Every Last Word

Guest (Male): Too many, a conspiracy that was carried out against Jesus by one of His own disciples seems unthinkable. Are the circumstances surrounding the Last Supper curious to you? If you have difficulty with this story, turn in your Bible to the Gospel of Luke as we listen to Dr. Philip Ryken explain Christ's last Passover feast with His disciples.

Welcome to Every Last Word, a radio and internet program with Dr. Philip Ryken, teaching the whole Bible to change your whole life. Today we continue our study in the Gospel of Luke by looking at the conspiracy against Jesus during His final Passover dinner. We'll learn how the devil and a bit of money can accomplish all kinds of evil things. Phil, we're always told we need to be content, but really, is there any harm in not being content with the money we make or the job we have or the lifestyle we want?

Dr. Philip Graham Ryken: I think there is real harm in that, Mark. One of the reasons for that is that when we are discontent, not only do we tend to grumble a lot about what God is doing or about what God is not doing in our lives, but also it becomes very tempting for us to get what we want anyway that we can get it. We'll see a horrendous example of that in today's story, the story of Judas Iscariot. Part of his problem was not being content with Jesus, maybe not being content with the money he had. There's a lot about that in the gospel, but it all comes from discontent.

Guest (Male): What can we learn from Judas' example? And really, are any of us capable of betraying Jesus like Judas did?

Dr. Philip Graham Ryken: Well obviously, there's some ways in which that betrayal was unique. It's said in the Bible that the devil actually entered Judas when he went to do his deadly deed. But if we think we're better than Judas, we really need to be careful because it's often when we think we're above any particular kind of sin that we're particularly vulnerable to that sin.

There are ways that we can become guilty of betraying Jesus by not standing up for His name, by not trusting Him with the troubles we're having in life. There are lots of little ways, little betrayals of the Christ. That's one of the reasons, Mark, why we need to hear the Word of God the way our listeners will hear it today, so that we can be encouraged by the word of Jesus Himself to remain faithful to Him and not to betray Him.

Guest (Male): Okay, thank you Phil. Let's turn in our Bibles now to Luke chapter 21, verse 37 through chapter 22, verse 36, and listen to Dr. Ryken.

Dr. Philip Graham Ryken: Sometime in the late 1970s, an ancient document was stolen from an Egyptian tomb. It was sold to an antiquities dealer, and then from one dealer to another, until finally scholars identified it as a copy of the long-lost Gospel of Judas, so-called.

We first read about the Gospel of Judas in the writings of Irenaeus in the second century, who said that this text was rejected by the church because it was not in agreement with the biblical gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. In fact, the Gospel of Judas is not really a gospel at all, properly speaking, because it does not tell the good news about the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and that's what a gospel is.

The story simply ends at the point where Judas handed Jesus over to the Jews, but there is no cross, no empty tomb, and therefore no forgiveness of sins or hope of eternal life. Instead, this heretical manuscript is really a rather desperate attempt to make Judas the hero. The hero who delivered Jesus from having to live in a physical body by handing Him over to be killed.

You see, according to this false gospel, these two men were the best of friends, and Judas only betrayed Jesus because Jesus asked him to do it. They had many private conversations during the last week of their lives, in which Jesus divulged many secrets only to Judas that He never shared with any of the other disciples. In fact, Judas appears to be the most important of all the disciples in this false gospel, the only one who really understood Jesus.

Well, it's all utter nonsense, of course, a blatant contradiction of everything that the Bible says about either Judas or Jesus. And really, the people promoting this false gospel are trying to rehabilitate Judas by saying he wasn't the villain that Christians say that he was, he was just misunderstood, you see. But what they are actually doing is betraying Jesus all over again by calling something a gospel that doesn't give people any good news at all.

No, if we want the real good news, we have to go back to the Bible itself. And when we do that, we discover that the biblical gospels do not treat Judas as a hero at all, but rather give a sober, straightforward account of his conspiracy to murder the Son of God. I can show that to you if you'll turn in your Bibles to Luke chapter 22, where we consider everything up through verse 13.

I want to take some time to explain the conspiracy that Judas was involved in and what we can learn from it spiritually. But I also want to show you the counter-conspiracy that brings us salvation through the Son of God. Now, we are joining the story in the middle of the last week of Jesus' life, the most important week in the history of the world. It was Passover, and the Messiah had come to Jerusalem where He had wept tears of sadness for the lost city, where He had cleansed the temple of its spiritual impurity as we have seen in previous chapters of Luke's Gospel.

