When God Makes a Plan…
Matthew 26:1-5, 14-16
June 21, 2009
Note: The ME/WE/GOD/YOU/WE format is from Andy Stanley’s book, "Communicating for a Change." Unfortunately, I’ve still got a way to go before I’ve fully implemented the book!
Before I get into the message, I’d like to just take a moment and encourage you to go to my blog, “Living Intentionally,” which you can find by going to www.brianlacroix.com, or by going to the website and following the link on the page about me there.
I’m not saying that as an advertisement for the blog. I’ve had it for a couple years, but haven’t been real regular in posting to it, but yesterday I posted the first of a series on the power of the quiet time.
Each part will discuss one reason why it’s so important that we spend regular time with God in His Word and prayer.
I also share my own struggles in being consistent with quiet times, because I don’t ever want to come across like I’ve got it all figured out or that I’m perfect in all this.
But I don’t want you to just go and read the posts. I’d like you to respond with your thoughts and your stories on how you interact with God during your quiet times, as well as give suggestions for folks who would like to either develop the habit or rekindle it in their own lives.
You can respond by clicking on the little post-it note looking thing at the top of the post.
I’m hoping this will be an encouragement to you, but I really do want to hear from you on this very important topic, okay?
Me/We:
I think many of us sit here today in a situation that we hadn’t planned on as we were growing up, or even a few years ago, right?
You had dreams and goals that either you set for yourself or someone like a parent set for you.
But here you are, and those things haven’t come to pass.
I had started out wanting to be a cowboy, a fireman, a paramedic, and a high school band director. And in my mid-30’s I became a pastor.
That wasn’t my plan! But apparently it was God’s.
Or we look around. Crime, war, religious persecution, big-name Christians having public moral failings, and all sorts of stuff leave many wondering if God’s really got a handle on things.
And even on a local church level – there’s squabbling, grumbling, scandals, and splits.
Do God’s plans really work all the time?
Can something happen to throw God’s plans off track?
Can people get in the way of what God wants to have happen in a given circumstance or situation?
Well, people try – all the time. And the Scripture passage for today gives an example of that.
But it’s also an example of how God works to bring His plans to action. And I hope that you’ll find some personal encouragement as we go through this.
God: We’re going to be looking at two short passages in Matthew 26 (p. 703) that bookend a special anointing with perfume that Jesus had received a few days before.
There are three pieces to this part of the story, but they all work to show us what God had in mind as Jesus walked closer and closer to what He knew was coming in just three short days.
We start with a brief statement that Jesus makes while He is on His way back to Bethany to spend the night on Tuesday.
This comes the end of the recorded conversation He’s just had with His disciples that started in chapter 24 and included His talk about the end times and His upcoming return.
Now He changes the subject to what’s going to be happening starting in the next couple of days, here in the first two verses of chapter 26 –
1 When Jesus had finished saying all these things, he said to his disciples, 2 "As you know, the Passover is two days away--and the Son of Man will be handed over to be crucified."
This is the fourth time in this gospel that Jesus predicts His death, but this is the first time He lets the disciples know that His death would come during the Passover – this Passover.
While this conversation is happening, we find that the religious leaders haven’t just been sitting around.
Verses 3-5 –
3 Then the chief priests and the elders of the people assembled in the palace of the high priest, whose name was Caiaphas, 4 and they plotted to arrest Jesus in some sly way and kill him. 5 "But not during the Feast," they said, "or there may be a riot among the people."
The phrase “not during the Feast” is incredibly significant.
The Feast they’re talking about, of course, is the Passover Feast, and what did Jesus just say? That He would be handed over to be crucified during the Passover.
Most, if not all, of us remember what happened on the first Passover.
When Moses was working to bring the Hebrews out of Egypt, God brought 10 plagues on Egypt, but the last one was the worst one – the plague of the firstborn, in which God struck down the firstborn of everyone in Egypt who didn’t have their homes marked by the blood of a lamb or goat.
When God came to a house marked with the blood, He “passed over” that home, sparing the Hebrews in there and delivering them once and for all from Egypt.
And since that time, Jews, and even many Christians have celebrated the Passover.
In the Passover feast, the main course is a lamb whose blood had been spilled out to commemorate God’s deliverance from Egypt.
With Jerusalem being the home of the temple, and since everyone who could, came to Jerusalem for the Passover, the place was totally packed.
During this holiday, Jerusalem, a town of about 50,000, would swell to 250,000 people.
That means that it would grow to about 10 times the size of Aberdeen.
It was harder to find a hotel room in Jerusalem during Passover than in Aberdeen during the Pheasant opener. And harder to find parking spaces for the camels…
And the religious leaders remembered what happened a couple days before when Jesus came into town riding the donkey and all the crowds shouting how much they loved Him.
And so they met secretly to find a way to kill Him at another time when there wouldn’t be the crowds, because a riot would have brought an angry response from the Roman government.
But then, fortune seems to shine on them, in the form of Judas – let’s pick it up at verse 14, which probably happened the next morning - Wednesday –
14 Then one of the Twelve--the one called Judas Iscariot--went to the chief priests 15 and asked, "What are you willing to give me if I hand him over to you?" So they counted out for him thirty silver coins. 16 From then on Judas watched for an opportunity to hand him over.
