Preparing for Christ’s Death
(26:1–16)
And it came about that when Jesus had finished all
these words, He said to His disciples, “You know that after two
days the Passover is coming, and the Son of Man is to be delivered up
for crucifixion.” Then the chief priests and the elders of the
people were gathered together in the court of the high priest, named
Caiaphas; and they plotted together to seize Jesus by stealth, and
kill Him. But they were saying, “Not during the festival, lest a
riot occur among the people.”
Now when Jesus was in Bethany, at the home of Simon
the leper, a woman came to Him with an alabaster vial of very costly
perfume, and she poured it upon His head as He reclined at the table.
But the disciples were indignant when they saw this, and said, “Why
this waste? For this perfume might have been sold for a high price
and the money given to the poor.” But Jesus, aware of this, said to
them, “Why do you bother the woman? For she has done a good deed to
Me. For the poor you have with you always; but you do not always have
Me. For when she poured this perfume upon My body, she did it to
prepare Me for burial. Truly I say to you, wherever this gospel is
preached in the whole world, what this woman has done shall also be
spoken of in memory of her.”
Then one of the twelve, named Judas Iscariot, went to
the chief priests, and said, “What are you willing to give me to
deliver Him up to you?” And they weighed out to him thirty pieces
of silver. And from then on he began looking for a good opportunity
to betray Him. (26:1–16)
Chapter 26 begins the last and most pivotal section of
Matthew’s presentation of the gospel. Everything else has been a
prologue, an introduction to the great conclusion, which focuses on
the cross of Jesus Christ—the culmination of the gospel and the
culmination of redemptive history, the only eternal hope of fallen
mankind.
The hymn writer John Bowring exulted,
In the cross of Christ I glory,
Tow’ring o’er the wrecks of
time.
All the light of sacred story
Gathers round its head sublime.
Everything in the sacred story of God’s redemptive
plan does indeed center on the cross, apart from which no other
revelation or work of God would have any ultimate value for sinful
man. It is through the cross of Christ alone that the Lord has
provided the way for sinners to be saved and united with Him, the
holy God. There is no salvation, no gospel, no biblical Christianity
apart from the cross of Christ. It is because he unequivocally
believed that central biblical truth Paul could tell the Corinthians,
“I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and
Him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2).
The cross is the essence of redemptive
truth-foreshadowed in the acceptable sacrifice of Abel, 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 rock that brought
forth water in the wilderness, in the Levitical sacrifices, in the
serpent lifted up in the wilderness for healing, in Boaz 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.
Matthew deals with the cross in a concise and
straightforward way. His gospel could well be called an 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.
Chapter 26 picks up the narrative at the end of the
Olivet discourse, which Jesus had just finished. It was
still Wednesday, an unusually eventful 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).
Then the Lord abruptly brought them back to the central
reality of His first coming. For the fourth and last time (see Matt.
16:21; 17:22–23; 20:18–19) He told them of His inevitable death,
which would occur only two days hence (26:2). 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 preparations for Jesus’ imminent
death: the preparation of sovereign grace (v. 2), the preparation of
hateful rejection (vv. 3–5), the preparation of loving 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 divine master plan.
The Preparation of Sovereign Grace
You know that after two days the Passover is coming,
and the Son of Man is to be delivered up for crucifixion. (26:2)
In His incarnation, Jesus voluntarily limited the use of
His omniscience, His glory, and certain other attributes of His deity
(cf. Phil. 2:7–8). In His humility and self-imposed limitations as
a man, Jesus taught only the divine truth that His heavenly Father
revealed to Him. “The Father Himself who sent Me,” Jesus said,
“has given Me commandment, what to say, and what to speak” (John
12:49; cf. Matt. 24:36).
Now Jesus knew it was the Father’s time for Him to
die, and He not only declared again that He must suffer and be
crucified but specified that His death was only two days away,
at the beginning of the Passover. At that divinely appointed
time the Son of Man would be delivered up for crucifixion.
Unbelieving skeptics have long tried to explain Jesus’
death as a quirk of fate, the unintended termination of a
well-meaning revolution that was discovered and crushed or the sad
end to the delusions of a madman. Others picture Jesus as a visionary
whose dreams were ahead of the age in which He lived, or as a prophet
who overstated His claims and thereby roused the ire of the religious
establishment. But such assertions do not square with the gospel
accounts and are blasphemous.
