Matthew 27:54-28-10

We cast of today in Matthew 27:54,

So, when the centurion and those with him, who were guarding Jesus, saw the earthquake and the things that had happened, they feared greatly, saying, “Truly this was the Son of God!” 

In Mark’s gospel in Mark 15:39 he wrote,

So, when the centurion, who stood opposite Him, saw that He cried out like this and breathed His last, he said, “Truly this Man was the Son of God!” 

Apparently, that Roman centurion, who was in charge of the actual crucifixion, stood beneath the cross. As he witnessed some of the miraculous events during this time and as he saw the Lord Jesus give up His spirit, this hardened Roman centurion, who’d probably supervised the death of many others by crucifixion, was moved to make the statement that this truly was the Son of God.

The crucifixion of Jesus was so striking that he knew there was something absolutely unique about Jesus.

 

Notice that it wasn’t just the Roman centurion who came to this understanding but those with him also. We’re not told how many people came to that realisation. It could have been three or four or a hundred.

 

Did the centurion become a saved man? Was this a confession that he now believed that Jesus Christ was Lord and Saviour, or was it just an acknowledgment that Jesus was more than just an ordinary man? We can’t be sure.

Maybe the word “was” is a clue indicating that the centurion saw Jesus’s death as being the end of Him and that He no longer is the Son of God.

 

Many think that these soldiers, our Saviour’s executioners, became believers through the miracles they’d witnessed and according to what Jesus had prayed for them in Luke 23:34,

Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.”

We certainly hope this was the case.

 

To verses 55 and 56,

And many women who followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering to Him, were there looking on from afar, among whom were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joses, and the mother of Zebedee’s sons. 

Special mention is made of the women who’d faithfully ministered to the Lord, and who’d followed Him all the way from Galilee to Jerusalem.

The fearless devotion of these women showed more courage, and affection for their Lord than the disciples did. They’d all promised to die with Him rather than forsake Him and yet, apart from John, the male disciples ran for their lives!

 

Now we move to Matthew 27:57-58,

Now when evening had come, there came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who himself had also become a disciple of Jesus.

This man went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Then Pilate commanded the body to be given to him. 

Before this event, we didn’t hear about this man Joseph of Arimathea or know that he was a disciple.

Luke tells us in his account in Luke 23:50-51 that this man was a council member, a member of the Sanhedrin, and a good and just man who had not consented to the council’s decision and their acts against Jesus.

We’re also told here that He was waiting for the kingdom of God. He believed in Who Jesus was, the Messiah and the King of the new earthly kingdom which the Messiah had come to set up and reign over.

It’s interesting to see that the events of the arrest, the trial and the crucifixion had caused the disciples to scatter and run away and yet it drew out into the open others who, up to this time, would’ve been called secret disciples.

Joseph of the town of Arimathea stepped out and openly declared his faith.

Imagine the surprise to Governor Pilate, and the insult to the Jewish rulers, when a member of the Sanhedrin itself publicly took his stand for the Crucified Jesus.

Joseph buried himself economically, socially, and religiously when he approached Pilate and asked for buried the body of Jesus. This act forever separated him from the establishment that he was a part of and who had killed the Lord Jesus.

 

To verses 59 and 60,

When Joseph had taken the body, he wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, and laid it in his new tomb which he had hewn out of the rock; and he rolled a large stone against the door of the tomb, and departed. 

John tells us in John 19:39-40 that Nicodemus worked with Joseph in preparing Jesus’s body for burial and we read,

And Nicodemus, who at first came to Jesus by night, also came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pounds. 

Then they took the body of Jesus, and bound it in strips of linen with the spices, as the custom of the Jews is to bury. 

These two men, who had apparently been in the background up until then, now came out into the open as the disciples of Jesus.

Pilate had granted permission for Joseph to take the body and Joseph lovingly embalmed the body by wrapping it in a clean linen cloth, placing spices between the wrappings.

Then he placed it in his own new tomb, carved out of solid rock. The mouth of the tomb was closed by a large stone, shaped like a millstone and standing on its edge in a channel also carved out of stone.

Centuries before, Isaiah had prophesied in Isaiah 53 verse 9,

And they made His grave with the wicked—But with the rich at His death…

His enemies had no doubt planned to throw His body into the Valley of Hinnom outside the city to be consumed by the ever-burning dump-fires or eaten by animals, but God again overruled the plans of man and used Joseph to ensure that He was buried with the rich to fulfil prophesy.

It’s interesting to note that only loving hands touched the body of Jesus after His death.

 

Verse 61,

And Mary Magdalene was there, and the other Mary, sitting opposite the tomb. 

Again, these faithful women stayed on.

 

We move now to Matthew chapter 28.

The truth and the relevance of the Bible rests on two great events in the history of creation, the death of Jesus Christ, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Without the truth of these events the entire bible collapses and you and I are destined for an eternity locked inside our prison of sin.

