Jesus: Deserted

Now, as we resume our studies in Luke chapter 22, the perceptive among us will recognize that we’re focusing on Easter just in time for Christmas. And there may prove to be a little more method in our madness than at first is apparent, because each year at Christmastime, we point out that you can never fully understand the significance of the Bethlehem event without understanding where it fits in relationship to the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ at Calvary. And to the extent that that is the case, then it would seem purposeful that we would be considering Easter in November and December, which is actually what we’re about to do. Why we’re doing this: those who are visiting would perhaps find it strange, but we tend, as our routine, to work our way through a book of the Bible, and we’ve been doing that in the Gospel of Luke, and it so happens that we’re in this particular section on this first Sunday in November.

Now, the context for verses 47 and following may be understood by allowing your eyes to go back up to the second verse of the chapter, where Luke tells us that in the context of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, with the Passover approaching—verse 2—“the chief priests and the teachers of the law were looking for some way to get rid of Jesus.” Now, this tells us what’s going on behind the scenes. Luke is describing, or has described—we’ve dealt with these sections—Jesus and his followers at the Last Supper, and that he has given us an insight into Jesus and his followers in the garden of Gethsemane. But he wants us to know that while that is what he is surveying for us on the surface, that behind that there is a strategy that is being pursued on the part of the religious leaders of the day in the context of Judas’s willingness to betray Jesus, and their set objective is to try and get ahold of Jesus and to silence him.

Now, when we considered the previous scene, we were introduced to what we referred to as a distressed Christ, crying, “Father, if you[’re] willing, take this cup from me,”[1] and he was “in anguish,” and “his sweat was like drops of blood.”[2] Our hands were over our mouths, as it were, as we looked at that and realized all the distress of Jesus. In coming to verses 47–53, we move from a distressed Christ to events which produce a deserted Christ. Mark, in his reference to this in 14:50, in five words, gives us the summary of the event when he says, “[They all] deserted him and fled.” So things, as Jesus moves towards the cross, are, from one perspective, now beginning to fall apart: the distress with which he has faced the events and the desertion which he is now about to experience.

Now, in trying to come to terms with the seven verses that are before us—and I spent some considerable time, because this is familiar material to all of us and to myself—I finally decided that it fell into three tidy sections, and I wonder if you’ll agree with me that there are three questions here in these seven verses: first, in verse 48, there is a question for Judas; then, in verse 49, there is a question for Jesus; and then, in verse 52, that there is a question for the chief priests and the officers and the elders of the people. And by means of each of these questions we can get a handle on the material before us.

An Awful Treachery

Question number one introduces us to what we might refer to as an awful treachery—as an awful treachery. And of course, this treachery is famous throughout the world. People who only know a little bit about the Bible will probably know the name of Judas. They may refer to a friend who has backstabbed them as being a Judas, and they may even do so without understanding the derivation of their epithet. Well, in point of fact, it comes from the Bible here, and it is the recounting of the fact that Judas comes into the darkness of this garden scene ready to give the predetermined signal to the accompanying crowd of who Jesus was.

Now, he’s very skillful in what he does. He doesn’t come in and say, “Well, I’m going to hold a flag above his head.” He said, “What I’ll do is I’ll just go in and give the customary greeting.” And in the same way that we would walk into a room and shake hands with someone, so they would come in and kiss on the cheek, or on either cheek, as an Eastern greeting. “And that,” says Judas, “when you see that, you’ll know that is the man that you ought to move for.”

And so, as he approaches Jesus to kiss him, Jesus then asks this question: “Judas, are you betraying the Son of Man with a kiss?” Now, there’s more than a little irony in the question. There’s probably more than a little compassion in the question. He, using the phrase “the Son of Man,” reminds Judas of what he’s doing. He is not simply betraying a human friend, although Jesus had been that to him, but he is betraying the Christ. He is betraying the Messiah of God. He is about to betray the only one who can grant him forgiveness for his sins, eternity, and hope in this life. Don’t you sense that there is something of an appeal here on the part of Jesus in this final phraseology to him? “Are you going to betray the Son of Man with a kiss?”