As already noted, Jesus had predicted at least three
times previously that He would suffer to the death but would rise
again. He had even indicated that His death would be in Jerusalem and
that He would rise on the third day. He was on a divine timetable,
and no human plans or power could cause that timetable to vary in a
single detail. “No one has taken [My life] away from Me,” He
declared, “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” (John
10:18). When Pilate said to Jesus, “ ‘Do You not know that I have
authority to release You, and I have authority to crucify You?’
Jesus answered, ‘You would have no authority over Me, unless it had
been given you from above’ ” (John 19:10–11).
There were many times when people sought to kill Jesus
but were unable to do so. The Jewish religious leaders began plotting
His death soon after He began His public ministry (John 5:18), but
they were not able to fulfill that intention until it fit into God’s
timetable.
The first attempt on Jesus’ life was made shortly
after He was born, when Herod massacred all the male infants in the
vicinity of Bethlehem. God sent an angel to warn Joseph to take Jesus
and His mother to Egypt until the danger was over. On one occasion
when He was ministering in a synagogue in His home town of Nazareth,
the people became incensed by His claim to be fulfilling Isaiah’s
prophecy and by His reminding them of several instances when God
chose to bless certain Gentiles rather than Jews. They succeeded in
leading Him to the edge of a high cliff on the outskirts of the city,
but before they could throw Him to His death, He miraculously passed
through their midst and went His way (Luke 4:16–30).
After Jesus healed the crippled man at the pool of
Bethesda, the Jewish leaders began “seeking all the more to kill
Him, because He not only was breaking the Sabbath, but also was
calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God” (John
5:18). To some people Jesus became known as “the man whom they are
seeking to kill” (John 7:25). But when the Temple police were sent
to arrest Him for healing a man on the Sabbath, they returned
empty-handed. When the chief priests and Pharisees asked the officers
why they did not bring Jesus back with them, they replied, “Never
did a man speak the way this man speaks” (John 7:44–46).
All of those attempts to kill Jesus, and perhaps others
that are not recorded, failed because it was not God’s time or
God’s way for the Son to die. Only the sovereign grace of God could
have brought Jesus to the cross. No human power could have
accomplished it apart from God’s will, and no human power could now
prevent it, because it was now God’s plan. As Jesus declared at the
Last Supper, “the Son of Man is going as it has been determined”
(Luke 22:22). And as Peter declared at Pentecost, Jesus was
“delivered up by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God”
(Acts 2:23).
The appropriate time for Jesus to die was at Passover,
when the sacrificial lambs were slain, because that celebration
pointed to “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”
(John 1:29). The sacrifices of all the other lambs were but faint
symbols of what the true Lamb was soon to accomplish in reality.
As Philip explained to the Ethiopian, Jesus was the Lamb
predicted by Isaiah, led to slaughter but not opening His mouth (Acts
8:32–34). As Paul declared to the Corinthian believers, Jesus was
“Christ our Passover [who] also has been sacrificed” (1 Cor.
5:7). As Peter proclaimed to the scattered and persecuted saints of
the first-century church, Jesus was the unblemished Lamb “foreknown
before the foundation of the world, but [who] has appeared in these
last times for the sake of you” (1 Pet. 1:19–20). As John saw on
Patmos, Jesus was “the Lamb that was slain to receive power and
riches and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing” (Rev.
5:12).
The Preparation of Hateful Rejection
Then the chief priests and the elders of the people
were gathered together in the court of the high priest, named
Caiaphas; and they plotted together to seize Jesus by stealth, and
kill Him. But they were saying, “Not during the festival, lest a
riot occur among the people.” (26:3–5)
As Jesus was speaking to His disciples that Wednesday
evening on the Mount of Olives, the Sanhedrin, composed primarily of
the chief priests and the elders of the people, was gathered
together in the court of the palace of the high priest, named
Caiaphas. The chief priests represented the wealthy and
influential religious nobility and the elders represented the
wealthy and influential lay nobility. Scribes were present when Jesus
was taken to Caiaphas’s house after He was arrested (Matt. 26:57),
and it is likely that some of them were also there at this time.
