Mark 14:1  After two days was the feast of the passover, and of unleavened bread: and the chief priests and the scribes sought how they might take him by craft, and put him to death.
2  But they said, Not on the feast day, lest there be an uproar of the people.

The Gospels follow a general chronological order. They do not all cover the same thing, nor do they all cover each event with the same amount of detail. God is the Author of the Scriptures. He directed holy men to write as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. In our text, we are told here it is was now two days before the feast of the passover.
The passover was a very important feast for the nation of Israel. The lamb is used by God to demonstrate the nature of man. It is also used to demonstrate the nature of the eternal Son of God.
At the passover, it was necessary to remove all leaven from the homes and only unleavened bread was allowed in that feast. Leaven is often used in the Bible as a picture of sin. Leaven is a very small part of a loaf of bread. However, leaven has a very prominent affect on the dough.
The Bible declares that we are born as lost sinners. In fact, the Bible even declares that we are conceived in sin. As that baby develops in the womb of its mother, it is already a sinner.
We do not become sinners because we sin. We sin because we are sinners from the very moment of conception.
The Jews were commanded to remove all leaven from their houses and to eat only unleavened bread during the time of the passover and the days of unleavened bread. Most of them did not grasp the significance of either of those events. Most Jews still do not grasp the significance of those events. Most professing Christians today, still do not seem to grasp the significance of the Lord Jesus Christ being the fulfilment of the typology that God instituted until the perfect time of Jesus’ crucifixion.
In our text, the chief priests and scribes had lost any understanding of the purpose of the passover. They did not realize it, but they were going to be instrumental in placing Jesus Christ in the right place as the Passover Lamb.
Jesus Christ went willingly to the cross. God used ungodly individuals, who were hardened in their sin, to be the human vehicle to put Jesus on the cross. They were too busy scheming to allow God to show them what they were missing. Their hatred for God was blinding them to the facts.
There is a danger when we allow our preconceived ideas to override the facts. Islam is a philosophy, an ideology that is built on the hatred of God. Catholicism, which is actually closely related to Islam, is also a religion that is built on the hatred of God. Protestantism is a system that is built on a hatred of God as well. Any religion that seeks to put something in the place of the true God, is built upon a hatred of God.
In our text, we see that the chief priests and scribes were very concerned about optics. They were very concerned about how the people would look at them. They knew the people saw something in Jesus and they were not yet convinced that He needed to be destroyed. The passover still held some significance to the people, even though the true spiritual significance of it was lost. The chief priests and scribes were not interested in teaching the truth. They wanted to get rid of the main distraction to their lies.
They needed the praise of men to survive. False religion is all about numbers. That is all they have. True faith is built upon Truth. True faith does not make numbers the goal. True faith has God as its source and its goal.
We have noted before that the chief priests and scribes were not even a God-ordained group of people. There were no chief priests ordained by God. There was a high priest and there were Levites who served in the tabernacle and later the temple. God appointed the high priest. There was only to be one high priest at a time. That person was from among the Levites and he was to be chosen by God. He was the only one who could enter into the holiest place in the temple. He needed to offer sacrifices for his own sins before he could offer sacrifices for the sins of the people. He could only enter that place once a year, at God’s appointed time.
The chief priests and scribes had a very inflated view of themselves. They wanted to keep that position alive and everything they did was calculated on their own personal success.
The apostle Paul talked of dying daily. Jesus Christ is the superior example of that fact. He set aside His glory in order to become a man. In John 17 He prayed that His Father would give Him back the glory He had prior to coming to this earth. God honoured that prayer. However, Jesus Christ needed to follow through with God’s plan of laying down His life for the sheep. Jesus did that. He never failed in anything that had been planned before the foundation of the world.
The chief priests and scribes would cause an uproar among the people. They would be used to drive the people into a frenzy of hatred so that they would cry out ‘crucify Him, crucify Him’. People are easily stirred up if they operate in the flesh. The New Evangelical leaders understand this as well. The ‘worship teams’ are a tool to that effect. The audience needs to be manipulated to prepare them to accept the deception of the speaker. Just as in the Gospels, the people were unguarded and they were easily moved emotionally, at the right time.
It is important to know the Lord and walk in the Spirit. Even born again Christians can be manipulated by music and smooth talkers. If we are not submitted to the will of God, we will find ourselves doing things, and saying things that we would not otherwise do. We need to consciously seek God’s direction in our lives, if we are truly His children.
Pastor Bartel