As we come now to the preaching of God's Word, I'd ask you to turn with me once again to the Gospel of Matthew. This morning we'll be looking at Matthew chapter 26, verses 1 through 5. If you're using your pew Bible this morning, you'll have to hunt for it. The page is there in the bulletin. So we'll be reading this morning and looking at Matthew 26, verses 1-5. We'll hear now the Word of God. When Jesus had finished all these things, He said to His disciples, You know that after two days the Passover is coming, and the Son of Man will be delivered up to be crucified. Then the chief priests and the elders of the people gathered in the palace of the high priest, whose name was Caiaphas, and plotted together in order to arrest Jesus by stealth and kill him. But they said, not during the feast, lest there be an uproar among the people." Let us once again bow in prayer and seek the Lord's blessing. Our gracious and almighty Heavenly Father, Lord, as we enter this section of Matthew nearing so close to the end of Christ's earthly ministry, where he will be betrayed and given up to be crucified, we pray, Lord, that as we look at these verses, that you would guide and direct our hearts and minds by your Spirit You, Father, illumine our innermost being that we may know and understand your truth, and may you, Lord, apply it to our lives. And Father, we do pray that you would bless my mind and my mouth, that I may think and speak your truth clearly this morning. It is in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, that we do pray. Amen. Why does this, these verses begin, it says, when Jesus had finished all these sayings. This may not be referring to just what he had been teaching of the final judgment of his second coming, and then before that, the destruction of Jerusalem, and the sign of his enthronement on high at the right hand of God, but may refer to everything that he has been teaching up to this point in Matthew, because from here on out, The teachings of Jesus in his sayings come to a close. He doesn't have any more discourses where he begins to instruct and teach, but we then move to the final few days of his earthly ministry. And as we look at these verses as Matthew has finished a major section of his gospel and then is moving into this final section, what we're going to be considering as Matthew lays out very clearly at the outset that what is about to transpire in the betraying of Jesus Christ and his sacrifice upon the cross and his being beaten and scourged and humiliated was according to the plan of God. It wasn't according to the will of men. It was according to His plan, His design. And Matthew sets that out in these opening verses for us this morning, in verses one through five. And that leads us then to the theme of these verses. How do we respond then to what Christ has done? Well, it's a call for us to then live lives worthy of the calling that we have in Christ. To live lives, our lives for Him who willingly laid down His life for us. To live our lives for Him who willingly laid down His life for us. Now, just to give another recap of what's come up in the events leading up to this day. in the life of Jesus Christ. Beginning in chapter 21, that is when Jesus makes his entrance into Jerusalem, his triumphal entry, where he is very clearly declaring that he is the Messiah, he is the promised king, the anointed one, the promised one of God of old. as he very clearly comes in on a donkey, on a colt, which was prophesied of old that this is how this Messiah would come. And he receives gladly the words of praise and adoration of Hosanna, the son of David. He doesn't quiet people at all, but he receives it. And the teachers of Israel know what this means because they ask him about it later in the temple, that how can you let them do this? And what does Jesus do? But he responds by saying, well, out of the mouths of babes, God has composed praise. He receives this praise and he teaches in the temple. And then in this dramatic scene of, he gives these woes to the leaders and how they have misinterpreted and not guided his people. But in these woes, it's It's a plea really for grace as we see the end of that is a lament over Jerusalem and a desire for his people to come and submit under him. He very dramatically, he says to them, behold, your house is left to you desolate and he leaves the temple. Yahweh, Emmanuel, God with us, leaving the temple. He then answers the disciples' questions of about when his enthronement will take place. And he gives them then a discourse of what's leading up to the fall of Jerusalem. And then also, when will be your second coming in power? And he gives them then and tells them, well, there are no signs for that. There is no sign for my second coming. It will be when you do not expect. And a call to always be ready. And that is what leads us to this point this morning. Jesus, when he had finished all these sayings, said to his disciples, you know that after two days the Passover is coming and the Son of Man will be delivered up to be crucified. And then the chief priests and the elders