According to the famous Jewish historian Josephus, the
full name of the high priest was Joseph Caiaphas. He
was a conniving, treacherous, and deceitful man depicted in Scripture
in the one-dimensional role of Jesus’ antagonist. In every passage
where he is mentioned, he is seen pursuing the destruction of Jesus.
Like Herod, his hatred and fear of Jesus was not theological but
political. Caiaphas wanted to destroy Jesus because he feared that He
posed a serious threat to his position and power over the Jewish
people. Driven purely by greed and selfish, jealous ambition, he had
no sense of justice, righteousness, or propriety. He had no regard
for his country, his people, or his religion, except as those could
be used to personal advantage. His basic operating principle was
expediency, epitomized for all time in his infamous declaration: “It
is expedient for you that one man should die for the people, and that
the whole nation should not perish” (John 11:50).
The high priesthood traditionally was passed on through
the Levitical line, but during the Roman occupation the position
generally was sold or bestowed as a political favor. Because the
Jewish people would not have tolerated a high priest without some
Levitical heritage, Caiaphas married the daughter of Annas,
his predecessor in the high priesthood. The two men even served
jointly for a period of time (see Luke 3:2). Caiaphas served as high
priest from a.d. 15 to 37, an unparalleled tenure. To hold the office
for that long required a close relationship with Rome, and over the
period of some hundred years, 28 different men served as high priest.
Caiaphas’s successor lasted only 50 days in office.
Caiaphas was the epitome of the decadent
religious system that now dominated Israel. Wicked as he was, he
alone could enter the Holy of Holies on the Day of Atonement and
offer the sacrifice. He supervised all the priestly functions in the
Temple and profited from the merchandising there that had so incensed
Jesus that He twice drove out the money changers and sellers of
sacrificial animals (John 2:14–16; Matt. 21:12–13).
The Sanhedrin had assembled in Caiaphas’s house for
one purpose: to plot how they could seize Jesus. They wanted
to do it by stealth in order not to antagonize the masses in
the city where Jesus was popular; and once they had Him firmly in
their grasp they would then kill Him when it seemed
propitious. They had endured more of Him than they could tolerate and
were determined to put an end to His exposure of their hypocrisy and
ungodliness and His threat to their power and wealth. Apparently they
planned to arrest Him as soon as possible, before He had opportunity
to escape or amass further support among the people. He would then be
held in custody until the Passover crowds had left Jerusalem, making
it safer to put Him to death, perhaps also in secret. Therefore they
were saying, “Not during the festival.”
Jerusalem was swollen to near bursting with pilgrims
from all parts of the world who had come to worship at the Passover
festival. According to Josephus, some 256,500 sacrificial
lambs were slain during a typical Passover. And because tradition
required that no fewer than ten people were to eat of one lamb, the
number of celebrants could have exceeded two million. Many of the
worshipers would have been from Galilee and other places where Jesus
had ministered and gained great popularity for His powerful preaching
and miracle working. And a large number of those admirers doubtlessly
were among the multitudes who, only a few days earlier, had strewn
garments and palm branches on the road before Jesus and acclaimed Him
with shouts of “Hosanna to the Son of David; blessed is He who
comes in the name of the Lord” (Matt. 21:9).
From the standpoint of the Jewish leaders, therefore,
Passover was the worst possible time for them to take direct action
against Jesus, especially to put Him to death. They feared it would
surely cause a riot … among the people. But Passover was the
time God had chosen, and those hateful rejecters would crucify Jesus
according to God’s plan rather than their own. During the many
times when they wanted to kill Jesus immediately, they could not.
Now, when they wanted to postpone putting Him to death, they could
not. God’s time was not eight days hence but two, not after the
Passover but at its commencement. When, by God’s sovereign
allowance, Jesus’ enemies finally succeeded in putting Him to
death, it was at the very time they most wanted to avoid.
The Preparation of Loving Worship
Now when Jesus was in Bethany, at the home of Simon
the leper, a woman came to Him with an alabaster vial of very costly
perfume, and she poured it upon His head as He reclined at the table.
