Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Good morning, church Sam.
[00:00:05] What a joy to be together. Today we are. Ooh, ooh, there it is.
[00:00:12] Today we are finishing out the Gospel of Matthew.
[00:00:17] It's kind of exciting. That's kind of cool. We started our journey in Matthew here in Emmanuel Fellowship in 2022, right before Advent.
[00:00:28] So we've. It's been a while. The majority of our life as a church has been in the context of going through the Gospel of Matthew. And today we're done. We're finishing it out. And what a finish it is. I am excited for this. We're going to be in Matthew 28 today. If you want to go ahead and turn there in your Bibles, if you don't have a Bible with you, we have house Bibles around the room. Just look in front of you. Hey, we. I say this every week, but I don't want to burn past this. Right. We really believe in the importance of access to God's word here at Emmanuel. And so if you're here today and you don't own a Bible, please just feel free to take one of the pew Bibles or talk to one of the pastors and we'll give you a nicer one. Like, we really want you to have access to God's word. We're going to be in Matthew 28 today, and we're going to look at what is objectively one of the most famous passages in all of Scripture. This will likely be familiar to most of us, but, man, it is worth it. It's. It's worth our attention to sit in this text today. We are going to talk about the empty tomb. We're going to talk about resurrection. We're going to talk about new life in Jesus.
[00:01:40] And by the way, we earned this convo. All right? We. We earned this sermon today. This is the culmination of. Of all the difficult and painful texts we've been working through in the last two months. We didn't shy away from the horrors of the Passion and of the cross. And yet, if you've been with us the last couple months, the horrors of the cross are always kind of held in check by the truth that Jesus was choosing this, that he was in control, that he chose the cross. And why did he do that?
[00:02:20] Well, ultimately, Church, it's because Jesus was leading us to Easter Sunday morning.
[00:02:27] The whole Passion narrative is the truth that Jesus was leading us, not just those with him, all of us, all of his followers, leading us to Easter Sunday morning. And as we're going to see today, nobody expected this.
[00:02:42] Nobody expected Easter Sunday. This would be the perfect time to insert a Spanish Inquisition meme. But I thought, I can't do that many slides back to back, so you just have to imagine that one. Nobody expect it. Yeah, nobody expected Easter Sunday morning. Because how could anyone expect Easter? Like, it's. I gotta be honest, this is where 2000 years of church history and church culture and all these things do us a little bit of a disservice.
[00:03:10] Because the concept of Easter, the concept of resurrection, even though it's weird, it's very normal to us because we've. We live in a day, we live in a culture, we live amongst the people where we've heard that message a bunch of times. But can we stop for a second and just say, how could anyone possibly anticipate Easter?
[00:03:32] Think about your own experience.
[00:03:35] Dead people have a way of staying dead, right?
[00:03:40] That's kind of the default position of dead, is it doesn't stop.
[00:03:45] That's the way of things. But on Easter Sunday morning, the sun rose with people mourning and expecting to honor their dead friend, and yet finding something no one could expect.
[00:03:58] And this is going to be my main point today as we work through this last chapter of Matthew. It's just going to be this, guys.
[00:04:04] Resurrection substantiates the gospel.
[00:04:08] Resurrection substantiates the gospel. Jesus's empty tomb puts teeth to the truth of the gospel claim of forgiveness of sins and new life.
[00:04:20] The resurrection of Jesus. It proves the truth of Jesus's messiahship and Jesus's divinity. Ultimately, resurrection, guys, it empowers the followers of Jesus. It moves us to the amazing gospel work that God has for us. And I fear, like, right out of the bat, my fear on a day like today is that many of us in the room are already mentally zoning out.
[00:04:46] Like, you've heard my introduction. You go, oh, okay, yeah, Resurrection. This is the Easter one. I've heard this one a lot. I know the ending here. I'm good. And mentally, you're already moving on to Chili's for lunch or whatever your Labor Day plans are. Sorry, it's not a lake house. Me neither.
[00:05:02] I want to challenge you guys not to do that.
[00:05:06] I want to challenge you guys to do your best to actually be present and take in this text afresh. Because the resurrection, if the scripture is to be believed in any sense, the claim of the resurrection of Jesus is the single most important event in human history. It's the linchpin of human history.
[00:05:25] If it's actually what it says it is, that's worth considering. Even if it doesn't feel like this monumental world changing thing, even if you've been following Christ for years and you. Yeah, I've got that one down. I believe that one. I want to encourage you there is life for you in this text today.
[00:05:45] There's challenge for you in this text today. Let's do the work of slowing down and being present and hearing what the Spirit might have for us today. Pray with me and we're going to jump into reading. Jesus, we need you this morning, Lord. We need you all the time.
[00:06:04] We live our lives in need of you. But God, today, as we take a few minutes to dig into this text, to consider something that is culturally a well known story and yet practically by our own experience, is, if we're honest, outlandish.
[00:06:18] Lord, we just need you to be our discipler today.
[00:06:21] Slow us down, draw us to the present, teach us Holy Spirit, convict us, challenge us, remind us.
