The Evil of Religion, Matthew 26:1-5

Chapter 26 begins the next section of the gospel of Matthew. It begins with the conclusion of what Jesus has said in Matthew chapters 24 and 25, and this next section concludes our study of this Gospel. But it is not going to happen quickly because there are 75 verses in chapter 26 and then there is an additional 66 verses in 27 and then 20 in the last chapter. So this will take a little while, there is so much here.

What I'm thinking right now is doing this as not a complete merger of the other Gospels, talking about this period, because that would include the entire upper room discourse as well, but especially within the that the structure of these three chapters, bringing in what is covered in the other Gospels a little bit more than I have it in the past.

As we come to this section, this is the focus of the Gospel. Some people think, well, Jesus gets rejected and the failure almost is expressed and in some commentaries as if this is an afterthought, realization of the defeat of Jesus in terms of His message. But actually in each of the Gospels this is the target, because this is why Jesus came: to go to the cross and to be a sacrifice for our sins; to fulfill the promises and the prophecies the pictures from the Old Testament related to the sacrificial system, that He as the Lamb of God will fulfill, that He is the promised and future messianic King. Even though He has offered, the kingdom was rejected, it is the kingdom is postponed; it is not a failure, but God is using that to bring about something new that was not foreseen in the Old Testament, and that relates to the church.

This is not an end. The death of Christ is not an end. It is actually a beginning and we see this foreshadowed in this opening episode. The opening episode, goes from verse one down through verse sixteen. Even though that's covers about four or five paragraphs it is actually tied together at the end, and we see this foreshadowing of the future when we look at verse thirteen. In verse thirteen at the conclusion of the episode of the anointing by the unnamed woman of Jesus on the head, Jesus says, "Assuredly, I say to you that, wherever this gospel is preached in the whole world …" See, that's anticipating something is going beyond the cross, beyond the resurrection: that the gospel will be preached in the whole world. "… what this woman has done will also be told as a memorial to her". So there is a future focus that comes through in this section. It's not a defeat, it is actually the beginning of a glorious plan that God has.

So there's a lot that goes on in these three chapters, but in this introduction that covers verses one through sixteen is really a critical section. You may think that, Well, it just covers a couple of things in a summary manner, but that summary is important and it shapes our thinking about what is coming in the next couple of chapters.

Some observation. First of all, this section that is 26:1-16 serves as an introduction to focus our thinking on what is coming in the rest of this chapter—the Passover meal with His disciples, Jesus' arrest, His trials, His crucifixion, the resurrection, and then His parting instructions to His disciples. This is an introduction to focus us on two questions, which you think you will hear and will say, well, that sounds familiar, who Jesus is and what Jesus did. That's the focal point in these next three chapters. So this introduction sets the scene and introduces the cast of characters for this next part, and that is, Jesus, His disciples, and the religious leaders of the Jews.

The opening two verses focus our attention on who Jesus is. Jesus says there, "You know (talking to His disciples) that after two days is the Passover, and the Son of Man will be delivered up to be crucified". We talk about who He is: He is the Son of Man. And what He will do: He will be crucified for our sins.

As we look at this we see a study in contrast. Many times in the Scripture the Holy Spirit uses contrast, the good in contrast to the bad. It's not just positive. We live in an era today where in a lot of churches what people want, because it's a characteristic of the younger generation, we don't want to hear any criticism. If you don't want to hear any criticism you had better not read the Bible, because the Bible at its very core is polemical. It is an attack on all human viewpoint thinking, and to teach Christians how to identify human viewpoint thinking in their soul, so that the Holy Spirit can use the Word of God on a search and destroy mission to take out the human viewpoint in your thinking. And if you think all you are going to hear is positive good things and get stroked in your self-image, then you don't want to be a biblical Christian, you just want to be a cultural Christian. And what we see here is a study in contrast between the religious leaders of Israel and their legalism, which is evil, in contrast to the woman who will anoint Jesus. She honors Him and as He points out, this anointing is about recognizing his death. That focuses our attention on his death, which is His primary work, and who He is, by anointing, His head, which is what would happen for a new king in Israel. They would be anointed on their head, so she recognizes who He is as the promised messianic King, and what He is going to do. So person and work come together in that episode.

In contrast, the religious leaders don't have a clue as to who He is. They don't understand who He is or what He is doing because they're so immersed in the arrogance of legalism and religion that they totally missed the boat. And whenever you are mired in religion and legalism you are going to be hostile and antagonistic to the truth. We see the contrast between the religious leaders and the woman, but we also see a contrast between the woman and Judas Iscariot. She is a woman who selflessly worships Jesus, and Judas is the man who selfishly betrays Jesus. This leads and moves the action along, as we will see.

