The following sermon was delivered on March 16th, 2025 at Free Grace Baptist Church. The speaker is Roy Lindberry. Psalm 31, hear the word of God. In you, O Lord, I have taken refuge. Let me never be ashamed. In your righteousness, deliver me. Incline your ear to me and rescue me quickly. Be to me a rock of strength, a stronghold to save me, for you are my rock and my fortress. And for your name's sake you will lead me and guide me. You'll pull me out of the net which they have secretly laid for me, for you are my strength. Into your hand I commit my spirit. You have ransomed me, O Lord, God of truth. I hate those who regard vain idols, but I trust in the Lord. I will rejoice and be glad in your lovingkindness, because you have seen my affliction, and you have known the troubles of my soul, and you have not given me over into the hand of the enemy. You set my feet in a large place. Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am in distress. My eye is wasted away from grief, and my soul and my body also. For my life is spent with sorrow, my years with sighing. My strength has failed because of my iniquity, and my body has wasted away. Because of all my adversaries, I have become a reproach, especially to my neighbors, and an object of dread to my acquaintances. Those who see me in the street flee from me. I'm forgotten. As a dead man out of mind, I'm a broken vessel. For I have heard the slander of many. Terror is on every side. While they took counsel together against me, they schemed to take away my life. But as for me, I trust in you, O Lord. I say, you are my God. My times are in your hand. Deliver me from the hand of my enemies and from those who persecute me. Make your face to shine upon your servants. Save me in your loving kindness. Let me not be put to shame, O Lord, for I call upon you. And let the wicked be put to shame. Let them be silent in Sheol. Let the lying lips be mute, which speak arrogantly against the righteous with pride and with contempt. How great is your goodness, which you've stored up for those who fear you, which you have wrought for those who take refuge in you before the sons of men. You hide them in the secret place of your presence from the conspiracies of man. You keep them secretly in a shelter from the strife of tongues. Blessed be the Lord, for He has made marvelous His lovingkindness to me in a besieged city. And as for me, I said in my alarm, I am cut off from before your eyes. Nevertheless, you heard the voice of my supplications when I cried to you. Oh, love the Lord, all you His godly ones. The Lord preserves the faithful and fully recompenses the proud doer. Be strong, and let your heart take courage, all you who hope in the Lord. Amen. Well, as we continue our time of worship, go ahead and take a moment to open your Bibles to the book of Matthew, chapter 26. I'll be reading verses 1 through 16, particularly to provide some context this morning, but we'll be focusing our attention on verses 1 through 5, but we'll be reading the first 16 verses together. So let's hear once again from the Word of God. When Jesus had finished all of these words, he said to his disciples, you know that after two days the Passover is coming. and the Son of Man is to be handed over for crucifixion. And the chief priests and the elders of the people were gathered together in the court of the high priest named Caiaphas, and they plotted together to seize Jesus by stealth and kill him. But they were saying not during the festival, otherwise a riot might occur among the people. Now when Jesus was in Bethany at the home of Simon the leper, a woman came to him with an alabaster vial of very costly perfume, and she poured it on his head as he reclined at the table. But the disciples were indignant when they saw this and said, why this waste? For this perfume might have been sold for a high price in the money given to the poor. But Jesus, aware of this, said to them, why do you bother the woman? For she has done a good deed for me. For you always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me. For when she poured this perfume on my body, she did it to prepare me for my burial. Truly I say to you, wherever this gospel is preached in the whole world, what this woman has done will also be spoken of in memory of her. And then one of the 12, named Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests and said, what are you willing to give me to betray him to you? And they weighed out 30 pieces of silver to him. And from then on, he began looking for a good opportunity to betray Jesus. Amen. Well, I pray once again that the Lord would add His blessing to the reading of His Word, the preaching of it, and even your hearing and reception of it. We're returning back to the Synoptic Gospels, the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. And as we do so, we're turning the page into the final chapters of Jesus' earthly life. If you remember several weeks ago, probably months ago now, as we looked at the triumphal entry, we were marking the final week of Jesus' life. And there's a lot that's happened since then in terms of the teaching that Jesus gave and the things that were happening with the cleansing of the temple and those sorts of things. But this here