of the people gathered in the palace of the high priest, whose name was Caiaphas, and plotted together in order to arrest by stealth and kill him. They said, not during the feast, lest there be an uproar among the people." Now, as we look at this text this morning, we're going to begin by looking at verses 3 to 5. And then we'll go back and we'll look at verses one and two. Well, in verses three to five, we read that the chief priests and the elders of the people gathered in the palace of the high priest, a man named Caiaphas. Now, the high priest is, the office and the position came from Aaron and passed down. He was the high priest who ministered before the Lord. By this time, It's not so much a religious position as a political position. And it was someone that was installed by the governing authority, is actually a representative of the nation of Israel itself. And they're not really at his palace, but kind of meeting in his courtyard. That's another way that we could translate that word for palace. It's not his palace that he is living in, but the courtyard of his house. and that these people and the elders and the other priests are coming and gathering together. Basically, this is an unofficial meeting in secret. They don't want people to know that they're having this meeting. And they're trying to figure out how to kill and bring to ruin Jesus. as they have witnessed his growing ministry. They have seen firsthand his teaching in the temple and the authority with which he taught and the way in which he silenced the Pharisees and the Sadducees. Any opposition that came to him and brought him questions, he would silence their arguments and leave them speechless to where we read in Matthew that at a certain point his adversaries just stopped asking him questions altogether. And so they begin conspiring, and they begin meeting in secret to find a way to bring to ruin Jesus Christ. Now, the gospel of John, or John and his gospel, kind of gives us a more in-depth look into the dialogue of what went on in this meeting. In the gospel of John chapter 11, We read in verses 48 and following to verse 53, we read these words. Well, first of all, in verse 45, many of the Jews, therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what he did, believed in him. But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. So the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered at the council and said, what are we to do? For this man performs many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation. One of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, You know nothing at all, nor do you understand that it is better for you that one man should die for the people, not that the whole nation should perish. And he did not say this of his own accord, but being high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus would die for the nation, not for the nation only, but also to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad. So from that day on, they made plans to put him to death. Now, in John's gospel, he gives a greater explanation of kind of the dialogue that went through. And what we find out is that this Caiaphas, who was acting as high priest, he had a prophecy that Jesus would die for not only the nation, but to bring the people of God into one who were dispersed throughout the world. Now, as they had this prophecy, although as we read the Gospel of John, it seems like, well, maybe they didn't have bad motives at all. Maybe they knew what they were doing as they sent Christ to his death. Well, no, because Jesus himself says on the cross, forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do. Although they had this prophecy and this idea that Jesus' death would be beneficial for God's people, yet they were still looking at it in earthly terms. You know, they were worried about an uprising coming and the Roman Empire then coming down with its full weight of its military might and destroying them, which history tells us did eventually happen in 70 AD. The motive behind the priests and the scribes and the leaders in Israel seeking to bring Christ to ruin was not a good reason. It was not a reason at all that we should think was good or right. Because all the other texts throughout the Gospels clearly show us the ill intent that they had. They despised Jesus Christ. They didn't want Him in His teaching. And they were rejecting Him. What we see, brothers and sisters, as we look at these three verses, in verses three through five, displayed for us in the council there that was gathering together, in the elders, in the chief priests, at the palace or the courtyard of Caiaphas, is really the natural reaction that we will all have to Jesus Christ. It is a reaction of hatred. It is a reaction of animosity. It is a reaction of enmity, that enemy with, that war with. This is the reaction that we see in the Gospel of Matthew after Jesus has finished, for all intents and purposes, His teaching ministry. And the authority that they saw, and the way in which He taught, and the way in which He dealt with them, the reaction