Calvary Road Baptist Church

“The Surrogates Confront The Savior In The Garden”

John 18.5 

My title for this message from God’s Word is “The Surrogates Confront The Savior In The Garden.” To make sure my title does not leave you behind, and to make better sense of my explanation of John 18.5, let me do two things, define what I mean by surrogate, and rehearse to you the beginning and the expansion of the long war against God.

The word surrogate refers to a deputy, a delegate, a substitute, or a person appointed to act on behalf of someone else.[1] Although the word surrogate is not commonly used, the concept of surrogacy is very familiar to us.

The gardener who comes once a week to mow the lawn and trim the shrubs is the surrogate of the homeowner. The deputy on patrol is the surrogate of the sheriff. The youngster assigned to clean his room and empty the trash by one of his parents functions as a surrogate. Christian Church members seeking to undertake the Great Commission of the Lord Jesus Christ serve as authorized surrogates.

In this message, I will use the word surrogate as an accurate, descriptive word for those doing the bidding and acting to advance the agenda of God’s chief opponent, Satan. Those men who came to the Garden of Gethsemane around midnight to seize the Savior, and hold Him for trial by the religious authorities and the Romans, were surrogates.

That understood, what brings us to that late-night skirmish in the long war against God?

The Incarnation made possible our Lord’s earthly ministry, which began when He was baptized by His cousin John and culminated more than three years later on the cross of Calvary. What had been a broad spiritual conflict against the human race and then against God’s covenant people that are recorded in the Hebrew Scriptures came to be focused on Him, the God-Man, Israel’s Messiah, the Lamb of God.

What had been an assault on humanity with the efforts to produce a race of hybrids when fallen angels sired children by human women that God stifled with the Flood, Genesis six, and the Tower of Babel idolatry that God judged by the confusion of languages, Genesis ten, settled into a morass of worldwide paganism, demon-backed idolatry, pagan frenzy in their gross worship practices, and concerted efforts to thwart God’s chosen nation of Israel.

But God’s purpose with Israel was accomplished despite severe opposition. The virgin-born Son of God stepped into the human realm according to the divine plan, and the ferocity of God’s spiritual opponents escalated. They tried to kill Him when He was a baby.[8] The Devil himself tempted Him for forty days after His baptism.[9] And all along the way, the plan, purpose, and program of God that He advanced was opposed.

The Devil opposed Him personally. The demons, the Devil’s surrogates, opposed Him personally but pathetically. And, of course, the religious crowd clothed in their self-righteous hypocrisy, who was also the Devil’s surrogates, opposed Him deviously. Judas Iscariot (now, there was a surrogate) was tempted and subverted by the Devil to betray the Lord Jesus, having left the Upper Room to complete the plan to sell the Savior for thirty pieces of silver by leading men at night to find Him, subdue Him, and present Him to the religious authorities and then to the Romans. All of them, of course, are surrogates.

At the moment of our text, the Lord Jesus and His eleven remaining men had left the Upper Room after Judas’ departure, walked and talked on their way to the Garden of Gethsemane after pausing for the Lord’s high priestly intercessory prayer. Once in the garden, the Lord left eight men there, took three men a ways away, and then separated Himself from them for a season of fervent and physically demanding prayer.

His praying completed and returning to His eleven men, He stood once more in the Garden of Gethsemane as five or six hundred soldiers and guards trudged noisily up the hillside. Just as the Roman soldiers and Temple guards arrived at the garden, John tells us the Lord “went forth, and said unto them, Whom seek ye?”

Here is the scene. Twelve Jewish men dressed in typical Galilean attire in a level clearing facing more than five hundred Roman soldiers and a dozen or so armed Jewish Temple guards. Among the soldiers and guards the traitor, Judas, the chief priest’s servant Malchus, and Malchus’ relative; three civilians.[10] It is midnight in the olive grove, with moonlight and torches providing some flickering light by which to see. It is also getting colder by the minute.

In John 18.5, we examine the surrogates confronting the Savior, which is the Savior confronting the surrogates: 

“They answered him, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus saith unto them, I am he. And Judas also, which betrayed him, stood with them.” 

Recall that the Lord Jesus Christ has just advanced toward the approaching men, consisting of Judas Iscariot (to identify the person they have come to take into custody), a band of men (the word being speῖra, meaning a cohort of Roman soldiers), and officers from the chief priests and Pharisees (the officers being Temple guards). Our text does not mention the two other civilians, so we will not pay any attention to them.

It is in John 18.3 that the word “band,” speῖra, is used, the Greek word for a cohort of Roman soldiers. A whole cohort was led by a Roman tribune, consisting of as many as a thousand men but usually six hundred soldiers. If this seems like too many soldiers, remember that 470 Roman soldiers were assigned to protect the Apostle Paul in Jerusalem in Acts 23.23.