[00:06:30] And ultimately, Lord, we pray that you would use the truth of your resurrection to build our faith and to empower us to the life that you've called us to.
[00:06:39] We need you for this work, Father. So we pray it in your name, Jesus.
[00:06:44] Amen.
[00:06:45] Okay, Matthew 28.
[00:06:49] We're going to start in the first verse. And we read this after the Sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to view the tomb. Now there was a violent earthquake because an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and approached the tomb. He rolled back the stone. It was sitting on it.
[00:07:10] His appearance was like lightning and his clothing was as white as snow. The guards were so shaken by fear of him that they became like dead men.
[00:07:18] The angel told the women, don't be afraid, because I know you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified.
[00:07:24] He's not here, for he is risen, just as he said. So come and see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples he has risen from the dead. And indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee. You will see him there.
[00:07:39] Listen, I have told you so. Departing quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy, they ran to tell his disciples the news. And just then, Jesus met them and said greetings. They came up, took a hold of his feet, and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to leave for Galilee and they will see me there.
[00:08:00] Okay, let's stop there for a minute. Okay, so this is it, the empty tomb, the classic Easter text.
[00:08:09] This is the part where I go, he's risen. And you guys go right yeah, this is exactly it. But let's walk through this narrative. There's something we haven't really talked about much in our time in Matthew, but it's worth noting. It's kind of this textual tension we live in whenever we're studying one of the Gospels, which is this. You know, the four Gospels tell the same story. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. They all tell the story of Jesus's life, his ministry, and then ultimately his death and resurrection. All four of them tell the story, and all four of them, as far as history tells us, were written by eyewitnesses or from eyewitness accounts. Right. We know that Mark was written from the perspective of Peter through John, Mark, his apprentice. Matthew is Levi, one of the apostles. John is the beloved disciple, one of the apostles. And Luke was written through eyewitness testimony. So we know these four Gospels are written close to Jesus's life, mostly by people who saw the events, and they tell the same story, and they're very unified in telling the same story. And yet when you look at the individual scenes within the Gospels, you actually find all sorts of weird little differences, weird little emphases.
[00:09:22] And so it leaves you in kind of an interesting tension when you're studying the gospel, like doing Bible study. And you basically have one of two options. You can do what's called a harmony option, where you go, well, it's normal that if four people saw the same thing and all wrote down what they saw, they would focus on different details. That's how people are. And so we can harmonize the accounts of the Gospels. We can take any of the stories that tell the same story. We can put it together, and we can see how they fit together. And that's a beautiful thing. That's the way the gospel stories are most often preached in our context is from a harmony perspective. And we've done that a little bit kind of on and off as we've gone through Matthew. Sometimes you'll hear us up here go, oh, well, in Luke's telling you the same story, he gives us this detail. Or when John's telling you the same story, he gives us this detail that's appropriate and good, and we've done that. But the other side of that is sometimes it's actually really helpful to look at the text from the perspective of just the Gospel writer you're reading. Because here's the thing.
[00:10:22] The gospel writers knew there were other books of the New Testament, right? They knew people had access to other accounts of Jesus's life, and so they chose to include or not include certain details to give certain emphases.
[00:10:38] We'll talk about this a little bit. But a book like Matthew, Matthew focuses in on the. The way that Jesus fulfills Old Testament prophecy more than any of the other Gospel writers. Right. And so sometimes it's actually really helpful to just look at the story the way that particular writer is emphasizing it, because it draws out some theological point that's unique, that's beneficial. The reason I bring that up, I know that's a little bit of a heady thing, is that as we look at Matthew 28, we're really just going to look at it from Matthew's perspective.
[00:11:11] There's only going to be a couple times that I reference the other Gospels. And in the end of the Gospel, this is where these nuanced differences between become most apparent. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all tell the story of the resurrection. All four gospels culminate in the resurrection. But they tell it from different perspectives and they give very different emphases in how they do that. And I think that's actually important for us. I think it's good for us to sit with what Matthew specifically is challenging us with out of this text. And so if you're reading this and you go, wait, what about this part? What about this part? That's probably because you're just remembering one of the aspects of the other three accounts. And those are good, but we're not going to do much work to harmonize those today. Does that make sense? Okay, cool. So this is the classic Easter text. Let's look at the narrative here and see what Matthew draws out for us. We know that Jesus died and was buried right before a Sabbath, right before the end of the week, on a Friday. And after this, Sabbath was over. On the third day after his death, some of the women came to Jesus's tomb. He was buried in haste because of the approaching Sabbath. They didn't want to be touching a dead body or doing work or those sorts of things. So they got it done quickly. But let's be real.
[00:12:33] It doesn't matter how hasty or not hasty Joseph was when he buried Jesus's body.
[00:12:39] These women have been with Jesus from the beginning.
[00:12:42] These are the women who have followed Jesus in his ministry from day one. They're from Galilee. Many of them are related to Jesus, his cousins or things like that. They've been the ones who financially supported him. They're the ones, and we don't emphasize this bit much, but it's important. They're the ones who didn't actually abandon Jesus when the soldiers showed up in the garden, the disciples, in fear, fled and ran away. Peter denied Christ and hid, right? But the women stood by the cross.