But the disciples were indignant when they saw this, and said, “Why
this waste? For this perfume might have been sold for a high price
and the money given to the poor.” But Jesus, aware of this, said to
them, “Why do you bother the woman? For she has done a good deed to
Me. For the poor you have with you always; but you do not always have
Me. For when she poured this perfume upon My body, she did it to
prepare Me for burial. Truly I say to you, wherever this gospel is
preached in the whole world, what this woman has done shall also be
spoken of in memory of her.” (26:6–13)
Matthew here presents a flashback to the previous
Saturday, when Jesus came into the area of Bethany and
Bethphage, just east of Jerusalem near the Mount of Olives (see Matt.
21:1; Mark 11:1). In this touching account, a third preparation for
Jesus’ crucifixion is portrayed. It is in stark contrast to that of
the Sanhedrin, reflecting loving worship rather than hateful
rejection.
While in Bethany Jesus and the disciples were
invited to the home of Simon the leper for supper. From John’s
account we learn that Mary, Martha, and Lazarus were also present and
that Martha served the meal, probably as a gesture of friendship to
Simon as well as to the Lord (John 12:1–3).
Since a leper was not allowed to live in towns or
cities or to associate with nonlepers, it is clear that Simon
had been cleansed. And because that dread disease was incurable by
medical means, he apparently had been healed miraculously by Jesus.
In deep gratitude for that deliverance, he had asked Jesus and the
others to his house for a meal.
During the supper a woman, whom Matthew does not
identify but John tells us was Mary (12:3), came to Him with an
alabaster vial of very costly perfume, and she poured it upon His
head as He reclined at the table. From Mark we learn that the
very costly perfume was worth “over three hundred denarii,” a
year’s wages for a common laborer or soldier, and that the
expensive alabaster vial was broken, making Mary’s act even
more costly (Mark 14:3–5).
Mary had always been specially attentive to the Lord’s
teaching (see Luke 10:39), and it seems that on this occasion she
accepted the reality and understood the significance of Jesus’
impending death better than the Twelve. She may have sensed that in
His tragic death somehow lay her redemption. She understood what the
disciples did not want to understand, that Jesus had to die in order
to be raised again. Unlike them, she was not caught up in the carnal,
selfish desire for Christ to establish His earthly kingdom
immediately in order to share in the glory and privilege that event
would bring.
In an act of unmeasured love, Mary poured the
perfume upon His head as He reclined at the table. The perfume
was a pound of pure nard, John tells us, which she also used to
anoint Jesus’ feet (John 12:3). In that adoring testimony of love
and honor Mary poured out her soul in worship even as she poured out
the perfume. Being absolutely controlled by adoration for her Lord,
she lost all sense of restraint and economy.
Mary did not offer that valuable possession to support a
program or a ministry but offered it to Christ Himself. She did not
selfishly seek a visible and tangible result from her generosity but
without hesitation offered her most expensive earthly possession to
the Lord in an act of effusive, adoring worship.
Having no comprehension of what prompted Mary to do what
she was doing, the insensitive disciples were indignant when they
saw this, and piously asked, “Why this waste?” At the
instigation of the traitorous Judas (see John 12:4–5) they
suggested that the “perfume might have been sold for a high
price and the money given to the poor.” Even had that pragmatic
and seemingly altruistic notion been pursued, however, it would not
likely have benefited many poor people. Because Judas was
treasurer of the group and also a thief, he no doubt would have
embezzled most of the money for himself (see John 12:6). Now that he
was totally disillusioned with Jesus, he probably felt even more
justified in stealing whatever he could before going his own way.
Although the disciples’ indignation was not voiced
openly but only among themselves (Mark 14:4) and to Mary, Jesus
was aware of this and rebuked them for it. “Why do you
bother the woman?” He asked, “For she has done a good deed
to Me. For the poor you have with you always; but you do not always
have Me.”
In the parable of the sheep and the goats the Lord had
just graphically taught that meeting the physical needs of His people
is of the utmost importance and is a mark of genuine salvation (Matt.
25:34–36). But He was very soon to end His earthly ministry and
return to His Father in heaven. And before He returned He would
suffer, die, and be raised up. This was therefore not the time for
philanthropy but adoration, not the time for charity but for worship.