Now, some of you are looking at this, and you’re saying, “Well, why would there need to be a sign at all? After all, isn’t Jesus famous by this time? He’s been doing a tremendous amount of teaching. He’s been healing people, and the crowd have been gathering in his wake.” Well, the answer to that is fairly straightforward. If you think about the last time that you were at a bonfire or that you had a firepit in someone’s yard or down by the beach, and you went away to get something to drink, and you came back to the group, and you stood next to the person that you thought was your wife only to discover that you were standing next to someone else’s wife—and the reason you did so is because of the darkness. This, obviously, was an equally attractive person; otherwise, you wouldn’t have snuggled up as you did. But it’s obvious now: “I’m here talking to the wrong person.” And the lady looks and says, “What? I’m sorry. I don’t understand.” “Oh,” you say, “I’m dreadfully sorry. In the darkness I took you for someone else.” We all do that. And in the same way that Jesus was part of the crowd, how were the crowd going to identify Jesus unless somebody went up and made it obvious to them? And so Judas identifies Jesus in this way.

Now, the plot had been hatched earlier. We discovered this some months ago, back in verses 3, 4, 5, and 6 of this chapter, when we saw that Luke tells us—and you may want just to cast your gaze on these verses—Luke tells us that the precursor to this had to do with Satan entering Judas (an enigmatic phrase); Judas going to the chief priests, discussing how he can betray Jesus; their response is delight; they agree on a fee; and they discover that at the earliest opportunity, they will put their plan into action.

So there was something behind his kiss. You say, “Well, that’s fairly obvious.” Yeah, but I don’t mind ever stating the obvious. I miss obvious things all the time. I wonder if you do. In other words, it wasn’t that he was just walking in the evening shadows, and he said, “You know what I’ll do? I think I’ll just go up and betray Jesus.” No, there was a background to it. Listen, friends: there always is. This dramatic moment of betrayal did not appear from nowhere. There was a journey in the life of Judas Iscariot—a journey that took him from being the treasurer to the traitor. He was known as the one who kept the purse.[3] He was the fellow who did the disbursements. When they went for groceries, they went to Judas: “Judas, can we have some money? We need some bread.” He was in charge of the purse strings. What was it that brought him from treasurer to traitor?

What happened to Judas was that he reached the point where he would rather have Jesus destroyed than have his sins discovered.

Now, we dealt with this in part and in passing before, and I don’t want to reiterate that material. We can get the tape, all of us, and find out what it was we discovered. I’ve, personally, forgotten. But I think we said this: that somehow or another, Judas had begun to disguise how he really felt about Jesus and about his mission while he was still going along with things on the outside. In other words, his secret life was different from his public persona. In sporting terms, he would be like somebody on a sports team who has lost confidence in the coach, no longer appreciates the game plan, but instead of identifying his protest in the locker room, he simply dresses for the game and disguises his feelings with a public display of uniformity. But if you could get the individual on his own or on her own, then they will tell you, “I’ve lost heart in this. I’m no longer committed to this. I’m not a part of this except as it looks on the outside.” Now, for those of you who have played on a team and felt like that, or played on a team with someone who felt like that, or coached a team with someone like that in the locker room, you know that individual is finished. Finished! Because their heart is no longer represented in their actions.

And that is what had happened to Judas Iscariot. He had presumably decided that he could live hiding his small sins—little sins. Do you ever say to yourself, “But this is just a little sin. This doesn’t really matter. This isn’t something big. This isn’t in the top seven. This isn’t one of the dreadful sins.” And so we say to ourselves, “Well, I think, you know, we can cope with this. We can just put this in a corner and live with it for a while.” It’s a dangerous strategy. Because what happened to Judas may happen to you and may happen to me. What happened to him was that he reached the point where he would rather have Jesus destroyed than have his sins discovered. He’d rather have Jesus killed than have his cover blown. He’d rather run away from Christ than run to Christ and admit that he’d been a fraud. And this happens all the time. Somebody begins to drop to the back of the group—somebody who was once involved, running with the crowd, giving leadership. They begin to lose out. They begin to silence their voice. They begin to remove themselves from the play and from the contributions. And you begin to say to yourself, “I wonder why this is happening.” And it is often just this. You see, at the end of the day, betraying Christ came more easily than confessing his sin. He reached the point where it was easier for him to betray Jesus than to confess the fact that he was a hypocrite.