[00:13:15] They stayed with Jesus in the horror and agony of his death. They witnessed his final moments.
[00:13:22] The apostles missed that, right?
[00:13:25] The only reason they knew where Jesus was buried is because these women stayed with his body.
[00:13:31] And they saw Joseph of Arimathea up until that point. A secret follower who made his faith public. After Jesus's death, they saw him come and claim Jesus's body. They followed him at a distance and saw where he buried Jesus.
[00:13:44] These women have been with Jesus from the. From the very beginning.
[00:13:48] And if you know anything about that kind of person, you know there's no way they're going to let some random stranger be the last hands that touch their beloved rabbi.
[00:13:59] And so they come back after the Sabbath is over with spices and ointments to make sure that Jesus's body is given a proper and traditional burial. Right?
[00:14:11] This is an act of mourning.
[00:14:14] It's an act of honor. It's an act of closure.
[00:14:18] This is the act of women who loved a man dearly and need to move on.
[00:14:25] I think we all understand that, right?
[00:14:28] This is what you do when someone precious to you dies.
[00:14:33] You go through the motions of traditions.
[00:14:35] You come to the funeral, you wear black, you buy flowers, you listen to the graveside service, you drop the handful of dirt on the casket. We do all these things, we go through all these rituals because death is terrible when we can do nothing about it but accept it.
[00:14:52] And so we have these motions we go through to help us feel and be present and mourn and move on.
[00:15:00] That is the scene that we step into at the beginning of chapter 28.
[00:15:05] And it really can be nothing else.
[00:15:08] This is how folk have always mourned death, by going through the motions, by trying to find closure, by trying to give last acts of honor and loss.
[00:15:21] But this day, the text tells us something different happened.
[00:15:26] The text gives us this wild scene where the earthquakes as an angel appears and opens up the tomb.
[00:15:34] Yeah, it's pretty wild. I mean, when was the last time you were at a funeral and there was an earthquake and then a lightning guy appeared and it was sitting on the casket and flipped it open for you, like while he was dangling his feet. That's not a normal thing, right?
[00:15:48] It's wild.
[00:15:49] The text says the guards are so terrified by this that they freeze up like dead men. And Matthew is, if you notice the wording is awkward here, Matthew's giving us a little bit of Kind of wordplay, right? The guards who were set up to guard the dead body and make sure no one stole it, they freeze up like dead men while the dead body is awake and alive and living its life. Right? He's giving us a little bit of wordplay here. But the point is this.
[00:16:15] That would be terrifying, right?
[00:16:18] If lightning dude appeared and made the whole ground shake and opened up, the casket was like, body's gone. Isn't that wild? We would all be freaked out.
[00:16:27] So these guys are freaked out, they freeze up because who would it be? But the angel looks past the guards, past the soldiers, and he speaks to the women. Now, I have a hard time not just imagining this angel is downright giddy as he speaks in this moment. I'll be honest with you, that is my imagination. That's me reading into the text. Nothing there tells us the angels giddy. But I read Matthew, and I'm like, he's giddy, right? He's stoked. He's like, I know you're looking for Jesus. He's not here. He's not. He's already alive. He told you he was going to be alive. He is. Isn't that cool? I just imagine that level of excitement because he's been heralded. Like he's been sent to herald this news that no one's ever heard before. He gets to sit with these women as they realize death doesn't get the final word.
[00:17:14] He says, he told you he would raise from the dead, and he did. Look. And he opens up the tomb. And I think this part is so powerful. It's a little detail, but I think there's really power in this. You notice the angel opens up the tomb not to, like, let Jesus out, right? Jesus is not like a dog in his kennel being like, let me out. He opens up the tomb so they can see it's already empty because Christ has already risen. Because Christ is already triumphant. He goes, go, look, look, it's empty. It still has the seal on it. The guards are still here, but it's empty because he's risen.
[00:17:51] He says, go tell the disciples. And go tell the disciples to head back to Galilee, because Jesus is going to meet them there.
[00:17:59] And they. They. They're terrified, right? Do you catch this? Of course. They're excited, they're joyful. This is cool. But they're also terrified because that's the normal response to this kind of thing.
[00:18:14] If you had someone who you love dearly and they died and then you went to go mourn their body, you're at their funeral or at their graveside, and you found out their grave was empty and they were alive not because, like, the coroner got it wrong, but because they were supernaturally raised from the dead.
[00:18:31] That would be amazing. You'd be like, I love this person. This is wonderful. That would also be super freaky.
[00:18:36] That would be terrifying. And so they have this weird mixture of joy and terror. And when they leave the tomb, they see Jesus himself. There he is in his risen body. They fall down in worship and. And he sends them to go. He says, go along, go, go tell the apostles, like, I'm going to meet them in Galilee. And there's all this weird mixture of excitement and joy and weirdness. It's a wonderful text.
[00:19:02] And I think it's important, before we get too far into this to stop here and just sit in the amazing beauty and power of this scene, like, we need to let Jesus's accomplished work take center stage in our hearts. In this space right now.
