Judas Makes His Plans

Journey To The Cross Series

Luke 22:1-6  The Festival of Unleavened Bread, which is also called Passover, was approaching. 2 The leading priests and teachers of religious law were plotting how to kill Jesus, but they were afraid of the people's reaction. 3 Then Satan entered into Judas Iscariot, who was one of the twelve disciples, 4 and he went to the leading priests and captains of the Temple guard to discuss the best way to betray Jesus to them. 5 They were delighted, and they promised to give him money. 6 So he agreed and began looking for an opportunity to betray Jesus so they could arrest Him when the crowds weren't around.

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Judas was around for all the debates and the set-up questions that the religious leaders were using to try and create a charge that could be used to arrest Jesus. Over and over Judas saw Jesus turn the questions that were thrown at him into an opportunity to speak out against his accusers. Judas couldn't stand it, he wanted Jesus to overthrow the people that were trying to kill him, Judas decided that he had invested enough of his time in Jesus and that it was time for action.

The religious leaders needed Jesus arrested away from the crowds, and if they were to go identify the man that they wanted arrested it would probably create a scene, they needed to be able to send the guards out to arrest Jesus quietly. But in order to do so they needed to be certain that the guards would arrest the correct man, they couldn't take a chance on the wrong man being arrested, that would only make them look bad.

Judas knew that he could be of service to the religious leaders and he was ready to help, Jesus hadn't turned out to be the leader that Judas thought that he should be, Jesus didn't use his popularity to over-throw  the Roman government.

Thank you Jesus for your gift of salvation.