He then having received the sop went immediately out: and it was night
Judas and the sop
The subject suggests
I.
THE TWO-FOLD AND EVEN CONTRASTED SIGNIFICANCE OF THE SAME THING.
1. The giving of the sop meant one thing to John, viz., who was the betrayer? It does not seem to have been fully understood (verse 28), but that was its meaning. To Judas it was meant as a mark of kindness. There was no inconsistency in this. It was done for a good reason. It consisted with Christ’s affection for John, not to allow the suspicion of betrayal to rest upon him, and with His love for Judas to show him kindness. But why should Christ so act when He knew the result? Because He invariably acted as though results were unknown. He knew that He would raise Lazarus, yet He gave way to grief. He knew who believed not and who should betray Him, but that did not lead Him to slacken efforts on their behalf.
2. And so the same providence now may convey a varied meaning according to our feeling or position. We are more susceptible at one time than another. A song may make glad feelings in one and sad in another, according to the mood. Let each learn what God says aside to him.
II. HOW MUCH MEANING MAY BE CONVEYED BY A LITTLE THING. In the very unobtrusiveness of the sop there was an element of power. It was better than if many words had been employed. The little friendly act was sufficient to flash the whole before His mind, and to discover the whole attitude of the Saviour. It was an intimation that it was not too late for repentance. Shortly before Christ put into a little service the great lesson of humility and serviceableness; shortly after He put great meaning into a look; and while sitting there He put meaning to all time into simple bread and wine. It needs only to have susceptible warm hearts to learn great lessons through little things.
III. THE DISASTROUS EFFECT THAT MAT FOLLOW FROM THE REJECTION OF AN APPEAL.
1. During all his declension Judas had the close attendance of Jesus, and therefore must have had every help toward a successful issue in his trial. And now a last appeal was about to be made. Would he say yes or no to the love of Christ. That was the turning point in his, as in every man’s, destiny. And he was so infatuated with evil as to say No. And so Satan, who had only previously put the thought in his heart, now entered him, and the Spirit of the Lord departed from him. But as soon as the act was performed, the enchantment was gone, and he hurried himself into eternity.
2. And so Christ is continually making appeals to us, in some sermon, book, mercy, worldly loss. If we do not yield there will come a last and decisive appeal, and if we reject that, despair.
IV. HOW EXTERNAL NATURE REFLECTS AND MEETS STATES OF THE HUMAN SOUL. “It was night”--a congenial time for the deed of darkness. The children of darkness are dark within, and when Judas went out the dark thought of his mind was reflected there. Perhaps it was a relief to be away from the light, perhaps a suggestion of destiny. There is only outer darkness for those who “go out” from Christ. Let us accept Him now, from whose presence by and by we shall go no more out. (R. Finlayson, B. A.)
The sop and a dark deed
Notice
I. THE GROWTH AND STRENGTHENING OF EVIL AMID THE HOLIEST INFLUENCES. Judas lived within the circle of the Saviour’s influence for three years. Eli was rebuked by Samuel for permitting his sons to commit sin on the threshold of the Temple, and--strange irony--Samuel’s sons while doing priestly work walked in the same evil way. We may attend the sanctuary and listen to a mother’s prayers for fifty years, and afterwards be lost.
II. THE SAVIOUR’S GOODNESS BECOMES THE OCCASION OF GREAT EVIL. Judas was a worse man at the end of three years; while Christ’s appreciation of Mary’s offering, and His appeal to Judas, seemed to strengthen him in his purpose. So the presence of goodness, if not a blessing to us, is a withering curse.
III. CHRIST’S GENEROUS TREATMENT OF THE SINNER. He saw the growth of evil in Judas, but it made no difference in His trust and love. At the last moment, there was one more attempt to touch the traitor’s heart. “Friend,” etc. The gift of the sop was a sign of love. What a wealth of persevering love is poured out on the most depraved!
IV. THE DARK TERMINATION OF AN EVIL LIFE. Judas went out into the calm of that beautiful Syrian night, but is was a scene of blankness and tempest to him. Then came that deeper night of unavailing penitence and suicide. The path of sin always ends in night. It may be strewn with flowers or steeped in blood, but there is the same termination--the night of separation from God and communion with our own sins. (Noel R. Hamer, M. A.)
It was night
I. IN JERUSALEM. Only the pale shining of the passover moon lit the streets. The sieve was shaken, and the small soul of the money lover dropped through out of honour into shame and gloom.
II. In His HEART. For Satan, the prince of darkness, in person was ruling there. Over him swept a wave of the “outer darkness” like a cloud from the bottomless pit. Suicide was just at hand.