[00:19:20] The Easter text is so familiar to many of us that we can slide past it. But you have to remember, this is the core of our faith.
[00:19:31] In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul was addressing several concerns that the church had. They had written to him, asking him this series of questions, and one of them was an accusation that had come up that Jesus hadn't really raised from the dead. You see, this may surprise you, but the idea of supernatural resurrection wasn't. Was just as crazy of an idea to the 1st century Roman world as it is today. Like, it wasn't like, because they were olden timey people. They were just superstitious and dumb. Oh, okay, you rushed cool. No, no, no. Resurrection was just as insane an idea in the first century as it is right now, because we all live in the world and we all see people die and we all know death is permanent.
[00:20:11] And so when Christianity began to spread, some who were more educated in Greek philosophy began to say, you know, this Christianity thing is getting some traction. It seems really cool. It seems like it's changing people's lives. Seems like it's really powerful, like it's a force for social good. But this resurrection thing, that's crazy. So let's fix that part.
[00:20:30] You know, I bet what happened is that Jesus rose from the dead in like a spiritual sense.
[00:20:38] Like, like his, his ethos, his spirit rose and empowers his believers. And that's, that's the power of Christianity because dead people don't raise from the dead. So it's probably like this energy vibe thing that like his Spirit lives on in his church, right?
[00:20:54] So people started to ask that question. And Paul addresses it very clearly in very stark terms to the Corinthian church. This is in 1st Corinthians 15, starting in verse 12, it says this.
[00:21:06] Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? If there's no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation is in vain and so is your faith.
[00:21:23] Moreover, we are found to be false witnesses about God because we have testified wrongly about God that he raised up Christ, whom he did not raise up. If in fact the dead are not raised.
[00:21:34] For if the dead are not raised and even Christ has not been raised, and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless.
[00:21:41] You're still in your sins.
[00:21:43] Those then who have fallen asleep in Christ have also simply perished.
[00:21:48] If we put our hope in Christ for this life only, we should be pitied more than anyone.
[00:21:55] Woof.
[00:21:57] Paul says that in no uncertain terms. Here, look, if Jesus didn't raise from the dead, we're liars. The gospel is false and all of this is a waste of time.
[00:22:08] That's how he says it.
[00:22:10] We cannot divorce the reality of the resurrection of Jesus from the Christian message. And let me be clear here, just in case.
[00:22:20] Christianity, the Bible, this book claims that some 2,000 years ago in Jerusalem, a man named Jesus from Nazareth was killed by crucifixion and buried. And three days later, he was supernaturally bodily resurrected from the dead. His literal physical body came to life in perfection and glory. His heart beat, his blood pumped, his lungs breathed in perfection and glory. He left his grave alive and lived in fellowship with his friends and followers again before ascending bodily, not spiritually bodily, into heaven.
[00:23:01] This is a concrete, physical, historical claim.
[00:23:08] We proclaim and believe that this has really happened in time and space 2,000 years ago. And Paul says all of Christianity rises and falls on the truth of this claim.
[00:23:22] That's a big claim.
[00:23:25] And Paul says, this is it.
[00:23:28] No resurrection, no Christianity. It may seem like I'm harping too much on this here, but guys, this idea that Paul was challenging, it's alive and well today.
[00:23:39] Lots of folk want to grab a hold of Jesus's likability and Jesus's authority as a religious figure, as a teacher, but not deal with his claims.
[00:23:52] So culturally we say things like, oh, Jesus was a great prophet, but you know, his followers distorted his teaching. They. They took what he did and they Shifted it and changed it years later. And so that's why you end up with all these weird, wild supernatural claims. Because that's how the Muslim faith, the Mormon faith, the Jehovah's Witness faith handles Jesus. Oh, yeah, he was great, but you can't trust anything the Bible says about him. I mean, they, you know, they all, they all shifted and changed that later.
[00:24:21] Or you'll hear people say things like, well, Jesus is a good moral teacher. He had a solid ethical structure for his time and his place in history, but he never claimed any of this God nonsense that was added in by his followers later. This is a lot of what you'll read about in the new atheist movement who will discredit and say, you know, you can't trust the Bible. It was translated and copied a bajillion times over hundreds of years. And so everything in there is just confirmation bias from medieval monks who already believed a bunch of supernatural nonsense.
[00:24:53] But here's the problem.
[00:24:55] The problem with that, the problem is this, guys. Without the resurrection, Jesus is not a great prophet because he said he was God and he would rise from the dead.
[00:25:06] So if he's not, if he didn't raise, his prophecies failed.
[00:25:10] He's also not a great teacher.
[00:25:12] This part's really important, guys. The most. The most secularized Bible scholars, the ones who are most critical of the New Testament texts, who believe most strongly that these texts were distorted or shifted. And that's a different discussion we could talk about. But even the most staunch progressive, secular New Testament scholars claim that most of Jesus's verbal teaching, his ethical structures, have been accurately preserved for us.
[00:25:45] And if you look at Jesus's teaching, it's all built on his claims of divinity and resurrection.