Just as she had done on an earlier occasion, Mary now had “chosen
the good part” (Luke 10:42) and was performing a beautiful good
deed to her Lord.
Genuine worship is the supreme service a Christian can
offer to Christ. There is a time for ministering to the poor, the
sick, the naked, and the imprisoned. There is a time for witnessing
to the lost and seeking to lead them to the Savior. There is a time
for discipling new believers and helping them grow in the faith.
There is a time for careful study and teaching of God’s Word. But
above all else that the Lord requires of His people is their true
worship, without which everything else they may do in His name is
empty and powerless.
The worshiper emulated by Mary does not ask, “How much
is it going to cost?” or, “Do I have the time?” Like her, the
true worshiper gives Jesus whatever he has, knowing it is trifling
compared to what has been received from Him.
In this particular and unique act of worship, when Mary
poured this perfume upon Jesus’ body, without her
even realizing it she did it to prepare Him for burial.
It became a symbolic deed that anticipated His death and burial.
What Mary did was of such lasting significance that
Jesus declared, “Truly I say to you, wherever this gospel is
preached in the whole world, what this woman has done shall also be
spoken of in memory of her.” Through the accounts of this story
in three of the gospels, the Holy Spirit secured for posterity a
memorial to her love and generous worship. In fulfillment of the
Lord’s prediction, for nearly two thousand years what this woman
did has indeed been spoken of in memory of her. She is
perpetually an example to all Christians of unselfish, sacrificial
adoration.
The Preparation of Betraying Hypocrisy
Then one of the twelve, named Judas Iscariot, went to
the chief priests, and said, “What are you willing to give me to
deliver Him up to you?” And they weighed out to him thirty pieces
of silver. And from then on he began looking for a good opportunity
to betray Him. (26:14–16)
In contrast to Mary, who gave an open testimony of
loving worship, Judas Iscariot gave clandestine testimony of
betraying hypocrisy.
Going to the chief priests, probably while they
were still assembled in Caiaphas’s house, Judas asked callously,
“What are you willing to give me to deliver Him up to you?”
No doubt pleasantly amazed that one of Jesus’ own disciples would
be the means of their destroying Him, the religious leaders eagerly
weighed out to Judas thirty pieces of silver. For the
price of a slave (see Ex. 21:32), Judas not only sold out his teacher
and leader and friend but betrayed the very Son of God, who had come
to be his Savior.
Having irrevocably committed himself to the treachery,
from then on, Judas began looking for a good opportunity to
betray the Lord. In the eyes of Jesus’ enemies, the good
opportunity would be when He was “apart from the multitude”
(Luke 22:6), as He soon would be in the Garden of Gethsemane. In the
greatest example of forsaken opportunity the world has ever known,
Judas forever turned his back on the Lord and on his own salvation.
And the Lord forever turned His back on Judas.
THE ANOINTING AT BETHANY
Matthew 26:1–13
As we move into Matthew 26, we cross
a line of demarcation. There is a sense in which everything changes
at this point in this Gospel. Matthew tells us, “Now it came to
pass, when Jesus had finished all these sayings …” (v. 1a).
This is the end of Matthew’s record of Jesus’ teachings. When we
read the Synoptic Gospels, we note that each of them reports
substantially the same accounts, but they sometimes appear at very
different points in the narrative. That is, particular sayings of
Jesus might appear in one location in Matthew, another in Mark, and
still another in Luke. It is the almost universal opinion of biblical
scholars that the Gospel writers worked from a set of sayings called
the logia (“words”) of Jesus, which words were maintained
by an oral tradition with no efforts to keep them in a sequential
context. So, the work of the Gospel writers consisted in setting
these teachings down in written form, and they were free to use their
literary creativity to put each saying where it was most fitting from
the perspective of that author. That is what Matthew has been doing
to this point.
Now, however, his focus shifts completely to the
narrative of Jesus’ passion, the suffering and death of Christ.
Matthew is beginning to bring his account to a climax, which is the
climax of the redemptive activity of Jesus. The cross was now looming
directly ahead.
Plotting on the Eve of the Passover
Appropriately, Jesus Himself set the stage for the final
act: 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” (vv. 1a–2).