Why would Judas do this?
The Bible doesn’t outline all the reasons, but a number of things might have contributed to his decision.
He might have been smarting a bit from the dressing down Jesus gave him after he commented on Mary’s anointing him with the expensive perfume.
He might have been disappointed in Jesus – that Jesus wasn’t acting like the Messiah he expected
The most obvious reason is that he wanted money.
In any case, he knew that the chief priests and other leaders had it in for Jesus and he knew they could find a way to have him arrested.
And it had to be thrilling for them to find one of Jesus’ closest friends willing to turn Him over to them.
So even if it wasn’t according to the timing they had in mind, they were going to jump on the chance.
Matthew is the only one of the four gospels to tell us how much Judas was given – thirty silver coins.
And that’s significant for a couple of reasons.
One is that it fulfilled prophecy given in Zechariah chapter 11, but it’s also significant because it was really such a small amount.
I hadn’t realized that until I was researching for the message, but apparently, according to Old Testament law, thirty pieces of silver was the price of a slave accidentally gored to death by an ox.
It was nothing in terms of real money, and it shows how little both Judas and the chief priests thought of Jesus.
Now let’s review for a moment:
Jesus tells His disciples He will die during the Passover.
The religious leaders, in their conversation in the house of the high priests say they want Jesus to die, but not during the Passover.
Then Judas comes to offer his services and begins to look for an opportunity to turn Him over.
And what do you know? Jesus dies on the Passover.
The religious leaders didn’t want it then, but God orchestrated it to happen right then.
This was God’s intention from the beginning – from the very first Passover, when the blood of the Lamb was spread on the door jambs of the Hebrews to deliver them from death.
Now the Lamb of God was getting ready to take away the sins of the world. To deliver His people from the power and the penalty of death.
So here’s the main lesson that I think we need to take out of this:
When God makes a plan, that plan happens – no matter what.
None of the scheming by the most powerful people in Israel could thwart God’s plans to bring redemption through Jesus during the Passover.
Every Passover before this was pointing to this Passover as the ultimate fulfillment of what Passover was all about – deliverance.
In this case, deliverance from the power of sin and death, and deliverance to eternal life.
God would not be denied in bringing about His plan to redeem you and me.
He was determined to make it possible for you and for me to be forgiven, to have a home in heaven, and to live in His presence for now and evermore.
No longer would the power of sin and death rule His people. All who put their faith in the ultimate Passover lamb would be free of those.
It was always God’s plan, and God’s plans always happen.
There’s a saying that if you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans.
Why is that? Because God’s plans will always go forward.
Here are just three passages that show that, from the Old Testament.
Psalm 33:10-11 –
10 The Lord foils the plans of the nations; he thwarts the purposes of the peoples. 11 But the plans of the Lord stand firm forever, the purposes of his heart through all generations.
Proverbs 19:21 –
21 Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.
And then one that really applies to the passage we’re looking at today from Matthew, Job 5:12 –
12 He frustrates the plans of schemers so the work of their hands will not succeed.
Are you getting the idea here?
God’s purposes, God’s plans, will always go forward, and there’s nothing that anyone can do about it.
Maybe not in the time frame we think it should, maybe not in a way that we even see this side of heaven, but rest assured that ultimately, God’s purposes and plans always prevail.
The religious leaders were about to find that out in the space of three days from the time of their little conversation, as Jesus did, indeed, die during the Feast.
You: What will you do with the fact that God cared so much about you that He wouldn’t let His plans be changed because some powerful people didn’t like His plan?
What will you do with the fact that God loved you so much that He brought about His perfect plan so you could be forgiven and have a home in heaven?
There’s really only one appropriate response to this:
Thankful submission to Him.
It’s when you say, “Okay, God. You love me so much that You made sure Jesus would die for my sins at just the right time. The least I can do is live my life for Christ, with Your help.”
But let me add something else here, and this may take some of you by surprise:
God has plans for His Kingdom that involve you. Everyone in this room. Whether you know it or not, whether you believe it or not.
When you’re living a life in that thankful submission to Christ and His commands, God can use you in His plans, no matter who you are, what your age, what your education, or what you do for a living.
You don’t have to be a pastor or missionary or anything like that in order to be used by God for His plans.
You just need to be available to Him, living for Him and His agenda instead of living for yourself and your agenda.
You can refuse God’s desire to use you, but understand this: God’s plans will still move forward. He’ll just find someone else, as He’s shown Himself to do in other parts of Scripture.
So let me just invite you to respond to God’s love and His plan to bring you salvation by giving yourself fully to Him so He can use you for plans to build the Kingdom of God.
We: Folks, I want us to be a confident group of people who know that God’s plans will go forward, that they will succeed, and that we can be a part of that.
I believe there are too many Christians who go around with no hope because they look around and see nothing but evil, or they see things going on in the government and think that God has ceased to work.
Even in Aberdeen I see a sense of hopelessness among Christians who basically think God can’t do anything here.
But I say, God wants His kingdom to move forward, and that it will.
And it will move forward in Aberdeen and the surrounding area just like it moved forward in Jerusalem 2000 years ago.
The question is whether or not you’ll choose to be part of that working.
My hope is that you will.
Let’s pray.
