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John 13:21–30 What I Am Doing You Do Not Understand · The TakeAway

• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you are certain that God was leading you, yet you couldn't understand what he was doing?
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: In John chapter 13, Jesus tells his disciples that one of them will betray him.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: They are confused, uncertain, and unable to recognize what is unfolding right before their eyes.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yet Jesus knows exactly what is coming, and nothing that happens that night will take him by surprise.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: In this message, Pastor Harry examines the betrayal of Judas and the difference between what God is doing and what we are able to understand in the moment.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: Join Pastor Harry as he unpacks why trusting God sometimes means waiting until afterward to understand what he has been doing all along.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: Here's Pastor Harry Barrens with today's message.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: Hello, and welcome again to the takeaway.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: I'm your host, Pastor Harry Barrens.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: And today we're going to be picking up exactly where we left off last time, in the silence that fell over the upper room, the moment Jesus said, One of you will betray me.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: And that sentence unsettled every man in that room because of the same thing we have been naming across this whole series, that they could not help but hear him through their own perspective, the culture they had grown up in with the scripture they had grown up reading.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: And even though both of those were real and true, neither one could make sense on its own of what he had just said.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: He had told them plainly, more than once, and it still had not landed, which is exactly why what he says next matters so much when he says, What I am doing you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: And that is the same tension a lot of us are living in right now in our own lives.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: God leads us somewhere, and we are sure, genuinely sure, that it was him who led us there.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: And then, somewhere in the space between the leading and the glory that is supposed to come from it, we get lost and we feel uneasy and we start carrying a weight we cannot quite explain.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: Because what we are living does not yet look like what we thought it was going to look like.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: And Jesus is telling us right here that this is purposeful, not a sign that something has gone wrong.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: It simply means that what is happening in this moment needs the rest of the story to be understood, the parts still yet ahead of us.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: And he is not asking us to understand the moment.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: He is just asking us to trust him inside of it.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: Now, we have seen this exact pattern before in the life of Abraham and the promise God gave him back in Genesis chapter 15, where he said, Your very own son shall be your heir.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: And then years passed that were real and hard, long enough that Abraham stopped waiting and took the promise into his own hands.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: And then Ishmael was born out of that impatience.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: But the promise itself never moved.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: And in God's own timing, it came exactly as he had spoken it in Genesis chapter 21, where it says, The Lord did to Sarah as he had promised.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: Sarah had finally held the Son God had promised to her all along, and in the moment God had already appointed for it.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: Now that gap between the promise and the seeing of it nearly broke Abraham's trust.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: And it is the same gap the disciples are standing in right now in this very room.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: And it is also the same gap some of you are standing in today as you're listening to this episode.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: Now, Judas is about to show us what that same gap looks like from the inside of a very different kind of choice, though.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: A few episodes back, we asked a hard question whether if God chooses us, we still have to respond.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: And in the next few minutes, we get to watch that question answered in real time because he is about to make a real choice inside of a plan God had already set in motion long before he ever sat down at this table.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: His choices were never an illusion.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: What he does with them is entirely his.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: And that plan reaches back a lot further than tonight, which is exactly where we need to start.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: So let's step back into the room where Jesus has just told his men plainly that one of them will betray him.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: Now, this did not catch him by surprise because he had already told them back in verse 18 that the scriptures would be fulfilled when he said, He who ate my bread has lifted his heel against me.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: Now that comes from Psalm 41, verse 9, where King David writes about his own betrayal at the hands of someone close enough to sit at his table when he says, Even my close friend, in whom I trusted, who ate my bread, has lifted his heel against me.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: Now David lived a small shadow of this moment a thousand years earlier, betrayed by someone inside of his very own circle.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: And then Jesus takes David's own words and applies them to himself right here, which shows us that the deeper pattern of this David only felt.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: But Jesus is about to live it all the way to the cross.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: And then notice something else Jesus already told them in verse 19, where he says that he was telling them this now, before it happened, so that when it did happen, they would believe that he is who he says he is.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: Now that promise is the reason we can trust everything we are about to watch, because Jesus is not being caught by surprise by any of this.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: He said it would happen.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: And now in verse 21, it does happen.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: So let's look at what happens next in verses 22 through 25.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_01: It says the disciples looked at one another, uncertain of whom he spoke.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: One of his disciples, whom Jesus loved, was reclining at table at Jesus' side.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: So Simon Peter motioned to him to ask Jesus of whom he was speaking.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: So that disciple, leaning back against Jesus, said to him, Lord, who is it?
