The Young Man Who Fled

In this week’s message from Mark 14, a young man in a linen garment follows Jesus into the Garden of Gethsemane, and when the crowd seizes him, he runs away naked. Most believe this was Mark himself, a young follower who failed but was restored and used by God to write this Gospel. We are called to serve Christ early, with the strength of our youth, and to remember that only Jesus could do the work He came to do.

Well, if you would open your Bible to the Gospel of Mark, chapter 14. We’re going to return once again to the Garden of Gethsemane, that beautiful place where Jesus often met with His disciples. And we’re going to go back, as we were last week, to that night in which Jesus was betrayed and arrested.

What we’re going to consider today is really what it means to be a follower of Jesus, to trust Him and trust only Him, and even find no strength in ourselves. But what does it mean to follow Him? Back in chapter 8 of Mark’s Gospel, Jesus summons the crowd with His disciples, and He says to them,

If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.

Mark 8:34

So we’re going to look at the passage. I’m going to read the passage that we read last week, and then we’re going to continue this today, basically from where we left off last week. This is God’s holy, inerrant Word.

The TextMark 14:43–52

Immediately, while He was still speaking, Judas, one of the twelve, came up, accompanied by a crowd with swords and clubs who were from the chief priests and the scribes and the elders. Now he who was betraying Him had given them a signal, saying, “Whomever I kiss, He’s the one. Seize Him and lead Him away under guard.” After coming, Judas immediately went to Him, saying, “Rabbi,” and kissed Him. And they laid hands on Him and seized Him. But one of those who stood by drew his sword, struck the slave of the high priest, and cut off his ear. And Jesus said to them, “Have you come out with swords and clubs to arrest me as you would against a robber? Every day I was with you in the temple teaching, and you did not seize me, but this has taken place to fulfill the Scriptures.” And they all left Him and fled. A young man who was following Him, wearing nothing but a linen sheet over his naked body, and they seized him. But he pulled free of the linen sheet and escaped naked.

Let’s ask God to bless the reading of His Word.

Father, we thank you for your kind grace and blessing. We thank you, Father, for your precious Word. We thank you for the passage that we’ve read, which is so momentous, so important, that we should dwell over every word and contemplate it repeatedly. We ask, Father, for special grace today, that you would apply the truth of this passage to our hearts. And, Father, I pray that it’s the truth that you apply, your Word itself, that we actually take home today. Help us, Lord Jesus, to be faithful to you in all things, and help us to have the right humility as we approach passages like this. We ask your grace in Christ’s name. Amen.

Last week we looked at Judas showing up in the garden. We looked at him coming with the cohort of Roman soldiers and those who were from the temple, and how Judas betrayed Jesus with a kiss. We looked at and considered the mention of the certain one who stood by and drew his sword and struck the slave of the high priest. We talked about Peter for a little while last week, and Jesus’ confrontation of them. We looked at some other Gospels as well, the portrayal of this in John’s Gospel. And we ended with, they all left Him and they fled. And that’s true, the disciples all left and fled.

What we didn’t get to was the last two verses. We didn’t deal with it at all, which is kind of a strange passage, don’t you think?

The young man was following Him, wearing nothing but a linen sheet over his naked body, and they seized him. But he pulled free the linen sheet, and he escaped naked.

Mark 14:51–52

This is the only place in the Gospels where that little incident is found. And I think you read something like that, you have to ask yourself, why is that here? Why do we have such a strange thing found in this Gospel? What’s the purpose of it?

Well, that we can be certain of. We can be certain that this has good purpose, and we can even know what that purpose is. It’s here in the Bible, first of all, because it’s historical and it happened. Now, that’s one reason that it’s here. But it’s also here because the Holy Spirit of God inspired this Word to be here. The Holy Spirit of God had these words written the way they’re written in this passage so that we could benefit from it. In fact, in 1 Timothy 3:16,

All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.

2 Timothy 3:16–17

And that’s why it’s here. It’s here so that we can be reproved or corrected or taught or instructed in righteousness. That’s why it is here.