really marks the beginning of the passion. This marks the beginning of the suffering of Jesus as he's moving now towards crucifixion. All things now are pointing us towards the crucifixion of Christ. And it might seem really now like the subject matter is changing, but we can't separate this from the context that has gone before, the things that we've been looking at. So I want you just really to think back for the last several months as we've been working through the Synoptic Gospels in this final week of Jesus' life. Remember that that final week began with Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a colt. It began with Him riding in, proclaiming Himself to be King, being recognized as King by the Jews who were familiar with the Scriptures. And remember, they were throwing their clothing down before him. They're waving palm branches in the air. Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. And that sort of began this final week. He was fulfilling that kingly role of the Messiah. And then he demonstrated his authority over the temple. Remember, he was driving out the money changers. He was driving out all of those who were profiting from the temple and those who were profaning true temple worship. Significantly, as I've pointed out, that was also a fulfillment of the priestly role in the inspection of a diseased house. This was the second time that he had come in and that he had found the profanation of worship in the temple, that he had found people who had turned any kind of true worship, any semblance of true worship aside and had turn this into a place of commercial business and commercial activity where they might enrich themselves. And if you remember, the law spoke of the priest coming and inspecting the house for disease, and after that second time, then it would be torn down brick by brick by brick. And following that, Jesus then told two very specific parables, demonstrating that Israel had failed in her calling to be a light to the nations, that she had forsaken the true worship of God, that she had spurned the prophets that were sent to her, and that the kingdom then would be taken away from her and given to a people bearing the fruit of it. Remember those parables, the parable of the the landowner, the vineyard, and then the parable of the wedding feast. And again, that was all capped off by what I can only describe as a verbal flogging of the Pharisees in chapter 23 of the book of Matthew because of their hypocrisy and because they had become a hindrance to the people of Israel rather than a blessing. They had stood in the way of true honorable worship rather than actually trying to promote that among the people. And then following that, Jesus told the disciples that the temple was going to be destroyed, prompting those questions that we've been repeating over and over again over the last several weeks. The disciples asked those questions. When is this stuff going to happen and how are we going to know? When will it happen and what will be the sign? Chapter 24 was taken up, if you remember, with the signs that would indicate the imminent destruction of the temple and the greater city of Jerusalem. It was taken up with Jesus giving the signs of what was going to happen when they would know that this destruction was going to come. When Jesus said that there's not a single thing here that will not be toppled down without one brick no longer upon another. Then chapter 25 followed on, telling us about the new covenant age that will then happen from that time. If you remember, that's how chapter 25 begins. From that time, the kingdom of heaven will be. And then he gives us those two parables, the parable of the virgin and the parable of the talents, speaking of this new covenant age. And then that picture in chapter 25 ends with the final judgment, the last judgment. So that's kind of a lot of the territory that we've covered over the last several weeks together. Now we move into chapter 26. And that context can really help us understand this passage, because what's happening here now is a move by the chief priests to have Jesus killed. This is all coming to a head now here in chapter 26. What's happening is that the chief priests and the elders are literally fulfilling that which Jesus had said was going to happen. You remember the parable of the landowner when he went away on the journey and the people that he had left were taking care of the land and he sent his servants back, right? He sent his servants to go take what was his from the harvest. And what did they do? They mistreated, they beat, and they stoned all of these people that were sent. And so then the landowner says, I will send now my son because they will respect my son. And then he sent his son, and what did they do? They killed him. And that was the point at which Jesus said, he even said, what will the landowner do? And they condemned themselves by saying, he will bring those wretches to a wretched end. Now, we're seeing it played out in real time, beginning with the sending of the Son is here, and they are now taking it upon themselves, as the leaders of Israel, to kill the Son of God, to kill the Son who has been sent. Playing out in real time. After they'd already killed the king's messengers, and