Amen. Well, if you turn in your Gospels of Matthew to chapter 26, we'll be looking at verses 1 through 5 this morning. Matthew 26 verses 1 through 5 is our text. Last time we looked at Christ's final teaching discourse in the Gospel of Matthew, where He exhorted His disciples about the day of judgment, and that what would count on that day would not be whether one claimed to believe in Jesus or claimed to be a disciple of Jesus or claimed to love Him and follow Him as King. What would matter on that day? Was whether or not His life showed that He truly loved Jesus? And Jesus taught that a way in which our lives will demonstrate whether or not we loved Him is whether or not we love His people. That's what that text last week was about. Whether or not we love His people by serving and meeting their most basic needs when we can, that we would humble ourselves and serve one another in the church. And it's interesting to me, I didn't mention it last time, but when Jesus says that on that day the righteous will say, when did we ever see you, Lord, hungry or thirsty? When did we ever see you, Lord, naked or stranger? When did we ever visit you in prison or you when you were sick? Think of it, He's describing an entire group of people who will be His disciples, who will live for Him and believe in Him yet they will do so without ever having personally seen Him. You recognize that? All those people have to have never seen Him to be able to say that, never have interacted with Him, never have known Him personally in this life. In other words, Jesus once again shows that He did know, that He did understand that there would be a long period of time between the destruction of the temple and between His return and glory when He would sit before all of the nations. And there would be many on that day who would make this claim that they had never seen Him. And yet they did. Indeed, live and serve for Him, that there would be an entire group of people who will be His disciples living for Him by faith without ever having personally seen or interacted Him with Him. I think that's really neat to see that Jesus understood that. And that in the interim, when He would be physically absent, the way to serve Him would be to serve those who believe in Him. Think of it. As incredible as it is to imagine, not only was Jesus well aware of the church age, so He didn't know the date or the hour. He knew that this would be a long period of time when there would be all these people who would live for Him who never saw Him. Yeah, think of this, the Lord of the universe, the King of kings, the Messiah who is the very Son of God in last week's text clearly. He identifies with His church. He identifies with us so that when we serve the least of one of those who believe in Him, and that's what it was, serve the least of them. What does Jesus say? You did it to me. That's how much He identifies with us, with us lowly believers, the least believer, to do something for the least believer Jesus receives it as if you did it for Himself. That's how we live for Him in the between time of the destruction of Jerusalem, really, in the between time of the resurrection to the second coming when Christ returns again. That's how we live for Him by serving Him right now here on earth. Whenever we love one of those who love Him, whenever we serve one of those who are one of His children, the least of them, He says that He loves them so much that He takes it as if we did it to Him. And He's going to say that someday. So beloved, this is how we serve Christ today. Not in the great big, oh my goodness, I have to be the super pastor or super missionary or go and convert some country or something. I just need to love my Christian brother sister right next to me and humble things and little things that they need something. If I do that with any love for Jesus, if I do that because that person's a child of God and I fear and please God, if I do that at all for even one, Christ says it's for Him. And I won't lose my reward. He'll reward those tiny little acts of service for the least of them who aren't really His children. When you do the same as somebody blessed your child, when you weren't there, you would count it as indeed a blessing to you and that's exactly what Christ does. How important is it, beloved, that we love and serve one another in the church, Philippians 2.3, regard one another as more important than yourselves. That's to everybody. That's not to the children Christian or the new Christian. That's to me as the pastor and the elders and everybody else that we regard one another as more important than ourselves. That's what Christ did like no one else because no one was more important than Him and no one made themselves lower than Him. Well, Christ came, we know, as prophet and priest and king and the all of it discourse. He exercised in the main. You can't fully separate them from each other, but in the main he's exercising the office of prophet as he's proclaiming the Word of God and he was proclaiming the Word of God about his coming kingship, his kingdom when he would sit on the throne. Now, in Matthew 26, the focus turns to the priesthood. Of our Lord Jesus Christ, as he gets ready to offer himself for us. Let's praise, we turn to God's Word. Again, Father, we just pause and ask you to give us the ears to hear. Give us your spirit. Give us wisdom. Make this Word effectual in our hearts to the glory of our Lord who died for us. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Here now, the Word of the Lord from Matthew 26, beginning in verse 1, this is God's Holy Word. Now, it came to pass when Jesus had finished all these sayings that He said to His disciples, you know that after two days is the Passover and the son of man will be delivered up to be crucified. Then the chief priest describes in the elders of the people assembled at the palace of the high priesthood was called Caiaphas and plotted to take Jesus by trickery and kill Him. But they said, not during the feast, lest there be an uproar among the people. May the Lord establishes His Word in our hearts this morning. I want you to notice, first of all, the saintly life. I want you to notice, the saintly life. Look at verse 1. Now, it came to pass when Jesus had finished all these sayings. That phrase, by the way, occurs in Matthew five times, almost exactly word for word, and scholars have noticed that that's how Matthew has organized his gospel. Again, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, obviously. But in his way of organizing it, it's with these five great discourses of Christ, the sermon on the Mount, the all-of-it discourse that we just finished and three others. And every time when he completes that section, he says, now it happened when Jesus finished these sayings to let us know the reader that he's going on to something else. And that's exactly what happens now in our text. This is the last one. With the completion of the all-of-it discourse, Jesus has in a very real way finished, fulfilled his teaching ministry. It's not like he's not going to teach these next couple of days and after the resurrection. But he has completed that preaching of the gospel, that training of the disciples throughout the teaching ministry that he did, there's not another teaching discourse in the gospel of Matthew. And that's important for us because one of the reasons why Jesus came, he says over and over again, was to preach the Word of God, was to call God's people to repentance as he proclaimed the gospel. We see this in Luke chapter 4, verse 43, Jesus said, I must preach the kingdom of God to the other cities. Listen, because for this purpose, I was sent. Christ was sent to preach the Word of God to the cities of Israel. And he wasn't going to finish until he decided that he had completed that work. That's important to us. Remember before Pilate, Jesus testified, for this cause I was born, for this cause I have come into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth. And everyone who's of the truth, right? Here's my voice. Obviously he means in that effectual way. Here's and follows. Everybody hears his words bouncing off of their ear drums. But only those who are of the truth, really here. And Christ preached that gospel to call them to himself, that they would come, that they would hear and be convicted, that he was king, that he was Lord, that he was Savior, and they would follow him. Christ came to teach and to preach the gospel, to call people to repentance and to believe. And as we've seen over and over again, that means actually living that new life of faith, right? He's not looking for empty professors. In fact, one of the main things that we've seen him do over and over again is to condemn that externalism, that Judaism unfortunately had turned into under the corrupt leadership of the Sadducees and the Pharisees and the scribes and the elders, and only the whole leadership. They had gotten so enamored with the outward, that the inward transformation not only didn't matter, but they really didn't even think they needed it. You know, think of those leaders who wouldn't go out to be baptized by John. Why? They didn't need a sign to be clean. They were already clean. They kept the law perfectly. They were Jews, after all. And the whole purpose of the sign was, yes, your Jews and you too need cleanse, because you too were sinners. And that was what all of those sacrifices were supposed to teach them all of it. Put together that they were to humble themselves, to trust in Christ and then live for him, to put on that holy obedience, that having been transformed on the inside, to live it out on the outside. And of course, we saw again that last real emphasis of this, that Jesus gave last week, was that we would do that in love for one another. That's how we live out our faith. Christ was so adamant about that, that those who haven't loved one another, he said, depart from me, right? Those who have loved one another, he accepts even just that one mark is proof that the Holy Spirit transformed you wide because you and I could not do it. There's not a person in this room, there's not a person in the church today who could love another person at all, apart from the transforming grace of God. That's what Christ was showing. That's why any who did an active love for the least would be welcomed into heaven, not because they've