And here at the end of chapter 21, Luke tells us that every day Jesus was teaching in the temple, but at night He went out and lodged on the mount called Olivet. And early in the morning, all the people came to Him in the temple to hear Him. You can see what was happening in those days. The influence of Jesus was spreading. People were coming to hear His proclamation of the gospel.

But something else was happening in those days as well. And here dark chords begin to play in the music of Luke's Gospel. So many people were flocking to Jesus that the religious leaders who were opposed to Jesus began to worry that things were getting out of hand. They were secretly, and in many cases not so secretly, opposed to everything Jesus was saying. The more popular He became, the more determined they were to stop Him.

And here in the last week of His earthly ministry, their hatred grows to its most intense fury. The whole leadership of the temple in Jerusalem was trying to get rid of Jesus: the priests, the scribes, the elders. They all hated Jesus. They hated Him for condemning their hypocrisy. They hated Him for claiming that He was the Son of God. They hated Him for all of the influence that He had on people, especially at Passover when there were so many people there to be influenced.

And so we have read, going back to chapters 19 and 20, that they were trying to get their hands on Him, that they sent spies to trap Him, that they sought to destroy Him. That's what it says in chapter 19, verse 47. And this may explain, incidentally, why Jesus left the city every day before nightfall. It was too dangerous for him to be in Jerusalem after dark.

And we see, I think from the example of these men, that just because someone is in a position of God-given spiritual leadership, it doesn't mean that he's not capable of falling into grievous sin. Remember that these were the very men who should have been doing the most to worship Jesus and to spread His gospel. And yet here they were plotting to destroy Him, conspiring to kill the very Son of God.

There was only one thing that was restraining them, and that was that Jesus was much too popular for them to do anything against Him in public. And here is how Luke describes their dilemma at the beginning of chapter 22. "The feast of Unleavened Bread drew near, which is called the Passover, and the chief priests and the scribes were seeking how to put Him to death, for they feared the people."

You see, these wicked men had already decided what they wanted to do. They had a very simple mission statement: kill Jesus. The only question was how to do that without starting a riot. Their malice against Jesus was constrained only by their cowardice in the face of public opinion. And yet then, very unexpectedly, their dilemma was solved in the most unlikely and unexpected way.

They encounter the most unlikely co-conspirator that they could have imagined, one of Jesus' own disciples, a man we are told in verse 3 who was of the number of the twelve. And Luke tells us that Judas Iscariot, who had been with Jesus virtually since the beginning of his public ministry, "went away" in verse 4 and conferred with the chief priests and officers how he might betray Him to them.

And this whole conspiracy, for that's what it was, a conspiracy, was conducted with a view to a kill. Judas would be the betrayer. He would be the spy inside the organization who would give the information that would spring the trap. As Luke tells us, "He consented to this," in verse 6, and sought an opportunity to betray Him to them in the absence of a crowd.

So here was the main resolution to the diabolical dilemma that these men found themselves in. Here they could get that information they needed to capture Jesus when no one else was around, and then they would be able to do whatever they wanted with Him. And just thinking about this prospect of getting their hands on Jesus made these religious leaders cackle with evil delight. "They were glad," Luke tells us at the beginning of verse 5.

Simple words, but they form one of the strongest condemnations that we read anywhere in scripture. Here were men happy to commit the greatest crime in the history of the world with a murderous glee that came from the very heart of darkness. Now, I think we've seen in the gospels some of the reasons why these men hated Jesus so much. But what was it that motivated Judas? Here was a man who had been with Jesus from the very beginning, someone who had the extraordinary privilege of knowing the Christ as a personal friend.

He had heard everything that Jesus had to teach about the kingdom of God. He had seen the miracles that were the confirmation of his gospel. But in the end, Judas wickedly decided to betray Jesus at the earliest opportunity. Why did he do it? Well, the Gospel of Judas gives us its answer, that Judas was really trying to do Jesus a favor. "You will exceed all of them," Jesus supposedly said to Judas, "for you will sacrifice the man that clothes me."

And here the Gospel of Judas is speaking about the deliverance of Jesus from an earthly body. The idea here is that Judas would liberate Jesus so that he could become a pure spirit. Now, that idea contradicts everything the Bible says about the body and the soul. But it was common among the Gnostic theologians who tried to corrupt the gospel in the early centuries of the Christian Church.

