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Preached in Markham Baptist Church, April 8, 2007
SECURE THE TOMB!The Bible is generally considered to be a serious book. And when we read it we take it seriously and picture the people in it as being serious. To be sure the people of God were filled with joy. Jesus must have had a delightful sense of humour because everyone wanted to be around Him. But on the whole, everyone in the Bible is very serious. And the Bible is a serious book. But this morning in the midst of the wonder and miracle and the thrill of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, I think we read of something very humorous. In our text, the day after Jesus has been put to death on the cross we see the chief priests and the Pharisees come to Pilate at verse 63 and say, “Sir, while that deceiver [Jesus] was alive he said that he would rise again on the third day. So give the order for the tomb to be made secure until the third day.” And Pilate says – this is rich – he says at verse 65, “Take a guard. Go make the tomb as secure as you know how.” As I read that I can’t believe that Pilate said that with a serious tone in his voice. He may have said it out of impatience. He may have had enough of the chief priests during these last few days. They had brought Jesus to him to be tried – he really didn’t want anything to do with the whole thing – but they persisted. And here they were again, the next day and he simply wanted them out of his hair, so he dismissively says, “Yes, yes take a guard and go and make the tomb as secure as you know how.” He may have said it that way. But as I read this text, I can’t help but wonder if Pilate wasn’t saying these words with a bit of laughing mockery in his voice. I can’t help but wonder if Pilate isn’t making a joke here and poking fun at the chief priests and the Pharisees. He is mocking their fears. And I wonder if we couldn’t expand the conversation between Pilate and the Pharisees to help us see the truth of what is going on here. If we were the proverbial fly on the wall, and we could listen in on this expanded conversation, I think we would see Pilate with this perplexed look on his face. You can almost see the wheels turning in Pilate’s head. “Let me get this straight - You want to put a guard in front of a tomb? You want to guard the body of a dead man? You do know that he is dead, right?” The Pharisees would say, “O, yes, we know he’s dead. He hung on that cross until he was dead and a soldier put a spear in his side bringing a sudden flow of blood and water. (See John 19:34) O, yes, he is dead.” “And you want to put a guard in front of the tomb of a dead man?” Pilate asks. “O yes, yes, yes.” “Can I ask why?” And they give us the answer at verse 64, “Well, you see the disciples of Jesus might come along and steal the body and tell people that he has been raised from the dead.” And if Pilate looks perplexed before, well now he is just dumbfounded. And I can hear him saying to the Pharisees, “You mean that band of 12 men? You are afraid of those 12 fishermen? One has just committed suicide so it’s down to 11. You have just demonstrated to the whole city that you have the power to kill a man for blasphemy. You are able to sway the Roman justice system. You have all this power and you are afraid of 11 fishermen with no education, no army, who are on this very day running scared fearing for their lives, who did nothing to stop you from crucifying their leader and you think they will risk their very lives in order to steal a dead rotting corpse from the grave?” And the Pharisees reply, “Um, yes”. “Well that’s easily solved. Why don’t you just round up the disciples, have them arrested?” “No, no, no. That won’t be necessary. Just post a guard as we requested.” Do you get the sense that they did not really fear the disciples. What they really fear is that Jesus Christ would actually rise from the dead. And Pilate could have asked another question at this point and it comes out of something that the Pharisees say in the last part of verse 64 they say, “This last deception,” – referring to their belief that the disciples might steal the body and say Jesus rose – “This last deception will be worse than the first.” What is the first deception that they are referring to? I believe it is Jesus’ claim to be the Son of God. So Pilate could have asked, “You do know that he was just a man, right?” “O, of course he was just a man. All that talk that he was the Son of God is utter nonsense. (Like 22:70) We know that he said that He and the Father are one (John 10:30). But that was the ravings of a mad man (John 10:20). And yes, there were all sorts of so-called miracles but the man was demon-possessed. He was a sinner of the worst kind; there was no truth in him whatsoever.” Pilate says, “I heard that he raised the man Lazarus from the dead.” “Smoke and mirrors, a mere trick!” And so Pilate asks, “So, you’re not afraid that the one who raised Lazarus might actually break the bonds of death himself and rise again as he said he would?” The Pharisees sigh, “Will you please post a guard?” And I wonder if Pilate couldn’t contain himself at this point and breaks into laughter at the request. “You go and make the tomb as secure as you know how.” So they did. Verse 66 of our text tells us they did three things. First, there is a stone in front of the grave. According to historical and archaeological evidence a two-ton stone would have been used as a doorway for the tomb. The stone would have been in a slotted runway above and to the left of the entrance to the tomb before a body was placed inside. It would have had a