done a work that earned it, but because by that act of love, they've proven that they have a new heart, they've proven that they do believe in Jesus and they've lived it out by loving other Christians. Jesus taught this importance of loving and serving one another. And we do that again, as we put others needs before our own. Not exactly what Jesus did over and over again, put others needs before our own. And you and I can do this. We can do this because we have one Lord who did it for us and we have this spirit now to make us like him. That's part of the Christian life. That's the living out of the day-to-day Christian life. We do it by faith. We do it because of God's grace. We do it on our own personal repentance, but if we're not loving one another, we're not his children because his children love one another. And we do that again when we humble ourselves and we put others first. You can't serve anybody. If you don't humble yourself and put others first, just a couple, just a whirlwind tour of some verses that show this emphasis of Christ. Remember when the disciples were arguing about who was the greatest? Always wanting to know who could be better and above one another. What did Jesus say? Therefore whoever humbles himself as this little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven, Matthew 184, puts that little child in front of them. Not that the child was innocent or anything else that you get from some of the crazy commentators, but that a child typically is humble. Child typically doesn't go up in front of the room and start telling the adults what to do. Child typically listens to his parents and humbles himself and that's what Jesus says is the greatest in the kingdom because who humbled himself more than anyone else? Jesus because he's equal with God and not only did he come down and make himself equal with man by taking on a human nature, he made himself a sin offering. He made himself an unclean thing, a curse on a cross that we would not be cursed. No one humbled themselves like Jesus and so he is the model and if he can do that then we can certainly humble ourselves to serve others who really are our equals. In Christ there's no male or female Greek or two or anything else, young or old, rich or poor. I'm not asked really to lower myself too much to serve anyone in the church. Am I? And neither are you. That's why Philippians 2.3 says, do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility of mine, he's got to do it in your mind. The humility of mine, do what? Count others more important than yourselves. Every Christian should do that. Should count others more important. Well, you know, I really want to go and do this thing right now, but this Christian, my brother needs something and I'm going to count him as more important than myself because I really don't need to do that thing. Just see how that does that when we do that. All right, so all Christians should do that. First, Peter 5.5, close yourselves, all of you with humility towards one another. Ephesians 4.2, with all humility, neatness and long suffering, bear up one another in love. That's going to cost me something. I have to flex my muscles to bear up others. In other words, I have to count them as worth it. I use my energy. Use my gifts and graces. What good are my gifts and graces if I don't serve others? You know what the number one word is for minister in the gospels? Number one word, there might be somebody that knows here. I'm sure there's somebody over there that knows. Deaconos. It's like 20 times, out of the 28 times it's used in the Bible, it's for minister. Deaconos, Deacon, servant. What am I doing up here right now? Am I lording it over you? I'm serving you. I worked really hard to prepare a message that you can sit back in your chairs as I'm serving you. That's what we do. In the church, we love one another, we pour ourselves out for one another, we serve one another, we're servants.
Love is as humble, right? Patient, kind, long suffering. All those things that love is, this is the saintly life, beloved. But again, we can't do it. I can't show an instance of love in anything I do unless I've been regenerated unless I've been bought by the blood of the Lamb, unless I've been given a new nature, and that brings me to my second point, which is notice the sacrifice of the Lamb. Notice the sacrifice of the Lamb. We're called to live those saintly lives, and we can't do it. Apart from the sacrifice of the Lamb, look at verse two, you know that after two days is the Passover and the Son of Man will be delivered up to be crucified. It's Tuesday evening and Holy Week when Jesus says this on the Mount of all of us as we've seen. It's been a long day. If you look in the gospel of Matthew, if you're careful, Tuesday of Holy Week began in Matthew chapter 21, verse 20. We're in 26 now, one day. Jesus did a lot that day, walked into the city because remember he was staying in Bethany each night and as they were coming in in the morning, there was the tree that he occurs the day before and they were all awestruck by it. And then he went into the temple and he began to debate with the different parties as they came out and tried to trip