God's Plan Prevails

Now the Passover and the Festival of Unleavened Bread were only two days away, and the chief priests and the teachers of the law were scheming to arrest Jesus secretly and kill him. “But not during the festival,” they said, “or the people may riot.”

Mark 14:1-2

Jesus of Nazareth has 3 days left to live as the religious leaders gather to plot how they can arrest and kill Him. The ESV Study Bible puts it this way- “The verdict about Jesus is decided. The only remaining issue is how to get rid of Him" (p2004). 

I have no doubt that these wicked men would've rushed and seized Christ to stone Him to death right then if it weren’t for certain political considerations that must be made. You see the Jewish religious leaders only held limited authority under Roman rule. They didn’t have the right to put anyone to death. Only Rome could execute a criminal. That posed a problem. On top of that, the little power that Rome did afford the religious leaders was predicated on them appeasing the Jewish masses and keeping the peace. They knew that if they arrested Jesus openly it might cause a riot which could in turn bring the wrath of Rome down on their own heads. So, they meet together to plot how they will navigate these murky political waters. 

We aren’t sure exactly when Judas Iscariot decided to betray Jesus. Some think it was on Wednesday of Holy week. But whenever he came to the religious leaders and volunteered to help put Jesus to death, we do know his assistance was key. Judas would help them find and arrest Jesus when He was away from the crowds at night. Something that would have been difficult to do in the dark without an inside man. 

But it's important for us to remember that in the end it wasn’t the plotting of wicked men, or Judas’ betrayal, or even the scheme of the Enemy himself that was the ultimate cause of Jesus’ crucifixion. It was the love of God.

If the plot of the religious leaders had ultimately been responsible for Jesus’ death then you would expect the early church to have railed against these leaders and to have sought their harm. But that is not the message we find on the lips of the earliest apostles. Certainly they condemned the unbelief and the wickedness of the Jewish religious leaders but that was not the theme of their preaching. From the earliest days they proclaimed that it was God the Father who had handed Jesus over to death.

Acts 2:23 says, "This man (Jesus) was handed over to you by God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross." Sure the religious leaders were wicked men who had participated in the death of Christ, but it was God's plan long before it was theirs. 

This serves as a powerful reminder that even now and especially in dark and difficult times God has a plan. And in the end His plan will prevail. That gives us a measure of consolation and peace when life isn’t going our way. Even in the darkest of times we know that it isn’t meaningless. It isn’t random. There is a good God at the back of it all. And even when we can’t trust those around us who mean us harm, we can submit to and trust Him.