The Passion: The Wisdom Of God In Betrayal
Study The Word
Mark 14:10-11
“And Judas Iscariot, one of the twelve, went unto the chief priests, to betray him unto them. And when they heard it, they were glad, and promised to give him money. And he sought how he might conveniently betray him.”
There is something that every child of God needs to understand about the betrayal of Jesus Christ — and once you see it, once the Holy Spirit opens your eyes to it, you will never read the passion narrative the same way again. The betrayal of Jesus was not a tragedy. It was a setup. Glory to God!
Now, before you go any further, I want you to lock this into your spirit: God is never caught off guard. Not by Judas. Not by the chief priests. Not by the thirty pieces of silver. Every single detail of that night — the garden, the kiss, the price — had already been written down by the prophet Zechariah hundreds of years before Judas was even born. Think about this: the prophet said in Zechariah 11:12, “And I said unto them, If ye think good, give me my price; and if not, forbear. So they weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver.” Hallelujah! They weighed the price. Thirty pieces of silver. And then Matthew 26:15 tells us that when Judas walked into that meeting with the chief priests and said, “What will you give me and I will deliver him unto you?” — they covenanted with him for thirty pieces of silver. Exactly. Word for word. The prophecy came to pass.
שָׁקַל shaqal weighed – to weigh out, pay, assess value, count out payment, measure by weight
That Hebrew word shaqal is the root of the word “shekel” — the currency standard of ancient Israel. When Zechariah said they “weighed for my price,” he meant a transaction was being formally completed. A price was being assessed. A covenant was being sealed. And the price they put on the Son of God? Thirty pieces of silver — the price of a common slave in the Old Testament (Exodus 21:32). The administrators of the Old Covenant — the ones who were supposed to know the scriptures better than anyone — assigned to the Son of God the value of a slave. Haha! And God called it “a goodly price.” There’s divine irony dripping from that verse. But God wasn’t offended — He was working.
מְחִיר mᵉchîyr price – purchase price, hire, sale value, the amount something is worth
You see, this is what you need to understand about God’s sovereignty. He does not operate reactively. He is never scrambling. Long before Judas ever walked into Caiaphas’s palace, long before the silver coins changed hands in the darkness of that meeting, God had already predetermined it, set it up by design, revealed it in prophecy and had it written through Zechariah. Why? Because the betrayal was the divine mechanism God needed to bring righteous judgment against the corrupt administration of the Old Covenant — those three shepherds, the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders of the people — who had enriched themselves while God’s sheep lived in poverty. That is what Jesus was addressing when He delivered the message — “I am the good shepherd.” He wasn’t just speaking a beautiful metaphor. He was continuing from the prophecy of Zechariah and was pronouncing and setting up the stage of the judgment of the three shepherd’s — the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders of the people. He was declaring that a new administration was coming, the administration of the good shepherd, and that the old one — the one that stole, killed, and destroyed — was about to be cut off. In this Easter month make sure you make some time to listen to our teaching on this The Passion: The Betrayal part 1 and The Passion: The Betrayal part 2, so that you can see and get a greater understanding of the wisdom of God in Jesus’s betrayal.
Now, in understanding all of this, what does this mean for you today? It means that whatever looks like the most devastating betrayal in your life is not outside of God’s script. The moment you see what they did to Jesus — and how God used the most treacherous moment in human history as the foundation for the greatest covenant ever established — you stop seeing betrayal the way the world sees it. You start seeing it as God’s setup for something greater. The events that gave us the gospel of Christ were established after His betrayal. It was all a part of God’s plan. The New Testament — established on better promises, with better provisions, with Jesus Himself taking over from the three shepherd’s as the Good Shepherd and High Priest of a better covenant — and all came after His betrayal. Hallelujah!
Pray The Word
Heavenly Father, I thank You for the perfect sovereignty that You demonstrate through out all generations. Long before I was born, You had already written my redemption and salvation into history and sealed it with the blood of Jesus Christ. I declare that no betrayal, no conspiracy, no scheme of darkness can derail the purposes You have ordained for my life, in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
Speak The Word
The sovereignty of God governs every detail of my life! What men intend for evil, God is turning for my good! I am hidden in the eternal script of God, and what He has written concerning me cannot be unwritten. I walk in the victory that was purchased at the price of the blood of the Lamb — no weapon forged against me shall prosper, in the name of Jesus Christ!