you might say, well, wait a minute, the Pharisees, the chief priests, they never killed here any of the prophets. But remember what Jesus said to them in Matthew chapter 23. He said that upon them would fall all of the blood, innocent blood shed, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, whom they slew between the temple and the altar. because they are, as Jesus said, filling up the measure of their fathers. They're walking in the footsteps of their fathers, those who had persecuted the prophets, and now they are coming after the Son of God, plotting to kill Him as well. And the final portion of the Gospels is the fulfillment of all that Jesus has been already pointing us to. Now this passage here, verses 1-5 of Matthew 26, gives us the fourth and final prediction of Jesus of his crucifixion. He's foretold his death three other times, and now this is the fourth one that we find. Just very quickly, the first in Matthew 16.21, From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and the chief priests and scribes and be killed and be raised up on the third day. That one speaks not only of His crucifixion, but also of His resurrection. Again, we see something very similar in the next chapter, Matthew 17, verses 22 and 23. It says, While they were gathering together in Galilee, Jesus said to them, The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill Him, and He will be raised on the third day. And they were deeply grieved. And then finally in chapter 20 of the book of Matthew verses 17 through 19, As Jesus was about to go up to Jerusalem, He took the twelve disciples aside by themselves. And on the way He said to them, Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem. This is right before the triumphal entry. We are going up to Jerusalem. The Son of Man will be delivered to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn Him to death. and will hand Him over to the Gentiles to mock and scourge and crucify Him, and on the third day He will be raised up." You'll notice all three of these speak of the resurrection as well. We don't see that in our passage this morning. Our passage this morning says that when Jesus had finished all these words, what we have just read before in Matthew 24, Matthew 25, of the destruction of Jerusalem, the end of that old covenant age, and then the kingdom of heaven, the new covenant age, and the final judgment, He's done speaking of these things. He says to His disciples, you know that after two days, the Passover is coming. So they understand, he's setting that context, you know the Passover is coming, and the Son of Man is to be handed over for crucifixion. He's already spoken of that to them multiple times, just one of them in chapter 20 just a few days prior. Verse 3, the chief priests and the elders of the people were gathered together in the court of the high priest named Caiaphas, and they plotted together to seize Jesus by stealth and to kill him. But they were saying not during the festival, otherwise a riot might occur among the people." That is the current prediction, and it contains three major elements as Jesus makes the prediction that we really see in verse 2. And I'm going to be able to incorporate what we see in verses 3, 4, and 5 under the elements of his prediction. I've broken that up under those three major elements, the moment, the means, and the method. Those are the elements he's giving us there of his foretelling of his imminent and impending death. The moment, the means, and the method. So let's look first at the moment, the moment of his death. His prediction says, after two days, Passover is coming. He specifically labels it there with Passover. But what I want you to understand is that Jesus was very keenly aware of the timing of his crucifixion. This didn't catch him by surprise. He knew that it was happening, even as we saw in the previous statements that he'd given. Here's what's going to happen. And the son of man will be put to death, and then he'll be raised up on the third day. As he's getting ready to go up to Jerusalem, he says, hey, here it is. It's coming now. We're headed up to Jerusalem, and I'll be handed over to the chief priests. and the scribes, and then they'll hand me over to the Gentiles to be scourged and mocked. He's laying out much detail there. He knows exactly what's coming, and he knows when it's coming. Why? Because it's been determined from all eternity. This wasn't some random piece of history just kind of playing itself out by chance. This was the outworking of the eternal plan of God for the redemption of a people for himself. If you remember, there were multiple attempts to arrest or to kill Jesus. But He was never concerned. His time had not yet come. I've got a couple of those. Luke 4, verses 28-30. This is, if you remember, the beginning of His ministry, right after He had stood up and He had spoken and read from the scroll. He says, "...and all the people in the synagogue were filled with rage as they heard these things. And they got up and they drove him out of the city and led him to the brow of the hill on which their city had been built, in order to throw him down the cliff. But passing through their midst, he went his way." and a crowd of people trying to