him and everything else. It's been a long day and they're there. If you remember why he's sending apostles there? They're just to provoke something. No, they're there because they have to be there. It's the Passover. It's one of the three feasts when all the men had to go up to Jerusalem. The Passover is why they're there, why they're going into the city every day because the Passover is a eight day feast. It's the feast of unleavened bread. The Passover is the first day, which is literally the 14th day of the first month of the year of the Jews, which is the month of Nissan. So the 14th day is the Passover. The 15th day is a holy convocation. The first day of the feast of unleavened bread. And that goes for seven days and on the 7th day there's a holy convocation, which means you gathered together for worship and nobody works that day. First day, 7th day, which is actually the second day, 8th day, counting the Passover. And that's the feast of unleavened bread where they would only eat unleavened bread and have a feast each one of those days, especially the first and the seventh. And the Passover was commemorating. Remember God commanded the Jews to celebrate the Passover because it commemorated. It caused them to remember their deliverance from Egypt. The Passover, especially called them to harken back to the 10th plague. Remember, Pharaoh wouldn't let the people go. Moses turns water into blood. Moses brings the locusts and the gnats and boils and the hail and the darkness. And finally the last plague and God said, this is the one he'll let you go on. Where God himself by the angel of death passes through Egypt in holiness. So he kills all that would and should deserve to die. That would have meant that he killed everybody. But God limited great... I want you to think of this. In the 10th plague, God greatly limited his wrath and justice. He took only the firstborn instead of everyone. He took them as a kind of substitute. And he took them from the Egyptians and he took them from the Jews and he took them and even says, from the animals of every animal, the first one that opened the womb would die. But the Jews were allowed, the Jews were exorded, the Jews were given a gospel message that if you put the blood of the Passover lamb on your door, the angel of death will pass over your house. That's what the Passover was. Literally, he will pass by. He will... The angel of death going through the streets of Egypt. We'll look at the door and see the blood and he'll be satisfied. That blood covered. He won't go in that house and kill anybody. But the Jews had to do that. God couldn't just say, well, you're my people and I just will... I'll make it a... No, there had to be a sacrifice. There had to be a payment. Something had to cover them because they were worthy to die too. That's the point. So that angel or that Passover lamb, they were all commanded to kill it. That's why I put the blood on their doors and the angel of death would not kill if you did that, if you trusted God's word to deliver you through that sacrifice and that blood. Now, they were commanded to keep that feast every year and that commemoration didn't save them and the original sacrifice... Well, it saved them bodily in Egypt. It did not cleanse them as being sinners in the sight of God. That whole demonstration, that whole historical event and it was that. It's not an allegory. That really happened. The Passover in Egypt and all of that happened exactly the way the Bible says it did. But that was actually done as a prefiguring and as a type of the one who would come to actually take away our sins in the presence of God. That we could be clean, that God could accept us, that God could dwell with us again and we could dwell with him and we wouldn't have to worry about being destroyed because of our sins because they would be gone. Well, that's the Lamb of God who would take away not just cover temporarily to escape a physical death, but that would be the Lamb of God who would take away the sins of the world. Of course, that's what John the Baptist said about Jesus, right? He was the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. After two days is the Passover Jesus said and now the real Lamb is there. All of that type, all of that shadow. It's about to happen for real. The son of man, the son of God is going to die on the cross. He's going to be slain for the sins of the people and he's going to be slain outside the camp like the scapegoat and the sacrifice goat and the scapegoat. So many of the signs and really all of the ceremonial law fulfilled in Christ in different ways and you can see it, but that's that system had to be fulfilled. Hebrews 10 4 says it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sins. God cannot accept an animal in your place. You're worth too much than that. All the animals, if God were to put in the in the account as it were of one sinner that he wanted to say, all the animals that were ever sacrificed under those thousands of years of sacrifices, all of their blood could not atone for the sin of one human being because of human beings made in the image of God. And his sin has offended God in such a way that no amount of