Holy Wednesday
Pause:
Before you start reading this devotional, take a moment to stop what you’re doing, slow down and focus on Jesus.
Pray and ask him to open your eyes to see as you read the scriptures, and to open your ears to hear as you wait on the leading of the Spirit.
Read:
Mark 14:1-2
It was two days before the Passover and the Festival of Unleavened Bread. The chief priests and the scribes were looking for a cunning way to arrest Jesus and kill him. “Not during the festival,” they said, “so that there won’t be a riot among the people.”
Going Deeper:
When I was 20, I took a class on the New Testament at California State University, Northridge. It was fascinating learning about Jesus from a professor who made it very clear on the first day of class that he was not a Christian. With a decade having passed since that class, I still have one lecture engrained in my memory. We were reading the gospels and talking about Jesus’ final days before the crucifixion when my professor, in what appeared to be a vulnerable curiosity, exclaimed, “After all of these years of studying the New Testament, I still don’t understand why Jesus would walk into Jerusalem at this point in his life – He had to have known it was a death trap – It’s as if he wanted to die.” I sat there stunned, with the phrase ringing in my ears, “It’s as if he wanted to die.”
We don’t know many details about Holy Wednesday and all of the events that occurred two days before the crucifixion, but the one glimpse we get is quite disturbing. Throughout Jesus’ three years of public ministry in Israel, readers of the four gospel accounts meet a few different groups of people Jesus consistently interacted with. First, there were his committed disciples who had left everything to follow him, then the superficial crowds who loved to witness and benefit from his miracles, and then there were the religious leaders who mostly hated Jesus from the beginning. It is this third group, the jealous and fear-driven leaders that take the spotlight on Holy Wednesday.
The chief priests and the scribes were some of the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem who wanted Jesus dead due to his constant challenging of their hypocrisy, their false teachings about Yahweh and their lack of love for people. The chief priests, in particular, were some of the most powerful people in the region. N.T. Wright says that the chief priests “formed the heart of the Jewish aristocracy.” And it is these powerful men who make a very simple plan: Kill Jesus. But not during the Passover.
Proverbs 19:21 tells us, “Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the LORD that will stand.”
Even the plan to kill the Son of God can be prepared in the mind of man – but it is the purpose of the LORD that always stands. The chief priests wanted Jesus dead after the Passover feast, but Jesus had determined in eternity’s past to be our Passover feast. What man intended for evil, God intended for good.
Jesus always uses His wisdom and His power for our good – even when things aren't going according to our plans. If he could orchestrate and work through the evil plans of man to bring about redemption for the world, we can trust Him with today. We can trust him when our plans are cancelled, when we are wrongfully accused, when we suffer, when our dreams are on pause and when life seems out of control.
“Why did Jesus walk into the death trap of Jerusalem?” my professor marveled.
For love. For you and I. For his glory and our joy.
Pray:
Respond to God in prayer by speaking to Him about what stood out to you from this passage this morning.
Listen:
What is the Holy Spirit saying to you this morning?
Apply:
What are you going to do in response to what God is saying to you from the text and the Spirit?