Now on the first day of unleavened bread the disciples came to Jesus, saying, Where wilt thou that we make ready for thee to eat the passover? And he said, Go into the city to such a man, and say unto him, The Teacher saith, My time is at hand; I keep the passover at thy house with my disciples. And the disciples did as Jesus appointed them; and they made ready the passover.
Now when even was come, he was sitting at meat with the twelve disciples; and as they were eating, he said, Verily I say unto you, that one of you shall betray me. And they were exceeding sorrowful, and began to say unto him every one, Is it I, Lord? And he answered and said, He that dipped his hand with me in the dish, the same shall betray me. The Son of man goeth, even as it is written of him: but woe unto that man through whom the Son of man is betrayed! good were it for that man if he had not been born. And Judas, who betrayed him, answered and said, Is it I, Rabbi? He saith unto him, Thou hast said.
And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed, and brake it; and he gave to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body. And he took a cup, and gave thanks, and gave to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; for this is my blood of the covenant which is poured out for many unto remission of sins. But I say unto you, I shall not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom. Matthew 26:17–29.
Our attention is upon the 22nd verse: And they were exceeding sorrowful and began to say unto him every one, Is it I, Lord? In every respect this is the cry of our hearts: to please God. It’s good to have the right attitude toward the words that come to us. It’s good to have that sensitivity in your spirit that says, “Lord, is it I?” It’s good not to be one of those who looks around when a word comes from the Lord and says “Well, that word belongs to this brother or that sister,” but rather to be one that says, “Lord, is it I?” There’s so much in this walk that leaves us open to the view of everyone else. Our privacy is lost: we know even as we are known. God is trying to show us that each man has to be sensitive to what God is speaking to him, and he says in his heart, “Lord, is it I?”
Judas had already made his plans to betray the Lord and when the Lord put the pressure on and prophesied, he finally said, “Rabbi, is it I?” and the Lord said “Thou sayest”. I wonder if Judas really knew, if he realized what he was going to do. The Word says that after he did it, it dawned on him, and he said, “I have betrayed innocent blood.” He threw the money down in the temple, went out and hung himself. That is not the reaction of a man that is callous, and his actions premeditated to the extent that he is aware of what he is doing. It’s a man that had probably been deceived by the devil. The Scripture does say that Satan entered into his heart and he went out and did it. So we know that Satan actually dwelt in the heart of Judas when he betrayed the Lord. But, you see, Judas had opened the door to it, and he knew the responsibility was upon his own shoulders. Where Judas made the big mistake that opened the door to Satan was that he was self-deceived.
Self-deception is mentioned a few times in the Scripture—and when it comes, the man who is self-deceived has no awareness of his need before God. When the Spirit moves through the word, he does not say with an honesty and a sorrowful spirit, “Lord, is it I?” Picture those disciples: the sorrow, exceeding sorrow of their spirits, saying, “Lord, is it I?” Not Judas, he was self-deceived; he was being set up by Satan to betray the Lord Jesus Christ. Self-deception comes whenever people are not sensitive to the Spirit of the Lord, but they follow after the flesh. They are not sensitive to what God is speaking with the Spirit.
Be not deceived; (this comes right down to self-deception) God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth unto his own flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth unto the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap eternal life. Galatians 6:7–8. Now this was written to the brethren. You must never fool yourself when you are in this walk. Face the fact, that as far as the old flesh is concerned, every one of you is a potential Judas. As far as the flesh is concerned, every one of you is a potential harlot, murderer, thief, extortionist: you all have it in you. Paul was well along in the marvelous apostolic ministry when he said, For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing.… Romans 7:18. Not that we are sufficient of ourselves, to account anything as from ourselves; but our sufficiency is from God. II Corinthians 3:5.… we are of the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God, and glory in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh. Philippians 3:3. And this is why the disciples of all times, when the Lord speaks to their hearts and at every message that comes, if they say, “I’ve never been guilty of that,” potentially they may be. You may be guilty of the potentiality of that sin. It may be that you’ve never had the opportunity or the pressures or the right circumstances working against you to produce that fatal moment of yielding, but your flesh is flesh. When God speaks, be very quick to repent.