wedge to keep it in place. Once the body had been placed inside the tomb, the wedge would have been removed and the stone would have rolled over the doorway to block any potential grave robbers. It has been suggested that it would have taken almost twenty men to move the stone. Next, the text says that they sealed the stone. This seal was simple enough – it was a rope that was slung across the surface of the stone and attached to the sides of the tomb wall. The stone could not have been moved without breaking the seal. It was a simple device. But the penalty for breaking the seal was very serious – it was the official sign of the government. As soon as a broken seal was discovered, the one responsible would be sought, found and automatically executed by crucifixion upsidedown. No one dared break the Roman seal. Third, they posted a guard. Now we know from history that a guard would have been composed of 16 men. Four would have been posted in front of the tomb and the remaining twelve would have been in groups of four fanning out in a semi-circle. These were not Jewish temple guards, but Roman legionnaires; these were disciplined soldiers, the best of the best. They would have all known that the penalty for sleeping on the job was execution by being burned to death with their own clothes. So it was done. The tomb was made as secure as they knew how. All seemed well. But then, we read at verse 2 of chapter 28, “There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone, and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men.” And the angel spoke to the women who had come to see the tomb and said, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen, just as he said.” The rock was rolled away! The seal was broken! The guards were ineffective! They could not hold Him. Death could not hold Him! He is risen! And Christianity began its triumphant expansion into God’s world. Pilate said, “Go make the tomb as secure as you know how.” Secure against God? Secure against the life-shattering power of the resurrection? How absurd! Here is the greatest power the world has ever known – the power over life and death, sin and the grave. How could a stone, an official seal and few soldiers secure the grave against such a power? How could any of these keep the Giver of life in the grave? Their efforts were useless. But still they tried. And this is what makes the whole thing so funny. Maybe I’m giving Pilate too much credit, but he could have been thinking, “If Jesus Christ is God in the flesh, if His kingdom is not of this world as he said, if he really does have 10,000 angels at his command – then it doesn’t matter if they put thirty stones, sealed with thirty official Roman seals and a whole legion of armed men in front of that tomb – there is nothing on this earth that is going to stop Jesus Christ from rising from the dead!” So Pilate laughingly said, “Go and make the tomb as secure as you know how.” I wonder if that really isn’t a picture of many a human life. The tomb is like a life - dead without the presence of Christ. But we are comfortable in our state and we often try to secure our lives against the presence of the Living One, Jesus Christ. We try to push Him away and we try to make our lives as secure as we know how against Him. History certainly proves this to be true. Men and women have all tried to secure their hearts and their interests against the power of the resurrected Lord. The chief priests tried to seal up the tomb through force. Then they tried to seal up the truth of the resurrection through lies and deception. We read at verse 11 of chapter 28 that the guards go to the chief priests. That’s important to note. They don’t go back to their own barracks – they go to the Jewish priests. Why? Because they knew they wouldn’t be believed by their own superiors and as I said, they would have been executed for sleeping on the job. They go to the temple priests so that they will plead their case for them. At verse 13 we discover that they come up with a plan - they are to say that the disciples stole the body. And we read at verse 14 – if this report gets to the governor, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble. And Matthew tells us that this idea is believed by many in his day. Having failed to keep Jesus in the grave by force, the chief priests now try lies. But throughout history their testimony has been seen for what it is – utter nonsense. To believe that the timid disciples could overpower an entire Roman guard, move a two-ton stone and revive a dead Jesus is to have more faith than I can muster. I find faith in Jesus Christ to be easy in some ways because it is based on fact - historical truth. But there are those who try to fortify their hearts against the risen Lord by believing lies and wild theories. Even today there are those who believe in the most outlandish things and try to secure their lives against the truth of the resurrection. Last year in my Easter sermon I outlined a number of popular theories designed to explain away the truth of the resurrection. I won’t go into them again this year, but I thought I had covered them all until this past month when I had lunch with a woman who told me that her church had just completed the most interesting study of Tom Harpur’s book entitled the Pagan Christ. She told me that she found it very helpful and she believed it to be true. Tom Harpur, one-time Anglican priest and then religion editor for the Toronto Star essentially believes that Jesus Christ is not a historical figure – that He never existed. He doubts that Pontius Pilate ever existed and King Herod also was simply a man made