To this huge contingent of armed men, the Lord Jesus Christ calmly asked, “Whom seek ye?” He asked that question not to discover information unknown to Him but to stage the encounter that was taking place, to exert His control over the situation. That question was asked in verse 4.

We see three declarations in verse 5, three statements: 

First, THEIR DECLARATION 

To better understand their answer at the beginning of verse 5, we must get hold of the question our Lord asked them in verse 4: 

“Whom seek ye?” 

The Greek word translated “seek ye” is zhteῖte, which is a second person plural form. Thus, when He advanced on the large number of armed men, the Lord Jesus Christ did not address any particular figure among them. He does not address a tribune or a centurion among the Romans.

I find this interesting because, come to Judgment Day, as each of them stands before the Great White throne to be judged by the Savior they have come to apprehend, no one will get away with saying, “But I was only a soldier. I was told to assemble and march, so I assembled and marched. It’s not like I knew what we were doing. I was just following orders.” People tend to think that shared responsibility for an action taken or a deed done is a diminished responsibility, like spreading mayonnaise on a slice of bread. But it doesn’t work that way at all. The war crimes trials conducted following World War Two settled once and for all among modern nations that “following orders” in no way diminishes personal responsibility. The five or six hundred armed men standing before the Lord were as responsible for the actions they were about to take as if they were acting alone and without help. That is something every lost individual needs to ponder as you consider your future judgment for rejecting the Gospel.

The Lord asked them, verse 4. They answered Him, verse 5: Verse 5 begins with their, which is to say the group’s, response to the Master’s question: 

“They answered him, Jesus of Nazareth.” 

Why do you think the Lord Jesus Christ asked them, “Whom seek ye?” Because the Lord Jesus Christ knows all things, He knew that the large group of men entering the area did not recognize Him. Therefore, we can be confident that He was not asking a question to find out who they were looking for. He asked that question to create an opportunity.

How can we be absolutely sure they did not know Him or the man they were sent to take into custody? First, whoever among them spoke did not respond by saying, “You. We are here for you.” Second, had they known who they were looking for, they would have had no need for Judas Iscariot to point the Savior out to them. Thus, we have a group of hundreds of armed men who have been dispatched to take a single man from Nazareth into custody. They did not know what their man looked like in that pre-photographic era. We are not told who of the hundreds of Roman soldiers and dozens of Temple guards spoke to answer the Lord’s question, but my guess is that it would likely have been the senior Roman officer or senior Temple guard present. In the end, it doesn’t matter who voiced the answer to the Lord’s question, a Roman tribune, a Temple guard officer, or the chief priest’s man on the scene, Malchus. By inspiration of the Holy Spirit, John shows the Savior asked them who they sought, and they answered. Each person is responsible. Each individual is culpable. Each one among them is blameworthy. 

Next, THE LORD’S DECLARATION 

“Jesus saith unto them, I am he.” 

Notice, if you will, that the word he in this phrase is italicized. Italics are used in the KJV to denote the addition of an English word supplied by the translators when there is no corresponding word in the text.

The actual Greek words in the text are ἐgώ eἰmi, meaning “I am.” This is one of a number of places in John’s Gospel where the Lord Jesus Christ expresses Himself using the counterpart to the LORD, identifying Himself to Moses from the burning bush in Exodus 3.14 as “I AM.”

The eleven remaining apostles are witnesses to the confrontation of surrogates. Reflect on the implications of this confrontation, the Lord Jesus Christ on one side and the surrogates of the Devil on the other side. Eve became the Devil’s surrogate upon eating the forbidden fruit when she offered it to Adam, and he ate. Cain was born the Devil’s surrogate and displayed his surrogacy when he attempted to pass off an unacceptable offering to God and retaliated against his brother by murdering him in a fit of jealousy. Both the sinful angels, identified as sons of God, and evil women, identified as the daughters of men, were surrogates of the Devil in Genesis 6. Those who built the tower of Babel were surrogates of the Devil. The demons behind every idol and false god are surrogates of the Devil. Everyone who bows before a statue displays that they are surrogates of the Devil. When the Lord took His men to Caesarea Philippi, Matthew 16.13-20, He challenged His spiritual foes, the Devil’s supernatural surrogates, and announced His plan to defeat them.[11] When He took His men to Jerusalem, was He not once more announcing His plan to prevail over the Devil’s surrogates, the religious leaders of Judaism? So again, here, in a face-off against perhaps five to six hundred armed men and three civilians, the Lord Jesus Christ is yet again challenging the Devil’s surrogates.