throw him off a cliff. The Scripture just leaves us with this, but passing through their midst, he went his way. They weren't able to do it. He wasn't concerned. John 5, verse 18 says that the Jews were then seeking all the more to kill him because he not only was breaking the Sabbath, but was also calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God. So the Jews at that point were trying to kill him. They were seeking all the more to kill them, to kill him. And then in John chapter 10 verse 39, therefore they were seeking again to seize him and he eluded their grasp. There was bloodlust, really, among many of the people of Israel, particularly the leaders of the people of Israel, and it had been going on for quite some time. It is now, at this point, coming to a head. It's building up to this. It's now the right time. Here's what's really interesting about this passage. Verse 5 tells us that they didn't want to do this during the feast, during the festival. We read that the priests wanted to delay his capture and his execution because they feared the crowd. Due to their cowardice, they would have waited until there were far fewer people in Jerusalem. But just as they couldn't take him before his time, they couldn't put it off past his time. They couldn't keep it from happening at the appointed time. Do you see that they had zero control over this? They wanted to do it months, days, years, whatever before, and couldn't make it happen because it wasn't his time. And then when it finally was coming to a head, when it was finally driving to this, They said, not quite yet. There's a whole lot of people in Jerusalem coming here for the Passover, and there's a lot of people coming from Galilee and coming from Judea and coming maybe even from Samaria, but there are Jews who are coming to celebrate the Passover, and they kind of like this guy, Jesus. He's healed a bunch of them. He's cast demons out of them. He's got some popularity. Remember, they were the ones throwing their coats and their clothing, their cloaks down before him as he was riding in, and they were crying out, Hosanna. We don't need a riot on our hands. We want to get this guy, but not quite yet. Let's put it off. They weren't able to do that any more than they could have done it earlier when they wanted to. Why was this the appropriate time? Well, the text tells us there was something big happening in a couple of days. The Passover. The Passover was happening in a couple of days. People were gathering, as I said, they're coming into Jerusalem, they're flocking in for the celebration of the Passover to observe the feast. It is not a coincidence that Jesus was crucified at Passover. And recognize, Passover, this was something that had been going on for millennia within the Jewish people. This is something that God instituted thousands of years before. He instituted this Passover with the bringing of the people of Israel out of Egypt, out of bondage and out of slavery. In fact, that very event wasn't an end in itself. but it was something that signified something far greater. It was pointing to what Christ is doing. It was pointing to Christ. What was about to happen two days hence, what was about to happen was the very fulfillment of what that Passover celebration had been pointing to year after year after year after year to the people of Israel, been pointing to this, and now the final fulfillment is coming. It is a reminder of the release from bondage from Egypt. There can be no denying that. The Scripture brings that out over and over and over again, and that's something that the Israelites were to remember. But it was pointing forward to the perfect Passover lamb. was pointing forward to a release from bondage that was far greater than the bondage of the children of Israel in slavery in Egypt, but rather a release from the bondage of sin. You hear us use the terminology very often, types and shadows. Type, sometimes that seems like an unusual word to our ears in modern culture when we speak of something being a type. A type simply means it's a pattern. If something is typical, it follows a very specific pattern. So you can look at that pattern and that becomes the type for those things that are patterned after it. A type, in the context of when we talk about the type and the shadows, is the pattern, but not the fulfillment. It's the thing that points forward to the one that is the fulfillment, which we refer to as the anti-type. That is the final and full fulfillment. So we see that Passover was always a type. It was a shadow. It was the sign that pointed forward to something greater, and that Christ himself is the antitype. He is the full and final fulfillment of the Passover. Now, if you remember the story of the Passover from the book of Exodus, you remember that the lamb was slaughtered and the blood was painted on the lintels, the doorposts, and so that when the angel came during the plague of the firstborn, seeing the blood on the doorposts would pass over those houses. so that the people of Israel remained completely free and they were not touched by the plague of the firstborn while everybody in Egypt lost their firstborn. It was a matter of, again, a picture of using the blood of the lamb sacrificed to prevent