Arresting the King

Transcript of the segment on the Reaction to “I am he” :

And when Jesus, notice the text, and when Jesus said to them (v. 6) ‘I am, I am he’, they drew back and fell to the ground. It was a work of power. Jesus is confronting the powers of darkness. And you need to see the element of the comic here, the authorities had been waiting for this moment for a long time. The Jewish authorities had been concocting plans to get him. All of the time, they had been talking about putting him to death, from very early on in his ministry. This was their moment. This was their high point. They had Jesus within their grasp. The fawning crowds of people who adored him for his miracles weren’t there. It was the darkness. He was there alone with his twelve men. And here they were with a force of Roman soldiers with them. This was their moment. Throughout John’s Gospel, we have seen the elusiveness of Jesus. They would go looking for him and they wouldn’t find him. They would try to arrest him and he would slip through their hands. They had tried to, determined to silence him, but he would not be silenced. Every effort had failed. Every effort. And yet instead of falling upon him and arresting him, they draw back. Like dominos you have set up and you push one and they all collapse on each other. You can see the comic picture of these men, drawing back and bumping into the men behind them and they are all falling down like nine-pins. Chaos ensues. Because they’re afraid. There is a fear. R. C. Sproul says, “There were two groups of people terrified that night. There were the disciples terrified at this huge force coming to arrest Jesus. And there was this huge force terrified for this mome