The Final Countdown Begins..
14 Now the Passover and the Festival of Unleavened Bread were only two days away, and the chief priests and the teachers of the law were scheming to arrest Jesus secretly and kill him. 2 “But not during the festival,” they said, “or the people may riot.”
Horsham: 20th October 2025
The authorities in Jerusalem have a problem. They have had enough of this troublesome rabbi. They want rid of him. Not for the first time, they are looking for a plan to do that. This is the Wednesday, just two days before the Passover celebrations, which will be followed by the Festival of Unleavened Bread. That, in a nutshell is their problem.
Passover was one of the major festivals of the Jewish year (the others were Festivals of Weeks (Shauvot) and Tabernacles (Sukkot)). So many people have travelled for the celebration that a city which has a permanent population of less than 100,000 people, has grown exponentially with visitors for the festivals. Some commentators suggest that there might have been close to 2-3 million people crammed into the city (Barclay, Loc 6534). This overcrowding would of itself create a volatile atmosphere, even before you add in the religious fervor which was an attendant part of the celebration.
Just a few days ago, Jesus was welcomed by crowds of people as a hero. They called him the King, riding the colt of a donkey. Some in that crowd hailed him as the Messiah. For the Jewish leaders, things were getting out of control.
Since then, he has been commuting between Bethany and Jerusalem, where he is spending much of the day in the Temple. In recent days he has offered a masterclass in dealing with, and sometimes publicly humiliating, the religious leaders who have tried again and again to catch him out and arrest him for blasphemy.
The problem for the religious leaders is that the crowd, or more accurately a significant number of people in this crowd, are believing that this Jesus is, or might be the Messiah. If the Jewish leaders have him arrested at the wrong time, or in the wrong place, there will be serious public disorder, which will bring the Romans out in strength. Not only would the festival be disrupted, but that could only lead to greater violence towards and greater suppression of the Jewish people.
Their determination to do something about Jesus is now at fever pitch. One way or another, they will arrest him. They will do away with him.
“But not during the festival,” they said, “or the people may riot.”
End Piece
To me, one of the most surprising features of this whole story is that Jesus has, so far, escaped arrest. There must have been many opportunities. At this point, they could surely arrange for a staged robbery or violent assault at a quiet location, perhaps on the path between Jerusalem and Bethany. Jesus could easily be done away with.
At the start of his ministry, one of his first encounters was with John the Baptist, who saw Jesus approaching and said “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29)
The Passover is celebrated with the killing of an unblemished lamb, commemorating the moment when the spirit of death ‘passed over’ the people of Israel before their escape from Egypt (You can read the story in Exodus 12).
Could it be that it was God’s will that the death of Jesus, the unblemished Lamb of God, should take place at such a time as it is inextricably linked to the Passover festival.
Every attempt to catch him out and arrest him has failed. So far. These verses stand out as a kind of punctuation mark. They mark a tipping point. They stand as an introduction to the sequence of events which will take Jesus to Gethsemane, to prison, and to the cross.
Things are about to move forwards, and when they do, they will move rapidly.
As in all things of His Kingdom, this is God’s timing. For in His Kingdom,
‘There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens:’ (Ecclesiastes 3:1)