Don't Point, People Will Stare!

We read one of the accounts of the last time Jesus sits down and eats with His disciples in Matthew 26:17-35.  It's such a tough scene.  He tells them someone would betray Him.  Judas speaks up and says "It's not me, is it Teacher?"  Jesus answers, basically, "If that's what you say".  Judas seems to be testing Jesus.  Does He know?  Am I busted?  Jesus won't really answer him, but gives him a chance to fess up.  He doesn't.

Then Jesus warns the rest that all of them will abandon Him that night.  He knows.  He doesn't say they might, but that they would.  They all deny it.  There is no way they could abandon Jesus.  But He knows.

It is so hard when Jesus knows us better than we know ourselves, and He calls out things in us we don't want to hear.  He points things out in our life, and we look the other way.  We can try to skirt around it, cover it up, or deny it.  But He steadily tells us the truth.  And it hurts.  I hate it when He tells me things about myself that I am working hard to be in denial of, and He won't let it go.  It burns deep inside my heart, until I come clean and deal with the sin that is there.

By the end of the night, the disciples will run, Jesus will be arrested and beaten, and Judas will be preparing for his own suicide.  Denial is such a completely destructive tool in our lives.  It kills.

What if they had all listened and agreed?  What if they had fessed up? 

What if we do?