a person, in this case a household, a family, in the case of the type, from bearing the wrath of God, from experiencing death. And that's exactly what we see in the fulfillment and the anti-type in Christ. It's the Passover. He is our Passover. Jesus was declaring that this would be happening during the Passover and that would give the disciples context that they needed to better understand these events that were taking place as they unfolded. If you can imagine the disciples, things start getting really weird for them. As their master is arrested, as he's betrayed, they start getting afraid. And you can imagine in that sense how hard it might be to keep your head or to remember these things. Right now, he's giving them some context to help them understand better what is going on. People came for the Paschal Feast. There were hundreds of thousands of people in Jerusalem. All of these pilgrims coming to remember the work of God in releasing His people from bondage. Again, it's a type. This release from bondage from Israel to be brought into freedom. It's a type of the release from bondage of sin to be brought into spiritual freedom. And so, not only recognizing the pattern that's happening there, but think also about what was happening in Jerusalem and this fervor. As people were coming to celebrate the Passover, they're remembering God's deliverance. They're thinking about these things. So it brings about a messianic fervor, waiting for God to send His Messiah that would save them. And in fact, that was actually exacerbated by the fact that the 69 weeks of the book of Daniel that spoke of Messiah the Prince coming had been fulfilled. So this was a time of very fervent desire and waiting for the Messiah to come, for God to be doing something big. They were waiting for the Messiah to come and to deliver them once again. And as we've said a number of times and pointed out, that's exactly what happened. Unfortunately, many of the people of Israel misunderstood that deliverance and they were looking for the wrong thing. They were looking for the wrong kind of deliverance. If they had only known They'd only known that the promises of God far exceeded political freedom and that it pointed to a greater freedom. More of them may have received their king when he came. But what was about to play out before their eyes is truly everything their scriptures pointed them to, but they didn't recognize it because they were looking for the wrong thing. They were by and large looking for the wrong kind of deliverance. They didn't understand that this was a full deliverance from sin. Now the true Passover Lamb, Jesus Christ, had come. He'd come to shed His blood so that the wrath of God, as I have already said, would pass over those who were covered by His blood. 1 Corinthians 5-7 tells us that Christ, our Passover, has been sacrificed. Paul makes this connection very explicit. Christ, our Passover, has been sacrificed. He is the one whose blood covers over us so that we can be free from our sin and therefore the just penalty of it, the very wrath of God. He is, as John the Baptist said, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. So this very precise moment was very important. And Jesus tells his disciples specifically about this moment, the Passover. You know that after two days the Passover is coming. And then we see the means. The means. You know that after two days the Passover is coming and the Son of Man is going to be handed over. It's the next part of his prediction of his death, that he will be delivered up or handed over. I want you to understand this. The leaders of Israel couldn't simply march in and arrest Jesus. That wasn't going to happen. Nor was he going to just turn himself over. Oh, knock on the door of the high priest's court. Hey, I'm here. Take me now. That was not the plan of God. Rather, He would be delivered up. He would be handed over. Now, there's a couple of different ways that we could look at this and understand it. Contextually, there's one that is favored over the other, but let me say this. We might be seeing in this simply this verbiage of being delivered up or handed over, the picture of the sovereign hand of God, delivering up His own Son to be crucified. Certainly that's a biblical truth. Romans 8, verses 3 and 4 tells us, For what the law could not do, weak though it was through the flesh, God did, sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, as an offering for sin. He condemned sin in the flesh, so that the requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. God did. God sent His Son. God delivered Him up. God delivered Him over. But I don't believe that's the thrust of what Jesus is saying here. Contextually speaking, His focus is not on having been delivered up or handed over by God the Father, but rather by a friend who would hand Him over to the religious leaders. The truth is, the blood of the innocent Son of God would be shed through an act of betrayal by one who is close to Jesus. And in fact, that concept forms what we call an inclusio or bookends for these first 16 verses of this chapter. So we read here in verse two that he will be delivered up, he'll be handed over, and then we see the fulfillment of that happening in verse 