They did not imagine themselves to be the Devil’s surrogates. The Roman soldiers, from the tribune to the centurions, to the ordinary soldiers, imagined that they were nothing more than Roman patriots doing their duty to follow orders and keep the peace, serving the emperor. The Temple guards imagined that they were doing nothing less than maintaining order and propriety in and around the Temple, yielding in all ways to the authority, the traditions, and the age of the chief priest and the elders of the Jewish Sanhedrin. Malchus and his relative saw themselves as functionaries whose job was to execute the wishes and directives of the chief priest, Caiaphas. They were bureaucrats doing their jobs. Not a one of them, Judas Iscariot, aside for the moment, saw himself as a surrogate of the Devil, a pawn of wickedness and evil. Yet, there they were, come to seize by force the Son of the living God, who had just confronted them with His identity: “I am.” He is not only on God’s side opposite the side they were on as surrogates of the Devil. He is God! 

Finally, THE TRAITOR’S DECLARATION 

The verse concludes with the words, 

“And Judas also, which betrayed him, stood with them.” 

My impression, from this phrase at the end of the verse, with the Lord Jesus Christ’s question, “Whom seek ye?” answered by an unnamed individual rather than Judas, is that the Lord’s betrayer does not occupy a prominent place among this large body of armed soldiers.

They had proceeded to a designated place (the Garden of Gethsemane) under orders from higher authorities to take someone into custody. If needed, Judas Iscariot was the paid informant who accompanied them to identify the person they were seeking. But I guess that such delegations of soldiers typically did not need their quarry to be identified.

What do most men who are pursued by fearsome authorities who do not know them by sight do as soon as they are aware they are being pursued? They run. I suspect the Romans and Temple guards expected their quarry to run, and as soon as he began to run, they would know who he was.

The fact that the Lord Jesus Christ confidently stepped forward and asked, “Whom seek ye?” might initially give the impression the man they were after was not there. Or, if he tried to hide from them, Judas would be useful to identify Him.

That Judas was not walking at the front of the soldiers (in which case he would have immediately pointed out the Savior) might suggest that his usefulness was not respected by the Romans or the Temple guards, either because they were not sure they would need him or because they had no respect for him as a paid informant.

In any event, Judas made a declaration before he ever said a word. This is because standing with them is all the declaration he needed to show which side of the conflict he was on and whose surrogate he was. Sometimes you don’t need to say anything to declare yourself to one and all. Just keep your mouth shut when you ought to say something when you ought to witness, when you ought to declare yourself to be on the Lord’s side.

Your silence shows one and all which side you are on. And don’t kid yourself into imagining that you can possibly be neutral in this conflict. The Savior had already dispelled that naive notion in Matthew 12.30, when He said, 

“He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad.” 

The phrase “which betrayed him” was confirmation of Judas Iscariot’s nonverbal declaration to everyone there which side he was on. 

Yes, it has been a very long war. The war did not break out in the Garden of Eden. The war broke out in heaven, with Eve’s and then Adam’s sins being the result of the opening of a new front in the war, the human realm.

As in every war, there are casualties of war. Every incorporeal being created directly by God before the event of Genesis chapter one who has sided against God will someday be consigned to the lake of fire, which was created by God for their eternal punishment.[12]

On the human front of this war, those who pass from this life when they die will immediately begin to suffer eternal punishment if they die without Christ, or they begin to enjoy eternal bliss if they die having turned to Christ.

Finally, since no war lasts forever but is either won or lost, it must be pointed out that when the Lord Jesus Christ suffered the death of the cross and rose from the dead, He secured victory in the spiritual conflict. He conquered sin, death, Hell, and the grave, and Satan’s fate is sealed.

What is occurring now are the final scenes leading to the final acts of the drama of redemption. But the victory is won! Just as the battle of New Orleans was fought and won by Andrew Jackson after the War of 1812 was ended by treaty in Europe, so the victory has been won, and the Devil and his surrogates are defeated foes, struggling in vain in a cause that is already lost.

What remains for us is a matter of discovery. We live for, love, and serve the Lord Jesus Christ, witnessing to this person and that, seeking to discover which among the lost we know will be rescued by the Gospel message and through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Will it be you, my lost friend? Only time will tell us if you are among those who turn from your sins to trust Christ to save your eternal and undying soul.

__________

[1] Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary, (New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1996), page 1836.

[2] Michael S. Heiser, Demons: What The Bible Really Says About The Powers Of Darkness, (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2020), page 7.

[3] Job 38.7; Genesis 1.31

[4] Revelation 12.4

[5] Genesis 3

[6] Psalm 51.5; Romans 3.10-12, 18; Ephesians 2.1

[7] Jeremiah 17.9; 1 John 5.19

[8] Matthew 2.1-18

[9] Matthew 4.1-11

[10] John 18.10, 26

[11] Michael S. Heiser, Reversing Hermon: Enoch, the Watchers, & the Forgotten Mission of Jesus Christ, (Crane, Missouri: Defender Publishing, 2017), pages 94-102.

[12] Matthew 25.41

 

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