Studying the Passage Inductively

How do we get those things out of the passage? That’s the next thing. Well, one principle of Bible study is, through prayer and through our dependence on the Holy Spirit of God, we look at a passage and we look at the details of the passage inductively, which is to say, we look at all of the details so that we can understand the meaning and the purpose of the passage. Just like a detective at a crime scene preserves the evidence and then considers the evidence one thing at a time, until he’s able to eventually put a hypothesis together about how the crime happened and maybe who perpetrated the crime.

Inductive thinking is like a jigsaw puzzle where you have the picture that’s in place and you are putting the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle together. Even if your jigsaw puzzle is not exactly complete, after a little while, as these pieces begin to fit together, you get some idea of what the whole might be. And I think that’s what we need to do with this passage. It’s what I propose to do.

I’m not saying that everything that I say this morning is going to be exactly historical. But I’m going to say that I believe that the things that I’m going to apply are going to be the truth of God’s Word, and that there is a bigger picture here that we should probably appreciate, and that it is highly probable. One of the things with some passages of Scripture is that, though they are loaded with lots of detail, and if you actually look hard you find quite a bit, sometimes you don’t get everything that you’d like. And so I think this is one of those passages. But that said, let’s begin to explore what we can learn from this passage.

First of all, I think there’s an example here for us to emulate. The first thing I want to say is that there’s an example for us to emulate. And it says in verse 51,

A young man was following Him.

Mark 14:51

And I’m going to stop with that. There’s two facts there. There’s a young man. He is a very young man. The word there indicates somebody who probably is in their teens, could be in their early 20s, but a young man. And given the association here, and the connection, and the fact that it says he was following Jesus, I think it’s pretty safe to say that he is following Jesus, that he is a follower of the Lord Jesus. I think that that is something absolutely true. He was a follower of Christ.

Coming to Faith Early

Now, that in itself is something that we should be praying for, for our families and for our church, that people come to faith at an early age and become disciples of Christ, or are made disciples of Christ, at an early age. What a blessing that is. And as we sing in that hymn,

Savior, like a shepherd. Early let us seek Thy favor, early let us do Thy will; blessed Lord and only Savior, with Thy love our bosoms fill.

“Savior, Like a Shepherd Lead Us”

It should be our prayer for ourselves, and it should be our prayer for all of the youth in our church, and the youth in our families, and the youth in our neighborhoods. We should long to see them come to faith.

Over the past couple of few weeks, I’ve had the opportunity to share the gospel with some people. Two of them: one lady that I shared the gospel with was in her 90s, and it’s a joy to share the gospel with anyone. And the other person that I shared the gospel with was in his 80s. And I have to tell you, if anyone comes to the Lord at any age, it is a truly, truly wonderful thing, and they will glorify God for all of eternity. They will be praising God and be a trophy of grace forever and forever.

But you know what? What a precious thing it is when somebody commits their life to the Lord at a very young age. What a wonderful thing it is when they come to Christ when they are so young, when they are a teenager even, or even before, when they are able to spend their life in service to the Lord, to cultivate their relationship with God for decades, to be storing up treasure for the Lord year after year, storing up treasure in heaven. What a glorious thing that would be. What a glorious thing it is. How much better when a person follows Christ at an early age. How much better it is to come and follow Christ when you’re healthy, before the strength of your body is gone.

Consider Solomon’s wisdom in Ecclesiastes, when he said,

Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come.

Ecclesiastes 12:1

And everybody in this room has some youth left, and we should be remembering our Creator right now while we have strength of body. Our strength evaporates. I can give you that firsthand. I can tell you that from personal experience. And being able to have the best years of your life, your ability to think clearly, your ability to have strength to serve Christ, to do anything for the Lord and for His people, what a wonderful thing that is. God deserves the best years of our life. So we should be praying for that. We should be praying for children to come to faith. We should long to see them come to faith, so that God can use them in wonderful ways, to bless and serve them, to get to know Him.