There's a contrast seen in the contrast between the leaders plan and the Lord's plan in the verses three through five. We see that the leaders plan is not to have Jesus crucified during the Passover feast. That's really ultimately Satan's plan: we want to keep God from filling his plan according to His timetable, and win some sort of tactical victory. The leaders plot together and they say whatever we want to do, let's not do it during the feast. And through Judah's machinations and his betrayal, his willingness to betray Jesus at that time, it moves the action forward in terms of their timetable. So there's a contrast between the leaders plan and God's plan as He is exercising his sovereign control to bring about Jesus crucifixion. Jesus has His own plan. He's not going to be surprised by what the religious leaders are attempting to accomplish, and all of that works together under God's sovereignty.

We also see a contrast between the evil hostility of religion as they seek to do everything through deception, through guile, through trickery, and through lies to destroy Jesus. And that is contrasted to the generosity and the beauty of grace as exhibited by this unnamed woman who is making a very expensive sacrifice in anointing his head with this extremely expensive perfume.

We see in this contrast the emphasis on how religion hates Jesus, and whether it's an idolatrous religion like the idolatry of Hinduism or the idolatry of the ancient Baal religions, or whether it's the more sophisticated idolatry of modern self-worship, or whether it's the religion of liberalism, or religions of other ideologies, they all hate Jesus and are antagonistic to Jesus. Those who understand Jesus want to adore Him, they want to worship Him, they want to put Him at the center of their life, and so there's always this antagonism that comes from religion of all kinds.

We also see a contrast between the stinginess of the disciples. They are like many Christians they see somebody spend money on something beautiful for the church, done from the right motive to worship the Lord, and they react and say you're just spending too much money. And yet, if it's done right, that's what this is teaching. There are a lot of things that were going to see here related to our attitudes towards money and finance in relation to worship. So there's this contrast between the stinginess of the disciples and the superficiality of their understanding of who Jesus is, and the deep, profound devotion of the woman and her sophisticated understanding of who Jesus is.

We see a contrast between the memory that we have of Judas Iscariot. Judas is the poster child of treachery and betrayal down through the centuries. But what we see in Jesus' interpretation of what this woman does is that, though she is not named, and she is unknown, what she did as an act of worship, He says this will be a memorial through the ages that is always connected to what He does on the cross, because her anointing speaks of his preparation for the grave.

There is a reference to Passover here that we get in the second verse. "You know that after two days is the Passover". But the mention of Passover begins to focus our attention on Jesus as the Passover lamb. He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Passover is the feast that was established by God when He redeemed Israel from slavery in Egypt, and it is the picture of His ultimate redemption of the human race from slavery to sin. Passover is the feast that speaks of redemption of God's people, and in a Jewish context His covenants with them. And the crucifixion of Christ fulfills the type of the Passover, and it also fulfills the covenant of foundations that are stated in the Jewish covenants--the Abrahamic covenant, the Mosaic covenant, the Land covenant, the Davidic covenant and the New covenant. The foundation is laid at the cross, by His payment for our sin.

We also see in this chapter that the second main event after the anointing of Jesus by the unnamed woman is the institution of the Lord's Table, which grows out of the Passover meal, the Seder meal that He celebrates with his disciples, and Jesus transforms the Lord's Table into something that is that is designed to focus our attention on the person and the work of Jesus Christ—who He is and what He did. So what we see throughout this whole section is constant reminder of this theme of who is Jesus? What did He do? Jesus is the Messiah. He's the God-Man. He was sent by God the Father into human history to fulfill the mission of paying the penalty for our sins. The two are inseparable.

All that's just the first observation. Second observation: Though this section has four paragraphs, each is relatively short, they deal with a different topic, a different scenario, but they are tied together. The second verse says, "You know that after two days is the Passover, and the Son of Man will be delivered up to be crucified". That's the Greek word PARADIDOMI. That same word is used again in verse 15, and then in verse 16. When Judas is speaking to the religious leaders he says, "What are you willing to give me if I deliver him to you [PARADIDOMI]?" Then in verse 16, "So from that time he saw the opportunity to betray him [PARADIDOMI]". This brackets the whole section, this vocabulary. In literature that's called an inclusio; it is where you have a statement at the beginning and a statement at the end. In terms of literature it wraps it up together. Matthew has done this intentionally under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit to show us that this all fits together. We should understand these separate events as a unit, and I think that's very important.