III. IN ALL THE VAST FUTURE. He was going “to his own place.” (Job_10:22). We see at this vanishing moment that the man is lost while he is living, virtually in hell because the prince of hell is in his heart. And so we know that a soul can be damned even before it is dead. (C. S.Robinson, D. D.)
Walking in the night
I. THE DARKNESS OF JUDAS’S CRIME.
1. The night has become intolerable to him now.
2. He was not always a traitor.
3. He may even have been brought into Christ’s company that he might be saved.
4. But over all good his evil heart obtains supremacy.
II. THE DARKNESS OF HIS REPENTANCE.
1. His conscience works up with the terror of night upon it, but without the accents of hope.
2. His repentance leads only to suicide--a further crime.
III. THE DARKNESS OF HIS DOOM. “It had been better for that man, if he had never been born.” (J. H. Hargreaves.)
The harmony of nature with our mental moods
We always like to have nature in sympathy with our sorrows and our joys; to have our moods of mind quite in accordance with our moods of seasons. Thus, if you and I are in distress, there is a sort of melancholy pleasure to find the sky gloomy with clouds; and when the shutter which tells our loss, and hides our mourning from the world and casts a shadow upon our home, lets in through the crevice the sunbeam, and we hear the happy crowd enjoying it outside, that intrusion seems quite an injury to our feelings. We take our moods of mind from those of nature, and this is a mystery, of course, which we cannot explain; but we have pleasure in finding that her moods are in accordance with ours, that she is bright when we are bright, that she is in sackcloth when we are sad. And so it is quite a relief to our feelings, just as it must have been to the Evangelists, to find “it was night.” Such a deed could not have been done before the face of God’s smiling sun. (C. J. P. Eyre, M. A.)
Moral seasons
There is a moral night upon the soul of every sinful creature, just as there has been a day spring in the soul of every true believer. (C. J. P. Eyre, M. A.)
Now is the Son of Man glorified.
The triple glorification
I. THE GLORIFICATION OF THE SON OF MAN IN AND BY HIS SUFFERING. This language is strange here. It would not have been wonderful at Jordan or on the Mount of Transfiguration. Observe that it is as “the Son of Man” He is glorified, i.e., His glory
1. As the perfect man was displayed in and by His sufferings. Man’s excellence consists in entire conformity to God’s will. Of this Christ was all through possessed, but more particularly when at the supreme moment to do God’s will He died for man.
2. As the representative man, as typified by the vicarious sacrifice on the Day of Atonement, and by the “Kinsman Redeemer.” How glorious this was.
3. As the God-man, as illustrated by the supernatural portents before and at the Crucifixion, which made the Centurion exclaim, “Surely this is the Son of God.”
4. As the predicted man. At no period of His history were so many prophecies fulfilled. It is probable that the words suggest that there should be spectators: that there should not only be glory, but glorification. If so, Christ was glorified in His sufferings by the dying thief, God the Father, and the holy angels. Some expositors refer the words to the Lord’s supper--a glorious display of His authority as the Legislator, and His love as theSaviour of the Church.
II. THE GLORIFICATION OF GOD IN THE SON OF MAN SUFFERING. This is a strange declaration. We can understand how God is glorified in heaven, in the universe, in His government, and in multitudes of saved beings, but how in the sufferings of His Son? Now was “the hour and power of darkness.” The words “in Him” explain the mystery. By men and devils God was dishonoured, but by Christ honoured. God was glorified in Christ’s sufferings
1. Viewed in themselves, they glorify
(1) The Divine power which inflicted them and sustained the Sufferer. Never was sorrow like Christ’s sorrow, but never was God’s grace so abundant. Christ crucified is “the power of God.”
(2) The Divine wisdom. Christ’s sufferings
(a) Effectually answer an important end--the eternal salvation of man.
(b) By means different from any that created wisdom could have suggested.
(3) The Divine justice (Rom_3:25-26).
(4) The Divine faithfulness in exactly fulfilling so many predictions.
(5) The Divine benignity (chap. 3:16).
2. Viewed in their results.
(1) In the events themselves. The enemy of God is baffled, evil in the form of sin and suffering prevented, and good in the form of holiness and happiness produced.
(2) In those events as the results of Christ’s suffering--to bring such results out of such means. Satan’s ruin rises out of his apparent triumph; life is the fruit of death; favour arises out of wrath, etc.
III. THE GLORIFICATION BY GOD OF THE SON OF MAN, ON ACCOUNT OF HIS SUFFERINGS, IN CONSEQUENCE OF GOD BEING GLORIFIED BY HIM IN THEM.