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: Now notice the room in this moment, because nobody stands up and accuses anybody here.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: They just look at each other, unable to imagine which one of them could be capable of this.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: And then one of them, the disciple whom Jesus loved, whom we already know to be John himself, is close enough to lean back against Jesus and ask him directly.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: The same man writing this gospel, who never once uses his own name to tell us who he is.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: So he simply tells us he was there, close enough to ask the question.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: Every other man in the room wanted answered, but could not bring himself to ask.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: So now let's look at how Jesus answers him in verses 26 and 27.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: It says, Jesus answered him, It is he to whom I will give this morsel of bread when I have dipped it.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: So when he had dipped the morsel, he gave it to Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: Then after he had taken the morsel, Satan entered into him.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus said to him, What you are going to do, do quickly.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: Now notice how Jesus is the one to move first in this verse and does not wait for Judas to reach for anything as he dips the bread himself and hands it right to him.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: Now, if you remember what we said about Psalm 41 earlier in this episode, it pictures a friend who ate bread at another man's table and then turned on him.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Judas never actually takes bread from Jesus in that sense.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: What we see instead is Jesus doing the giving, reaching for the bread himself and placing it directly in Judas' hand, just like what we saw in the last episode when he picked up the basin and knelt down at Judas's feet.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: And now he is extending fellowship to a man who is about to use it against him, exactly the way we saw him command it in Luke chapter 6, when he said, To love your enemies and do good, expecting nothing in return.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: And then comes the hardest line in this whole passage in verse 27, where he says, Satan entered into him.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: Now, this was not a surprise attack on an innocent man standing in the wrong place at the wrong time.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: This was the last step of something that had been building for a long time.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: Back in verse 2, John had already told us the devil had put it into the heart of Judas to betray Jesus.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: And that was just a door cracked open there.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: Then back in chapter 12, verse 6, John told us plainly who Judas already was.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: Before any of this, where it says he said this, not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: And having charge of the money bag, he used it to help himself to what was put into it.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: So this is not the first compromise.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: It is the last one.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: And what we see in verse 27 is not a door thrown open by force.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: It is a door that had been left open again and again until there was nothing left to resist through.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: Now, Judas never practiced anything like sorcery or divination that we know of.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I want to be clear about that, because his door opened through nothing more exotic than ordinary greed, a compromise he never dealt with.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: But the principle behind it, that repeated small choices can open a door wider than we realize, is something Scripture takes seriously in a far more literal way, also, even if our culture does not think much about it.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: Now, long before Jesus, we read that the Lord commanded his people in Deuteronomy chapter 18, verses 10 through 12, when he said, There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens, or a sorcerer, or a charmer, or a medium, or a necromancer, or one who inquires of the dead.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: For whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: Now notice that God never tells his people these things are fake or powerless.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: He tells them plainly to stay away.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: And the reason is not that these practices accomplish nothing, because in 1 Samuel chapter 28, when Saul goes to the witch of Endor, something real happens there, something neither Saul nor the medium fully controlled.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: She was expecting whatever she was used to conjuring in that room.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: And instead, Samuel himself actually appears real enough that she is the one who cries out in fear, not Saul.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: So whatever she normally produced in her session was never enough to frighten her like this.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: Now, Paul also has something to say about this, and he tells us plainly in 1 Corinthians chapter 10, verse 20, what pagan sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God, showing us that the door is real.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: It is just never what the person opening it thinks it is.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: None of that means Judas himself practiced anything like this.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: His door opened through greed, plain and ordinary.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: But it is the same warning, either way, aimed at whatever we leave cracked open, whether it looks occult or it looks completely mundane.