What a wonderful thing it is to be a child who has come to faith in Christ and has so much time:

• to read the Word of God,
• to understand who God is,
• to listen to good sermons, sermons that make you think, so that you know the ways of the Lord, know the Word of God, know the will of God, and so you are able to do those things through your life,
• to come to faith at an early age and make friends who are Christians,
• to be guided by them and share that unity and the bond of unity that comes only in Jesus Christ,
• to be able to learn from them and to be a blessing to them, to help instruct and teach them.

What a terrible thing it is that so many young people brought up in a church seem to think something like, “Well, I will give my life to the Lord one day, but I want to live for myself for a while. I want to do my own way for a while. And maybe soon I’ll trust the Lord. Or maybe later I’ll trust the Lord.” Well, you may never trust the Lord, because no one knows what a day may bring forth. We’re to come early and serve Christ with the strength of our youth. That’s what this young man did. He is a follower of Jesus. He’s a very young man, and he is following Jesus.

The second thing I want us to pull from this passage is that I believe, and I’ll have to argue for this, that he’s a courageous follower of Christ. I believe he’s a courageous follower of Christ. Now, a couple of points here. One is that I think I can say with some certainty that the people in the early church, particularly the people in the early church at Rome, knew who this person was. I think I can say that with some reasonable certainty. And here’s why I think that.

A Certain Young Man

I haven’t read this in a commentary, and we’ve got some Greek scholars in our audience, so I’m happy to be corrected, and you can tell me my heresies if I come up with one. But one of the things that struck me as I was studying this particular passage, and it’s because when I looked at the Greek, it didn’t agree with my text that I had been studying. It doesn’t say, to begin with, “a young man was following him.” It doesn’t say that literally. In the Greek, it says “a certain young man was following Him.” Here’s a place where the King James Bible is more accurate than the New American Standard Bible that I’m reading from. There are a few places like that. A certain young man was following Him.

The Greek word there is the word tis, and it’s an indefinite pronoun. It’s used often to mean anyone. And so I read that verse earlier, back in chapter 8, when Jesus said, “If anyone wishes,” that’s the word tis, that’s the word used there, “anyone.” It’s an indefinite pronoun. It can mean anyone. When it’s used by itself, that’s exactly what it means. It means anyone.

If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.

So you have that word used that way. The word is used ten times in the Gospel of Mark, and seven of those times it means anyone. It’s used just like that. But three times the word is used where it is connected with a descriptor of some kind. And so here is one of those examples. It is not “a young man,” but the word tis is used with that. It is a certain young man. Not just a young man, but a certain young man. So I think that in itself is kind of interesting. I think that in itself makes it interesting to me.

Let me give you an example, how we use that. If you think about the way we use that word certain and that construction in English, I think you’ll see what I mean. If you go shopping and you run into a friend, and it’s a lady with her daughter, people you know quite well, and the lady points to her daughter and says, “She has just bought a valentine for a certain young man.” Well, if you know her and you know her family, you probably know who the young man is, wouldn’t you? If you didn’t, you would want to know, because it’s something that’s been singled out. It’s special in some way.

Or if I started to talk about a certain young man who lives in Antigua, you’d probably have some idea. Many of you are going to have some idea who I’m talking about. But if I said to you, “a young man in Antigua,” you wouldn’t be so uncertain. There might be a story that I’m getting ready to relate that I heard from that certain young man who’s in Antigua. You see what I’m saying? And so the fact that this word is used here makes me think that when Mark wrote this Gospel, which went first of all to his early readers in Rome, those readers knew who this person was, because the way that person is introduced to them seems to imply that they would know it. You see? And so I think that that’s highly probable.

The next one that I found is in the next chapter. Another construction like this, just as an example to see how this flowed. It’s in Mark 15:21.

They pressed into service a passerby.

Mark 15:21

Well, you know what? When I looked that up, it doesn’t say “they pressed into service a passerby.” It says, literally, the word tis is there.