16. What does verse 16 say? From then on, he began looking for a good opportunity to betray Jesus. So here at the beginning, Jesus begins talking, and he says, hey, I'm gonna be betrayed. Delivered up, handed over. And then we see that Judas, there in verse 14, goes to the chief priests and says, what do you give me to do it? So they handed him the money, 30 pieces of silver, and he then starts looking for the opportunity. It forms the bookends for this passage, and that's why I say contextually, I don't think that we're specifically looking at the sovereign hand of God delivering him up so much as we're looking at that outworking of that sovereign hand of God through the betrayal of a close friend, Judas. In fact, This entire chapter really focuses much on that betrayal. Not only do we see this predicted in verse 2, we see that it's beginning to be fulfilled in verses 14 through 16. But we see in verses 21 and 25, adjacent really to the passage we'll be reading for our Lord's Table celebration a little bit later, that as they were eating, He said, "'Truly I say to you that one of you will betray Me.' And being deeply grieved, they each one began to say to Him, "'Surely not I, Lord?' And he answered, he who dipped his hand with me in the bowl is the one who will betray me. The son of man is to go just as it is written of him, but woe to that man by whom the son of man is betrayed. It would have been good for him if that man had not been born. And Judas, who was betraying him, said, surely it is not I, rabbi. And Jesus said to him, you have said it yourself. So we see this theme of betrayal continuing on as Jesus is identifying now His betrayer. And then if we jump to verse 45 and pick up, we read that He came to His disciples and said, this is in the Garden of Gethsemane, as He was praying, Are you still sleeping and resting? Behold, the hour is at hand, and the Son of Man is being betrayed into the hands of sinners. get up let us be going behold the one who betrays me is at hand and while he was still speaking behold judas one of the 12 came up accompanied by a large crowd with swords and clubs who came from the chief priests and the elders of the people And now he who was betraying him gave them a sign, saying, Whomever I kiss, he is the one, seize him. And immediately Jesus went to Jesus and said, Hail, Rabbi, and kissed him." There we see the betrayal reaching its fulfillment, seeing it actually played out. This entire chapter is really taken up with this idea of betrayal, this means by which Jesus would be crucified, having been handed over or delivered up at the hands of a friend. Judas handed Jesus over to those who wanted him dead. And even though this was in the sovereign, eternal plan of God, as the scripture reinforces over and over again, what did Jesus say? Woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed. It would have been good for that man if he had not been born. Such a terrible thing he was doing. But I want you to notice all who were involved. Verse 3 says it was the chief priests and the elders, and many manuscripts add in the scribes. which are very often lumped in with the chief priests or the Pharisees, the leadership of Israel. But what we see is that this is the group of people who have been imposing him the entire time. They've been opposing him the entire time, recognizing that they all hated him, or excuse me, recognize, I want you to recognize that they all hated him because he opposed their way of life and their empty religious systems. He came to call them to account for their empty, vacuous religious worship, for their abandonment of the true worship of the true God, for their turning His house of prayer into a den of thieves. for their oppression of the people of Israel, the very people that they were supposed to shepherd, the very people that they were supposed to help draw close to God, and yet they pushed them away to keep them at arm's length. And He came to call them to account for that, and therefore they couldn't stand Him. He came doing the very things that they should have been doing, ministering to the poor, to the needy, ministering to the people who were demon-possessed, bringing relief to those who needed it, preaching the gospel of grace and salvation, pulling people closer to God, calling them to Him, and He was doing what they should have been doing. And He did more in the three and a half years of His public ministry than they had ever done. And rather than look at that and say, woe is me. I am cut to the heart. This is what I should have been doing. Please forgive me and help me. Give me the strength that I need to do that which I've been called to as a leader of Israel. What did they do? We got to kill them. We can't have this guy showing us up. We can't have him condemning our behavior. We can't have him interfering with us enriching ourselves through the religious practices, the religious obligations and burdens of the people. Think of that. These poor people, many of whom weren't wealthy by any means, But the law required that they would come and offer sacrifices. So then let us make our fortune on their backs." Because they can't say no. They can't just not follow the law of God. That's the kind of behavior that they were