Matthew 26:54

How then should the scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be? In that hour said Jesus to the multitudes, Are ye come out as against a robber with swords and staves to seize me? I sat daily in the temple teaching, and ye took me not.

Jesus' emphasis was ever upon the fulfillment of God's word. It is not merely the death of Christ, but the death of Christ "according to the scriptures," that constitutes the true gospel (1 Corinthians 15:3ff). The Scriptures were the only weapon on which Christ relied in his encounter with the prince of evil (Matthew 4:4, which see). The thesis of his life was "and the scriptures cannot be broken" (John 10:35). As for the expression "thus it must be," see notes on Matthew 18:7.

Christ's mention of sitting daily in the temple, teaching, confirms the existence of an extensive ministry of Christ in Jerusalem. Dummelow noted that,

This cannot merely refer to two, or at the most three days' ministry during Holy Week, but indicates a more extended ministry at Jerusalem, at an earlier period, as the fourth gospel relates.[21]

Jesus' mention of his teaching daily in the temple is viewed as an appeal over the heads of the arresting authorities to the general opinion of all the people, and eventually of all mankind, with reference to the essential injustice of this night-time arrest, so utterly incongruous and out of joint with what the situation required.