This so-called Gospel of Judas won't tell you anything about the gospel at all, but it will tell you about the false religion that tormented the early church. You see, according to the Bible, our bodies are part of God's good creation. And even our bodies will be glorified in the resurrection. This is what we confess when we say we believe in the resurrection of the body.

But according to the Gnostics, only the soul is good; the body is evil. And so by betraying Jesus unto death, Judas was actually liberating from his body. Do you see how cruel this ancient heresy is? And I call it an ancient heresy, but it's very common in our day. A spiritual kind of religion that ignores or downplays or even denies the reality and the beauty and the plans that God has for the body. I say it's a cruel heresy because it was used even to justify murder, the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

Well, if Judas wasn't trying to do Jesus a favor, then what was he trying to do? Well, it may be that he was disappointed with Jesus, as many people were in that day. Most Jews were hoping for some kind of military leader and political hero who would liberate them from their Roman captivity. That's the kind of Messiah they wanted, the earthly king of an earthly kingdom.

But by now it was becoming clear that Jesus had no intention of establishing that kind of kingdom, not right away. And so maybe Judas himself felt betrayed because Jesus had failed to be the kind of savior that Judas wanted him to be. And of course, many people feel the same way about Jesus today. They have their own ideas about what kind of savior he ought to be, what kind of physical healing he ought to bring, for example, or financial prosperity, or personal success.

And then when life disappoints and Jesus fails to meet their expectations, they turn against him. They drift away from the church and from faith in the only Savior. Well, it may be that Judas was tempted by that kind of motivation. The only clue that Luke gives us, though, is that he had a profit motive. Notice what it says in verse 5, that for his part in this conspiracy that the chief priests agreed to give him money.

Matthew goes farther than that, and in his gospel tells us that Judas was the one who brought up the whole subject of money. "What will you give me if I deliver him over to you?" That's the question that Judas asks. And Matthew tells us they paid him thirty pieces of silver, and from that moment he sought an opportunity to betray him.

And it's interesting later, when Judas felt remorse for what he had done, the first thing he did was to take the money back. You see, that's what it had been all about. But all of that fits in with what we learn about Judas earlier in the gospels. It was Judas, you may remember, and very tellingly, who complained when Mary of Bethany anointed the feet of Jesus with a whole pound of sweet perfume. "Why was this ointment not sold and given to the poor?" Judas asks.

And John tells us that he did not ask this question because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief and because he used to help himself to what was put into the disciples' money bag. You see, as much as anything, it was the love of money that tempted Judas. And how sad that was, because Jesus had warned Judas and all the other disciples about this very temptation when he taught the parable of the rich fool. He said, "Take care, be on your guard against all covetousness." That was back in Luke chapter 12, but Judas failed to heed that warning and it was to his own destruction.

I think Cyril of Alexandria applied the lesson well when he said, and he's partly quoting from 1 Timothy, but he's also thinking about this episode in the gospels, "Those who seek to be rich fall into numerous and unprofitable lusts, which sink people in pitfalls and destruction." And he goes on to say the disciple who became a traitor is a clear proof of this because he perished for the sake of a few miserable coins.

Yes, that's all it was, just a few miserable coins, just thirty pieces of silver. And surely to this day, we remain shocked that Judas would perpetrate such a colossal crime for such a paltry sum. But you know it is shocking what people will do for the money. There's a notable example of this even surrounding the very publication of the Gospel of Judas.

Did you know that the Swiss dealer who sold that false gospel to the National Geographic Society for a sum of one and a half million dollars, a woman named Frieda Nussberger-Tchacos, did you know that she is a known felon for trafficking in stolen antiquities? And that further, in order to avoid jail time, she betrayed one of her co-conspirators, a former director of the Getty Museum? Well, the Los Angeles Times had this to say about the irony of that situation: "Some things don't change except for inflation. Thirty pieces of silver then, a million and a half now, it's still all about the money."

Well, that's wisely said. And you know, many Christians think of the love of money as one of the lesser sins. I mean, just loving money, I mean, what's so wrong with that? But do you see where it leads? When we refuse to be content with our financial situation, whether we happen to be rich as many of us are or poor as some of us are, in either case, if we are not content with our situation in life, we are opening the door to fatal temptation.