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I want to be honest about why I took the time to say all that, because our own culture is full of doors just like this one, chances to dabble in things we do not fully understand.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: And most of us walk past them without ever asking what we are actually opening.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I'm not telling you that every door left open ends in something demonic.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: What Jesus calls us to is simpler than that.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: And it is just awareness, paying attention to what we are letting into our lives and why.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: And if you belong to him, you do not have to live in fear over this because scripture tells us plainly in 1 John chapter 4, verse 4, you are from God and have overcome them.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: For he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: A genuine believer is not going to be possessed by a door left open.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: But the influence of the door is still real, and it can shape us more than we realize.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: So with that, let's come back to the table because Jesus already knew Judas's door was open long before any of us did.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: And what he says next does not flinch from it.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: When he says something remarkable, given everything we just said, he says to Judas, What you are going to do, do quickly.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: Now, this is not weakness, and it is not a man losing control of his own arrest.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: This is the same authority we watched him carry through this entire meal, the same hands that picked up the towel, now sending the betrayer out to do what only Jesus himself all along had already seen coming.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus already knew exactly what this meant, but the men sitting around him didn't know any of it.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: Not even after watching the sign happen right in front of them.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: So now let's look at verse 28, because for a single sentence, it is doing enormous work here for what's happening in this room.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: It says, Now no one at the table knew why he said this to him.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: Now we have seen this before, just a few episodes ago, standing at the gate of Jerusalem, watching Jesus ride in on a donkey, where we saw palm branches waving, the crowd shouting, Hosanna, and John telling us plainly that his own disciples still did not understand what they were watching until Jesus was glorified.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: And only then did they remember that all of it had been written about him.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: And now we're going to watch the same thing happen again right here at this table, where a private sign has just been given when the bread was dipped and handed to Judas, and it still does not register with them, not even with the one disciple who was close enough to ask the question directly, as we see that he does not even act on the answer given to him, which shows us that the understanding was never simply a matter of information, as these men had the information, but what they lacked was the vantage point only the resurrection would eventually give them.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: And while they're still trying to make sense of what they just saw, the moment doesn't pause for them because Judas is already getting up to leave.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: And the confusion that creates for the disciples in that room is real as they are sitting there at the table, still turning over everything Jesus had said and done in their minds, still glancing at each other, waiting for someone else to say what none of them understands.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: They are not being slow or foolish here.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_01: They are simply standing exactly where every one of us stands before the resurrection interprets anything in a moment that will not make sense until it is already behind them.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: And there is nothing to do in a moment like that except keep sitting at the table.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: And if you're honest with yourself for a moment, some of you already know exactly what this feels like because you're sitting in a place right now that does not make sense to you either.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: A job, a diagnosis, a relationship, a decision you cannot undo.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: And no amount of thinking harder is going to hand you the meaning of it before its time comes.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: Now that is not a flaw in your faith.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: It is simply where you are standing, the same place these men are standing.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: And we're going to talk about exactly what to do with that in just a moment.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: But right now, let's finish out the scene in verses 29 and 30 where it says, Some thought that because Judas had the money bag, Jesus was telling him, Buy what we need for the feast, or that he should give something to the poor.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: So after receiving the morsel of bread, he immediately went out, and it was night.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: Now there's a small detail sitting right here that may look like an apparent contradiction in Scripture, and I want to point it out rather than skip over it.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: John already told us back in verse one that all of this happened before the feast of the Passover.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: But Matthew, Mark, and Luke all describe the same meal as the Passover itself.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: So we have to ask, which is it?