Jesus knew what was going to happen. He knew His
destiny; indeed, He had known it from the beginning and had told His
disciples about it several times (16:21; 17:22–23; 20:17–19). He
knew that the hour that had been drawing near was about to come to
pass (John 13:1; 17:1). He also knew that all of the things that were
about to transpire were fully under the sovereign ordination of His
Father; no one could take His life from Him. He knew very clearly
that all the machinations of the scribes, the Pharisees, the
Sadducees, the Sanhedrin, and even His own disciple Judas would not
have any power over Him unless He allowed Himself to be taken by the
Jewish authorities and delivered to the Romans. He stated that He had
the authority and the power to call on legions of angels to stop this
drama from working itself out and save Him from the suffering He was
about to endure (26:53). But as we have seen, He had set His face
like flint to go to Jerusalem (Isa. 50:7) so that He might fulfill
the mission He had accepted in the covenant of redemption in eternity
past.
Jesus tied the moment of His passion to the Passover,
which was two days away. The Passover was the most important festival
on the Jewish calendar. It was conjoined with the Feast of Unleavened
Bread, and together the festival lasted seven full days. Literally
hundreds of thousands of pilgrims would find their way to Jerusalem
for this celebration.
In the economy of God’s plan, it was absolutely
fitting that the Lamb of God should be sacrificed at the time of the
Passover. The national identity of the Jewish people was established
at that point in antiquity when they were spared from the wrath of
God in Egypt and then delivered by the exodus. You remember the
story. God had brought nine plagues on Egypt as Pharaoh refused God’s
direct command that he let the Israelites leave (Exodus 7–10). So
God vowed to send one more plague. He said that He would go out into
the midst of Egypt and cause all of the firstborn of the mighty ones,
the firstborn of the lowliest slaves, and even the firstborn of the
animals to die (Ex. 11:4–5). But He promised that if the Israelites
would put the blood of a lamb on the doorposts of their homes, their
firstborn would be spared (Ex. 12:1–13). So it was. The people of
God were delivered from the wrath of God when He struck the
Egyptians. Where God saw the blood of the lamb on the doorposts, He
passed by. Egypt was subdued and the Israelites were freed, for which
reason the Passover became a time of unparalleled celebration. Thus,
it was appropriate that this feast should be the time for the
ultimate atonement, for the sacrifice of the Lamb of God, whose blood
delivers from God’s wrath.
Matthew then adds one other brief note as He continues
to set the stage for the climax of his account: Then the chief
priests, the scribes, and the elders of the people assembled at the
palace of the high priest, who 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” (vv. 3–5).
These were not mafia chieftains gathered in a manor house in New
Jersey. These were the most consecrated men of the Jews, chief
priests, scribes, and elders, and even the reigning high priest,
Caiaphas, in whose palace they met. These supposedly godly leaders
came together for one purpose—to find a way to trap Jesus so that
they might execute Him and be rid of Him once and for all.
Stop and think for a moment about what was going on
here. The priests of the land were trying to figure out a way to kill
the Son of God. I do not believe we can fully grasp the egregiousness
of what they were doing. God Himself had taken a human nature and
appeared in human history to redeem His people. He came to give His
life as a ransom for many (20:28). But these people hated Him with
every fiber of their beings. They were of one mind—Jesus had to go.
Was there ever a more literally diabolical conspiracy in the history
of the world?
But they said to one another, “Not during the feast,
lest there be an uproar among the people.” They knew many people
from Galilee would be in Jerusalem for the feast, and they knew Jesus
had a widespread following and a great reputation there. So they
agreed to wait until the Passover feast was over before they set
their snare. Of course, God had other plans. It was God’s will that
the Lamb of God should die during the Passover. God would decide the
time of the death of His Son, not the holy men of Israel.
Jesus Anointed for Burial
Matthew abruptly changes the subject. Instead of telling
us more about the plans the religious leaders made and how they set
their trap, he instead writes, And when Jesus was in Bethany at
the house of Simon the leper, a woman came to Him having an alabaster
flask of very costly fragrant oil, and she poured it on His head as
He sat at the table (vv. 6–7). This event happened in Bethany,
a village just outside Jerusalem, across the Kidron Valley and over
the Mount of Olives. Matthew tells us Jesus was in the home of a man
known as Simon the leper. We do not know who this Simon was. It seems
unlikely he had leprosy at this time because he seems to have been
actively involved in the social life of the town rather than isolated
as lepers were at that time. Perhaps he had been healed by Jesus.