Now, we daren’t miss the warning. It’s imperative that you and I learn to confess our sins, because failure to do so may find us swallowed by the darkness of deceit—a darkness that may, in the end, engulf our souls even as it engulfed the soul of Judas. You see, when they discussed this—when Jesus had said to them that “one of you is going to betray me”[4]—it’s significant that they didn’t say, “Oh, yeah! And we know who that is.” They began to say, “Lord, it’s surely not me, is it?”[5] There was no obvious suspect when it came to the issue of betrayal.

Well, that’s the first question—we must hasten on—a question which introduces us to the awful treachery that we find in Judas.

A Dreadful Comedy

The second question is at the heart of a dreadful comedy which we find in the disciples. Now, some of you may be put off by the word comedy. I think I can legitimately use it here. I didn’t go to the Oxford English Dictionary, but I’m pretty sure there’s a way to get around this. I think comedy is the right word. The more I thought about it, I didn’t know, in reading verses 49 and 50 and 51, whether I should laugh or cry. You know those strange times in life where you’re supposed to burst into tears, and you start laughing, or vice versa, and you can only explain it in terms of the nervous energy that is created within you, because as you respond to the circumstances, you just don’t have a mechanism for dealing with it?

Now, look at this question. This is a farce right here, in verse 49: “When Jesus’ followers saw what was going to happen,” when they realized that their Master was about to be taken from them, when they failed to recall that he had predicted this and that they would all fall away—“You will all fall away,”[6] he had told them—failing to remember what Jesus had said, failing to understand the nature of what is happening, they respond in complete panic. I don’t think it’s a harsh judgment to say that what we have here is a complete shambles. Isn’t it?

Just when they’re getting a committee together to discuss the potential use of force: “Jesus, we thought we might take a moment and discuss the…”

“What are you doing? Oh! Look at the man’s ear! Oh, for goodness’ sake!”

“Hang on, Jesus! Wait…”

This is the A-Team. These are his boys—handpicked, ready for anything. What a shambles! Ears lying on the ground, questions flying in the air—what R. T. France refers to as “a desultory attempt at armed resistance.”[7] It’s a great phrase. I long to write one phrase like that before I die: “a desultory attempt at armed resistance.” That’s it! I mean, are they fighting, or are they not fighting? What are they doing? Swords here, ears there, questions here, shambles everywhere! We might imagine Jesus saying to them, “Listen, we had the sword conversation only a few minutes ago.[8] You’ve got the preposition wrong. I told you cut it out. I didn’t tell you cut it off. Look at it! That’s enough of this,” he says. “This is embarrassing.”

It is embarrassing. It’s farcical! The followers of Jesus, the faithful eleven, ready to go into battle for Jesus, and as soon as the thing begins to rock and rattle a little bit, it’s complete panic. Are you pressing the Rewind button in the video as you zing back in Luke’s Gospel? I think many of you are. Where are you? Well, you’re with the fishermen. Where? On the boat. Where? On the Sea of Galilee, at the place where they knew what they were doing. “Hey, we’re fishermen, Jesus. Sea of Galilee? No one knows it like us. We know where the fish are; we know where they’re not. We know every tide and every current. Why don’t you just sleep, Jesus? Here’s a pillow. You relax. We’ve got it covered.”

Until the storm descends. And then they shake him, and in the words of the King James Version, remember, they say to him, “Do you not care that we perish?”[9] “Jesus, sorry to wake you, but we just want you to know: we’re all going down.” Jesus stands up, and he rebukes the wind and the waves, and they then have a little conversation with one another. They look at one another—it’s really just with their eyes—and in their eyes, they communicate with one another. And afterwards, when they’re having a cup of tea, they said, “What manner of man is this, that even the winds and the [waves] obey him!”[10] And probably one or two said, “You know what? From this point on, let anything come our way. We’ll be able to handle it. We’ve seen it all now. He is in control of absolutely everything.” And here they find themselves in the garden, and in comes Judas and his group. And all of a sudden, it’s a complete shambles.

Oh, I’m so encouraged by this. I hope you are too. Of course, those of you whose Christian lives are completely watertight and tidy, who never rattle, never rock, never roll, get everything right, you won’t be able to identify with this at all. But for the rest of us, we don’t want to use this as an example, but we do identify with it.

