Value System!

For Tuesday, August 26, 2025:

Mark 14:1b NLT: “The leading priests and the teachers of religious law were still looking for an opportunity to capture Jesus secretly and kill him.”

It was two days before Pasach, the Passover, the Festival of Unleavened Bread. The men behind the conspiracy against Jesus were priests and Jewish teachers of religious law. They should have known better.

On one hand, their religious beliefs taught that murder is wrong. Their parents and schools taught that murder is wrong. They teach others their deep-rooted moral belief that murder is wrong. And here they all are, plotting a murder, in direct conflict with their own value system, their own beliefs. Listen to this: Anyone who is doing what they would counsel others to NOT do is caught up in a big mental mess. In this case, perpetuating their religion had taken precedence over the religion’s fundamental principles, and that’s backwards. The priests believed Jesus was threatening their religion, and suddenly, plotting a murder became acceptable to them. They were wrong.

The priests and religious teachers didn’t want this event to happen on a holy day. The people might rebel! This tells us that, deep down, they knew the whole affair was wrong. If this secret were exposed, people could lose confidence in their religion.

With Jesus, God gave us the New Covenant. Believers have God’s Laws written on their hearts. In other words, God gave us a conscience. We should instinctively know right from wrong. So when a question arises, we should ask ourselves, “Is this good, is this right, is it fair, is it honest – should we be doing this thing?” With our God-inspired internal value system, we already know the right answer!

Pastor Norton Lawellin

Jesus In the City Fellowship