Jesus becomes more specific about the unclean person and indicates the person who eats bread with Him is against Him. Jesus when asked directly by the disciple leaning on Him, He showed him by giving the dipped bread to Judas. Dr. Sproul looks at Psalm 41 and discusses David's betrayal by a friend. Dr. Sproul next comments on the new commandment Jesus gives them and then concludes this section with an investigation into Jesus' statement that Peter will deny Him three times.

We are continuing our study of the gospel of John. I will be reading this evening from John 13:18–30:

“I do not speak concerning all of you. I know whom I have chosen; but that the Scripture may be fulfilled, ‘He who eats bread with Me has lifted up his heel against Me.’ Now I tell you before it comes, that when it does come to pass, you may believe that I am He. Most assuredly, I say to you, he who receives whomever I send receives Me; and he who receives Me receives Him who sent Me.”

When Jesus had said these things, He was troubled in spirit, and testified and said, “Most assuredly, I say to you, one of you will betray Me.” Then the disciples looked at one another, perplexed about whom He spoke.

Now there was leaning on Jesus’ bosom one of His disciples, whom Jesus loved. Simon Peter therefore motioned to him to ask who it was of whom He spoke.

Then, leaning back on Jesus’ breast, he said to Him, “Lord, who is it?”

Jesus answered, “It is he to whom I shall give a piece of bread when I have dipped it.” And having dipped the bread, He gave it to Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon. Now after the piece of bread, Satan entered him. Then Jesus said to him, “What you do, do quickly.” But no one at the table knew for what reason He said this to him. For some thought, because Judas had the money box, that Jesus had said to him, “Buy those things we need for the feast,” or that he should give something to the poor.

Having received the piece of bread, he then went out immediately. And it was night.

Let us pray. Our Father, in this hour of darkness in which we have gathered to attend the hearing of Your Word and the feast of Your table, we pray that You would be present with us in the presence and the power of the Holy Ghost. For we ask it in the name of Christ. Amen.

Scripture Fulfilled

It was Maundy Thursday, and the disciples had gathered with Jesus in the upper room. On that occasion, we saw the humble experience of the washing of the disciples’ feet by Christ, which we looked at last Sabbath. It was in that room on that night that our Lord instituted the Lord’s Supper, or the sacrament of Holy Communion, for the first time. It was in that room on that night that our Lord instituted the new covenant in His blood and gave to His disciples a new commandment to love one another. If you look at your bulletin, you read something of the origin of the Maundy Thursday celebration. The word maundy derives from the words mandatum novum, which is the Latin phrase for the “new commandment” that Jesus gave to His disciples that night.

As we pick up the text at verse 18, we read Jesus saying this: “I do not speak concerning all of you. I know whom I have chosen; but that the Scripture may be fulfilled”—and He quotes the text. Then He says: “Now I tell you before it comes, that when it does come to pass, you may believe that I am He. Most assuredly, I say to you, he who receives whomever I send receives Me; and he who receives Me receives Him who sent Me.” All of this is by way of preface to His grim announcement, “Most assuredly, I say to you, one of you will betray Me.”

Let us look at the text that He cites when He says: “I do not speak concerning all of you. I know whom I have chosen; but that the Scripture may be fulfilled, ‘He who eats bread with Me has lifted up his heel against Me.’” In this moment, our Lord quotes from a psalm of David, Psalm 41. I will not read the psalm in its entirety, but in Psalm 41:4–6, David writes these words:

I said, “Lord, be merciful to me;
Heal my soul, for I have sinned against You.”
My enemies speak evil of me:
“When will he die, and his name perish?”
And if he comes to see me, he speaks lies;
His heart gathers iniquity to itself;
When he goes out, he tells it.

You can see what David is saying here. First, he confesses his own sin, and then he cries out to God about this enemy who spreads vicious lies about him and bears false witness against him. As he continues to describe the anguish this enemy is causing him, David says this:

All who hate me whisper together against me;
Against me they devise my hurt.
“An evil disease,” they say, “clings to him.
And now that he lies down, he will rise up no more.” (Ps. 41:7)

The climax of this lament is found in verse 9:

Even my own familiar friend in whom I trusted, Who ate my bread,
Has lifted up his heel against me.

It is one thing to be hated by your enemy, but to be betrayed by your friends is one of the darkest experiences that a human being can ever endure. We see that Christ is David’s greater Son, and David is a type of the Christ who was to come, so that many things that took place in David’s life are later recapitulated in the life of Christ.