that they have to His presence is not, let us submit to our Messiah. Let us find a way to remove Him from our midst. That is what we see throughout the world, brothers and sisters. When it is confronted with Christ, with God and His anointed, as Jesus told us would happen in John chapter 15, is that the world will hate Him. And the world does hate Him, and will hate all who seek to proclaim Him. This, brothers and sisters, apart from the grace of Christ, is our natural reaction to Him. Jordan and I and Richard Leah Buck were down there as well. We're down in California, Friday and Saturday for Presbytery. And as we were flying back yesterday, we had to stop over in Portland. So on the second leg in the 35-minute flight between Portland and Seattle, I sat down next to a man who would describe himself as an atheist agnostic. He had grown up in the church. But at this time, he didn't believe, and he had rejected the faith, and he was a kind man. He didn't, as we talked, he didn't get angry or upset. But as I pressed him of, well, why would God accept you? His response was that he has faith in himself, that he would recognize the truth when it appears, and that he would be received because of that. That's a sugarcoating of the truth. We all would love to think that, I wouldn't do that. We look back and we think, well, I wouldn't cry out, crucify him. That wouldn't be me. But brothers and sisters, that is who we are, apart from the grace of Christ. That is who we are in the core of our nature. We despise Christ. We want nothing to do with him. Then why do I focus on this in these verses? It's important for us before we get to the next point, which we'll end on a happier note, that we understand who we actually are apart from Christ. Let us not sugarcoat it. Let us not hide behind some veneer of, I wouldn't do that. No, we would do that. It's our natural desire to choke the life out of God if we could. That is who we are. in our sinful nature. And let us remember that it was our sin that was the reason Christ went to the cross. It was our sin that put him there. The why he willingly laid down his life. It was our sinfulness, the sinfulness of his people. Now, as we change then to the second point here, first of all, the leaders plot to kill Jesus, and the second point, the events here didn't unfold according to their design. It wasn't according to their design, their plan, that events unfolded. It was according to the will of God. Now, as I said, we dealt with the last few verses first, and we're going back now and dealing with the first two verses. And the reason is, as I said, I want us to understand, first of all, who we are, in and of ourselves, and be reminded of that fact, before now we look at the sovereignty of God and what He has done, and His willingness to do what He did, despite the fact that we were alienated from Him, despite the fact we were in a hostile relationship to Him. We were sinners who despised Him. Yet we see in these verses that Christ willingly, and according to the plan of God, went to the cross. And having said that, the fact that these verses come first is crucial to understanding the whole point of what's going on is that everything, as I mentioned in the introduction, that unfolds now from chapter 26 on Matthew is reminding us, the very outset, that this is preordained by God, by His sovereign decree and plan. When Jesus had finished all these sayings, He said to His disciples, You know that after two days the Passover is coming, and the Son of Man will be delivered up to be crucified. He knows full well what is happening, according to His plan. Now, as we consider this, One of the things it means here is that Jesus on the cross was not a victim. He was not murdered as a helpless victim. He willingly laid down his life. He was the sacrifice, the only sacrifice that was able to remove our sins and to satisfy the wrath of God. Nobody, as Jesus says, took his life from him. But he laid it down willingly. And he had the power also to take it up again. It was a willing sacrifice. Now the time frame that Jesus puts us in is that you know in two days the Passover is coming. The Passover is laid out for us and described in detail what was to be done in Exodus chapter 12. And as you may know, it was what was given by God for the people to continually do year by year throughout their history to remind them of the great deliverance that He worked for them in freeing them from slavery in Egypt. It was a real and physical way in which they could partake and look at the deliverance that they had because of God's mighty work. Well, today we're partaking of the Lord's Supper. As Jesus will use later the observance of the Passover as a means through which to ordain and to give His church the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. The same way as the Passover was a very real, invisible, tangible way that the people of God could experience and remember the deliverance that they had from Egypt. The Lord's Supper, brothers and sisters. It is a visible, it is a tangible, it is the Gospel that we can taste, that