Some have speculated that Simon was the father of Mary, Martha, and
Lazarus, Jesus’ dear friends who lived in Bethany (John 11:3).
Jesus had spent many hours in the home of that family, and perhaps it
was there that this remarkable event took place. Matthew also does
not identify the woman who came to him with costly oil. However, John
identifies her as Mary, presumably that Mary who was the sister of
Lazarus and Martha.
Matthew adds some interesting details in this account.
He tells us that Mary brought “very costly fragrant oil,” but the
fact that it was in an alabaster flask gives away the fact that this
was an extremely precious possession. Alabaster is a mineral, and in
this case, it probably was gypsum. Both Mark and John report that the
flask and the oil were worth three hundred denarii (Mark 14:5; John
12:5). That was the average person’s wages for ten months. Consider
how much you make in ten months and then ask yourself whether you
would spend that much for one alabaster vial of perfume.
This unidentified woman came to the table where Jesus
was reclining with Simon and His disciples, and she poured the flask
of oil on His head. She anointed Him with oil. It seems that she
recognized Him as the Anointed One, which in Greek is the word
Christos, from which we derive the word Christ. She
recognized that the one who was reclining at the table was her
Messiah, who was anointed by the Holy Spirit at His baptism (3:16).
This scene is such a stark contrast to what was going on
behind closed doors at the palace of Caiaphas. There, the Jewish
leaders were conferring together about how they could kill Jesus. In
Bethany, an unidentified woman was performing an extravagant act of
love, devotion, and adoration for her Messiah.
But her extravagant act was interrupted by the
disciples. Matthew tells us: But when His disciples saw it, they
were indignant, saying, “Why this waste? For this fragrant oil
might have been sold for much and given to the poor” (vv. 8–9).
The disciples were appalled to see such valuable oil spilled out so
copiously. How dare this woman pour all this perfume on Jesus. Did
she not realize how much money she was wasting? Did she not realize
how much good could have been accomplished if the perfume had been
sold and the proceeds given to the poor? I do not know whether this
woman had done all the math, but for her, nothing was too good for
Jesus. By her act of devotion and sacrifice, she shamed the
disciples. They should have praised her, saying, “What a
magnificent thing you have done for our Messiah.” Instead, they
were indignant.
The disciples’ attitude did not escape Jesus’
attention: But when Jesus was aware of it, He said to them, “Why
do you trouble the woman? For she has done a good work for Me. For
you have the poor with you always, but Me you do not have always. For
in pouring this fragrant oil on My body, she did it for My burial”
(vv. 10–12). Jesus defended the woman. He told them she had done “a
good work for Me.” I think a better translation would be “a
beautiful work for Me.” What she did, the materials she did it
with, and her motive in doing it were all beautiful. And what was
that motive? Jesus said she did it to prepare Him for His burial.
Bodies were often anointed with valuable perfume to show respect to
the deceased. Because Jesus was given a hasty burial after He died on
the cross and then rose again on the first day of the week before the
women could anoint His body with spices, this was the only anointing
for burial He was to receive.
As part of this rebuke of His disciples, Jesus uttered a
sentence that has often been misunderstood and misapplied: “You
have the poor with you always, but Me you do not have always.”
Several years ago, I preached at a church in inner-city Cleveland, an
area that was afflicted with all the problems of urban blight—drug
abuse, crime, and so on. The minister of that church had been there
for many years, but he told me that he had had more than fifteen
associates during the time he had been the pastor. When I asked him
why he had experienced such high turnover, he explained that young
ministers would come out of seminary with zeal to do good works, but
when they came to inner-city Cleveland, they rarely lasted more than
a couple of years because they were defeated by the poverty, the
squalor, the crime, and the hopelessness. That made me curious as to
how he had been able to stay there so long, so I asked him about it.
He said: “Because of what Jesus said: ‘You have the poor with you
always.’ I didn’t come here to eliminate poverty, because I knew
that wasn’t going to happen. I came here to minister to people in
the middle of it.”
