SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 4/7/2024 7:57 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-2 “Intro to Matthew 26:1-16”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
26:1-16
Message of the verses: “1 When Jesus had
finished all these words, He said to His disciples, 2 "You know that after
two days the Passover is coming, and the Son of Man is to be handed over
for crucifixion." 3 Then the chief priests and the elders of the people
were gathered together in the court of the high priest, named Caiaphas; 4 and they plotted together to seize Jesus by
stealth and kill Him. 5 But they were saying, "Not during the festival,
otherwise a riot might occur among the people." 6 Now when Jesus was in Bethany, at the home
of Simon the leper, 7 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. 8
But the disciples were indignant when they saw this, and said, "Why
this waste? 9 “For this perfume might have been sold for a high price
and the money given to the poor." 10 But Jesus, aware of this, said
to them, "Why do you bother the woman? For she has done a good deed to Me.
11 “For you always have the poor with you; but you do not always have Me. 12 "For
when she poured this perfume on My body, she did it to prepare Me for burial.
13 "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."14 Then one of the twelve, named Judas Iscariot, went to the chief
priests 15 and said, "What are you willing to give me to betray Him to
you?" And they weighed out thirty pieces of silver to him. 16 From then on
he began looking for a good opportunity to betray Jesus.”
We
begin with a quote from John MacArthur’s commentary: “The cross is the essence of redemptive truth—foreshadowed
in the acceptable sacrifice of Able, in the ark that saved Noah and his family,
in the substitute ram provided to Abraham on Mount Moriah as the substitute for
Isaac, in the deliverance of Israel from Egypt, in the struck rack that brought
forth water in the wilderness, in the Levitical sacrifices , in the serpent
lifted up in the wilderness for healing, in Boas as Ruth’s kinsman redeemer,
and in countless other Old Testament persons and events. In the deepest sense, all Old Testament truth
and history point unerringly to the cross of Jesus Christ. John the Baptist, the last prophet of the Old
Covenant, testified of Jesus, ‘Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin
of the world’ (John 1:29). Above all
else, the Christian gospel is the message of the death and resurrection of
Jesus Christ, and that is the dominant and supreme focus of both testaments,
the Old as well as the New.”
He
goes on in his introduction to write that “Matthew deals with the cross in a
concise and straightforward way. His
gospel could well be called a expanded narrative of the cross, and in the last
three chapters he focuses on this central theme in several culminating
elements. In chapter 26, he details the
preparation for the cross and the arrest of Jesus. In chapter 27, he presents Jesus’ trials, execution,
and burial. And in chapter 28, he narrates the Lord’s resurrection victory over
death and His final instructions to the disciples.”
We
have just spent four and a half months looking at the Olivet discourse, which
as we have seen that Jesus finished at the end of chapter 25. MacArthur says “It was still Wednesday, and
unusually eventual day that had included Jesus’ teaching the multitudes in the
Temple and His excoriating the Jewish religious leaders for their hypocritical
ungodliness. Upon leaving the Temple, He
went with His disciples to the Mount of Olives, where He privately taught them
about His second coming (Matt. 24:3-25:46).”
Now
we see that after this event the Lord abruptly brought them back to the central
reality of His first coming. This will
be the fourth and last time (see Matt. 16:21; 17:22-23; 20:18-19) that He told
them of His inevitable death, which would occur only two day later (26:2). I will end this introduction by again quoting
from John MacArthur’s commentary: “The crucifixion itself was the next major
event in Messiah’s mission. Before He
should return in glory and power He must die in willing and humble submission
to His Father’s plan.
“In
26:1-16, Matthew presents four incidents that give distinct perspectives on the
preparation for Jesus’ imminent death:
the preparation of sovereign grace (v-2), the preparation of hateful
rejection (vv. 3-5), the preparation of living worship (vv. 6-13), and the
preparation of betraying hypocrisy (vv. 14-16).
Each of those events was in the eternal plan of God for the redemption
of the world, and each one transpired precisely according to that diving master
plan.”
4/7/2024 8:22 AM
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