[00:25:53] He claims that you should live a life of sacrifice and suffering for the sake of others because he is God and he'll raise from the dead and he'll raise you up from the dead, and the eternal reward you will reap in him will make the cost you pay in this life worth it.
[00:26:09] You need to know something, Blood.
[00:26:11] If he is just a teacher, if he's just a man with an ethical structure or philosophy, then he's a bad teacher because he's teaching you to suffer for no purpose.
[00:26:26] He's teaching you to sacrifice, to live a life with less pleasure, to live a life with more suffering, with more hardship, for no reason.
[00:26:37] That's not a good teacher.
[00:26:40] That's not a teacher who has your good in mind, beloved. The resurrection of Jesus is the linchpin of all of Creation and all of Christianity.
[00:26:51] Our faith is pointless without resurrection. If Christianity is just a philosophy to make you a good person, you should reject it.
[00:27:01] Paul says if that's the case, then we should be pitied as having wasted our lives.
[00:27:09] But if Jesus is who he says he is, and by the way, there are very good academic and historical reasons to believe that the New Testament has been accurately preserved, that the claims of it have not been changed over the last 2000 years.
[00:27:25] If Jesus is who this book claims he is, who he claims to be, and that really does change things, doesn't it?
[00:27:34] But here's the thing.
[00:27:36] If Jesus is who he says he is, what can possibly validate that?
[00:27:41] If Jesus says, I'm God, I'm divine, I can forgive your sins.
[00:27:46] You should bet your whole life on that.
[00:27:49] That's a wildly huge claim.
[00:27:53] So what can possibly validate the claim that Jesus can forgive your sins and destroy sin and death? What could make us believe Him?
[00:28:04] Well, he died and then rose again.
[00:28:06] He resurrected. He actually raised from the dead. In that passage of First Corinthians, Paul continues it like this in verse 20. But as it is, Christ has been raised from the dead. He's the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead also comes through a man. For just as an Adam all die, so also in Christ, all will be made a lie.
[00:28:32] Beloved, on that day 2000 years ago, Jesus rose from the dead.
[00:28:37] He is the first fruits of the resurrection. That's a Bible way of saying he's the first of what is to come.
[00:28:45] You can trust his promises.
[00:28:48] That means that all of us who follow him are drawn up with him, are included in his blessings, are called to his mission.
[00:28:58] There's something there that we need to sit in today. Beloved, the resurrection is not something you can move past simply because it's familiar.
[00:29:06] It is a huge claim.
[00:29:09] It's a huge claim that's worth investigating.
[00:29:12] That matters enough that you should spend time considering it, Considering the validity of this is where things like apologetic studies can be really interesting, right?
[00:29:22] Really interesting to go and dig into. Why do we believe this text is actually accurate? Why is it trustworthy? What are the claims Christ is making? What kind of verification will we look for? That stuff's interesting.
[00:29:34] But I'll also tell you this. It's not actually sufficient.
[00:29:38] You can't just dig into apologetics and get your way to fate. So hold on to that idea because we're going to circle back to that. I love our text today. For a lot of reasons. But one of my favorite is that our sweet Jesus, according to the text, on the day of his resurrection, chooses to reveal Himself for the first time in his glorified body to a group of women who had been quietly following him for years.
[00:30:02] I love that these women are the first evangelists. They are trusted by Jesus to take the news of his resurrection back to the actual disciples.
[00:30:13] The disciples ran away in fear, but these women stuck with Jesus. They stayed faithful to the bitter end. And now they get to bear the first fruits of the joy of the moment.
[00:30:23] You have to remember, guys, in the first century, Jewish culture didn't really honor women.
[00:30:29] Like in this day and age, where these women lived as Jews in Palestine in the first century, they couldn't own property.
[00:30:36] They couldn't work outside of their home without their husband's permission. They weren't allowed to be witnesses in legal proceedings because they weren't trusted.
[00:30:45] And yet, in the middle of that world and that cultural moment, Jesus honors and trusts these women to. To be his first heralds to the world and to his church, because that's what resurrection does.
[00:30:58] That's why texts like this are so important.
[00:31:01] The resurrection of Jesus, the truth of the gospel, it fills us. It empowers us. It raises us up, it elevates us.
[00:31:11] I know in a room like this, some of you right now, you feel stuck in seclusion and quiet.
[00:31:20] I feel like your life and your faith are spent in the overlooked spaces.
[00:31:26] But you need to know something.
[00:31:28] Your Jesus sees you.
[00:31:31] Jesus sees your quiet and faithful pursuit of Him. He sees your overlooked work for the sake of others and for the sake of the kingdom. He sees you. He honors you. He believes in you. He elevates you. And beloved Jesus empowers you to do him his work.
[00:31:49] We're going to come back to that truth. But that's this part of the scene. I wanted to make sure I hit that part.
[00:31:55] Because no one would ever commission women to bear witness to a supernatural work.
[00:32:00] No one who was trying to fake the story would do that in this day, because it would be foolish. It would have made people less likely to believe because it was women reporting that. And by the way, we know from the other gospels that the disciples don't believe them.
