Matthew 16:21

Christ's First Prophecy Concerning His Passion. From that time forth began Jesus to show unto His disciples how that He must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day.

The disciples had made a splendid confession of their faith, proving conclusively that they had the right, saving knowledge concerning Jesus, their Redeemer. Christ therefore thought it the appropriate time to prepare them gradually for the great climax, the culmination of His work. They should now be able to bear the news. He began to show them, to give them explicit and detailed information. A very significant word: He must go to Jerusalem; a divine obligation was resting upon Him, it was a necessity which He had taken upon Himself to fulfill the will of His heavenly Father by His death for all mankind, Psalms 40:8. The elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, twenty-four of each class of these forming the great Sanhedrin, or chief council of the Jews. That these enemies of His would succeed in putting Him to death, but that He would be raised on the third day: that was the sum and substance that Jesus attempted to make clear to the disciples from the Scriptures of the Old Testament.