engaged in. Is it any wonder that when Jesus calls them out and holds them to account, that they then want to kill Him? As one commentator said, Jesus exposes their hypocrisy, he ignores their authority, and he threatens their supremacy. He came as their king, as we've seen a number of times, teaching as one who has authority, not as the scribes and Pharisees, not as they did. He came as one who actually has authority. He was a threat to their power, to their control, and to their influence. In fact, where do we find that they had this little meeting? It was in the court, some translations will say the palace of Caiaphas, the high priest. Think of that, the high priest, the one person that you might really expect would be able to say, wait a minute, all of these sacrifices that we've been doing, are pointing to something greater. The Messiah will come and save us by being that perfect sacrifice. But they're meeting in his house, plotting on how they might kill Jesus. Now, it's important probably for us to note that Caiaphas was an illegitimate high priest. He's the son-in-law of Annas, the rightful high priest, but Annas was deposed by the Roman authorities. Caiaphas then basically put in his place. Originally, the high priesthood was until death, but eventually politics started getting involved and controlling that. But Annas was the rightful high priest. So Caiaphas, as the high priest, was in charge of the temple. Likely he profited greatly from all of the commercial activity that was happening there. So if you can imagine the infuriation as Jesus runs that out, as he upends that entire system, everything that has been going on, all of the perversion of the laws of worship that had been in place, would have been an outrage to Caiaphas when Jesus was overturning the tables. And so in this, all of their hatred for Jesus coalesced. They began plotting to seize him, but not just to seize him. What does the scripture tell us? By stealth and kill him. They needed to do it secretly. They couldn't do it openly. Why not? I mean, if he was truly a criminal, what would be the problem? If he truly had blasphemed and broken the law of God, by their law did he not deserve to be stoned? Why could they not do it openly? Because he had not. Because he had not sinned. And they knew it. So they had to come by stealth in order to kill him. This language takes us back to Psalm 31, the reason for us reading it this morning, verses 13 through 15. For I have heard the slander of many, terror is on every side, and while they took counsel together against me, they schemed to take away my life. But as for me, I trust in you, O Lord. I say, you are my God. My times are in your hand. Deliver me from the hand of my enemies and from those who persecute me." And that deliverance would come three days after his crucifixion. We're going to be celebrating that here in just a few weeks. The means of his death was through being delivered up, being handed over by a friend. So we've seen the moment, we've seen the means, now let's look at the method here again from verse 2. This is the final piece of his prediction. You know that after two days the Passover is coming and the Son of Man is to be handed over for crucifixion. There's the final piece for crucifixion. Now he said that in his earlier predictions as well, but I'm bringing this up because it's such a strange thing. Maybe you've had a chance to think on this before, maybe not. But crucifixion is decidedly a Roman form of execution. This wasn't a Jewish form of execution. It was reserved even in Rome for really the worst of criminals. And they crucified many, many people. But it was reserved for the worst of criminals. So it's odd that Jesus, who has really made no enemies with Rome at this point, but only enemies among the Jews, is saying, I'm going to get handed over to be crucified. What sense does that make? Crucifixion? Really, Jesus? Romans? Isn't this kind of an in-house thing? The Jews mad because you've blasphemed? Because you're affecting their way of life? How should this be the fate of Jesus who went around preaching repentance to salvation and went around healing the sick? How should crucifixion be His fate? But as we look again deeper into this, we must remember that this was always the sovereign purpose of God. Acts 4, verses 24-28. When they heard this, they lifted their voice to God with one accord and said, O Lord, it is You who made the heavens and the earth and the sea and all that is in them. who by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of our father David your servant said, Why did the Gentiles rage and the peoples devise futile things? The kings of the earth took their stand and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against His anointed, or His Christ. For truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your purpose predestined to occur." All of this is playing out according to the decree of God. But let me ask you this. I've talked about it. Crucifixion is really a Roman form of execution. What do we think about when we think about the Jewish capital punishment? Stoning, right? That's what we read about really throughout the scriptures. We would expect that if the Jews are going to put somebody to death, that