Matthew 26

Matthew 26 begins the story of Jesus's final day before He was crucified. Jesus had fully condemned the religious leaders in Jerusalem, and they became desperate to get rid of Him.

Bethany is about two miles east of Jerusalem - a walk that would go through the Mount of Olives. We saw earlier that Jesus went to Bethany and returned to the city the next day (when He cursed the fig tree), so He must have chosen to stay at His friend's house in Bethany instead of sleeping somewhere in the city.

The annointing for burial was a sign of honor. When a poor person died their relatives would not be able to afford an expensive burial, but when a king died no expense would have been spared to honor him. The fact that the perfume that Jesus was annointed with was so expensive that it alarmed Judas show that it was of the highest value. The woman was annointing Jesus for a king's burial.

Judas was driven by money. Perhaps he was greedy, or perhaps he could not give up control and was trying to figure out how to make things go the way he thought they should go. Either way, he was not completely surrendered to the authority and leading of Jesus. He made very serious mistakes, but Jesus also knew that he was making them. Jesus was never not in control of the situation. In fact some say that Jesus is the one who forced the Pharisees to act on the Passover night. They might have been scheming for Judas to hand Jesus over at some future time, but Jesus ordered Judas to go and do what he was going to do now - perhaps forcing the Pharisees' hand.

One finer observation about the unleavened bread - Passover was a meal that was taken the night before the beginning of the Feast of Unleavened bread. They were eating unleavened bread when Jesus broke it and said that it was His body. Jesus also equated leaven to evil, so He was saying that His body was sinless.

Jesus knew that Peter's faith would falter, but He also already had grace in store for him.

Jesus went to pray in Gethsemane. The building where they pressed the oil out of olives is called a "gath shamine" so it's likely that the place was not named Gethsamane, but it was near an olive press building in an orchard. Not an significant detail, just interesting.

The cup that Jesus prayed to pass was the cup of God's wrath. He drank it all for us.

Jesus was praying while he asked the three disciples to keep watch. Watchmen are both guards on the city wall, keeping watch for enemies, and prophets who intercede for God's people - keeping watch over the faith of the people. The disciples failed at their duty three times, but Jesus did not punish them - instead He willingly turned Himself over into the hands of the enemy in order to save them.

Then Jesus was brought before the people who knew who He was, who had to bribe false witnesses in order to deny who He was, and who completely rejected Him by slapping Him and spitting on Him. They rejected Jesus as harshly as anyone can be rejected.

And right along with them we see Peter outside also rejecting Jesus. Jesus was completely abandonded and rejected by the end of the night. But still He stayed faithful to His mission and went to the cross for all of us.