They pressed into service a certain passerby, coming from the country, coming from Cyrene, Simon, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to bear His cross.

Mark 15:21

So that’s interesting to me. The fact that that passage is so detailed, mentioning names that would be absolutely irrelevant, and you don’t find in the other Gospels Alexander and Rufus. What does that imply? It implies that they probably know Alexander and Rufus, and because they know Alexander and Rufus, they know Alexander and Rufus’ father. And how is the passage introduced? It’s introduced with that tis, “a certain.” See?

Also, last night, while I should have been sleeping, in the middle of the night, I’m thinking about this, and I think, well, you know, I hadn’t thought about it, to look it up or anything. I thought, we were just introduced to a person who was unnamed, and they knew who he was, because Peter founded the church of Rome. So here’s a person who’s unnamed and they know who he is, but Peter introduced him. How did he introduce him? And so I’m looking at this, and it didn’t say it again in my Bible, but when I looked at the Greek text, it’s not “one of those standing by.” No, it is “a certain one of those standing by.” And that’s certainly something that they’re going to know who this is. A certain one standing by.

So I believe, and that’s the only times that you have this construction in Mark’s Gospel, and I didn’t have time to explore it. I looked at Matthew’s Gospel, but I didn’t have time to explore that throughout the New Testament, to see if that’s a fairly consistent kind of a thing. But I suspect that it might be. So for what that’s worth, I’m pretty sure that the people who were in the church at Rome in the first century, that Mark wrote this Gospel and they were the very first readers of this Gospel, they knew this man. They knew who he was. So that’s a powerful clue, isn’t it? That’s someone that they might know.

Cast On a Linen Garment

So why did I say he was courageous? Well, there’s that next phrase in my Bible. If I can get back to the passage:

A young man following Him, wearing nothing but a linen sheet.

Mark 14:51

Well, when you look at that, here’s another place where the King James is a little more accurate. He is not just wearing a linen sheet, but literally having cast on a linen garment. Having cast on over his body a linen garment. And that’s a little different than just wearing. Having cast it on. Why call attention to the fact that he cast on the garment? And so here we get a bit speculative. But I think that because the word is used that way, it’s relevant. Back 500 years ago, Calvin said,

It’s probable that this young man, on hearing the tumult by night, without stopping to put on his clothes, covered only with a linen garment, came either to discover the traps or at least that he might not be wanting in duty a friendship.

John Calvin

And I think that that’s right. I think that that’s kind of what must be going on here. Here is a young man who is awakened in the middle of the night, and immediately he recognizes the great need, so he takes the sheet, or he takes his bathrobe, and he runs out because of the urgency of the moment, in order to meet a great need. I think that that’s the principle here. He cast his garment over his naked body and ran out. I think that that’s the picture that we’re getting here. So I think it is a courageous young man who runs out into the night in order to find Jesus. I think it’s to help Jesus. I think it’s because of his association with Jesus. And so it’s a courageous young man that we are to emulate.

And we are to be that way. It is such an easy thing to just sort of drift through life, and drift through life identifying as a Christian. But being a disciple of Christ means that we need to have some courage about us. We shouldn’t be pusillanimous sunshine soldiers, if I can say that, tongue twister, of Jesus Christ. We shouldn’t be afraid to mention the name of Christ in public. We shouldn’t be afraid to defend Christ when He’s being attacked, even if it’s by someone who has an authority over us, such as an employer or a professor in a university. We should have courage to be able to stand up for the Lord Jesus.

And I think that this young man was that kind of a young man. A young man who leaves the warmth of his bed and, in the crisis moment, rushes out into the night to be with Christ in the crucial time of this betrayal. I think that’s exactly the picture that we have. Can we go further than that? And I think that we can. I think that it might be possible to get a little closer. So bear with me.