And their shambles is about to give way to a shuffling departure. They’re all just going to leave now. They’re all just going to go. I wonder: Do they go one at a time, slipping away, or did they go just as a group—eleven of them, off down the road? What an embarrassment, eh? “We’ll follow you anywhere, Jesus. Excuse us. We’ll get back to you.” Well, you do that, don’t you? I do it on a Sunday: “Jesus, this is a great word from you, and I want to preach it, and I want to hear it, and I want to learn it, and I want to follow it.” And boom! All of a sudden, it’s Tuesday.

Isn’t it super, as well, that the Bible has been put together in such a way that we have the disciples in all of their historic ugliness and shambolic stupidity and dreadful, comedic “tragical comedy,” in Shakespearean terms? We’ve got it here. And the people want to tell us, you know, “The Bible is a manufactured book. It was put together, you know, hundreds of years later, and the early church wrote it, and we don’t know what the things were that happened, but they put it together in such a way to make everything look good.” Oh, yes? Like this? They all sat down and said, “Why don’t we look like a bunch of nitwits? You know, why don’t we write a scene where instead of going for it, we all shamble around, and chop ears off, and ask dumb questions, and eventually run away into the darkness of the night?”

If we fail to understand correctly, we will fail to act properly, and we will eventually run off hopelessly.

Incidentally, for those of you who are reading The Da Vinci Code… And eventually, after twenty-seven people told me, “You must read The Da Vinci Code,” I began to read it. I’m about at page 240 or 250. I’m right at the point where all of a sudden, from nowhere, the author unleashes a forceful diatribe against Jesus of Nazareth—his identity, his divinity, and the authority and the sufficiency of the Bible. All of a sudden, from nowhere, it appears, and the agenda item that is clearly part and parcel of what’s going on suddenly spills out. And many of you are unsettled by it, I’m sure. But you need not be. You need not be. There’s nothing new in what that guy writes. He’s just dishing up the same old liberal nonsense that’s been around for hundreds of years. And his idea is—and he writes it in the book—that the Gospels were inventions, that Jesus was just an ordinary guy, that Constantine turned him into divinity, that the real gospels were kicking around, eighty of them or so, and eventually they got it all together, and so on. It’s such a fabrication. A sixth grader at a good Christian school could blow a gigantic hole through the heart of the argument. Remember that silly stuff is silly stuff, no matter where you pick it up. And do not allow yourselves to be overwhelmed. Do not fail to understand, because if you fail—as we can easily fail to understand, as the disciples did—if we fail to understand correctly, we will fail to act properly, and we will eventually run off hopelessly.

You see, the application’s fairly obvious. Again, I think when the tide is lifted up against Jesus and the gospel, then all too quickly, the church is ready to make a pathetic attempt at armed resistance or a wholesale defection. And just as in the case of Judas there was a background to what they did, there was for these disciples a background to what they did as well. Their failure in this moment to act as they may have done is surely related to the fact that they were passive when they should be active, and they were active when they should be passive.

You say, “Well, hey, where do you get that?” Well, just go back and read the early part in the garden. Jesus said, “Watch and pray.”[11] Well, they fell asleep. So they went passive when they should have been active, and now they got active when they should have been passive. They gave in, if you like, to justifiable weaknesses. Jesus was compassionate towards them, wasn’t he? He came back, and he said, “Are you still asleep?”[12] There’s no indication that he lambasts them, that he was unduly critical of them or forceful with them. His heart was tender and compassionate, of course. He understands our lives. He knows the feelings of our hearts.

But listen, my friends, and listen carefully: these disciples gave in to what we might refer to as justifiable weaknesses without realizing that our justifiable weaknesses have consequences—have consequences. “Oh, well, I don’t read the Bible with my children. You know, I’m not really that kind of leader. I’m not that kind of father in my home. I’m sure that God understands that I’m weak in that area.” Oh, yes, I’m sure he does. But there will be consequences for that justifiable weakness. “Well, you know, I don’t really find it easy to tell anyone that I’m a Christian or to witness. I’m sure God is sympathetic to me. He knows my personality.” Yes, he does, but there will be consequences to that justifiable weakness. “Well, I know the Bible says that I should take seriously the thought of listening to it taught and gathering with his people, but you know, I can only do so much in a day. And I’m sure that God’s not really down on me if I don’t take seriously the responsibility to do what his Word says.” There are consequences to our justifiable weaknesses. And in the case of these disciples, their failure to do what they had been asked to do led to further failure, disappointment, regret, and embarrassment. Look at them. Do you see yourself in the crowd as they slip off under the cover of darkness? What a dreadful comedy.