animal sacrifices could wash that away. We need a worthy sacrifice. We need a sacrifice that is equal to us, that is someone like us in our place and that's why Christ came. He came to teach, we've seen that. He had that preaching ministry. He came to teach and to preach the gospel. He came to destroy the works of the devil. He says that in the gospel of John, I've come to destroy the works of the devil. He came to give us an example. As I have done, you also do likewise. He says when he's washing their feet, again, serving them in the lowest place. He gives us an example. He teaches us. He preaches the gospel. But he also came to die. He came to offer himself up as a sacrifice because God is so holy that there's no way he can accept us unless his justice has been satisfied for our offensiveness. Not my father, not Adam, me. What I've done that is so offensive to God that what I deserve is to be thrown into hell forever. And God must do that. He can't compromise his holiness to allow sin to go unpunished. He would be the most corrupt being in the universe if he did that. No, he must punish all sin and yet God because he chose to save wicked sinners made away whereby he could save them and his mercy and yet his justice would be fully satisfied. And that's the message of the cross. That's the Passover lamb that now at last the lamb has come and all the Passover's that were up until that point could not do it. And if there were people who were celebrating it today, they've missed the purpose. He's come. He's fulfilled it. That's why sacrifice ended when the New Testament gospel aged commence. That's why there's no more sacrifices for the church because we don't need the pictures anymore. We don't need the anticipation that all someday God's going to do it for real. God's done it for real. And now we don't continue to do that. But one of the things I want you to notice in this sacrifice of the lamb is that Jesus goes willingly. Do you see this verse two again? You know that after two days is the Passover. And the son of man will be delivered up to be crucified. And he's going to do that. He's there. He's ready to go. After two days, by the way, it's Tuesday, Wednesday, after two days is Thursday. That is the way they counted. That's the idiom. You count the day that you're in as one. We'll do it that way pretty much in the Western world today. But that's the way they did it. If you were going to say two days from now, you would say today is not day one tomorrow is day two. And that's two days from now. But this is after two days. So Thursday evening, we know Thursday evening was the Passover that year because that's the year Jesus, that's the day Jesus said after two days, the son of man will be delivered up to be crucified. It's going to happen on the Passover after two days. And he's willing to go. He's actually there to go. And so I want you to notice thirdly the scheming of the lawless. I want you to notice the scheming of the lawless. Jesus is that lamb of God who came to take away the sin of the world. He knew it. And he intentionally went to do it. But there was another group of people who were trying to stop him. They were trying to destroy him. They know nothing of his sacrifice of of atonement for our sins. They wanted to destroy him because he's a threat to them in their position and their power and their pride and their pleasure. Verses three and four. Then the chief priest describes in the elders of the people assembled at the palace of the high priest who was called Caiapus and they plotted to take Jesus by trickery to kill him. All of the leaders are there. Notice it. It's the scribes and the elders and the chief priest. Not if you have an ESV, it leaves out the scribes. But Mark and Luke both have the scribes there in all the translations. So we know the all three groups were there. The priest would have been the Sadducees. The scribes were the lawyers of the Pharisees, the leaders of the Pharisees, and the elders were the secular, the civil leaders of the people. So the whole government, this is the Sanhedrian, the Seventy, that the Jews were allowed to have under Rome. This is their Congress together now. This is everybody. They're there, the leaders of the people, the people of God, the people who are supposed to be trusting in the Messiah, and they are literally plotting to kill Jesus. And it's not the first time they've been trying to do this for quite a while. Remember, first they try to get Jesus on their side, try to come up to him, try to get him to play ball, as it were. Then they begin to debate him when he begins to review them and fault them. They try to dismiss him, they try to slander him. He's a glutton, he's a drunkard, he's a smaritan, he has a demon. Then they try to get the people to turn against him, try to get him to look like he's against Moses, or to get Rome to turn against him, to look like he's he's a constantist in sedition. So get the Romans to take care of him. They tried all kinds of ways and they, you know, it's really a compliment that this is happening in the verse because they're really admitting there's nothing else we can do. We can't show that he's a sinner, we've tried that, it doesn't work, he's righteous. We can't, we can't refute his doctrine, we've tried that, he makes us look stupid. We can't, we can't call him and then slander him with all these lies nobody believes we can't turn him against the people to trick him to go against Moses because he he follows Moses perfectly. We can't get him to go against Rome because he continents is submission even to Rome.