Because once we decide that we want something more than what we have, we start thinking about the ways to get it. And the more that desire grows, the more tempted we are to get what we want in ways that are not pleasing to God or dependent on his providence. Let me ask you, in light of the terrible sin that tempted Judas, are you content with what you have? Or has your mind been playing around with the possible ways to get richer? Are there any ways you are in danger of compromising your integrity merely for financial gain?

I think the reason that the Bible emphasizes that Judas had a profit motive and shows us that a little bit through the gospels is not to stigmatize him, not to say what a terrible, horrible person he was, but rather to show how ordinary his temptation was. Judas did it for the money, which is exactly the reason why a lot of people do a lot of the wrong things that they do.

As we think about that temptation, we should recognize there's a little bit of the betrayer in all of us. Think of all the ways that we are like Judas. We've had the extraordinary spiritual privilege of seeing the person and work of Jesus for ourselves. We have offered, so many of us here this morning, a profession of our faith in Christ. We have started to follow Jesus as Judas did. We have heard the preaching of his gospel. We know something at least of his divine power. And yet even a temptation as simple as the love of money might lead us into a deep betrayal of the Lord that we say we want to worship.

One commentator gives this warning: "The history of Judas, who although he occupied such a privileged position, nevertheless betrayed the Master, serves as a powerful warning to every member of the church. That there is always the terrible possibility that even among us who apparently live in the closest connection with the Lord, there may be those who are inwardly false and busily engaged in betraying Him."

And that's a warning that is given not so much that we might be concerned about someone else's spiritual condition, but so that we might examine our own hearts. In what ways might we be in danger of betraying our Lord? Well, let me suggest a couple of ways: when we spend more time thinking about what we don't have than praising God for what we do have, then we might be in danger of betraying the Lord.

We might be in that danger when we want Him to do something different for us than what He thinks is best, as Judas surely thought. And we might be in that danger when we think we are so strong spiritually that we could never betray Jesus at all. Well, if we are tempted to think that, then we need to see that there was an even darker conspiracy at work here in the 22nd chapter of Luke.

We need to see that behind the betrayer there was a darker and more demonic influence. And if you want to understand the true nature of this conspiracy that led to the crucifixion, you need to see that it came from the very pit of hell. Notice how Luke begins his account of this clandestine encounter between Judas and the chief priests. He tells us in verse 3, "Then Satan entered into Judas called Iscariot, who was of the number of the twelve."

And when he said this, Luke was lifting the curtain of concealment to show that there was a supernatural dimension to this conflict, a conspirator behind the conspiracy. The ultimate co-conspirator. It was Satan himself, God's ancient enemy, the devil. And what Luke describes here must surely be the most extreme form of demonic possession. Not possessed simply by a demon, but by the devil himself. At least during these hours when he conspired against the Son of God.

And John tells us again later that the devil entered him when he went to betray our Lord. And even if we don't know exactly what kind of control Satan had over Judas, we can agree with J.C. Ryle, who said that this was something peculiarly awful. Judas was under the influence, the evil influence, of the arch-enemy of God. And let me emphasize, this was not against the betrayer's will. For Judas himself had already opened the door for the devil to come in.

We know this because the Bible promises that if we resist the devil, he will flee from us. And therefore, we should never think, even for a moment, that we are powerless against the schemes of Satan or fear that against our will he could do to us what he did to Judas. No, it's the devil himself that wants us to think that, that we can do nothing to stop him.

What God wants us to believe and what he has said in the Word is that He has superior power for those who believe, against which the devil cannot stand. And as long as we exercise our faith in the victory of Jesus Christ, we are free from the fear and free from the sin and the temptation that the devil wants to make our torment.

Oh, if only Judas had resisted Satan's temptations by trusting in the promises of God, he never would have become the betrayer. But instead, weakened by his own sinful desires, he came under the devil's power. And how happy the devil must have been for it. As happy as those chief priests were when Judas became their co-conspirator, Satan was even happier than that.

For ever since the beginning of human history, he had been sneaking around creation looking for some opportunity to destroy all of God's plans for the blessing of his people. And first you'll remember he succeeded in tempting Adam and Eve into the first sin. But then immediately God pronounced a terrible curse against him and he announced that Satan would be crushed by the woman's son.

