3-25-2026

“FOR US BETRAYED”

Text: Mark 8:31 – 9:1

Wednesday March 25, 2026 – Lent Midweek 5

Trinity – Creston

       Grace, mercy, and peace is yours from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ!

       Our text for this Fifth Midweek of Lent is from Mark 8 and 9 that was just proclaimed.

Let Us Pray: Dearest Jesus, send your Holy Spirit to remind us that you allowed yourself to suffer not only for us but with us and be betrayed to go the cross and ultimately die for us. Amen.

Dear Fellow Redeemed in Christ:

Tonight, we will continue looking at the ancient hymn “O Love, How Deep”           and how the love of God in Christ means everything for us Christians.

Last week, we heard how Jesus drives back the forces of Satan for us. This week, we are confronted with what happens when we are the problem.

Last week, Jesus drove a demon out of the man, but today it seems as though Satan has entered not one but two of Jesus’ close disciples.

Jesus teaches “that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again” (Mark 8:31).

Two particular words are important in that sentence from Jesus—namely, the words “suffer” and “be rejected.”

A part of Jesus’ humiliation is that He suffers both for us and with us. His suffering is not simply that He is in pain or that He hurts. It means that He endures the pain of another, He feels as they feel, He knows what they are going through.

Mark uses the word πάσχω here. The English words compassion and sympathy are related to this Greek word. The author of Hebrews puts it this way:

For it was fitting that He, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering. (Hebrews 2:10)

Everyone and everything exists according to the Son of God. All things exist through Him. So when Jesus works to bring us back to the gracious presence of the Father, He does so through suffering. Our salvation is made perfect—that is, completed—through His suffering.

But Jesus’ suffering is not simply that He hurts as we hurt. It is not just that He is like us, although that is true. His suffering comes specifically as a result of the world’s rejection of Him as the Son of Man.

In many ways, Jesus’ journey throughout the Gospel of Mark is the story of His rejection. City after city, town after town, group after group rejects Him, but not because He has done something wrong or because He is evil or has sinned. Far from it.

They reject Him because He is good and holy and righteous in every way. For that, they reject Him.

Tonight, though, this rejection takes an even darker turn. Both Peter’s and Judas’s betrayals are predicted in Mark 8:31–9:1. They were two of the Twelve.

Peter was one of the three members of the inner circle, one of Jesus’ nearest and closest friends. And that betrayal cuts the deepest of all. That is the suffering that only comes from love.

One of the most dangerous things about love is that it makes you vulnerable. When you love another person, you are, in effect, giving them permission to hurt you.

The closer you are to a person, the more they can hurt you. And that is why Peter’s betrayal cuts so deep. Three times he denies Jesus in the face of enemies.

And Judas . . . well, Judas betrays Jesus all the way to death itself. Judas takes Jesus when He is most vulnerable, most exposed. He betrays the Son of Man with a kiss.

Yet remember that even when Jesus is betrayed and delivered into the hands of sinful men, He permits it because of His great love for you, as we hear in stanza 5 of the series hymn:

5. For us by wickedness betrayed,

For us, in crown of thorns arrayed,

He bore the shameful cross and death;

For us He gave His dying breath.

Imagine now the scene before us. Jesus, betrayed by Judas into the hands of sinful men, is now arrayed in a crown of thorns so painful that the mere thought of them being placed in His head makes one’s skin itch.

Then, the very cross upon which He will be crucified is placed upon His back. He literally bears it—that is, He carries it—to Golgotha, the Place of a Skull. And it is there that our Lord gives up His dying breath.

The one who first breathed life into all creation now breathes His last. The one by whom all things are made and given life is unmade and dies.

He is rejected by friend and enemy alike. And yet even then, in His last breath, He gives. He gives His dying breath so that you may have life breathed into you again.

This, beloved, this is the heart and soul of Christianity. This is the essence of love—that God, our God, would love us to the end, and by that end, by His death, would take us from this valley of sorrow to Himself in heaven.

But in order to get us through the valley of the shadow of death, He must lead the way. He must die so that when He rises from the dead, He is the “firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep,” as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:20.

Tonight, we have heard how our Lord died upon the cross, the cost He paid for our salvation.

As you prepare for Holy Week, repent and remember the God who does all things for you and who gives you His dying breath. We will hear it again on Good Friday. It is worthy of our meditation more than once this season.

Amen.