We have to kill him. That's all we can do. What a compliment. We can't get rid of him any other way. Notice by trickery, it's actually the word for dial or deceit and John 147 when Jesus, one of my favorite passages, when Jesus sees Nathaniel coming towards him and he says, behold, it is a light indeed in whom there is no dial. When Nathaniel must have been an interesting guy. He didn't knew I said, he didn't saw a tablet. There was no dial in Nathaniel. No, you know, dancing around the bush. If he thought you look fat, he'd say, you look fat. Anyway, just tell you the way it was. We need, I think in a lot of ways, we need more than the fanials today. We need people to just tell it like it is. He didn't have any cleverness, guile trickery, some smoothing over nuance. He was someone interested in the truth and walked in the truth. And you see, these guys are not committing themselves to this kind of guile, deceit, deception. We're going to try to look like we're doing one thing, but we're going to under the cover of that plot to kill Jesus. It's hypocrisy and deception. Remember, again, these are the holy governing religious secular leaders, the whole government of the chosen people who claim to be believers in God, now committing themselves to deception and to murder. Of when they know is innocent, of when they actually know is the Messiah, because he's proven to be that over and over again. And they have one qualification, just one, verse five, but they said, not during the feast, unless they're being uproar among the people. They don't fear God. Oh, we can't be deceptive and murderous, because God commands against that. They don't feel the fear of the law, respect the righteousness of God's commandments, or they would be doing this. They don't fear for their salvation that they need to turn from sins. The only thing they're afraid of is the people. The people might catch them and mess up their murderous, deceitful plans. We can't do it during the feast, because we might not be able to pull it off. We might even have a riot. We might even lose our positions. That's the only thing they fear to think of that. Beloved, this should really warn us. This is the danger of opposing the truth of God when it's demonstrated before you, as Jesus did over and over again. They didn't wake up one day, and just yesterday they met Jesus, and today let's be murderous deceivers. It took about three years for them to get here. And this is what happens when we allow ourselves to go against the Word of God. We allow ourselves some sin, and we don't want to turn from it, and it feels good, and maybe we'll put it up tomorrow. And what happens is a hardening process. And that's what happened with these guys. I'm sure if you would have got ahold of them on day one, will you think that you should at some point, as a whole body, you guys are going to say, let's buy guile and deceit murder this prophet, Jesus. Oh no, we'll never do that. We'll never do that. We're going to talk to him. We're going to debate with him. We're going to see what he's about, and now they're there. Probably this is the same process that happens to all of us. If we would knowingly resist God's Word, knowingly, begin to walk by something else. There's a hardening that we need to fear, and we need to run back to God, and stay close to him. He alone is our shepherd. And they had reasons to fear. The commentary say anywhere from a million, some say a million, some say two million people were in Jerusalem during the Passover week, two million from all over the empire. Remember, there are synagogues all over the empire. There's God fears all over the empire, and they all come to Jerusalem for the Passover, one of the great feasts of Israel, maybe two million people. They had reason to fear. Remember Sunday, just two days earlier, Jesus entered the city with shouts of Huzanna to the gang. They put down their garments. They threw palms. They were saying he's king, and they were, they were living, but there were so many of them. What could they do? And then Jesus, after coming into the temple on Monday, driving them out with whips, overturning their tables, healing the unclean in the temple, and then on Tuesday, refuting the sidesties, refuting the scribes, refuting the Herodians, refuting the Pharisees, embarrassing them all, one after another, and then chapter 23, remember chapter 23, the eight woes, woe to you scribes, Pharisees, hypocrites, eight times in the temple precinct, public play. Oh, they know one thing for certain, they know three things for certain. Jesus ain't going to play ball. We can't defeat them. We have to kill them. If we want to keep our position and our power and our pride, and of course they deceive themselves into thinking they're doing it for the people, you know? And I think this