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.”

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 schemed to arrest Jesus secretly and kill him. ⁵ “But not during the festival,” they said, “or there may be a riot among the people.”

Dear God, I never caught the subtlety of all of this before, but Matthew is pretty clear in how he lays this out—Jesus said what he did in chapters 24 and 25 in order to set up verse two here. He knew it had to happen. He knew he needed to be crucified. He knew that I needed him to be crucified.

I wonder what the disciples were thinking while all of this was going on. They had to have been uncomfortable while Jesus was sitting there and saying such provocative things. Then it had to have really disturbed them when he so plainly told them, in essence, “I know they are mad, and now they are going to crucify me.” At that point they must have been confused and scared. They couldn’t see the big picture that Jesus could see. They couldn’t understand the plan.

Father, I know that, as I look around my life, I can’t see the big picture. I have no idea what your plan is. The trick is to come to terms with that and live in peace regardless of what is happening around me. So help me to do that. Help me to be your example in the lives of those around me. Draw others to yourself through me. Help me to decrease as you increase. Be glorified through me so that others might be drawn to you.