Of course, this whole psalm is not a messianic psalm. This whole psalm is not about Jesus because at the beginning of the psalm, David confesses his sin before God. This had no relevance or application to Christ whatsoever. But the application comes at the point that Jesus quotes: “My own friend, the friend whom I have trusted, the friend who ate my bread—he has lifted up his heel against me.”

In the ancient Near East, to be betrayed by one’s friend was considered a heinous crime, but the most heinous betrayal would be by a friend who had actually shared bread at your table. On the night that our Lord institutes His final supper, the sacrament of Holy Communion, He breaks bread and distributes it to His disciples, His friends, those who had been His closest companions over the previous three years. Now He makes the announcement that one who is at the table eating with Him will indeed betray Him.

Is It I?

There are some other points in the text that I do not want to gloss over too quickly. Jesus says, in essence: “I’m telling you this so that when it happens, when it comes to pass, you may believe”—that Ego eimi—“that I am who I am.”

Throughout the gospel of John, as we have been studying it this past year, we have seen the “I am” statements of Jesus. Jesus uses the formula borrowed from the Greek Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Old Testament, where the supreme name of God, Yahweh, is rendered by the phrase Ego eimi. Jesus now makes the pronouncement that He is about to be betrayed so that the Scriptures may be fulfilled. In effect: “That you, knowing the Scriptures and knowing that I have predicted it, will now be confident that I am.”

Now when He said these things, He was troubled. He was troubled in a visceral way, deep in His spirit, when He said, “One of you is going to betray Me.” We read that the disciples looked at one another perplexed when He said it. They were startled, stunned, and confused.

If we look at the other records of this in the Synoptic Gospels, two of them mention a detail that John omits. When Jesus makes the announcement that one of those assembled is going to betray Him, one by one the disciples ask the question, “Is it I?”

Teaching in seminary, when I am involved with students who are studying the text, learning to preach or learning theology, one of the principles of biblical interpretation I give them is this: “When you’re reading a text, pay attention not only to the structure of the language, the nouns and verbs and so on, but to the immediate and broader context. I want you to read the text in an existential way—not in the existential philosophical way, but in the sense of empathy. I want you to try to get in the skin of the people who are engaged in the drama of redemption. Try to imagine, to the best of your ability, what they’re thinking, what they’re feeling, and why they’re behaving in the manner that they are.”

Now imagine this: You go to the upper room. For the last several weeks, you have been listening to Jesus talk about the grim events that are in front of Him. He has told His disciples that He is going to go to Jerusalem, that He is going to suffer and die. Now He tells them that the hour is at hand. The leader has just said that He is going to die. What do you think that meant to the disciples?

I imagine that there was not one of them who did not ask himself: “Does this mean I will die with Him? Is it my hour too? This Jesus, in whom I had placed all my hopes that He would be the Messiah—I had a different understanding of what the Messiah would be than what He’s explaining to us now. I don’t like what I’m hearing.”

They knew that every time that Jesus opened His mouth during the time that they were with Him, He spoke nothing but the unvarnished truth. Suddenly, He announced to those who were seated there, “One of you is going to betray Me.” Each one of those assembled knew there was no doubt that what Jesus had just announced was true, and someone in that room was going to betray Him. But He did not say who it was.

I think there was a fleeting moment that every man there in the presence of our Lord thought: “Oh no. Please, don’t let it be me.” They did not know that it would not be them. They hoped that it would not be them, but they did not know. That is why they asked the question seriatim, around the room: “Lord, is it I? Lord, is it I who will betray You?”

The Signal to John

One of the details we get in the text is that during the Passover meal that evening, the disciples reclined with Jesus at the table. That is a detail that I am afraid the greatest artists in Western history either overlooked or simply ignored when they painted their depictions of the Last Supper.

Invariably, when we see the paintings of the Last Supper, from da Vinci on down, we see people seated at the table. Normally that was how Jewish people had their meals—they sat around a table—except on rare and special occasions.

Some of you may remember movies from Hollywood that would depict the Roman orgies, the Bacchanalia, the Dionysian feasts of the Greeks. They would come together and get drunk. They would have dancing girls. They would fill themselves with so much food that, in order to continue to enjoy this celebration, they would run out, stick their fingers down their throats so they could regurgitate the food and make room for more, come back in, and gorge themselves some more in their gluttony.

When you have seen these scenes in Hollywood, they always have the emperor and his guests reclining at low tables, leaning on their left arms and keeping their right arms free to put the food and drink into their mouths. When the custom of reclining at meals was first introduced to Palestine, it was completely rejected by the Jews. It was seen as a sign of decadence because of its earlier association with the hedonistic cultures of the pagans.