The third thing is that the anonymity of the woman is important. Ironically, it is contrasted with this announcement that her deed will be a memorial down through the centuries in the teaching of the gospel, that even though she does this with without it being known who she is, without being named, that event and that woman will be remembered through the centuries.

Fourth, the issue of money and finances is at the core of the disciples' disagreement, their dissatisfaction with this woman. How in the world can she spend all that money? That's a year salary for a laborer and she just pours it over His head. We could spend that money a thousand different ways. They don't understand grace, they don't understand who Jesus is, they don't understand what He is going to do, because that anointing symbolizes her understanding of what He is going to do, that He is going to die. And so it shows how superficial the disciples are, and by application, and how superficial many Christians are when it comes to how money is spent.

Then fifth: above all, what the thread that runs through this entire introduction is, and the entire section is the theme of Christ's death. The focus for Christianity is on Jesus. What makes Christianity Christianity is the message that Jesus died for our sins, that He was crucified in our place. He is a substitutionary sacrifice, and because of that He bore in His own body on the tree the penalty for our sins. This is emphasized again and again in Scripture. Yes, the resurrection is important, but the resurrection throughout Scripture is symbolic of the new life that we have in Christ, not the payment for sin. The payment for sin happens on the cross but the foundation for our new life in him, according to Romans 6:3-6 is His resurrection, and often that is misunderstood today.

We have the emphasis on the death of Christ in passages like Romans 5:6-8: "For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."

We look at first Corinthians 15:3. "For I delivered to you as of first importance [the priority of his message] what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures." Now there was much else that he taught. He taught the resurrection, all those things you mention, because his focus in the chapter is on the reality of the resurrection and why makes a difference in the life of the believer after he is saved, not in getting the life.

In first Corinthians 1:23 he says, "but we preach Christ crucified to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness." And then in 1 Corinthians 2:2 he says, "For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified". The redemptive work of Christ that what happened on the cross when He paid the penalty for sin. That's when the transaction takes place. That's when the justice of God is satisfied or propitiated. That is when our sins are paid for and the debt is canceled, Colossians 2:12-14. This takes place on the cross.

Peter puts it this way in 1 Peter 2:24, "and He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed." Notice that healing there isn't a physical healing from disease, it is the spiritual solution to sin. Often the word healing is used as a synonym for the payment for sin and the solution to sin. And so it is that death on the cross. That is where that transaction takes place.

1 Peter 3:18 Peter says, "For Christ also died for sins once for all, {the} just for {the} unjust, so that He might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit."

As we come to Matthew 26 we see a transition taking place that begins at the first verse. "Now it came to pass" is a common idiom in the Greek moving us to the next scene of action. "Now it came to pass, when Jesus had finished all these sayings, that He said to his disciples, [v2] 'You know', and it should be stated, 'You know this, that after two days is the Passover and the Son of Man will be delivered up to be crucified'."

There are a couple of things we ought to note about this. We see this phrase "when Jesus had finished all these sayings". This is the final of five times that Jesus says this in Matthew. Matthew uses this as a way to organize his material. In the Gospel of Matthew there are more words of Jesus recorded than in any of the other Gospels. And we have several discourses. Usually in commentaries a talk about the Sermon on the Mount and the Olivet Discourse, but actually there are five different times when Jesus speaks at length through the Gospel. And we see these as they are concluded in Matthew 7:28, Matthew 11:1, Matthew 13:53, Matthew 19:1 and Matthew 26:1. Each one of these verses says, "Now it came to pass, when Jesus had finished these sayings". So these five discourses are lengthy instruction sections by Jesus to His disciples. Matthew 7:28 follows the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew 11:1 follows His instructions and teaching to His disciples. Matthew 13:53 follows the long chapter where He speaks in the parables related to the previously unrevealed information about the kingdom of God and its postponement. When we come to Matthew 19:1 that follows a section in Matthew 17 and 18, where He has given further instructions to the disciples. And then this verse follows the Olivet Discourse.

So what we have in Matthew is some tremendous teaching. We have gone through all of it now and the remainder of Matthew is primarily narrative. It's primarily telling us what happens in the events leading up to Jesus' arrest, the crucifixion, His death and burial, and then His resurrection and His final instructions for the disciples.