I’m not saying that you should confess sins that you haven’t committed, but you should be aware of what the flesh really is, for that potential is there. The word came to the believers of Corinth, Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall. (Yet it bolsters you up) There hath no temptation taken you but such as man can bear: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that you are able; but will with the temptation make also the way of escape, that ye may be able to endure it. I Corinthians 10:12, 13. He will make a way of escape, that you may be able to bear it.
Our biggest protection is to have a healthy respect for the deadliness of the flesh nature, and to have a glorious appreciation of that new nature in Jesus Christ. Be determined to see your position in God and to crucify the flesh and reckon it crucified with Christ. When you reckon it so, it will be so. But we can deceive ourselves if we sow to the flesh, for then of the flesh we will reap corruption. If we sow to the Spirit, of the Spirit we will reap life eternal. “Lord, is it I?”
Who are those who have fallen by the wayside? Almost invariably the ones that fall are not the ones that come and say “Oh, I’m weak; pray for me.” But the ones that think they stand are told to take heed lest they fall. In this walk we have a new nature, a born-again spirit, but it is housed in a body that has not been brought to the fullness of redemption. Consequently, the flesh is still alive to the stimulus of the world round about it. It has to be crucified, it has to be reckoned dead; we have to appropriate the perfect provision of Christ for that need. If we ignore this, if there is not a sensitivity in us to that need, we can put ourselves in a place of spiritual jeopardy.
Open your hearts always to this. We don’t want to walk with self-condemnation, but we don’t want to walk in a fool’s paradise either. Know that the flesh wars against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh and these two are contrary one to another, so that you cannot do the things that you would (Galatians 5:17). Don’t be overcome by the flesh, crucify it. It’s a dangerous thing; kill it, come against it with all your heart.
There sometimes comes in the lives of young people, sometimes in the lives of those who are older (you never know when this attitude of mind will hit), when suddenly it seems to be quite fashionable, quite chic, quite clever, to see how much you can play with the world, how you can flirt with it and see how close to the fire you can get without being singed. It’s not wise. It’s not good for you to play with the things of the world. It is good to see how far away from the world you can stay, how you can maintain a spiritual walk before the Lord. This is wisdom.
You lose so much of that sustaining joy when you are a marginal Christian. You get the spiritual splits when you try to straddle the fence between the world and God, and it’s always just a little bit farther than you can reach. Having one foot in the Kingdom and the other foot in the world won’t make it. The joy is not found in that marginal line; the joy comes when you abandon yourself to God with all of your heart and say “Goodby, world: goodby, flesh; goodby, devil,” and you are thrust into the Kingdom of God’s dear Son, and you walk with that sensitivity toward the Lord, striving to please Him in all things.
A depth of love can be realized when you’re very sensitive. Recently, someone was afraid they had offended me, and they came to me in tears and asked, “Oh, have I done anything, have I said anything wrong?” The bonds that exist between people are amazing. If you want things right between one another, how much more do you want them with the Lord? It is good to come sometimes when you want assurance and say to the Lord, “Lord, are You angry with me? Am I doing anything to displease You? Lord, as the sermons are coming I’m trying to take them to heart, but I’m saying to You, ‘Lord, is it I?’ ”
The only person that has that perpetual assurance before the Lord is the person who is a deep repenter, one who is very sensitive to the moving of the Spirit of the Lord when it comes to things that are wrong. This kind of person wants to keep his love affair with the Lord going, and if there’s something wrong he will be on his face, saying “O Lord, something’s wrong; forgive me.”
“Lord, is it I?” We can say sometimes, like Peter, “Oh, Lord, if everyone forsakes You, I’ll not forsake You. I’m ready to go to prison and to death for You, Lord.” “Oh, Peter, the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. Don’t you know that before the night is over you’re going to deny Me three times? Don’t you know that, Peter?” “I’ll never deny You, never.” “The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.” Keep that in mind.
There has to be such a complete trust in the Lord and in what He has done for us, and the full assumption that by one sacrifice He has forever perfected them that are sanctified (Hebrews 10:14). Believe that, but don’t trust the old flesh, and don’t give it an inch: crucify it. Keep yourself sensitive to everything that God wants to speak to you.