we can smell, that we can see, that we can hold in our hands. Right now, I'm preaching verbally the Gospel that we can hear. This table is a physical partaking of that Gospel. as we hold in our hands the sacramental symbol of Christ's broken body. And we feed on it by faith. We feed by faith upon the broken body of Christ. We hold in our hands the sacramental symbol of Christ's shed blood. And we drink it. And it goes into our bodies and strengthens us. We are about to partake, brothers and sisters, of the visible, the tangible, the very sensory-filled proclamation of the Gospel as we partake of the Lord's Supper. What do we know then? What can we take home from these two verses? First of all, know the sovereignty of God. know the sovereignty of God. In all of human history, this act of Christ's crucifixion is the most heinous and despicable act throughout all time. From the beginning of time to the end of time. For every single human being who has lived has deserved this punishment, has deserved this death. But Jesus did not. He did not deserve it. but He willingly laid down His life. We'll get into when Jesus was before the authorities, and before Pilate, and His silence before them. As a lamb before a sheep before its shearers is silent. We look at that, and someone in the world might think, well, that's weak. Why doesn't Jesus stand up and defend Himself? Do you see the power of Jesus Christ in His silence? In those instances, He was taking control of the situation. They were demanding He say something, but He was exerting His sovereign authority and control of the situation by saying nothing at all. In silence. God was sovereign in the most despicable act of all of human history. The sacrifice of His Son. And what it means for us, brothers and sisters, in every trial, in every tribulation, in every discouragement, in every heartache and pain, physical, mental, spiritual, whatever it may be, every joy, every blessing, it is according to the plan and the decree of God. The diagnosis of a horrible illness, that was not outside of God's control, it was His sovereign decree. Any troubles that may come along in marriages, God is not outside of that. It is according to His sovereign decree. Anything we suffer, anything we go through, it's according to His sovereign plan. His control. And ultimately for our good. It's hard for us to see that in the midst of it. But He loves us and cares for us. And that leads us to the second thing we can take home from this. Know then the love of God for His people. Jesus knew full well what He was going into. He knew full well what was going to happen. He knew full well not only the physical torment and pain that He would experience, but He knew full well that while He was on the cross, He would experience the full weight of the wrath of the Most High God for the sins of His people that He would be, who knew no sin, would be made sin. So that we could become the righteousness of God. Yet He went willingly. He did it anyway. Because of His love for His people. Because of His love for you and me. While we were His enemies. But we will yet sinners, Christ died for us, that we might become the children of God. So brothers and sisters, as we draw this to the close, our sin may have been the reason that Christ hung on the cross. But what really drove the nails into Christ was the love of God for you and me. It was God's love that sacrificed His Son. And if He was willing to sacrifice His Son, how much more, now that He was risen and defeated sin and death and brought you to Him, is He willing to pour out upon you in His love and His care? If He was willing to nail His Son to the cross for you, How much more is He desiring to come alongside you and draw you near and to uphold you in any circumstance you are in? The love of God is beyond comprehension and understanding. And the sign of His love we will partake of in a moment. The death of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, His broken body, His shed blood upon the cross. And because He willingly laid down His life for us, brothers and sisters, how then are we called to live for Him? Not by our own strength, as Paul said, all who are in Christ are new creation. The old things have passed away. Behold, the new has come. There is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me, who loved me and gave Himself for me. Amen. Our Heavenly Father, we do thank you for the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. Lord, we have just heard the audible proclamation of the gospel. But in a moment, Lord, we will be able to touch it with our hands. We'll be able to taste it with our mouth. will be able to feel it going down our throat as we by faith partake in the body and blood of Jesus Christ. Lord, we pray that both the preaching and the proclamation of your gospel and this partaking of the gospel would have its effect in our lives. that we would see real growth as you, by your Spirit and your sovereign decree and control, mold us more into the image of our glorious and risen Savior, Jesus Christ. In the name of Jesus we do pray, Amen.