up by the gospel writers. The whole idea of Jesus Christ came from Egyptian myths and He is simply a model of the best of these pagan myths. Unfortunately, somewhere along the line, according to Tom Harpur, people stopped believing in the myth and started believing that Jesus was an actual figure in actual time and space. What a great theory – how convenient. We don’t have to deal with any of the hard sayings of Jesus, we don’t have to really follow Him, because He’s just a creation of some very imaginative people. And the resurrection – well it never happened. Why fool ourselves with such a silly thought? But if you read Tom Harpur’s book carefully you discover that it isn’t very scholarly. He relies on questionable translations, discredited sources and few facts. I find that I can believe in almost anything if I don’t worry about the facts. So we can bring one attempt after another to secure your heart against the reality of the resurrection, but its truth continues to shatter to pieces all such foolishness. For when we look at the facts that prove the resurrection they are staggering. There are the eyewitness accounts of Mary Magdalene and the other Mary and the immediate disciples and then the larger group of 500 (1 Corinthians 15). We have the changed lives of the disciples, we have the existence of the Christian church, we have the moving of the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday. And so many facts to deal with. The evidence for the resurrection is staggering. So, Dr. Simon Greenleaf (a Harvard University professor of Law) states, “According to the laws of legal evidence used in courts of law, there is more evidence for the historical fact of the resurrection of Jesus Christ than for just about any other event in history.”1 C. S. Lewis, a literary genius was also interested in the resurrection. After evaluating the basis and evidence for Christianity, Lewis concluded that in other religions there was “no such historical claim as in Christianity.”2 He was too experienced in literary criticism to regard the gospel as myth. He had no other choice but to accept the resurrection as fact. So the chief priests began a tradition in the world – they tried to fortify their hearts against the transforming power of Christ by force and then with silly ideas – by ignoring the facts. But they are nothing compared to the power of the resurrection. The Church grew and became strong in spite of the lies spread by the chief priests. And Luke tells us in the book of Acts, “The Word of God spread. The number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly,” and listen to this – “a large number of priests became obedient to the faith.” Go make the tomb as secure as you know how – against the power of the resurrected Lord? James Boice, in his sermon on this text3 suggests that we do not need to read very far into the New Testament to discover a man by the name of Saul, later called Paul, who persecuted Christians with great enthusiasm. It is said that when Stephen, the first Christian martyr, was being stoned to death that Saul held the coats of those who were throwing the stones. Being a proper Jew himself Saul hated the Christians. He hated the fact that they apparently disregarded the law, the law which he loved and cherished and followed so wholeheartedly. So he chased and persecuted Christians throughout Jerusalem – and when he ran out of Christians to persecute there, he got special letters ruling religious council to go to another region, Damascus, to persecute them there. A little later in his life though Paul would describe his past to King Agrippa and say, “You know it was like I was kicking against the goads.” (Acts 26:14) That is, I was like an animal fighting against the one who is prodding me to go in the right direction. The more I resisted, the harder the prod became. It means that while Paul was physically persecuting Christians, he was spiritually and mentally battling against the influence of the risen Lord. Every night he would try to go to sleep and he would toss and he would turn and he would wrestle with the truth of the risen Lord. Perhaps the image of Stephen who testified to the reality of the risen Lord would walk across his pillow. He was fighting against the reality of the risen Lord and he was trying to make his heart as secure as he could against the truth of the risen Lord by doing everything right, by keeping the law. Being the best Pharisee that he could. But then one day it happened. He was walking along the road to Damascus and a blinding light from heaven blazed all around him and he heard a voice say, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” It was the risen Lord and Saul would never be the same again. He had tried to secure himself against the risen Lord but it was no good. Such is the power of our Lord. Scripture tells of another person who has always tried to secure himself against the risen Jesus Christ. Satan himself. He started in the garden of Eden bringing Adam and Eve down into sin. Then he continuously sought to wipe out any hope of a Messiah by attacking God’s people – enslaving them in Egypt and luring them into sin again and again. Then when he could not stop the coming of the Messiah, he tried to stop the Messiah himself – tempting him with material wealth, power and authority. Later he would get his own friends to betray him and forsake him. What glee Satan must have felt when he goaded the people to cry out, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” What delight he must have experienced when the rough nails were forced through Jesus’ feet and hands and the friend of sinners