This message is one that a person could easily pass over, saying, “There’s nothing wrong with me.” It is easy to be self-deceived until you don’t live in awareness of your need. There is a paradox that has to exist with spirituality: that which sees its place in God, also sees the treachery of flesh and the enormity of its sin against God. The great Apostle Paul in the greatness of his walk with God (no one could say that he didn’t understand what it meant to be justified by faith), in one of his epistles said, I was not a whit behind the very chiefest apostles. II Corinthians 11:5. I labored more abundantly than they all. I Corinthians 15:10. But as he became more spiritual and mature, finally he said, “I’m the chiefest of sinners because I persecuted the church of God; but I obtained mercy because I did it ignorantly.” (I Timothy 1:13, 16).
When people come into this walk with God, they go through a period in which God searches their hearts and they repent, “Oh, thank God I was taken out of the scene,” and they tend to forget it.
As they go on and get closer to God, the hunger for righteousness grows and they look back with horror at the pit, the close times that they almost failed. They break out with cold sweat when they realize the awful peril, the deadliness of sin, how they walked without any awareness of the danger. They learn to cleave to Him more closely, to hang on to Him. Have you had that same experience? Have you ever looked back and thought, “My God, what could have happened to me there?” Over and over again in your life you would think, “Even when I was such a vile sinner, God must have been with me, to have spared me. I am one of the miracles and trophies of the grace of God.” None of you are worth a plugged nickel, as far as your flesh is concerned—you are no good, but you are God’s new creation. All of you, in the sight of God, are worth more than these many present worlds on which we live. That’s how much He loves you.
“Lord, is it I?” I don’t want anything to cause me to miss the center of God’s will in any way, do you? This walk is our very life; it is everything. Don’t blow it by playing too close to the world. Stay away from it. Carefulness now is not a matter of legalism but a matter of having enough wisdom and perception to realize that you don’t play with fire. Stay away from it. It isn’t how close in the world you can get, how you can walk that little line and stay a Christian—the devil might bring a strong wind and blow you off that line; you might fall.
Do you know the story of the little boy who fell out of bed? He fell out with a thump and began to cry. Mama came and picked him up and put him back in bed. She asked, “Why did you fall out of bed?” He said, “I don’t know—I guess I went to sleep too close to where I crawled in.” If you’re going to fall out of the grace of God it’s because you fall asleep too close to where you first crawled in. So, scramble for it; get all the way in. Don’t live in dangerous territory; don’t stay on the borderline; move in with all your heart. It isn’t how close you can be to the world or to sin, or to responses of the flesh: it is how far you can stay away from them.
When I was a young person, I used to think, “Well, Lord, I gave it all to You.” I had read a Scripture that bothered me—“He that is forgiven much loveth much” and I said, “Even Your Word tells me that I’ll never be able to love You as much as other people, because I’ve tried to walk clean from the time I was a boy. I’ve tried to be just what You wanted me to be.” I had walked the lonely path with the Lord, yet I used to think, in order to be a preacher, one had to have done something terrible—robbed a bank, been in the penitentiary, been a cowboy or a desperado who had shot someone—otherwise, you didn’t get a chance to preach. I started out to preach when I was so young that I didn’t have any list of sins I could recount at all.
It seems amusing, but that is the way young people think. The young girls think, “The other girls have played around and have played with the world; they are more acceptable than I am. For what have I kept my virtue, for what purpose have I walked in integrity?” The grace of God to keep you from a thing is greater than the grace of God that delivers you out of it. One day, about twenty years ago I began to realize what a sinner I was, and it cured me of legalism forever. As I was walking down the street I was thinking, “Oh, Lord, I love You,” when suddenly the Lord let the things of the world come over me. I was hit with one thing after another that you’d never believe. I began to just sweat and then the Spirit spoke to me, “This is what I delivered you from.”
After that I counted myself a real sinner. I realized what God had delivered me from before I ever got into it. That was an amazing miracle: the Lord let me see what I would have been, and but for the grace of God I would have been a rascal. Some of you may say, “I was in the world and I don’t want to play with it.” There’s a carefulness in me, too. Maybe the depth of sin was not the reality in act, but I know my nature and what the old flesh is capable of and I crucify it: it is to be a dead thing in my life and I’m going to cleave to the Lord.