[00:32:17] They question them. They're like, okay, yeah, sure, that's kind of rough, but it's 100% true. And yet that's what God does.
[00:32:26] Jesus commissions them and empowers them and sends them anyway, because he raises us up on his coattails and empowers us to amazing kingdom work.
[00:32:36] We know that not everyone responds to the resurrection of Jesus with this kind of joy and empowerment. Read on with me. Verse 11.
[00:32:44] As they were on their way, some of the guards came into the city and reported to the chief priests everything that had happened. After the priests had assembled with the elders and agreed on a plan, they gave the soldiers a large sum of money and told them, say this. His disciples came during the night and stole him while we were sleeping. If this reaches the governor's ears, we will deal with him and keep you out of trouble. So they took the money and did as they were instructed. And this story has spread among Jewish people to this day.
[00:33:09] This part is so weird. It's like an aside in the story bringing us back to these men who plotted against Jesus, the Sanhedrin. Confessionally, I just being real with you, this is the part of the story I tend to skip over when I'm reading it myself, because I'm kind of like, okay, but it carries power for us today.
[00:33:26] We need to not look past this. Look what happens here. The guards saw the angel, right?
[00:33:34] They heard his voice.
[00:33:36] They have no doubt what happened here.
[00:33:39] So they return to the Sanhedrin and ask what to do. We skipped over this part a little bit last week, but we know historically that there was essentially a group of Roman soldiers stationed in Jerusalem who were exclusively pulled from the Jewish population. And they were kind of separated from the larger Roman military element there. And they would be used essentially as like, a functional police force. And oftentimes the Sanhedrin had commanded them. This is why when the Sanhedrin asked for a guard, Pilate said, you have soldiers. Do what you want, want. He was referring to these Jewish Roman soldiers who would have been stationed. These are the ones the Sanhedrin send. When all this stuff happens, these guys have no idea what to do. So they go back to the Sanhedrin and say, oh, no. Earthquake, lightning, angel, empty tomb. What do we do? Right? Because that's what they do. That's what they would do if they went back to Pilate, they wouldn't be believed. Because who believes that an angel showed up and made an earthquake and a dead person rose from the dead? Who would believe that when they could go, sure, you didn't just get drunk and fall asleep and they stole his body, Right?
[00:34:37] Who would believe the supernatural story?
[00:34:40] So when they go to the Sanhedrin to ask the Sanhedrin immediately, immediately go to, okay, how do we cover this up?
[00:34:51] They bribed the soldiers to report that they did in fact, fall asleep. The disciples stole his body. This is a big risk, by the way, because Roman soldiers, derelict in their duty through drunkenness or sleep, would be severely punished, sometimes even killed. But the Sanhedrin say, don't worry about it. We'll bribe whoever we have to bribe. As long as you keep this story just between us, we'll be good.
[00:35:14] So the soldiers take it.
[00:35:16] What I think so interesting about this bit of the story.
[00:35:19] Doesn't it strike you how hard hearted of a response to the gospel this is?
[00:35:26] This is wild to me. The Sanhedrin here are confronted with a supernatural account of an angel and a resurrection. And rather than even consider its truth or investigate it, they move straight to denial and avoidance.
[00:35:42] They just want to get ahead of the story that might cause them problems. That's so sorrowful to me. It's also a stark warning for us, guys, the resurrection is the substantiation of the gospel. Its power, its joy, its freedom, its life. It moves us to faithfulness and gospel work. But not everyone who experiences the gospel story when they hear about it, not everyone is actually moved by it.
[00:36:08] The reality of resurrection is foolishness to most people who hear it.
[00:36:13] This is to me. It brings us to this truth. The plain facts of the gospel will not convert someone.
[00:36:20] This is why I said earlier, like apologetics is interesting, you should study that stuff. But it isn't sufficient.
[00:36:26] The plain facts of the gospel doesn't move anyone to Christ.
[00:36:32] The Sanhedrin learned the facts straight from the source. The guards were there, they heard the angel speak. But the Sanhedrin's hearts remained hard.
[00:36:42] The truth is, guys, one must encounter the resurrected Jesus for the resurrection to have power in their lives.
[00:36:51] It's because the claims of the gospel are foolishness.
[00:36:54] It's wild, it's supernatural. It doesn't happen this way. I know many of you in this room. Like this is your story, right?
[00:37:03] Maybe you came to faith as an adult. You considered the central claims of Christianity. A man who was God died and rose from the dead. And you thought something to the effect of an extraordinary claim requires extraordinary evidence, right? You moved on.
[00:37:18] I know there are some of you in this room who had the Paul on the road to Damascus experience, where no atheism, no agnosticism, no skepticism can long survive an encounter with the risen Christ.
[00:37:30] When you meet him and he speaks to you, whether it's through the church, through his words, there's something supernatural. When you encounter Christ, you react to it.
[00:37:43] All of a sudden, the claims of the gospel mean something different.
[00:37:47] But here's the thing, guys, that's just. It's just not going to work to fact people into the kingdom.
[00:37:56] That's not how it works. That stuff's interesting. Read the Case for Christ, read Cold Case Christianity, all that stuff.
