L"Men of Israel, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you  by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know. This man was handed over to you by God's set purpose and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross."

The procedure is the combination of steps needed to carry out the plan. The procedure is the way to hit the target.  For the believers who plan to follow Christ the steps in doing that include prayer, Bible reading, church attendance, and service to others.  Other procedures might be: to have devotions every day at 6 am to read from Acts and write in a prayer journal.  A procedure can be as different as individuals and as different as churches.  The way we might decide to have a worship service is different than the way another church may decide. So much of worship and styles of worship is frankly cultural, depending on the people who gather to honor God. One is necessarily right or wrong. The procedure includes the steps to carry out your plan.

Some of our worship procedures are to make a bulletin, plan an order of service, have a choir number, make arrangements to have someone help clean the sanctuary.  We have procedures of worship that include inviting people to sing for us as testimony of worship to God and ushers who collect an offering and so forth. We seek to develop procedures to address needs in teaching, evangelism, missions, social concerns, and fellowship.

The Jewish religious leaders had their plan to kill Christ, but it needed a procedure too. They were plotted their steps. The first step was to arrest Him. They had spies seeking to carry out this procedure, to look for Him, to tell them where He might be found so they might gather up soldiers and have Him brought to the Sanhedrin.  Then they must come up with false charges that sound reasonable enough to have Him condemned to die.

It takes shrewd people who operate schemes, when innocent people are made to look guilty and the guilty are made look innocent. Caiaphas was such a person. He was crafty, shrewd, and aware of ways to look so just, yet his heart was deceptively evil. But you cannot fool God.

Jesus knew the divine plan was to fulfill prophecy, and His death was to be after the Passover not before, so He stayed in hiding. When He does come into Jerusalem it is not with the secret disguise, but rather with a great crowd hailing Him King of Jews, with shouts of Hosanna.

When Peter preached on Pentecost, we hear the message which God had predetermined all along, Acts 2:22,23 "Men of Israel, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know. This man was handed over to you by God's set purpose and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross."

When people saw Christ, there were some who professed faith and others ran to tell the Jews.  Some met God and others were more concerned with what men thought.

Application:   In making your plans, is it out of faith? Is it with concern for others or for God? Is it for God's glory or for your own sense of pleasure or security?

Jesus said, "He who gains his life shall lose it and anyone who loses his life for my sake or the gospels shall find it." Matt. 16:35

Prayer:  father, you bless us with so much, which makes it easy sometimes to lose sight of you as the provider of everything. All that we do be done to and for you .  Create in me a clean pure heart oh God.

Dale