As we look at this, it is a reminder that takes us back to what we have seen and what we have studied in this Gospel. Now I want to take you through this just as a reminder. Remember all this is just introduction to getting into chapter 26, but I want to remind us of the timeframe. What's been happening with Jesus and His disciples over the last four or five days? I think that's important. We are going to get into is a lot of chronology here and I'm going to state some things. Some of you may say you've never heard that before. Okay, here are some new things. I don't want to get into the intricacies of the chronology here. There's so much discussion and a tremendous amount of debate that goes on about the chronology. I'm going to wait and put it together into a special. It gets a little intricate but I think it's important for people to understand some of these things.

In Matthew 19:1 we see that Jesus is leaving Galilee in the north and is coming south. He is headed to Jerusalem for His final trip to Jerusalem. When He heads down from the north He is going to cross east across the Jordan, somewhere just south of the Sea of Galilee, and is going to come down through Perea, around Samaria, and then He is going to come down just north of the Dead Sea, crossover where the old and the new cities of Jericho are located. Then He is going to ascend to Jerusalem. There will be the entry into Jerusalem and then the instruction that we have seen. So Matthew 19:1 talks about Him departing from Galilee and heading south.

Matthew chapter 20:17-19 tells us that Jesus began his travels up to Jerusalem. He crosses the Jordan, goes to Jericho, and then he will ascend to Jerusalem. As He does that He predicts his death. He tells His disciples He is going to go to Jerusalem to die, and this is the third time. Here are the three references: Matthew 16:21; Matthew 17:22; Matthew 20:18-19. The fourth prediction of His going to be killed is in our passage in Matthew 26:2. Matthew 16:21, "From that time Jesus began to show to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem …" He must go to Jerusalem, that was the Father's plan. "… and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes…" It is basically the Sanhedrin. "… and be killed, and raised up the third day."

Now He just said is going to be killed. He doesn't say how. And then He says He is going to be raised from the dead. I don't think they had a clue what that meant. They heard it, but that didn't mean they comprehended it. Then in chapter 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." There is that keyword we will talk about several times, PARADIDOMI, which is sometimes translated "being handed over". It has a range of meanings, depending on the context. Sometimes it has the idea of being betrayed.

Then in Matthew 20:18-19, which is just before his entry into Jerusalem, He says, Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem; and the Son of Man will be delivered [PARADIDOMI again] to the chief priests and 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.” He emphasizes now, crucifixion, and precisely resurrection the third day.

Then in Matthew 21:1-11 we saw that He entered into Jerusalem. We will the call that day one. Then on day two, Matthew 21:18, 19, He curses the fig tree. If you read the parallel in Mark 11, Mark has another day in there. There is a third day. Matthew just sort of skips over that and says, "And when the disciples saw the withered fig tree". You don't realize, unless you look at Mark, that it's actually the third day. Day one He enters; day two He curses the fig tree; day three is the big day. In terms of Jesus life this is the longest day.

This is everything from 21:20 down through 25:46—all those confrontations with the religious leaders, and then His announcement of the 7+1 woes that we studied in chapter 23, then the Olivet discourse. All of that is on one day. It is a long day. And then we now have the evening, and this is the end of that third day.

What is interesting here in the beginning is, He says, "After two days I will be crucified." In other words, the day after tomorrow I'm going to be crucified. That is when the most crucial statements on figuring out this whole chronology because the bottom line is, no matter how you work it out you've got these three days and then two days, and then He is crucified. If you chart it out, however, you work it out; it can't end up with a Wednesday crucifixion. Now all of us have been taught a Wednesday crucifixion. It is impossible. According to that scenario you are going to have been doing a bunch of stuff on the Sabbath, which violate the Sabbath law, and Jesus never violates the literal Sabbath law. He violates the Pharisees interpretation of it, but not the law itself, so it pretty much excludes Wednesday is an option. I think there's about an 80 per cent probability that it is going to exclude a Thursday option as well. That's why we are going to have to take some time and do a special lesson just dealing with all of this, because it's extremely complex and there is a lot of data there that has to be considered.

What we see here is that Jesus is going to control the time of His death. He says that it will take place after two days, but in the second part of this opening the chief priests are going to say no, we are not going to let it happen on the feast because it's going to create a riot among the people. So we see Jesus controls the time; Jesus Christ controls history. At the same time, we learn that individual human volition is functional but within parameters established by the sovereignty of God. It is the religious leaders who exercise their volition to kill Jesus, but it is according to the plan of God. We see this in passages like Acts 2:23, "Him, being delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God." That is talking about God's side of the equation—unknown to man. God is not coercing man. On the other side Peter says, "You have taken by lawless hands, have crucified and put to death"—human responsibility for their actions, even though this is what is part of the plan of God.