1. God glorified the Son of Man
(1) Under His sufferings, which tested His power to bear and His disposition to obey, by sustaining Him amid them.
(2) After His sufferings--“straightway,” “It is finished,” paradise, the resurrection, ascension, session, and the judgment to come.
2. God glorified the Son of Man in Himself. If God is glorified in Him He shall be glorified in God.
3. God’s glorification of the Son of Man was the result and reward of God being glorified in and by the Son of Man’s sufferings.
Conclusion: The subject bids us
1. Rest with entire confidence on the finished work of Christ as the ground of our hope.
2. Imitate the Son of Man in glorifying God and in seeking thus to be glorified by God.
3. Cooperate, though at an infinite distance, with God in glorifying the Son of Man. (J. Brown, D. D.)
God glorified in His Son
showed what glory accrued from the sufferings of Christ.
I. TO THE SON HIMSELF.
1. In completing His engagements with the Father.
2. In redeeming from death a ruined world.
II. TO THE FATHER THROUGH THE SON.
1. In the display of all His perfections.
2. In the accomplishment of all His purposes.
III. TO THE SON BY AND WITH THE FATHER.
1. In the testimonies borne to Him under His sufferings.
2. In the triumphant issue of them.
3. In the benefits conferred in consideration of them. (C. Simeon, M. A.)
God glorified in His Son
By
I. HIS OBEDIENCE TO GOD’S LAW.
II. HIS TEACHING OF GOD’S WILL.
III. HIS SUBMISSION TO GOD’S APPOINTMENTS.
IV. HIS DEATH FOR GOD’S CHILDREN. (S. S. Times.)
The cross the glory of Christ and God
There is something very weird and awful in the brief note of time--“it was night.” In immediate connection comes this singular burst of triumph--“Therefore.” Now that that “spot in their feast of charity” had disappeared, the Master felt at ease; and, like some stream, out of the bed of which a black rock has been taken, His words flow more freely. How intensely real and human the narrative becomes when we see that Christ, too, felt the oppression of an uncongenial presence, and was relieved and glad at its removal! The departure of the traitor evoked these words of triumph in another way. The match was lit that was to be applied to the train. He had gone out on his dark errand, and that brought the Cross within measurable distance of our Lord. What Judas went to do was the beginning of Christ’s glorifying.
I. THE SON OF MAN GLORIFIED IN HIS CROSS.
1. There is a double aspect under which our Lord regarded His sufferings. On the one hand we mark the innocent shrinking of His manhood. And yet, side by side with that, there is the reaching out almost with eagerness to bring the Cross nearer. Like the pellucid Rhine and the turbid Moselle, that flow side by side, so the shrinking and the desire were contemporaneous in Christ’s mind. Here we have the triumphant anticipation rising to the surface, and conquering for a time the shrinking.
2. Why did Christ think of His Cross as a glorifying? The New Testament generally represents it as the lowest point of His degradation; John’s Gospel always represents it as the highest point of His glory. And both are true; just as the zenith of our sky is the nadir for these on the other side of the world. The same fact which in one aspect sounds humiliating, in another is glorious. The Cross glorified Christ because
(1) It was the revelation of His heart. All His life long He had been trying to tell the world how much He loved it; but in His death it comes in a flood, and pours itself upon the world. For Him to be known was to be glorified. So pure and perfect was He, that revelation of His character and glorification of Himself were one and the same thing. We can fancy a mother in the anticipation of shame, and suffering, and death for the sake of some prodigal child, forgetting all, because all are absorbed in the one thought: “If I bear them, my poor, rebellious child will know at last how much I loved him.” So Christ yearns to impart the knowledge of Himself to us because by that knowledge we may be won to His love and service.
(2) It is His throne of saving power. Christ could not have spoken such words as these if He had simply thought of His death as a Plato or a John Howard might have thought of his, as being the close of his activity for the welfare of his fellows. If His death is His glorifying, it must be because in that death something is done which was not completed by the life, however fair; by the words, however wise and tender; by the works of power, however restorative and healing. Here is something more, viz., that His
Cross is the propitiation for the sins of the whole world. He is glorified therein, not as a Socrates might be glorified by his calm and noble death; but because in that death He wrestled with and overcame our foes, and because, like the Jewish hero, dying, He pulled down the house which our tyrants had built, and overwhelmed them in its ruins.
3. And so there blend, in that last act, the two contradictory ideas of glory and shame; like some sky, all full of dark thunderclouds, and yet between them the brightest blue and the blazing sunshine. In the Cross Death crowns Him the Prince of Life, and His Cross is His throne. “He endured the Cross, despising the shame;” and lo! the shame flashed up into the very brightness of glory, and the ignominy and the suffering became the jewels of His crown.