shows that they know he's the Messiah, that they trick themselves. They deceive themselves. You know, when you just decide to walk in some sin, you're always going to fall in that same sin. That's why God works in this world. So they, they're deciding through deception, that they're going to commit murder, so they end up deceiving themselves to the death of their own souls. We know this because of John chapter 11, and one of them, Caiaphas, being high priest that year, said to them, you know nothing at all, nor do you consider that it is expedient for us. What's one of those words you use to cover over your sins? I'm not doing anything wrong. It's just expedient to do it this way. It is expedient for us, that one man should die for the people, and not that the whole nation should perish. Why were they all perish? Because Jesus is Messiah, and Rome's going to crush them when they figure that out. This he did not say on his own authority, but being high priest said, you're prophesied that Jesus would die for the nation, not as he thought. In fact, the exact opposite happens because of the plotting priest of the House of Annas, the nation is destroyed. In 78 AD, they are destroyed because they act against Jesus, and Jesus said that all of the judgment of all the prophets will come on this generation, and it happened when the whole nation was destroyed when Israel ceased to be of people anymore scattered now throughout the empire. In 78 AD, it was the exact opposite. What Caiaphas and the priest said, we've got to do this to save the people, they did it, and it destroyed the people. And it's interesting. To this day, you can read it in the Talmud. The Talmud, the Jewish traditional sayings, the Talmud blames the House of Annas for the destruction of Jerusalem in 78 AD. I say the House of Annas, Caiaphas is high priest, quick background. So Annas is the father, and he is high priest from 6 AD to 15 AD. He's removed by Pilates predecessor, but in 18 AD, Caiaphas is put in and Caiaphas is his son-in-law. And Annas is still the one behind the scenes pulling the strings. In fact, they go to Annas during the trial of Jesus, and sometimes he's even still called the high priest, like we still call presidents, Mr. President. Well, Ann, not only Caiaphas, but Annas' five sons in 6, almost unbroken succession after Caiaphas, they all are high priest, one after another. Who's behind the scenes making that happen? Annas. Again, the Talmud calls it the House of Annas, and it calls woes down upon the House of Annas because it was Annas' son, his fifth son, that was sitting in the seat of the high priest in 70 AD when the priesthood was destroyed. These are the lawless. We thought they were going to stop Jesus. They stopped themselves, and therefore, fourthly, I want you to notice the sovereignty of our Lord. Notice the sovereignty of our Lord. Again, verses 1 and 2, now it came to pass when Jesus had finished all these things, that He said to His disciples, you know that after two days of the Passover and the Son of man will be delivered up to be crucified. Who's in charge? Who isn't controlled? Who knows exactly what's going to happen and when it's going to happen? They've tried to kill Jesus multiple times before. He would always leave the situation or pass through the midst of them, or they'd pick up stones to stone Him, and for some reason they would drop Him. He would refute them. It wasn't time. He wasn't going to go until he was ready. He needed to finish that public teaching ministry. He hadn't done that yet. He hadn't prepared them enough yet. Now he has. Now he's ready. Now he says, after two days on the Passover, the Son of man will be delivered up. Jesus is making it happen perfectly according to His plan, according to His power, according to His word. And then He came to do this because of the will of the Father. And remember, He's been teaching them about this coming death for about six months now. That's about when we see the first direct teaching in Matthew 1621. I just want to go through some of these verses quickly. From that time, remember, they're up in Cesarea, Philippi. Jesus withdraws them up into the north, you know, remote region. He gets them alone and says, who do, who do men say? Who do people say that I, the Son of man, am? And some say John the Baptist, you remember the story. And then Jesus says, who do you say I am? And Peter gives the, you know, you are the Christ, the son of the living God, you're the Messiah. Blessed are you, Simon, Bartona. And he had missed that. But then he says, don't tell anybody. Not yet anyway, because I need to accomplish something first. I need to die. And he tells them at that point, Matthew 1621, from that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem, suffer many things. Listen to this from the elders, chief priests and scribes, who's in charge, and be killed and be raised the third day. Remember Peter takes him aside to rebuke him on that occasion. Hey, what are you talking about? And then in Matthew 17, now they were state, while they were staying in Galilee, Jesus said to them, the Son of man is about to be betrayed into the hands of men and they will kill him. And the third