The Upper Room

That’s our Sunday school lesson. A few weeks ago, if you were here for that service, one of the things we pointed out in chapter 14 is that Jesus settles down. He goes to have the Passover meal with His disciples in the upper room of this house. And the upper room is in a house that’s probably a little upscale, a little more than just your average house. The probability, since they have an upper room for something like this, is that this is probably a little better than average. A nice place to be, to be with His disciples, to share disciples and any of those who might be there with them, as they share this meal together.

And so as we were exploring that a few weeks ago, I pointed out that it’s interesting, because after Jesus rose from the dead, His disciples, staying in Jerusalem, met in the upper room. They stayed there meeting in the upper room. And when you get to Acts chapter 1, after Jesus’ ascension, they’re meeting in the upper room. When you get to chapter 12, later on, they’re in Jerusalem again, meeting in a place. This is when Herod puts to death James, the brother of John, and Peter is arrested because they’re going to do the same thing to him, and the angel delivers Peter. And when they come back, the girl at the door, he leaves Peter standing at the door and goes and tells them, and all of those events that take place in that chapter. It’s an interesting, beautiful chapter.

And the interesting thing there is that that room, that place where they are, is absolutely identified. And it is identified as the home of Mary, the mother of John Mark. Interesting, isn’t it? If that is the same place, if that is the same place, then there is a follower of Jesus, and Mark certainly was a true follower of Jesus. Mark would have been a young man in that house. He absolutely certainly would have been a young man in that home, if that’s the same home, and that’s a good clue that it is the same place. Mark would have been a young man in that home, experiencing all the blessings of seeing Jesus there with His disciples, and all of the things that took place there.

He may have been in the room when Jesus taught His disciples, when they shared the meal together, when He introduced the Lord’s table. That’s all possible. I don’t know if he was or not, but certainly he was in that home. He probably knew, certainly he knew Jesus. The person that they were staying with is going to be a disciple of Jesus. He’s going to be a follower of His.

Mark Was the Young Man

And so if that’s the case, let’s begin to think about what’s happened in Mark 14. What has happened is, during that meal, Jesus says, “One of you is going to betray me.” And He gives the sop to Judas, and Judas immediately goes out to complete his deal that he’s already made with the high priests. He runs out. Judas, who’s been waiting for an opportunity to be able to take them at a time when it’s not public, right to where Jesus is going to be, runs to the high priest. And when he gets there, it probably takes longer than he expects, because they don’t just come. What they do is they must appeal to Pilate to get that cohort of Roman soldiers, in case there’s a rebellion. They don’t want to go by themselves. They take a cohort of Roman soldiers.

So, as that takes place, Judas leaves the temple with this small army of Roman soldiers and some of the Jewish leaders to go find Jesus, and he leads them.

Where would you go? You would go where you left them, wouldn’t you? I think that’s exactly what Judas did. He goes back to the house of the upper room. That would be the first place I would go, because that’s where he left them. That’s where he thought Jesus would be. I think that’s absolutely right. And so he goes back to that place. The cohort of soldiers, they come in there. “Where is Jesus?” “Judas is here.” “Find Jesus.” However they decided to do that, it had to make pretty much a pretty good stir.

Mark, having already gone to bed, hears this and wakes up. He recognizes what’s about to take place. Jesus is being betrayed. They’re coming to arrest Jesus. In the urgency of the moment, he throws on a bathrobe. He takes off. He wants to warn Jesus. I think that that is a very plausible scenario of what’s going on here. He wants to warn Jesus.

So he goes, doesn’t know exactly where Jesus is. Judas, who is familiar with Jesus and His habits, has a really good idea where Jesus will be if He’s not there. And so Judas leads the soldiers to the garden. He betrays Jesus with that kiss. Jesus confronts them all, telling them who He is. After that, they arrest Jesus. All of Jesus’ disciples leave Him. They’re gone.

And then this incident happens. How would we know about it if the disciples are gone, have already fled, according to this chronology in Mark? Except that there was one there who does know, who did see it. And I think that that is Mark himself. I think that Mark was there, because he is the young man who fled out to warn Jesus. He’s a young man who courageously went there to warn Jesus, arrived too late after Jesus has been arrested, and they’re leading Him back for the trial.

