Matthew 26:1-5 (NIV) When Jesus had finished saying all these things, he said to his disciples, “As you know, the Passover is two days away–and the Son of Man will be handed over to be crucified.”
Then the chief priests and the elders of the people assembled in the palace of the high priest, whose name was Caiaphas, and they plotted to arrest Jesus in some sly way and kill him. “But not during the Feast,” they said, “or there may be a riot among the people.”
Jesus had a far better grasp of the way things would roll out than those who were supposedly in control of the situation. From the beginning, God had decided that the Messiah would be sacrificed at the Passover, and that ultimate sacrifice formed the basis of the symbolism that He included in the first Passover event (Exodus 12:1-13), not the other way around.
Jesus knew that He would be sacrificed on Friday, only two days away, to fulfill all of the Scriptures. But the chief priests and elders shied away from doing anything to Him during the Passover festival, because they had seen the adulation of Jesus by the crowds, and reasonably figured that merely arresting Jesus, let alone trying to execute Him, would cause a riot.
They couldn’t see that early the very next day, one of Jesus’ own disciples would knock at their door, extending an offer to betray Jesus into their hands at His camping spot on the Mount of Olives. That would enable them to arrest Him out of the public eye, and have Him tried and condemned before most people were out of bed. It would be an opportunity that would change everything, and that they would jump at, completely oblivious to the fact that it was God Himself who was orchestrating the timing.
Father, You are the Sovereign of the universe, and Your planned timing will always come through, no matter what roadblocks we mere humans try to throw in Your path. Help us to fit ourselves into Your plan, instead of breaking ourselves against You by trying to resist it. Amen.