[00:38:02] But those aren't evangelistic tools.
[00:38:05] We don't fact people into the kingdom. That wasn't your story.
[00:38:09] It's not going to happen for most other people. When we meet Jesus, when we meet him, when we see and know how good his gospel invitation is through His Word, through His Spirit, through the Church, that is when the gospel clicks.
[00:38:23] And once you get to know him, his resurrection becomes a fact of your head and your heart together.
[00:38:31] Look what happens when the remaining 11 apostles encounter Christ. That's how we'll kind of bring this to a close today. Verse 16.
[00:38:39] The eleven disciples traveled to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had directed him. When they saw him, they worshiped. But some doubted. Jesus came near and said to them, all authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything. I have commanded you and remember, I am with you always to the end of the age. And that's where Matthew cuts it off.
[00:39:08] What a text.
[00:39:10] We'll talk about that, but don't jump past the narrative aspect of this. Matthew tells it very quickly. But Jesus invites the apostles to travel back to Galilee, north, where their ministry started. And the text says when they finally encounter him, they both worship and doubt.
[00:39:28] And some of you guys, that's all you need to hear today.
[00:39:31] The apostles were hanging out with Jesus in his resurrected body, and it drew them to worship and doubt. You know why?
[00:39:38] I've said it like 10 times so far.
[00:39:41] It's because resurrection is crazy.
[00:39:44] Doubt is a normal part of faith.
[00:39:47] The apostles were hanging out with Jesus and his glorified body, and they still were like, is this real? Am I crazy?
[00:39:54] Because it's that wild.
[00:39:56] And yet, as we encounter Christ spiritually through His Word, through His church, supernaturally as we encounter Christ, his resurrection becomes more real. It becomes fact in our mind and our heart together, guys, it's really normal that they have doubts. Even though Jesus did resurrect, these guys all abandoned him. So why is he being so nice to them, right? Like, shouldn't he have some beef to settle? They're in a weird headspace.
[00:40:29] And so Jesus clarifies it all together with this charge to the church.
[00:40:35] We call these Last couple texts or verses of Matthew, the great Commission, because this is God's call to every person who follows him. And so I'm going to land us today by walking through kind of the four or five aspects of this commission. This is what I want us to think about as we think about our own life, our own reaction to the resurrection, our own dealing with the truth of the risen Christ. I want you to hear that. Christ's response to his own followers, mixture of joy and doubt, of terror and worship. Christ's response to that is to commission.
[00:41:11] Let's look at this. What he says here.
[00:41:13] The truth of this text we see, guys, is that Jesus doesn't leave us where we are.
[00:41:18] He doesn't leave us in that place of mixed emotions. One of the most wonderful truths about the Gospel is that Jesus gave his life for sinners like you and me, sinners like the apostles. But he receives us exactly as we are. With all our failures, with all our doubts, with all our terrors. He loves us just as we are. We're invited to come to Christ without changing a thing about us. But the risen Jesus doesn't just forgive us of our sins. He doesn't just, just not hold our failures against us. No, no, the, the risen Jesus is the first fruits of resurrection.
[00:41:50] And so he raises us up alongside Him.
[00:41:54] The gospel of Jesus that is substantiated in his resurrection because it changes us, empowers us to be more like Christ, to join him in his work. Look what he says here.
[00:42:04] The first part of the commission is Jesus's authority.
[00:42:08] He opens by plainly stating what the resurrection needs.
[00:42:11] What does this mean? It means Jesus rose from the dead because he's the King and God of the universe.
[00:42:16] All authority in heaven and earth belongs to Him. All, all. All authority belongs to Christ.
[00:42:24] And out of that authority, he says go.
[00:42:27] Because of this authority, Jesus tells us to go. He commands his church to move. As you move through this life, every step you take, every place you go, every job you have, every person you meet, everywhere you find yourself, if you are in Christ, you are sent. You're going under the command and the authority of Jesus. If you are his follower, most of us in this room are.
[00:42:50] Then you have been sent to the life you currently live.
[00:42:53] Your friends, your family, your co workers, your children, your grandchildren, your neighbors, the people you love, the people you hate. You are a sent one.
[00:43:03] And why does he do this?
[00:43:05] Basically, he wants us to go and make disciples. This is why your Jesus sends you. You and I are to invite more and more to Come to meet Jesus and to find life through him.
[00:43:15] You found your life and freedom in Jesus, right?
[00:43:17] Right.
[00:43:19] Then, beloved, invite more to come and drink freely of the living water and find life.
[00:43:24] That is what it means to make disciples everyone you meet. And I'm so serious when I say this, guys, every single human being you meet, they're made in the image of God. They're precious to them.
[00:43:39] And they have been marred and ruined and broken by sin.
[00:43:43] They're going through trials and suffering and doubt and hurts and joys that you can't imagine.
[00:43:50] They are as complex as you are, and they are beloved by God.
[00:43:56] Every person you meet is precious to the Father.
[00:44:01] So he has sent you to them.
[00:44:03] You are the missionary in that person's life.