And one way of understanding the whole narrative of the scriptures is to see that from the beginning, the devil did everything he could to prevent that son from ever coming. He tempted Cain. You can read about that in verse 4. Cain was tempted by the devil to kill his brother Abel. And yet God preserved his holy line through Seth, the son of Adam and Eve.

The devil tried to turn people against God. You can read that in the early chapters of Genesis. Many people did turn against God. They were destroyed in a flood. But God preserved his holy line through Noah. Satan tempted Abraham to produce his own son by his own methods, but he was not the son of promise. Nevertheless, God preserved his holy line through Isaac.

The people of God ended up in Egypt, and there Satan tempted Pharaoh to put all of Israel's sons to death in the Nile. That way Satan would leave no stone unturned; he would just kill them all. But God saved his people through the prophet Moses. And all through the Old Testament, you see the conflict continuing, that invisible war between heaven and hell, between God and Satan.

The children of Israel carried off into captivity, but God preserving a righteous remnant and eventually the Savior was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. And Satan's response was oh, so predictable. He tried to kill all of the baby boys in Bethlehem. But that strategy failed as well. And finally, there was nothing Satan could do except take the fight right to Jesus Himself.

And you'll remember from Luke chapter 4 that three times he tried to tempt the Son of God into sin. But Jesus resisted the devil and the devil fled from him in that wilderness. And since that very moment, indeed, since the very moment that he first rebelled against God, Satan has been working with all of his hateful strength to destroy the plans of God for his people.

He's been skulking around here in the shadows of the Gospel of Luke. We always knew that we would see him again before the end. It was just a matter of when. You'll remember that after the temptations in the wilderness, Luke tells us that the devil departed from Jesus until an opportune time. And now, as far as the devil was concerned, that opportune time had come.

Judas the betrayer had joined Satan's conspiracy, and the devil would not stop until he put Jesus to death. And this time his scheme would succeed beyond his wildest expectations. Judas would become the betrayer, the chief priest would arrest Jesus and accuse Him and abuse Him and hand Him over to the Romans, who would hang Him on the cross.

But there was something Satan didn't anticipate. There was something he didn't account for in all of his plotting and his scheming, that at the same time he was conspiring against the Son of God, God was actually operating a counter-conspiracy that would crush Satan and bring salvation to all the people of God. And this was the real Passover plot. Not Satan's wicked scheme to put Jesus to death, but the eternal plan of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit to defeat Satan through the crucifixion of the Christ.

And here at the very time Satan is actively seeking to destroy Him, we see Jesus still in control. I think we're shown that by all of the details that Luke gives us about the preparations he was making for Passover. You see them beginning in verse 7. "Then came the day of Unleavened Bread, on which the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed. And so Jesus sent Peter and John, saying, 'Go and prepare the Passover for us, that we may eat it.' They said to him, 'Where will you have us prepare it?' He said to them, 'Behold, when you have entered the city, a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him into the house that he enters, and tell the master of the house, The Teacher says to you, Where is the guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples? And he will show you a large upper room furnished; prepare it there.' And they went and found it just as he had told them, and they prepared the Passover."

You see, these are the preparations that Jesus was making. The day of Unleavened Bread was the day before Passover. It was a day of spiritual and practical preparation. The people of God would sweep out their homes symbolic of the sweeping away of sin. They would slaughter their lambs for the Passover sacrifice. It was the biggest feast of the year, like Christmas and Thanksgiving all rolled into one. It required elaborate preparations, and so Jesus sent some of his disciples to do the necessary things.

And yet it was not just Passover that was being prepared, it was also the death of Jesus for the salvation of sinners. This is what Jesus had in mind. This is the thing that he was working to bring about in just the right way. And Luke is giving us these details to show that Jesus is in full control of everything leading up to the cross.

Our Savior had determined that He would eat this one last meal with His disciples. And there He would institute the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. And to that end, His divine providence and His sovereign foreknowledge had arranged this room where they could meet. Very likely it was pre-arranged, and the jar of water, which ordinarily would have been carried by a woman, was a signal that this was the way to the proper room.

Commentators as far back as Cyril of Alexandria have suggested that Jesus may have done this very specifically to keep Judas from knowing where they would meet that night. You'll notice, if you look at it carefully, Jesus doesn't tell any of his disciples the secret location. He only gives Peter and John a sign that they will then use to find the location. And this kept Judas in the dark until Jesus was ready for his betrayal.

