Everybody, what is going on? You know what time it is. You're listening to join the Journey podcast with your host, Emma, daughter.

Thanks for joining. What do you typically do when you encounter verses that don't make sense? More often than not, I think our tendency is to just skip them.

In today's Devo, Terrell reminds us that Jesus understands our

trials, our suffering, and our pain. He isn't a stranger to deep agony. Our own challenges in agony

can overwhelm us, but God's always there. He's not hiding, he hasn't gone astray, and he has not

turned his face away from us.

As a reminder, you can access daily devotionals and discussion questions that correlate with our

reading plan at join the journey.com. In today's episode, I want to talk about two challenging

verses you probably encountered when you read Matthew 26. First off, in

verse 5, as the priests are plotting to arrest and kill Jesus, they plan not to during the feast,

lest there be an uproar among the people, it reads. And it's interesting. When I think back

to Sunday school Easter lessons, I recall crowds cheering for Jesus' crucifixion.

Give us Brabis, crucify Jesus.

Were the crowds not pro-crucrucution?

Why did the leaders fear an uproar?

Why wouldn't the crowds have favored Jesus' crucifixion had it been proposed during the feast?

Remember, Bible Study 101, we always start with observation. What do we notice? Ask the who, what,

when, where, and why questions. In verses 1 through 5, who? The chief priests and the elders, they're the

spiritual leaders of Israel. That's verse three.

What did they want to do? Deliver an innocent man over for punishment. Verse five.

And this would have applied Matthew's Jewish audience. Remember, the book of Matthew was written to the Jews.

Why? In short, they disagreed with Jesus's teachings, which would maybe be verse one, but we can't make an explicit why observation from these five verses. So I'm cheating a little here.

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