Jesus is in control. John 10:18, “No one has taken it away from Me, but I lay it down on My own initiative. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This commandment I received from My Father.”

And then Jesus says, "You know that after two days is the Passover and the Son of Man will be delivered up to be crucified." When He says, "you know", it's in the perfect tense, which indicates past completed action. That means they already know this. He has told them three times already. You know this. You may not really grasp it yet, but you know it. And they know, of course, it's Passover. So is emphasizing that this is something they know, and He adds to this that in two days it's going to be the Passover, and that is when He will be crucified.

Now when you try to deal with all these issues related to chronology, when He says, "After two days it is the Passover", is he talking about the Passover meal, the Seder meal He will be celebrating with his disciples the night before goes to the cross? The rest of the uses of this word in this chapter, all relate to that Seder meal that He is going to have with His disciples the night before goes to the cross. Or does this refer to the day of the Passover, which is when the lambs are slaughtered? Or does it refer to that evening, which would be the 15th of Nisan, when everyone is sitting down and eating the Passover meal? The second two are the same day. But if He is referring to the meal He going to eat with his disciples, if that's Thursday night, then this would be Tuesday night when He saying this. If He is talking about Friday then this is going to be Wednesday night. It is ambiguous, you can't nail it down with absolute precision.

So says after two days of the Passover and the Son of Man will be delivered up. Again, all through the Olivet discourse we saw Him refer to Himself as the Son of Man. This is a messianic title. He will be delivered up. Here it doesn't have the idea so much as betrayal as He uses in some places. He be given over to the Gentiles. It will be used when when Judas does it in terms of betrayal.

We see the opposition from the religious leaders—the chief priests and scribes, the elders. That's part of the Sanhedrin. This is an ad hoc meeting of the religious leaders, just to try to figure out what they are going to do. They are going to plot; they are going to conspire: how are we going to accomplish this?

Notice it says the chief priests. How many high priests did Israel have? You can count it on one hand, one finger—one. Why does it way chief priests? Because Annas, Caiaphas's father-in-law, was the legitimate high priest, but the Romans thought he exercised too much political power, so they took him out and replaced him with his son-in-law, Caiaphas. Now Caiaphas must have been very pleasing to the Romans, because he was the longest high priest through this period. He is high priest from 18 to 36. So for 18 years he is the high priest. He must have been a very pleasing lackey to the Romans, is what that indicates. We know of his existence because he is mentioned by Josephus (his full name was Joseph Caiaphas), and because we discovered his ossuary, the bone box in which his bones were buried. They gathered at the palace of the high priest.

They plot to take Jesus by trickery, that is, deceit and to kill Him, but they said, not during the feast lest there be an uproar among the people. There are two groups of people. There are those who were with Him on His entry into Jerusalem, and they were His disciples, and those who believed in Him, and there was a large multitude of those. But then there were the others—don't mix them up—those who are in the courtyard, screaming for his death, those are the unbelievers there. They are not the same people who were there singing the Psalms as He entered into Jerusalem. There are two different groups of people. And we see them and Matthew 21. When He is entering the multitudes they said that this is Jesus the prophet of Nazareth. They recognize who He is as a prophet. We are also told in that chapter that when the Pharisees began to plot against Him they sought to lay hands on Him, and they feared the multitudes because they took Him for a prophet. So they are fearful of them.

What we see here exhibited by the religious leaders is the evil of religion.

Religion is not Christianity; religion is a human system to try to please God, based on what man does, whereas Christianity is based on God doing that which pleases Him, and we simply believe it or accept it. Religion attempts to please God on man's terms. Man defines who God is what God wants, what God is like, and what God will accept, and that man provides it. Whereas Christianity lets the Bible determine who God is and what God requires and man simply believes it. Religion is always based on arrogance, and arrogance always leads to division, it leads to chaos and it leads to destruction. Religion is the source of much evil in the world—religion in the forms of non-Christian religions, but religion also in the forms of legalistic Christianity. It was legalistic Christianity, not biblical Christianity that provided the motivation for the Crusades into the Middle East. You often hear people say, well the Moslems have jihad and the Christians had their crusade. The only difference is that jihad is consistent with what is commanded in the Quran, whereas the Crusades were a contradiction and a disobedience of what is said in the New Testament. They are not the same thing. The Crusades were the product of evil religion, legalistic religion.

Missions, and especially in the 19th and 20th century was a product of grace oriented Christianity taking the gospel to the world and transforming the nations. Biblical Christianity is about a relationship, a relationship with God through belief in Jesus Christ as our Savior. Biblical Christianity is grounded on the person and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

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