II. GOD GLORIFIED IN THE SON OF MAN. The mystery deepens as we advance. That God shall be glorified in a man is not strange, but it is strange that the act in which He was glorified was the death of an innocent man, and must imply
1. That God was in Christ, in some singular and eminent manner. If His whole human life and nature were the brightest manifestation of God, we can understand that the Cross was the highest point of the revelation of the Divine nature, and so was the glorifying of God in Him. But if we take any lower view of the relation between God and Christ, these words are a world too wide for the facts of the case.
2. That these sufferings bore no relation to the deserts of the person who endured them. If Christ, with His pure and perfect character, suffered so, then, if they have any bearing at all on the character of God, they cast a shadow rather than a light upon the Divine government. But if we can say, “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself;” that His death was the death of Him whom God had appointed to live and die for us, and to bear our sins then, though deep mysteries come with the thought, still we can see that, in a very unique manner, God is glorified and exalted in His death. For, if the dying Christ be the son of God dying for us, then the Cross glorifies God, because it teaches us that the glory of the Divine character is the Divine love. If there be nothing Diviner in God than His giving of Himself to His creatures, then the Cross towers above all other revelations. And is it not so? Has it not scattered doubts that lay like mountains of ice upon man’s heart? Has it not delivered men from the dreams of gods angry, capricious, vengeful, etc.? Has it not taught us that love is God, and God is love?
III. THE SON OF MAN GLORIFIED IN THE FATHER. The mysteries deepen as we advance. “If God be glorified in Him,” etc. Do these words sound to you as if they expressed no more than the confidence of a good man, who, when he was dying, believed that he would be accepted of a loving Father, and would be at rest from his sufferings?
1. “In Himself.” That is the obvious antithesis to the previous clause, a glorifying which consisted in a manifestation to the external universe, whereas this is a glorifying within the depths of the Divine nature. And the best commentary is: “Father! glorify Thou Me with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was.” We get a glimpse into the very centre of the brightness of God; and there, walking in that beneficent furnace, we see “One like unto the Son of Man.”
2. This reception into the bosom of the Father is given to the Son of Man. The brother of us all, in His manhood, enters into that same glory, which, from the beginning, the Eternal Word had with God.
3. That glorifying is set forth as commencing immediately--“straightway.” At the instant, then, that He said, “It is finished,” and all that the Cross could do to glorify God was done, at that instant there began, with God’s glorifying of the Son in Himself. It began in that Paradise into which we know that upon that day He entered. It was manifested to the world when He raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory. It reached a still higher point when, ascending up on high, a dominion and a throne and a glory were given to Him. It shaft rise to its highest manifestation before an assembled world, when He shall come in His glory, and before Him shall be gathered all nations. Conclusion: From that elevation He looks down ready to bless each poor creature here. And if we will but take Him as our Saviour, His all-prevalent prayer, presented within the veil for us, will certainly be fulfilled at last--“Father, I will that they also whom Thou has given Me,” etc. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Three important facts in relation to Christ
I. A PAINFUL IMPRESSION REMOVED FROM HIS HEART. “Therefore when he was gone out”
1. An object of moral offence had been removed from His vision. It is never felt to be a pleasant thing to have in your social circle a corrupt man, especially if you know he has plotted against you. The exit of such a man is felt to be a relief.
2. An obstruction to the free utterance of His love had been removed from amongst His hearers. Parents and pastors have often things to say which they will not utter in the presence of a stranger or enemy. When the traitor was gone Christ’s tongue was free.
II. A GLORIOUS CONSUMMATION OF THE GREAT PURPOSE OF HIS LIFE. The expression “Son of Man” occurs sixty-six times. Not son of a tribe, nation, sect, or He would have had tribal, etc., peculiarities. He realized the Divine ideal of what man ought to be.
1. The true glory of a man is the realization of the Divine purpose in his Ills. The universe is glorious because it realizes the Divine purpose. The gospel is glorified when it transforms men into the image of God.
2. The man who thus realizes the Divine purpose glorifies God also. We see most of God’s glory in his life who works out the Divine will in a Godlike life. This is what Christ felt now.
III. A TENDER CONSIDERATION FOR THE COMING TRIAL OF HIS DISCIPLES (Joh_13:33).
1. He informs them of that trial. A trial that would crush if it came unexpectedly may fall lightly when anticipated.
2. He informs them in the language of endearment. (D. Thomas, D. D.)
