Mark 14:19 And they began to be sorrowful, and to say unto him one by one, Is it I? and another said, Is it I?
I read Mark 14 this morning, and it made me realize that I can’t trust my own judgment. Would you know who is spending their time the most wisely today? Would you know if someone in your inner circle was robbing you blind? Would you trust your perception of how loyal you would be if push came to shove and the chips were down? In other words, do you trust your judgment of people? How can a person without good judgment even know it? If a person doesn’t have good judgment, how do they know they don’t have good judgment?
When you think about the Lord’s disciples, I can’t think of any group of men who seemed to have a better judgement of character than these men did. The religious leaders had rejected Jesus, yet these twelve followed Him. But, what you find in Mark 14 is one story after another reminding us of the fact that you can’t even trust you own judgment about people. I’m not trying to discourage you, but this fact may be worthy of your thinking about; you can’t trust your own judgment.
Let me give you a couple of examples. The first few verses of Mark 14 are about Mary, who anointed the Lord Jesus with basically a year’s worth of wages in precious ointment. The people that were there that day, mainly the disciples, said, “What a waste!” Now we know that Judas led this charge and that he was a traitor, but Mary did not know that. These were the people who were following Jesus, worthy of respect, and they were saying, “What a waste!”
There are going to be times when you are going to be doing the right thing and even the good people you know the best are not going to applaud you. That is okay. We are notoriously unable to judge our own motives or the motives of other people. So, Judas was the one who said, “What a waste! This could have been used much more wisely!”
Two things matter: the Lord’s appraisal and the Lord’s approval. The Lord’s appraisal was, “She hath done what she could.” The Lord’s approval was, “She hath wrought a good work.” Judas called it a waste, but Jesus called it a good work. So, you can’t trust your own judgment. The disciples didn’t know Mary for who she was and what she had done.
What about Judas? Right after this Judas left and sought out the religious leaders, the enemies of Jesus, to betray Jesus. He was making less on Jesus than Mary had spent on Jesus. When Jesus reveals to the disciples that one of them would betray Him, their response was, “It’s not me, is it?” No one said, “I know it! It’s Judas!” It is amazing that these disciples didn’t even know their own hearts. They may have been in doubt about who it was, but none of them said that it was Judas.
Now, let’s consider Peter. Later on Jesus says to Peter, when Peter brags that he would never be offended at Jesus, “Before the cock crow twice, thou shalt deny me thrice.” What a shock and revelation to Peter. Peter didn’t know that he would betray Jesus. Sometimes we can be troubled because we think, “If my back were against the wall, would I be loyal to Jesus?” It is foolish to brag or to be worried about what you would do because you don’t know your own heart. Just do what you know to be right, right now. You can trust the Lord Jesus when it comes to judgment of people, but you can’t trust yourself.
Verse 38 says, “The spirit truly is ready, but the flesh is weak.” This is to say, “I can’t trust my judgment about other people.” Here is Mary. She is not some important person in the hierarchy of the servants of Jesus, but the disciples were wrong and Mary was right. Judas carried the money for the disciples. They trusted him, but he was the traitor. Peter denied Jesus and ran off. No one saw that coming. Then Jesus says, “The spirit truly is ready, but the flesh is weak.” So, I don’t need to squander my time worrying or bragging about what I would do “if.” I need to spend my day serving the Lord Jesus and the people that He died to save.
The bottom line is that Jesus knows me to the core. He knows my heart, my character, my motives, my strengths, my weaknesses, and my future. We should know that and trust Him to be the judge.