Masterful Serenity

Well, are you with me? One more and we’re done. The awful treachery that we find in Judas, the dreadful comedy that we find in the disciples—the awful, dreadful comedy we find in the disciples—and then notice, in 52 and 53, the masterful serenity that we find in Jesus. The masterful serenity that we find in Jesus.

His followers are confused, but Jesus is composed. In spite of all appearances to the contrary, Jesus is as much master of this event as he was master over the winds and the waves in Luke chapter [8]. The crowd has shown up. What do these people think they’re doing? Why have they appeared en masse? And why have they come under cover of darkness? And why in the world did they show up with all these swords and their clubs? What possessed them to appear in this way? Were they afraid? It’s possible. Did they think that they might intimidate Jesus?

Well, when you read John’s account, you will discover that they were completely ineffective if that was their desire. Indeed, they were intimidated by him. At every point they were intimidated by him.[13] Some of them even remembered that when he had read from the Old Testament in the synagogue in Nazareth back in Luke chapter 4, and he had read the section that says, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me to proclaim good news to the captives and sight for the blind,” and so on[14]—some of them remembered that he actually said on that occasion, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”[15] And it annoyed them. But as they had watched his life, they knew that that was exactly the case.

And they were ticked. They were annoyed. They were resentful. Because they heard the people in the bazaar saying to one another, “You know, when you go to the local synagogue, these fellows are like [imitates droning]. But when Jesus teaches, man, it’s fantastic! The time passes! He speaks with authority—not like these other fellows.”[16] And they resented that. They also resented the fact that the people who were so messed up, who were so obviously out of it and sinful, they seemed to gravitate towards Jesus. And somehow or another, these stiff-faced jokers, they couldn’t make a dent on the community. And also, whatever they were able to say concerning the power of God, it was this Jesus of Nazareth who was giving sight to the blind and setting the limbs of people loose for walking and dancing. No, if they thought to intimidate him, fat chance! He intimidated them. And so Jesus is there, apparently the victim, apparently the captive. And yet, in a deeper sense, he’s in charge of the situation.

His question is essentially this: he looks at the crowd, and he says, “Do you really have to show up after dark with this unnecessary display of force? Every day in the temple, of course, I was teaching, and you could have arrested me there.” But of course, he knew the answer to his question. Their arrest was illegitimate, and that’s why they needed to come under cover of darkness. And so he says to them, “But this is your hour. I recognize that. This is according to the plan of God. This is the time when darkness reigns.” And if your eye can scan verse 37 of our chapter, you will see that Jesus recognizes that what is taking place is what has been written about him, and it’s now reaching its fulfillment.

Confusion among the disciples, corruption on the part of the Judas crowd, and compassion on the part of Jesus—a compassion that is there in his question to Judas, a compassion that is there in the restoration of the high priest’s servant’s ear, a compassion that is there as he essentially appeals to the consciences of these individuals who come in the crowd. He’s saying to them, “I know that many of you are acting on orders, but how many of you are acting out of conviction? I know you’re here with a party line,” he says. “But is that really the conviction of your heart?”

We may embrace Christ now as our Savior or face him then as our Judge.

Now notice, finally, because it’s important: What is this crowd? Who is this crowd? What is the nature of the crowd? Well, we’re told, aren’t we? This wasn’t a random mob that they’d gone into the marketplace and said, “Hey, we’re going to go and see if we can rustle up Jesus of Nazareth. Anybody want to come? Let’s go!” No, this was apparently a select group: “the chief priests, the officers of the temple guard, and the elders, who had come for him.” Others with them, perhaps, but they were the group. In other words, religious people antagonistic to Jesus, seeking to silence him. Isn’t that what this is? This is religious orthodoxy in its day seeking to silence the voice of Jesus.

