The fourth day of the Passion Week, rest for the Lord and evil planning for His enemies Matt 26:1,2. Part 1Conclusion The Olivet Discourse is the most detailed teaching that the Messiah gave concerning future things. It was His last great discourse as a prophet because from this point, He went into a transitional period from prophet to priest as He offered a sacrifice, that of His own blood, and then began to function as our High Priest after the Order of Melchizedek. When He returns to fulfill the rest of the Olivet Discourse, He will come as King.
The Olivet Discourse contains words for believers today: to look up, for our redemption draws near; and words for unbelievers today: to believe on the Messiah. It also has words for those who will be living during the Great Tribulation: for Jews to flee; and for Gentiles to watch, to be ready, and to labor.
That completes the activities of the 3rd day of the passion week.
Now for the fourth day: A day of rest and the beginning of the betrayal.
The three busy days of Passion-Week were past. The day before that on which the Paschal Lamb was to be slain, with all that was to follow, would be one of rest, a Sabbath to His Soul before its Great Agony.
He would refresh Himself, gather Himself up for the terrible conflict before Him. And He did so as the Lamb of God - meekly submitting Himself to the Will and Hand of His Father, and so fulfilling all types, from that of Isaac’s sacrifice on Mount Moriah to the Paschal Lamb in the Temple; and bringing the reality of all prophecy, from that of the Woman’s Seed that would crush the Serpent’s head to that of the Kingdom of God in its fullness, when its golden gates would be flung open to all men, and Heaven’s own light flow out to them as they sought its way of peace.
Only two days more, as the Jews reckoned them as beginning at sundown and it was the Paschal supper!
He passed that day of rest and preparation in quiet retirement with His disciples - perhaps in some hollow of the Mount of Olives, near the home of Bethany - speaking to them of His Crucifixion on the near Passover.
Matt 26:1 And it came about that when Jesus had finished all these words, He said to His disciples,
Matt 26:2 "You know that after two days the Passover is coming, and the Son of Man is to be delivered up for crucifixion."
Jesus didn’t know what it was like to be crucified but he did know that it would be the ultimate in agony, shame and suffering. And in all the trouble that that had brought His soul He was thinking only of His disciples.
Such thinking and speaking is not that of Man - it is that of the Incarnate Son of God, the Christ of the Gospels.
He had, indeed, before that, sought gradually to prepare them for what was to happen on the evening of the next day.
He stated it several times before. At times He stated it in a parabolic way, which to the disciples may have left open interpretation, especially since they strongly opposed His death.
John 2:19 Jesus answered and said to them, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." [first time in the temple during His ministry]
John 3:14 [said to Nicodemus] "And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up;
John 3:15 that whoever believes may in Him have eternal life.
Matt 9:15 And Jesus said to them, "The attendants of the bridegroom cannot mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them, can they? But the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast.
Matt 10:38 "And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me.
Matt 12:40 for just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
John 6:51 "I am the living bread that came down out of heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he shall live forever; and the bread also which I shall give for the life of the world is My flesh."
John 10:1 "I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep.
John 10:15 even as the Father knows Me and I know the Father; and I lay down My life for the sheep.
Matt 21:38 "But when the vine-growers saw the son, they said among themselves, 'This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and seize his inheritance.'
He had also spoken of it quite directly - and this, let us specially notice, always when some highpoint in His History had been reached, and the disciples might have been carried away into Messianic expectations of an exaltation without humiliation, a triumph not a sacrifice.
After Peter openly confessed that He was the Son of the living God:
Matt 16:21 From that time Jesus Christ began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised up on the third day. [Peter would immediately rebuke the Lord for saying this.]
After seeing the Lord in resurrection body on the Mount of Transfiguration:
Matt 17:22 And 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;
Matt 17:23 and they will kill Him, and He will be raised on the third day." And they were deeply grieved.
After the Lord told the disciples that they will sit on the 12 thrones of Israel and preparing His triumphal entry into Jerusalem:
Matt 20:17 And 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,
Matt 20:18 "Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem; and the Son of Man will be delivered to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn Him to death,
Matt 20:19 and will deliver Him to the Gentiles to mock and scourge and crucify Him, and on the third day He will be raised up."
You may wonder why they still didn’t understand what was supposed to happen. Maybe they thought His hinting and parables were to mean something else. Maybe they regarded it as a clear prediction of His death, but after time passed and it didn’t happen they thought of another explanation.
Certainly their love for the Lord and their respect of His power made it difficult to bear it as truth, which made it easy for another explanation to be believed.
The beginning of the Lord’s ministry was an exciting time. Sure there was persecution of Him and John the Baptist, but there was also a great following. There were healings and miracles in Israel and Judea which hadn’t been seen for centuries. There was teaching with authority, which also hadn’t been seen in centuries. It wasn’t long before the people hailed Him as King and wanted Him as an earthly King to remove the Romans and establish Israel’s sovereign glory as was before and was promised by God for the future.
You can imagine the adoration of the disciples and their excitement that this man that they loved and adored was about to be elevated to the throne of David, as was His birthright and in their eyes completely deserved.
But instead of accepting the hail of the crowd the Lord would go off on His own away from them. He would continually speak of what He was to suffer at the hands of those who weren’t deserving to tie His sandal. He would go to Jerusalem in secret instead of in procession and His brothers made fun of Him for it. He rebuked the leaders instead of embracing them.
So what started as a ministry with the excitement of anticipated victory has now become one of distress with a Messiah with a troubled soul and disciples that are deeply grieved.
It’s not victory for Jerusalem but predicted judgment and complete destruction of the temple compound. What happened?
It’s funny to think about this, with eventual victory in mind of course, that a student of the word of God first enters his path of positive volition with great excitement about victories and crowns and rewards and escrow blessings and the overcoming of life and usually accenting to the many passages about suffering, but ignoring them until the suffering comes.
Believers who understand the difference between truth and the lie; between life with God and life without God, say as Peter did when the disciples were challenged by the Lord after hundreds had left when victory wasn’t on the horizon, and he said, “where are we going to go, You have the words of eternal life,” these believer’s don’t quit when the suffering does come.
So 11 of the 12 didn’t quit, even after their temporary dispersion during the trials and the cross, but one of the 12 had never believed. Judas Iscariot had the excitement that all the 12 had at the beginning of the ministry and he most likely wasn’t even stealing from the money bag.
But when the Lord’s ministry didn’t pan out the way that he had envisioned he began to get bitter. While the Lord’s words excited him in the beginning they began to irritate him. Like all arrogant unbelievers he saw the Lord as weak instead of strong because they have no clue where real strength lies.
So, while Judas’ unbelief turned to the gravest of evil, the disciples believed but didn’t understand. But what the Lord tells them on the fourth day makes it impossible to misunderstand.
It could scarcely have been possible to doubt what Jesus said of His near Crucifixion. If illusions had still existed, the last two days must have rudely dispelled them.
Matt 26:1 And it came about that when Jesus had finished all these words, He said to His disciples,
Matt 26:2 "You know that after two days the Passover is coming, and the Son of Man is to be delivered up for crucifixion."
The triumphal Hosannas of His Entry into the City, and the acclamations in the Temple, had given way to the trivial objections and fault finding of the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Scribes, and with a ‘Woe’ upon it Jesus had taken His last departure from Israel’s sanctuary.
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