Dear Friends,

Sometimes it looks as if everything has gone wrong. Then comes the temptation to hopelessness. Today’s devotional will help all of us to remember Who is on the throne at just such times. God bless you.

Because of Calvary,

John Janney

• Matthew 26:2

  Matthew 26:2   English Standard Version (ESV)
  2 “You know that after two days the Passover is coming, and the Son of Man will be delivered up to be crucified.”

Matthew 26:2

“Let me read on beyond our text: ‘Ye know that after two days is the feast of the Passover, and the Son of man is betrayed to be crucified. Then assembled together the chief priests, and the scribes, and the elders of the people, into the palace of the high priest, who was called Caiaphas, and consulted that they might take Jesus by subtlety, and kill him. But they said, not on the feast day,’ — mark that, — ‘not on the feast day, lest there be an uproar among the people.’ Now, note this. It must be on the feast day, and it shall be on the feast day; yet they said, ‘not on the feast day.’ But what does it matter what they say? Do you not observe how they were checkmated all round, how their purpose was like the whistling wind, and the eternal purpose stood firm in every particular? They said, ‘We will take him by subtlety, and kill him;’ but they did not, they took him by force. They said, ‘We will kill him;’ but they did not, for he died by the hands of the Romans. They meant to slay him privately, but they could not, for he must be hung up before high noon in the midst of the people. And, above all, they said, ‘not on the feast day, not on the feast day.’ I think I hear old Caiaphas there, with all his wisdom and all his cunning, saying, ‘not on the feast day,’ and Annas and all the priests join in the chorus, ‘not on the feast day. Postpone it a little till the million have departed, the vulgar throng who, perhaps, would make a riot in his favor.’ There they stood with their broad-bordered garments and their phylacteries, and they were of opinion that what Caiaphas had proposed, and Annas had seconded, should be carried unanimously: ‘not on the feast day.’ But Christ had said, ‘After two days is the feast day, and the Son of man is betrayed to be crucified.’ We do not know how it all came to be hurried on against their deliberate will; but Judas ran to them in hot haste, and said, ‘What will ye give me?’ and they were so eager for Christ’s death that they overleaped themselves. ‘We will give you thirty pieces of silver,’ said they; and they weighed them out to him, little thinking how quick he would be about his accursed business. Soon he comes back, and says, ‘He is in the garden; you can easily take him there while he is in prayer with a few of his disciples; I will conduct you thither;’ and ere long the deed of darkness is done. These crafty, cruel men had said, ‘not on the feast day;’ but it was on the feast day, as Jesus had foretold that it would be.”

[Charles Haddon Spurgeon, The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit XLIII, (London: Passmore and Alabaster, 1897), p. 296-297]