and asking, Adam, where are you? That's a picture of God seeking. And when Adam decided to come to God, this is how he came to God, with 600 people with staves and swords and lanterns and torches trying to apprehend and trying to make the Holy One cease from their midst. and the Lord willingly surrenders Himself to the most vicious, most evil desires of wicked men. Here is the Lord in control. Here is the Lord, still God. Here is the Lord who is still holy, but for His great love for us, in order to purchase a holy bride unto Himself, He would not spare Himself, but allow Himself to be led by wicked hands.