person would be stoned. Not so. Not so. Here, he is saying that he's going to be crucified. He hasn't done anything, though, to offend the Romans. The Jews are being threatened by him. In fact, if you remember, when Pilate examined him, Pilate found no fault. When Pilate examined Jesus, read from Mark 15, this is verses 9-14. So Pilate knows that the only reason Jesus is in front of him is because the chief priests are jealous. Verse 11, but the chief priests stirred up the crowd to ask him to release Barabbas for them instead. And answering again, Pilate said, then what shall I do with him whom you call the king of the Jews? Wow. It's like Pilate is aware of what happened just a few days ago when he wrote in. recognizing that he's king of the Jews. Verse 13, they shouted back, crucify him. But Pilate said to them, why? What evil has he done? But they shouted all the more, crucify him. Even Pilate recognized there was nothing there worthy of condemning him to death. Luke 23, verse 4, Pilate said to the chief priests in the crowds, I find no guilt in this man. Matthew chapter 27 verse 24, when Pilate saw that he was accomplishing nothing, but rather that a riot was starting, he took water and he washed his hands in front of the crowd, saying, I am innocent of this man's blood, see to it yourselves. Rome didn't have a problem with Jesus, but he was going to be crucified anyway. Crucified. He was going to die by Roman death because the Jews were mad. Despite not finding any reason to execute Jesus, Pilate gave in to the crowd. He gave in to the crowd. In fact, the Jewish leadership refused to do it, claiming that they had no authority for capital punishment. You remember that. And in so doing, what did they do? They brought about the very fulfillment of Jesus' prophecy, right? And in absolving themselves of any authority to carry out capital punishments, they weren't going to stone him. Rather, they were going to get Rome to do their dirty work. They were bringing about the very prophecy of Christ that he would be crucified, that he would die a Roman death at the hands of Roman soldiers. But it wasn't just this prophecy that was at stake. I want you to walk away with something more here. It's not just the prophecy of His death that was at stake. The crucifixion was necessary because in it, in the crucifixion, Jesus was accursed of God. What are we reading? Galatians 3, verse 13. This is a quotation from the Old Testament. This is something that God had planned from all eternity. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us, for it is written, what? Cursed is every man who hangs on a tree. Stoning doesn't fulfill that. Crucifixion did. It doesn't say, curse it as everyone who is stoned. Curse it as everyone who hangs on a tree. This is a particular curse on the one who was nailed to that wood. So that we see in his crucifixion, Christ became a curse for us. A curse on our behalf. This is, as Guy just so eloquently preached, this is the circumcision of Christ. Being cut off. being cast aside, becoming a curse. And it was necessary that the righteous become a curse. Because in that exchange, sinners can then be made righteous. We read that from 2 Corinthians 5.21. You've heard this a number of times. You'll keep hearing it over and over and over again. He made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. That's the gospel of grace. Jesus, our Passover, was betrayed. He was handed over so that He would become the curse on our behalf in order to redeem us from the curse of the law. It's all right there in what Jesus is saying about how He is going to die. So with Paul, as an ambassador of Christ, I beg you to be reconciled to God today. For he made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might be reconciled to God. We might become the righteousness of God in him. Let's pray. Our great and glorious God, we thank you again for this time. We thank you for this day. We thank you for the opportunity to worship. We thank you for the reminder of the grace that you have shown us in Christ Jesus. And I pray, Father, that as we finish this morning worship service, that our minds wouldn't let go of these truths, but rather that our spirits would cling tightly to these things, and that you would use it to continually reinforce the truths of the gospel in our minds and in our hearts. Father, we thank you that Christ was crucified on our behalf, that he is our Passover, that his blood shed on our behalf means that we can then be freed from the curse of the law, redeemed from the curse of the law, never to face your wrath, for he took it in our place. Lord, I thank you again for your tremendous blessings here upon this church. I pray for those who are not able to be with us this morning. May you bless them where they are. May you comfort them, guide them, strengthen them, and minister to their spirits, even as you're ministering to ours here this morning. We pray, Father, that you would bring us all together again soon, united in spirit, united in heart, with one purpose, one voice glorifying the one God. Father, I thank you again for this church. I thank you for this body. Have your way with us, we pray. And we ask that you would glorify Jesus in our midst, in all things. Amen.