Two thousand years on, religious orthodoxy in our day—antagonistic to Jesus, and to his message of atonement, and to the truth of his resurrection, and to the power and authority of the Bible—that same religious establishment expresses itself in multivarious ways, not least of all on this particular day, so close to Reformation Sunday—a Reformation which the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England, the Episcopal Church… A Reformation upon which the Episcopal Church was founded. And yet, at two o’clock this afternoon in New Hampshire, the Episcopal Church in America will stand and disavow the very basis upon which it was established in baptizing into orthodoxy and ordaining the first avowedly homosexual bishop. Now, what is that about? It is about the very same thing. That’s not a cheap shot. I didn’t need to go looking for that. Every time I press AOL, it confronts me as the biggest news of the day. Well, fine; let it be the biggest news of the day! And then let us go to our Bibles and interact with the news of the day. What do we have? We have the establishment: religious authorities antagonistic to Jesus and his Word.

Now, what, then, are the disciples to do? What are the followers to do? Now, someone to put up a pathetic, silly fight: “Go chop a few ears off.” And there’s not a week passes without somebody calls me or writes me or emails me and says, “You know, we’re going to have to do something about this!” And they are to be commended for their desire for activism, but it is a pathetic, silly idea in the main. What’re we to do? Put up a pathetic fight? Run away under cover of darkness? No!

What was it the disciples couldn’t get? The disciples couldn’t grapple with the notion that the arrest and the crucifixion of Jesus could possibly be in the plan of God. “How can there be victory out of such defeat?” That was what they were saying. And when it became apparent that Jesus was to be arrested, they said, “Well, we may as well go. They didn’t come to get us. Our leader has gone. I’m going home.” It’s understandable, isn’t it?

And here we are today. If you and I fail to understand what Luther was saying in that hymn, if we misunderstand the times in which we live, then we will be tempted to the same confusion, the same silly fighting, or the same dreadful flight. But if we recognize that in and through it all God is fulfilling his plan, keeping his promises, and saving his people, then we may put our heads on the pillow at night in the awareness of the fact that one day, “at the name of Jesus every knee [will] bow … and every tongue confess that Jesus … is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”[17] And that’s why I urged you at the beginning to consider whether you are a Christian. For you and I will kneel before the lordship of Christ, either in the amazing display of gratitude for his grace or in the awareness of the fact that when our friends and neighbors told us that Christ died to be our Savior, we pushed it aside and moved off on our own. We may embrace him now as our Savior or face him then as our Judge.

Father, I thank you for the Bible and for this passage of Luke’s Gospel. I pray that everything that is helpful and of yourself may find a resting place in our minds and that we will not find any rest and peace until we find it in yourself, in the forgiveness and grace that is offered in Jesus. We pray that you will help us not to panic, to offer some kind of “desultory attempt at … resistance,” or to run away into the darkness of the night, but rather that we might recognize that even though this world is filled with all kinds of ill and hungry demons, that we might remind ourselves that “the tyrants of this age strut briefly on the stage.” Marx is gone. Hitler is gone. The Pol Pot regime is gone. “Their sentence has been passed,” and “we[’ll] stand unharmed at last,” because “a word from God destroys them.”[18] Save us from being smug with this information. Help us to be compassionate the way Jesus was.

And may grace and mercy and peace from the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit rest upon and remain with each one who believes, today and forevermore. Amen.

[1] Luke 22:42 (NIV 1984).

[2] Luke 22:44 (NIV 1984).

[3] See John 12:6; 13:29.

[4] John 13:21 (NIV 1984).

[5] Matthew 26:22; Mark 14:19 (paraphrased).

[6] Mark 14:27 (NIV 1984).

[7] R. T. France, The Gospel of Mark: A Commentary on the Greek Text, The New International Greek Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans 2002), 592.

[8] See Luke 22:38.

[9] Mark 4:38 (paraphrased from the KJV).

[10] Matthew 8:27 (KJV). See also Mark 4:41; Luke 8:25.

[11] Matthew 26:41 (NIV 1984).

[12] Mark 14:41 (paraphrased).

[13] See John 18:4–6.

[14] Luke 4:18 (paraphrased).

[15] Luke 4:21 (NIV 1984).

[16] See Matthew 7:28–29; Mark 1:22; Luke 4:32; John 7:46.

[17] Philippians 2:10–11 (NIV 1984).

[18] Martin Luther, trans. Stephen Orchard, “Our God Stands like a Fortress Rock” (1529).