And he runs up there, and they see him and recognize that he is connected with Jesus, through something said or just that, and they try to arrest him. He pulls away, leaving his garment behind him, and flees. A shameful thing for a Jewish person to flee naked through the streets. It truly would have been. But I think that that’s basically what has happened here.

So he’s awakened by the arrival of the soldiers. He throws the linen garment around himself, and he goes off to warn Jesus. I think there is great courage in that, and I think that there is a great model for us. I think that is a commendable model for us to follow.

Now, is this thing that I just outlined exactly the way it happened? Well, I can’t say that that’s exactly what happened. We don’t have enough to nail that down. I can tell you this: there’s a lot of probability in this that it happened. If this were a court case, if this were a police officer who was evaluating evidence, there’s probable cause to make the arrest, and there’s probable cause to get past the magistrate.

But is there probable cause to convict? Well, maybe. Maybe not. There’s a lot of things that’s just left unsaid here. But I think that there’s a lot here that we can consider. So I do believe that this is absolutely probable. The fact that he ran away naked instead of being arrested shows that, in a sense, he’s absolutely in the same camp as the rest of the disciples.

Now, here’s a historical thing that took place one time in history, never to be repeated, and that is that Jesus is there to undertake this great act of mercy and bringing about our salvation by taking on our sins and the suffering that we deserve. And there is not a disciple who could have stood with Him in that. That’s why you have the Old Testament prophecy that they’ll all be scattered. We’re going to be scattered, because there’s no way that we can work out a salvation on our own. There’s no way that we can stand apart from Christ at all. We can’t do it. Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ alone could do the work that He was there to do. It was just Him alone.

And while we may look at good examples in the Bible, a moral example to follow, well, that is a good thing to do. We don’t look at Jesus that way, exactly. Not really. He’s a good example to follow too, but He’s far more than that. He’s our Savior. He’s the one that did the work that we cannot possibly do. He is the one who, because of that work, has been given power and glory and dominion. He’s the Son of God. He’s the infinite God-man. He’s the King of kings and the Lord of lords. He’s the one who we follow. He’s the one who we worship. Following the example of someone who worships is commendable, but we must be the follower of Jesus Himself. We must come to Him to worship. We must come to Jesus Christ and look to Him to be our Savior, to be the one that we serve and be discipled to and to commit ourselves to.

So I’m going to close with that, because I think that’s the place we must leave this. If you think that my sermon was speculative, then focus on this last point. There’s no speculation on that. The Lord Jesus is the only one whom we can truly worship. And there’s all certainty with the work that He’s done for us.

Let’s pray.

Father, I thank you for your kindness, your mercy, your grace. I thank you, Lord Jesus, that you have shown us truth. And I just pray, Father, that you help us to be the servant of Jesus Christ that we need to be. I pray, Father, that you work by the power of your Spirit to sanctify us, to make us followers of Christ in every sense, that we would courageously defend Him in this world, courageously share the truth about Him with those that we know. Father, that we be obedient to His will and word, that in all these ways, Father, that we would truly be worshipers of our Savior, that we would love Him, that you would grow us in our love for our Lord Jesus.

And we thank you for His sufficiency. And we thank you, Father, for helping us to recognize our inadequacies, that we can’t do it in ourselves. We’re dependent completely on our Savior. And we thank you, Father, for showing grace with people and leading them. We thank you for Mark, who, though he had failures in his life, was a man of great usefulness to you, who was the co-worker of the apostle Peter, and who recorded Peter’s messages and, as a result, had this Gospel written, who was used powerfully by you, by your Holy Spirit, to give us this Word. We thank you for him.

And we pray, Father, that you would raise up many young people. And Father, that you would raise us all up to be faithful to you and to do good, to do your will, to be faithful disciples. We ask this in the name of our Savior, Lord Jesus, for His glory. Amen.