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: Well, careful readers of the Gospels have wrestled with this exact question for a long time over the precise night this meal falls on relative to the rest of Jerusalem.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I am not going to pretend that question is fully settled because it isn't.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't think it needs to be settled right here today.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_01: But what nobody disputes on any side of that discussion is the week this happens in, or what Jesus himself called it, and exactly what Luke told us when Jesus said he had earnestly desired to eat this Passover with his men before he had suffered.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_01: And that also answers the question sitting in verse 29 why some of his disciples thought Jesus might be sending Judas out to buy something for the feast.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_01: Now, Passover was never just one meal, it opened up an entire week called the Feast of Unleavened Bread that was seven days long.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: And a house needed provisions for all of that.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: And that is almost certainly what the disciples assumed Judas was being sent out to buy, supplies for the days still ahead in that week, not for the meal already in front of them.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: So when you read Luke calling this the Passover meal and John describing it as before the feast, you're not reading two accounts that disagree with each other.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: You are reading two honest descriptions of the same meal inside of the very same week Scripture calls Passover, told by two men who cared far more about what that meal meant than about the exact hour the calendar turned.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: So now with that, let's sit for a moment in exactly where this leaves us, because there is a real lesson sitting right here for us today.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: And this is what it is.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: This is the moment the page turns, but down at the table, nobody can see it turning just yet because all they have in front of them is the confusion.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: But we get to sit here and watch it turn from the other side, from heaven's own perspective, because we already know what's coming.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: But right after this scene ends, once Judas has walked out into the night, Jesus is going to say something enormous when he says, Now is the Son of Man glorified.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: And he is not going to mean it as something still ahead of him, because everything that needed to be set in motion has already been set in motion.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: And there is nothing left that can stop it.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: But I want you to notice that they're still sitting in the confusion, still bringing their own picture of how this was supposed to go into a room where Jesus has already moved past it.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: And that is exactly where a lot of us live most of the time in our lives.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: We know who Jesus is.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: We could say it out loud the same way these men could have said it, but we still can't let go of the picture we brought in with us, the cultural assumptions, the way we always thought this was supposed to look.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: And it keeps us standing right next to the truth without actually seeing it.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_01: King Solomon tells us in Proverbs chapter 3, verses 5 and 6, to trust in the Lord with all of our heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_01: In all of your ways, acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: Now that is not a suggestion to stop thinking.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_01: It is a warning about exactly what we watched happen in that room today.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: Men who had real truth, real love for Jesus, and still cannot connect what they knew to what was actually unfolding in front of them, because they were leaning on their own understanding instead of his.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: And Jesus already told them why back in verse 7 of this very chapter, when he said, What I am doing, you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: That is not just a word for Peter.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: It is the promise underneath this entire scene.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: And it may be the promise that you need today.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_01: Some of what God is doing in your life right now is not going to make sense just yet.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: Not because he has failed to explain it, but because you are standing on this side of the events that have not happened yet.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_01: And it will take those events that are yet to happen, the ones still ahead of you, to finally interpret what he has already shown you.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: Your job today is not to force the understanding early.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: It is to trust him without it, the same way these men are about to be asked to.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: So do not lean on your own understanding today.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: Trust the one who already knows how this ends, even when you can't yet see it all.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_01: Because from where he sits, the page has already turned.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: So sit in it and wait, because the events that God has already ordained are still coming.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: And when they arrive, they will finally make sense of everything that you're sitting in right now.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_01: Let's pray.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_01: Father, thank you that you already know how every one of our stories ends, even on the nights when we cannot see past the confusion right in front of us.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: Forgive us for leaning on our own understanding instead of trusting you.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: And teach us to sit still in what we do not yet understand, and give us a patience to wait for the vantage point only you can give.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: We ask all of this in Jesus' name.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: Amen.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: Now I want to thank you again for joining us today, and I hope today's message has truly helped you trust what God is doing, even in the moments you cannot yet fully understand.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: Now, if anything today resonated with you, if you have any questions or comments, please click on the text us link in the episode description, or you can visit us at thetaway.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: Now, in our next episode, we're going to sit with the words Jesus speaks the moment Judas walks out the door when he says, Now is the Son of Man glorified, and the new commandment he gives to every disciple who would ever follow him.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: God bless, and we'll see you next time on the takeaway.