Mark 14:1 (KJV) That’s Just Crafty

Mark 14:1 (KJV)
After two days was the feast of the passover, and of unleavened bread: and the chief priests and the scribes sought how they might take him by craft, and put him to death.

I am interested in the word “craft.” Just a little bit of research with my concordance revealed that the Greek word used in this text means trickery. That is in contrast to a passage such as the one that says Paul’s craft was tent making. But it seems telling that Webster’s 1828 dictionary gives the two definitions:

• A skill and
• A trick

as different but with little distinction. Perhaps the two are related, at least in perception. I have a craft. I am a journeyman ironworker by trade and a certified welder by craft. These are skills I trained for. They did not come quickly or easily. I had to work to become skilled at them.

I am reminded of a preacher friend who also has a craft. He has trained to become a skilled illusionist. His craft is slight of hand. He has learned how to trick an audience into thinking they have seen a thing they have not.

This is exactly the skill the chief priests and scribes had developed. They had learned how to trick people into believing a thing to be true when in fact it was not. They guided, through skillful deception, the mind of Judas to betray Jesus and the minds of the crowd to cry out “Crucify Him!”

The craft of the illusionist is such that, unless you are let in on his secret, you cannot tell where the truth ends and the trick begins. The same is true with the craft of religion. Those plying their trade are skilled to the place you cannot see where the deception begins. But all is not lost. God has given to us the only two tools needed to see through the trickery, if we will but use them.

• The one is the Bible, the record of all that is true. 
• The other is the Holy Spirit, Who illuminates that Word for the careful student. 

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Mark 14:1 (KJV) That’s Just Crafty

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