[00:44:08] And I know you right now. Some of you are thinking of like three or four specific people, and you're like, I'll be honest, I'm pretty bad missionary to that person. I don't like that person. Yeah, yeah.
[00:44:18] Go read Jonah this week.
[00:44:20] It'll take you about 30 minutes. It's four chapters. Go read Jonah.
[00:44:25] God sends us to go and love and proclaim to the people we hate just as much as he sends us to the people we love.
[00:44:33] You are sent, and by God's grace, listen, God's sending everyone else to. So that person likely is surrounded by missionaries. They don't even know it, but God has told you in his authority, go make disciples, baptize them. This is a very church way of saying, find folk who don't know Jesus and draw them in.
[00:44:57] Right.
[00:44:58] Discipling is about helping people grow as a student of Christ. And that happens for people who don't know Jesus. That happens for people who know Jesus. We all need to be made disciples. Baptizing them is a way of saying, find people who aren't in Christ. Invite them to be in Christ.
[00:45:14] Baptism is the entrance in the life of the church. It's the entrance into our communal family. So go to non believers, remind them, share them. Proclaim to them the goodness of the resurrected God. Invite them to come, be a part. But then he also says to teach them. Teach them to obey everything I have commanded. This is the reminder that all of us are still growing in Christ.
[00:45:35] New believers need to be taught to live a Jesus lifestyle, but so do all of us.
[00:45:41] All of us need to dig deep into his word and to find out how to follow him with our lives. Think about our summer discipleship groups that many of us did. Yeah, we all need this.
[00:45:54] This is the ministry we do for the lost. It's the ministry we do for the church, all of us, we help disciple one another by helping each other to obey everything that Christ taught you. And he ends by saying, I am with you.
[00:46:09] It all lands here.
[00:46:11] The Commission on Believers is not just a burden we carry, rather it's something we're empowered to.
[00:46:19] Beloved, Jesus is with us.
[00:46:21] He has all the power, all the authority. He goes with us in our sending and he helps us to do the work.
[00:46:28] The Great Commission is not a burden. It's an honor.
[00:46:31] And hear this.
[00:46:33] It's the most fulfilling life you can possibly live.
[00:46:36] It's the most joy filled, meaningful life you can live. You were made, you were built from the DNA up. You were designed by God to join with him in relationship to step into his work alongside Him. It's what God made you for.
[00:46:52] Band, if you want to come back up.
[00:46:55] Paul wrote another letter to the Corinthian Church later and he was speaking to this idea that we're built to join with Christ in this work. And he says this in 2nd Corinthians 5.
[00:47:06] Therefore, if anyone in his is in Christ, he is a new creation.
[00:47:11] The old has passed away and see, the new has come. Everything is from God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Christ and given us the ministry of reconciliation that is in Christ. God is reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them. And he has committed the message of reconciliation to us. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ.
[00:47:35] God is making his appeal through us. We plead on Christ's behalf. Be reconciled to God.
[00:47:44] Jesus has saved you, beloved.
[00:47:47] And if you haven't trusted Jesus yet, He longs to save you.
[00:47:51] But for those of us who trusted Jesus, he has made you new.
[00:47:56] His resurrection was the first fruits. But he brings you and me along side him in Christ you can be a new creation. We're his ambassadors to this world.
[00:48:08] Beloved, this is the life you've always dreamed of.
[00:48:10] It is.
[00:48:12] It reminds me, and I'll land here of my favorite Gaither song. This is for Craig McEligney.
[00:48:21] Most of you know the lyrics because it's famous.
[00:48:24] Let me land us by reading this.
[00:48:27] Because he lives, I can face tomorrow.
[00:48:31] Because he lives. All fear is gone.
[00:48:34] Because I know he holds the future. My life is worth the the living because he lives.
[00:48:42] Beloved, that is what resurrection does.
[00:48:45] Calls you to new life, gives you new life, gives your life purpose, gives your life meaning, helps you to be the person you were made to be.
[00:48:55] Let's take a few minutes to sit in reflection with Christ. I want to encourage you to find a posture of prayer in this space. If you can do that in your seat, that's fine. If you want to get on your knees or come to the altar or grab one of the pastors or wander into the back of the room where all the children are, whatever you need to do to connect with the Lord, I think there's some people meeting the Lord in new ways in the back of the room today.
[00:49:19] Whatever you need to do to meet with the Lord this morning, I want to encourage you to do that.
[00:49:23] I want to encourage you to reflect on the reality of the resurrection, reflect on the claims that Christ has made.
[00:49:30] And if you're in this room and you're one who wrestles with doubt, I'd encourage you just to simply consider this.
[00:49:37] Talk to Jesus about it.
[00:49:40] If he's risen, if he's alive, I'm pretty sure he can talk to you about it.
[00:49:46] Speak to him.
[00:49:48] See what he might tell you.
[00:49:51] When you feel like you've had time to reflect, to consider, to connect yourself to the truth of the resurrection, to the commission Christ has put on your life.
[00:50:01] Those of you in this room who are in Christ, I'd encourage you to continue that response through communion.
[00:50:07] We take communion every week here at Emmanuel and the.