Over time, another significance of reclining found acceptance among the Jews: To recline at table meant a great occasion. What was first rejected as having too many pagan overtones was welcomed into the Jewish situation, so that the celebration of the Passover was done in this manner. It was leisurely, in complete contrast to the first celebration of the Passover where the Israelites had to eat in haste as they were waiting to depart out of Egypt.

I go into that detail for this reason: In the middle of this meal, when everyone is excited and scared and frightened, Peter signals to John, who is the disciple whom Jesus loved. John is seated next to Jesus, reclining in such a way that all he has to do is lean backwards and turn his head, and he is head to head with Christ at the Last Supper.

Simon Peter gives John the cue to inquire of Jesus, “Who is it?” John gives us the detail that he asked Jesus, but it is obvious from the text that he did not ask loudly. He whispers to Jesus, “Who is it?” Jesus says: “Watch, John. Whoever I give the morsel of bread that I have dipped in wine, that’s the one.”

Jesus gives the signal to John to watch, and then we are told in the text that our Lord took a morsel of bread—let me read it for you: “And having dipped the bread, He gave it to Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon. Now after the piece of bread, Satan entered him. Then Jesus said to him, ‘What you do, do quickly.’”

Now He says that aloud, so the rest of the disciples clearly hear Jesus telling Judas to leave, and to do whatever he has to, to get it over with. But they still have no idea of the gravity of the occasion as Judas rises and departs from their company.

A Commandment of Loyalty

In the verses that follow, which I did not read, we read that it was night: “So, when he had gone out, Jesus said, ‘Now the Son of Man is glorified, and God is glorified in Him. If God is glorified in Him, God will also glorify Him in Himself, and glorify Him immediately. Little children . . .’” (John 13:31–33).

Is that not something? Jesus called them His friends, but this celebration of the Passover was a family occasion, presided over by the Father. All the children were gathered together for the celebration of Passover, and Jesus now adopts the role of the paterfamilias, the head of the household. He addresses His disciples as His children.

Jesus says: “Little children, I shall be with you a little while longer. You will seek Me; and as I said to the Jews, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come,’ so now I say to you. A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another” (John 13:33–34).

I sense some irony here. There is nothing new about that commandment. The commandment to love one another was deeply rooted in Old Testament law. What is new about it here? The only novelty I can guess about this commandment Jesus gives on Maundy Thursday is the context of the betrayal. In effect: “I’m going away. Where I am going right now you can’t come yet, but you will come. In the meantime, I’m giving you a new commandment: that you love each other the way I have loved you—that is, that you not betray each other.”

Later, at the end of the gospel, Jesus confronts Peter after Peter denies Him three times. They meet together, and Jesus says to Peter, “Peter, do you love Me?” We will look at that when we get to that point, but that comes right back to this moment. The love Jesus was asking about was the love that is steadfast, the love that stands up when push comes to shove. It is not like Demas, who betrayed Paul; not like our friends who eat with us, sing with us, and tell us they are with us—until the crisis comes. Jesus says, “That is not how I want My church to behave.” He draws attention to the betrayal by which He will actually be glorified. In that context, He demands from His disciples and all who will follow Him a love that gives no room, has no place for treason.

Jesus continues:

“By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Simon Peter said to Him, “Lord, where are You going [quo vadis]?”

Jesus answered him, “Where I am going you cannot follow Me now, but you shall follow Me afterward.”

Peter said to Him, “Lord, why can I not follow You now? I will lay down my life for Your sake.”

Jesus answered him, “Will you lay down your life for My sake? Most assuredly, I say to you, the rooster shall not crow till you have denied Me three times.” (John 13:36–38)

It is not just Judas, but Simon as well.

There is a lot of speculation among scholars trying to understand the conversations of this intimate group as they recline at the table. They are trying to understand exactly where and how John is positioned with respect to Jesus. While it is clear from the text that Jesus is seated with John at His right hand, some argue that is the seat of honor. But in the Near Eastern culture, at the dining table, the seat of honor was not at the right hand but the left hand.

We are not told who was at the left hand, in the place of honor. Maybe it was Peter. Maybe Peter leaned across, gave the signal, and said, “Ask Him who it is.” But if he was that close, he could have asked Jesus himself. So, for the most part, scholars conclude that Peter was not seated in the seat of honor. The consensus is that the man who was sitting in the seat of honor that night, who was close enough for Jesus to reach over and give him a piece of bread, was Judas.

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability.