Sealing the Deal...

Matthew 26:1-5 When Jesus had finished all these sayings, he said to his disciples, “You know that after two days the Passover is coming, and the Son of Man will be delivered up to be crucified.” Then the chief priests and the elders of the people gathered in the palace of the high priest, whose name was Caiaphas, and plotted together in order to arrest Jesus by stealth and kill him. But they said, “Not during the feast, lest there be an uproar among the people.” This is the strangest of contracts. The two parties are both signing off on the deal separately from one another. For His part, Jesus had imparted to His discples the warnings and instructions needed to carry on after His departure. For the religious leaders, they had their plan to silence this trouble-maker. They were both moving towards the same goal: His death, but for far different reasons: His was to provide salvation to His own, and to fulfill all the promises made about Him as Messiah. Theirs was to seek to silence the living conviction brought to their souls by His very presence. They got the short end of the deal, for the sought the impossible. But they could not get themselves to meet with Him again face to face and accept His part of the deal: the offer of the salvation we all need.