day will be raised up and they were exceedingly sorrowful this time. But I think somehow this is a lesson or they don't understand it. They can't believe it's going to happen literally. And then in Matthew 20 verse 18, behold, we are going up to Jerusalem. And the Son of man will be betrayed to the chief priests and to the scribes. They will condemn him to death and deliver him to the Gentiles to mock and discourage and to crucify. And the third day he will rise again. He just said that in 2018. He's told them this over and over again. Each time before he delay, he escaped. He didn't let them take him. It's time, now he's ready. And he tells them it's going to happen now in two days. He gets in the exact day. And the interesting thing about this, and here's why I want you to see the sovereignty of God, and I want you to apply it to your life, whatever you're in right now, whatever fears concerns you have, whatever it is that you think that maybe you see what's going on in the world, where is God? Is he in control? My goodness, what's happening? I know a lot of people are in a lot of fear right now. And then people in there sometimes you have your your loved ones going through something difficulty and suddenly every nothing matters, but that, right? Where's our confidence in our Lord in a sovereignty and his power? I wish I could picture it sort of like a like a movie scene. You know, I was in television for 10 years and and you have these like cuts from one thing to another. And here's the way I imagine this. Jesus is on the foot of the Mount of Olives, not the foot, but probably the summit of the Mount of Olives. He's just got done giving them the all of it discourse. By the way, this is how we know. This is he was privately teaching the disciples because he says after two days as the pastor of the Son of Man will be delivered up to be crucified. He's not going to say that in front of the priest. So this is that private discourse. It's at the end of the all of it discourse. He tells them this. And then I would like to right after he says that because after two days the Passover and then the Son of Man will be delivered up. That means the Son of Man will be delivered up during the feast during the feast. That's when he'll be delivered up. Jesus says that. Cut, scene change, bottom third of the screen with a little kaiwan saying at that exact same moment at the palace of Kayafas. And then you hear them all saying not during the feast. Jesus at the exact same time, during the feast, not all of them, all of their power against him. One man, a self-taught rabbi from Nazareth. He's going to determine when it is during the feast. He says they all say not during the feast. Do you see who's in control? Do you see who's in charge? Because they take him just as Jesus says during the feast and he actually dies on the cross on the first day of the feast of unleavened bread. And he's actually delivered over and handed over the night of the Passover. It happens exactly the way he said. Jesus takes all of his enemies intentions and actions and powers that they say it's going to be this way and he turns it exactly around. It says it's going to be the exact opposite because I'm in control because I'm in charge. That's how he saved us beloved. And that's the God that you can count on in your life right now for that sick love one, for that uncertain job condition, for that concern because of what's going on in our world with wars and rumors of wars. That God's in control. Whatever he has pleased and whatever he has determined to happen will happen. And we know that he does all that he does for the good of his people. He's the good shepherd. He's the king. That's why I chose the call to worship that I did. Donate all the nations or what? They're setting themselves together. The rulers, they take counsel against the Lord. Let us break their bonds and pieces. Let us cast away their coercion. What's God doing in heaven? He's laughing. He says my king right now is seated on my holy hill. He's in charge. And he's in heaven right now on his throne. Beloved and he's in charge. He's in charge of our salvation. He's in charge of our world. He's in charge of our lives, our intimate tiny little individual lives. And he will not let anything happen to you except what will be for your good if you trust in him. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the passion of our Lord Jesus Christ that he did the most important thing, the thing that we need. He purchased for us salvation. He purchased for us righteousness. He purchased for us forgiveness because he took your wrath that we deserve. And therefore we can live these lives. These lives that please you. These lives where we can enjoy you in one another as we see you by your spirit moving in others. Lord God, increase in us the joy of our salvation. Increase in us that saintly living where we're serving one another, recognizing we're all your children. And we want to glorify you even in a world of darkness, even in a world of plotting and scheming and hatred of you that not rattle us in the least. Our king is seated on your heavenly hill and nothing escapes his gaze. We thank you in Jesus name. Amen.