eventually weakened and died. What bliss when Christ was buried. What ecstasy when the Master’s lifeless body was placed in the tomb and the grave sealed. Satan had won! The devil had killed God’s Son. He had secured his evil kingdom against the second person of the divine Trinity. Yes, Yes! Satan had made his plans as secure as he knew how! But then the resurrection came – and Satan was proven to be as effective as the soldiers who guarded the tomb. Satan did not give up there. Indeed, to this day he did not give up. Satan still works against the power of the resurrected One. He persecutes the church – raising up this evil leader, and this evil state to wipe out Christianity. There was first Nero, who burned Christians like human torches. Then Diocletian made it a crime to be a Christian. And so it continued throughout history to our very day where we have seen the rise of Communism, and dictators of all sorts. “We will erase the church,” is their cry. We will make the name of Jesus history. But it’s no use. You can’t fight a risen Lord. You can’t subdue one who has broken the bonds of death. You can try to make the tomb as secure as you know how, but it won’t hold Him. And what about you? Have you been confronted with the power of the resurrection? Are you trying to secure yourself against His power? The chief priests and the Pharisees tried to secure their world against Him with force and refusing to believe the truth. Saul tried to secure Himself with religious zealousness and traditions. Maybe Jesus Christ has been speaking to you and you have been trying to secure yourself against him, securing your own values and agenda. You have heard Christ’s gospel, but you have tried to keep Him politely in His place. But let me give you a warning – Jesus is not easily contained. You push Him back and He comes forward again. You ignore Him and He persists to make Himself known. What are you going to do against the resurrection power of the One who so many call Lord? How are you going to make yourself secure against Jesus? James Boice makes several suggestions of what you can do to secure yourself against the truth of Jesus Christ. You can begin with excessive activity. That shouldn’t be too difficult in our country and in our time. Our world seems preoccupied with activity and even rewards those who are busiest. If you are busy enough, you will not have time to think. Fill your time. Schedule your idle hours. Take a class in art or foreign languages or computers or aerobics or any of a thousand things. Then you will not have to go to Bible study. You can claim that you are too busy when a Christian friend invites you. Play golf or join the Running Room on Sundays. Then you will not have to go to worship. Above all, fill your evenings with work and television programs or the latest best seller. Then you will not have to read the Bible and you can say that you are too tired to pray. Second, allow yourself to believe that you don’t need a Saviour. Don’t believe you are sinner and that you have fallen short of the glory of God. Don’t allow your conscience to bother you about your sins. After all, if there is no God, if Jesus Christ never really rose from the dead, what do you have to worry about? Don’t weep over your sins. Just continue to live your life with no worries – be happy. Make it as secure as you can against Jesus. Third, ignore the church and allow yourself to believe that it is full of hypocrites anyway. And lead the best moral life you can so that when you die people will gather around your casket and say, “He really was a good man. He never said an unkind word. He was compassionate and even though he didn’t make time for God in his life nor did he accept Christ as his Saviour, I’m sure God will be merciful to Him and accept Him into heaven.” Not. And finally I have one more suggestion. You can become religious. Religion is a great defence against true godliness. But if you take this course, I suggest that you do not learn to much about Christianity. Instead submerge yourself in ceremony. Do things, not because they are meaningful – you might have to think about their meaning – but for tradition’s sake or for mere looks. Yes, that will help. Go make your life as secure as you can with religion. Attach your seals, post your guards. Erect your barricades. But I am afraid that it will not be enough. Jesus has broken seals before. He has scattered countless guards. What will you do when the light bursts around you from heaven and the voice asks you, “Saul, John, Mary, Peter, Susan, why do you persecute me? Why do you push me away? What will you do when the tomb springs open and Jesus of Nazareth confronts you in resurrected splendour?” I will tell you what I would do. I would give up fighting. I would lay down my seals and stones and guards and feverish activity. I would lay aside my sins, my clever thought out arguments, my pretentiousness. My friends he will come to you if you will invite him to be Saviour of your life. To forgive you of your sins. To repent of those sins. To take His proper place on the throne of your heart. He will come in and make all things new. He will wash you whiter than snow. He will take away the burden of guilt and He will take away the fear of the grave. He will give you a never-dying hope and the certainty that when you give up your life in this world, you will simply enter into a more glorious life in paradise above with Him who lives forever. When Pilate said, Go and make the tomb as secure as you know how. You do know he was joking, right? Copyright MBC and Tom Cullen - April 2007
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