26 When Jesus had finished all these sayings, he said to his disciples, 2 “You know that after two days the Passover is coming, and the Son of Man will be delivered up to be crucified.”
3 Then the chief priests and the elders of the people gathered in the palace of the high priest, whose name was Caiaphas, 4 and plotted together in order to arrest Jesus by stealth and kill him. 5 But they said, “Not during the feast, lest there be an uproar among the people.”
This chapter brings us to the final section of Matthew's gospel, and to the record of the sufferings and death and resurrection of Christ. It is surely clear, from the great detail with which all four gospel writers describe these events, that for them this was the heart and centre of the gospel they had to proclaim. The introduction of the chapter is a word of prediction from our Lord about the imminent approach of His death (1, 2). But Matthew goes on to describe the scheming and plotting of the chief priests and scribes and elders of the people to put Jesus to death. Two days before the Passover, and this is what was in their minds! The great festival and memorial feast of the Jewish faith, commemorating the mighty acts of God in their past history which constituted them His people, a day of solemn worship and remembrance - and this is how their hearts were inclining: Yet, clearly, a higher Hand was at work in all this. While their dark hearts were burning with malice and hatred against Him, the heart of God was planning in love for our eternal salvation. In 5, their unwillingness to take Him on the feast day is particularly nauseating and hypocritical - as if any day would have been an innocent one for doing what they were about to do! But in the event, that higher power forced their hand, for when Judas offered to betray Him they did not hesitate to make use of him, even on Passover night. God was at work, decreeing that another Passover Lamb might be slain, another deliverance effected, another covenant sealed in blood.