Soon Judas would betray Jesus, but not yet. Not until Jesus knew that the time was right. Jesus would not offer his life as a sacrifice for our sin until Passover itself. At the very time when people were celebrating their deliverance, when they were offering a lamb as a sacrifice for sin, He would offer Himself as the Passover lamb for the whole world. This was what Jesus was setting in motion.

But He would not offer Himself on the cross until He first celebrated the feast with His disciples, giving them His body and blood in the bread and wine of the Last Supper. And He would not let the betrayer betray him until the time for the betrayal had come. This too was part of the plan. It had always been part of the plan. Indeed, it was the fulfillment of one of the ancient Psalms: "Even my close friend in whom I trusted, who ate my bread, has lifted his heel against me." That's Psalm 41, and it was fulfilled when Judas dipped the bread with Jesus at the Last Supper.

You see, all of this was part of God's counter-conspiracy and Jesus was working it all out to perfection. Not just the little details of preparing the feast, but the whole plan of redemption. Jesus knew exactly what he was doing. He knew what Judas wanted to do to Him and what the devil was trying to do. But He also knew what He was going to do.

His preparations for your salvation were already underway. Jesus was moving towards the cross already. And as determined as Satan was that he would die, Jesus was just as determined. For on this point both the conspiracy and the counter-conspiracy agree: both the conspiracy and the counter-conspiracy lead to the cross.

But you know that is where the conspiracy ended. That's as far as it would go. It would go only to the cross. When Jesus was crucified, the religious leaders got what they wanted. Judas got what he bargained for. And Satan got what he had been scheming to get since the day that God made the world.

Only you know, none of them actually got what they thought they were getting. For the very place that the conspiracy came to its end, the counter-conspiracy was just beginning to bring salvation. And unlike Satan, Jesus knew what his death by crucifixion would accomplish. He knew it would be the death of the devil himself. He knew it would be the death of sin for everyone who trusts in him. He knew it would be the death of death for everyone who believes in the cross and the empty tomb.

And as you consider the events described for us here in Luke 22, let me ask you: which Passover plot do you choose to belong to? The conspiracy of Satan or the counter-conspiracy of the Son of God? It's a different way of asking this question: are you with Jesus or against him? Do you have faith in his cross or do you secretly despise it as something unimportant to the kind of life that you want to live?

Oh, my friend, choose wisely. The conspiracy only leads to death. But the counter-conspiracy leads to eternal life after death. And when you believe in Jesus and become part of His counter-conspiracy, God Himself is now working His plan out in your life. And you should reason from this terrible conspiracy here in the gospels with all of its implications for the world, you should reason from that grand thing down to the little things of your own life.

Is it not the case that if Jesus could work all of this out, even through the betrayal of Judas, even through the cross, if he could work all of that out, can't he also work out the things that need to be worked out in your own life? Admittedly, there are times when it doesn't seem that way. The Bible says that Satan prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. And there are times in life when we hear the rumble of the devil's roar and it terrifies us.

We may be gripped by a sudden fear, a fear of failure, a fear of financial collapse, a fear of everything that seems to be going wrong in your family or in your church. Sometimes we don't hear the devil at all, but he is stalking us all the same, silently creeping in for the kill. He is tempting us to fall back into the same old pattern of sin, or to find our own way to get what we think what we want out of life, or to use our difficult circumstances as an excuse to be disappointed with God and to fail to serve Him.

I don't know what the devil is trying to do in your life. I only know that he wants to discourage you and if possible to destroy you. And I also know that he has no power where Jesus has claimed his victory. Do not be afraid of the devil. Don't let him devour you. Don't give in to his wicked schemes.

For no matter how much Satan conspires against you, through faith in Jesus Christ you belong to the counter-conspiracy. And at this very moment, the same God who planned His victory over Satan, even through the betrayal of Judas, is planning to work everything out in your life. He's planning to work everything out exactly the way that it's supposed to be worked out, the way He intends for it to be worked out, for your genuine good and for God's own greater glory.

Our Father in heaven, we pray for the faith to believe in your superior wisdom and power. We give you praise that even through the most wicked cruelty of men, you have accomplished our salvation. And Father, we pray that you would do your saving work in our own lives. And we pray for the faith to believe that you know what you're doing. In Jesus' name, amen.

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