That is precisely what Jesus meant. He was not saying
that we are free to ignore the poor. He was giving His disciples a
realistic picture of ministry. We are not going to get rid of
poverty. We are not going to get rid of pain. We are not going to get
rid of suffering. But we are to minister in the middle of it. Thus,
selling one alabaster flask of perfume would not have solved the
problem of poverty.
Finally Jesus told His disciples, “Assuredly, I say
to you, wherever this gospel is preached in the whole world, what
this woman has done will also be told as a memorial to her” (v.
13). Jesus knew that the gospel was going to be preached in the whole
world. He knew that the good news He had proclaimed was not going to
be snuffed out on a cross outside of Jerusalem. Rather, it would
spread everywhere, and when it did, the woman’s act of devotion
would be told as a memorial to her. She would be honored for her
extravagant gift to honor the Lord Jesus Christ.
The great ones of the Jews were meeting in the high
priest’s palace to hatch their grand schemes. Most of those men are
forgotten and their plots are unknown to history. But the action of a
simple woman who loved Jesus has indeed been told all over the world
as the gospel has been preached.
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XII. The Death of the King-Messiah (26:1–27:66)
A. The Hateful Plot Against Jesus (26:1–5)
26:1–2. As He was leaving the Mount of Olives,
Jesus gave clear instruction about His impending death. The One who
will judge will Himself be judged. He mentioned His impending
crucifixion (cf. 20:19), suggesting that He knew exactly what was
going on. He was no victim (in the truest sense) in what would
transpire. After two days the Passover is coming (v. 2)
indicates that Matthew is narrating events from late Tuesday
afternoon or early evening that, in Jewish reckoning, would have been
the start of Wednesday. Note the deliberate effort on Jesus’ part
to tie His death to the celebration of the Passover (see the comments
on Ex 12–13). He is the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the
world (Jn 1:29). For a harmonization of the various chronological
problems associated with the timing of events around Good Friday, see
Carson, “Matthew,” 528–32.
26:3–5. Jesus’ teaching became so caustic
against the leaders that they saw the need to kill Him. The high
priest (v. 3) was appointed by the Romans to four-year terms, and
one of his primary responsibilities, for which he also utilized his
family, was to direct the affairs of the temple. The temple cleansing
was a frontal attack against them. Caiaphas (a name that means
“Inquisitor”) was appointed by procurator Valerius Gratus and
held the position from AD 18–36, a much longer tenure than
traditionally was allowed, attesting to his political finesse. His
father-in-law Annas served before him and continued to wield
considerable authority (cf. Lk 3:2; Jn 11:47–53; 18:13–24). Their
plot would not be carried out until after the festival (v. 5),
the weeklong celebration of Passover and the Feast of Unleavened
Bread. By then the pilgrims, who were enthusiastic about Jesus, would
have returned to their homes.
B. The Act of Kindness for Jesus (26:6–13)
26:6–13. The episode at Bethany is a remarkably
tender demonstration sandwiched between the most reprehensible deeds.
The alabaster vial (v. 7) was probably a fine, translucent
white gypsum bottle. Costly perfume was typically made by
combining exotic oils and extracts of various spices and flowers.
Mark 14:5 and Jn 12:5 indicate that it was worth about 300 denarii,
or about 300 days’ wages. The disciples reacted so strongly (vv.
8–9) because, during Passover, it was customary for affluent Jews
to offer financial help to the poor. The perfume could have been sold
for that. But Jesus defended the woman (vv. 10–13), saying that her
act would serve to prepare Me for burial (v. 12). When a rich
person died the body was doused in perfume then wrapped in a burial
shroud. More spices were placed in its folds, not to mummify the body
but to cut the odors of decomposition for tombs were not airtight.
However, crucified criminals did not receive such treatment. After a
body was left to putrefy on a cross, it was usually cast into the
city dump, in Jerusalem’s case the Hinnom Valley on the southeast
edge of Jerusalem, and received no burial at all. What this woman did
honored Jesus and gave Him burial preparations that, under normal
circumstances, He otherwise would not have received.
C. The Plans Judas Formed (26:14–16)2
