Plotted How to Entangle Him

Plotted How to Entangle Him.  On rainy days, if we could find all the pieces, we used to play a game called Mouse Trap® as children. However, playing that game was seldom because there were so many, very easily misplaced pieces: various slides, ladders, cups, funnels, a marble, and the little plastic net at the end to trap the little plastic mouse. Missing just one piece meant playing something else like Uno®, or far worse, Parcheesi®. But honestly, it wouldn’t have helped if we had played Mouse Trap® every day because it never made logical sense to me the order in which to build or deploy the mouse trap. The take-away, I guess, was that I was no mastermind. I resembled the mouse more than the trapper.

Not a game, but a real trap was built for Jesus. He was the prey. The Pharisees and Sadducees were the predators. In secret meetings and hushed voices, the evil schemers had attempted to snare Jesus several times, but could not mechanize the right combination of slides, ladders, cups, funnels, and marbles to drop the net over him. “Then the Pharisees went and plotted how to entangle him in his words” (Matt. 22:15). The self-proclaimed masterminds were missing a piece until Judas gave it to them. Judas was the insider for hire, willing to identify Jesus at night when no one else that mattered was looking.

Entanglement is a sanitized word; the original idea was baiting a trap. The Pharisees and Sadducees could not outsmart Jesus, so they attempted to lure him into a trick. “Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar?” (Matt. 22:17). “In the resurrection, therefore, of the seven, whose wife will she be?” (Matt. 22:28). “Which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” (Matt. 22:36). Not only did Jesus evade their traps, but he also reversed their traps upon their own heads. Jesus was the true mastermind, yet he didn’t rely on traps.

Thankfully, the kingdom of heaven does not rely upon wits or staying one step ahead of evil. The kingdom of heaven relies solely upon believing/trusting in the King. It is God who delivers from entrapment, not our natural skills of logical deduction. Left to my own wits, I am still paralyzed between Proverbs 26:4 and 26:5—“Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest you be like him yourself. Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes.” Which way is better? is the weaker question to ask. The stronger question is always: What is your will, Lord? We do not need an answer to what as much as we need a relationship to who. “When they deliver you over, do not be anxious how you are to speak or what you are to say, for what you are to say will be given to you in that hour. For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you” (Matt. 10:19-20).

Jesus was not anxious about evading his enemies’ conspiracy because he knew what the will of the Father was: “Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him” (Isa. 53:10a). He would die, but not because they had outsmarted, overpowered, or outmaneuvered him. He died because his death was pleasing to the Father, a willing sacrifice for the sins of the world. “For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father” (John 10:17-18).