The entire Gospel of Grace that we must hear and believe in to be saved is stated by the apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:3-4,

For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures…

It’s that last portion “and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures” that we see in Matthew chapter 28, and it’s here that we either accept the truth of this gospel of grace and are saved to eternal life or we reject it as a myth and a fable, and we accept the consequences of eternal death.

 

The unique fact of the gospel of grace is the Resurrection.

All other religions record the death of their leader. Only the Christian faith records the Resurrection of its Founder. All other religious leaders are dead. Only Jesus Christ is alive. This is critical for us to know.

Neither Matthew, Mark, Luke or John gives the entire record of the Resurrection, only the details that serve the purpose of that particular account.

Each one records an aspect or an angle of the Resurrection which contributes to the whole picture the way God intended.

All the four accounts need to be put together to get the total picture, and when we do that we see that there’s no conflict or contradiction among them.

 

We begin in Matthew 28:1,

Now after the Sabbath, as the first day of the week began to dawn, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to see the tomb.

 

The other Gospel records tell us that they were bringing sweet spices to anoint the body of Jesus. It’s difficult to identify the “other Mary.” Tradition states that she was the mother of James and Joses.

Now, unless we see the whole picture of all the four accounts as we’ve already stated, we can miss an important factor here that poses some questions.

A great stone was rolled in front of the tomb, but these women are bringing more spices for Jesus body. How are they going to get into the tomb?

Well, we see this from reading the account of Mark in Mark 16:2-4 and we read,

Very early in the morning, on the first day of the week, they came to the tomb when the sun had risen. 

And they said among themselves, “Who will roll away the stone from the door of the tomb for us?” 

But when they looked up, they saw that the stone had been rolled away—for it was very large. 

We see here that these ladies had no idea how they were going to get the stone rolled back.

Their first motivation was to get to the tomb with the spices and they’d work on the other details later when they were there.

 

Now Matthew 28:2,

And behold, there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat on it.

Another earthquake! Does the earthquake cause the stone to be rolled away?

The text doesn’t actually say that. It attributes the earthquake more to the descending of the angel from heaven. It was he, the angel, who rolled the stone away.

Again, as in the previous earthquake, there’s no record of any damage to the city or it’s surrounds.

 

Verses 3 to 4,

His (the angel’s) countenance was like lightning, and his clothing as white as snow.

His countenance was like lightning, and his clothing as white as snow. 

And the guards shook for fear of him, and became like dead men. 

 

The angel appeared clothed in white. This would be taken by the women to signify the angel as a good angel, as the Jews apparently believed that ministering angels were clothed in white.

The Roman soldiers responsible for guarding the tomb were terrified. The angel didn’t need to pull out a flaming sword, or even to have speak to the soldiers guarding the tomb but just the angel’s presence made these professional soldiers tremble and faint in fear.

 

This all happened, of course, before the women described in verse 1 had arrived at the tomb. How long before? We don’t know. It could’ve been a minute or two or hours before they arrived.

 

Why was it necessary to roll back the stone? To let Jesus out? No, He was gone when the stone was rolled back. The tomb was not opened to let Him out but to let them in.

 

To verses 5 and 6,

But the angel answered and said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. 

He is not here; for He is risen, as He said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay.

He’s not in the grave where he’d been laid, and where these women saw him laid. He was dead, but now He’s alive. He was certainly laid in the grave, but God wouldn’t leave him there, nor suffer him to see corruption as the prophecies in Psalm 16:10 and Psalm 49:9 stated all those centuries before.

He is risen, as He said; not stolen or removed to another place, as Mary Magdalene first thought, when she found him gone; but He was risen from the dead, by the power of God, His own power, as He had said He would.

“Come on inside and see for yourselves where He laid,” the angel says to the women.

These faithful women heard what they didn’t expect to hear, that Jesus was not in the tomb, but risen to resurrection life.

They not only heard, but they were also invited to see the place where He lay, now empty, and the invitation was given to the same people who’d watched the body being buried in the tomb, so there’s no possibility of a mistake.”

What was spoken here by the angel reminded these women, and all the disciples, that they should’ve expected this. It was just what Jesus had promised.

Jesus had left the tomb before the stone had been rolled away. Later He would enter a room with a locked door. The glorified body of Jesus was radically different from the body in which He was born.

 

Verse 7 now,

And go quickly and tell His disciples that He is risen from the dead, and indeed He is going before you into Galilee; there you will see Him. Behold, I have told you.

 

Angelic announcements ceased at this point.

From here on the message would be told by human lips. But before any of us attempts to tell the story we first need an unshakable conviction of the truth of the Resurrection.

 

Now to Matthew 28:8-9,

So, they went out quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy, and ran to bring His disciples word. 

And as they went to tell His disciples, behold, Jesus met them, saying, “Rejoice!” So, they came and held Him by the feet and worshiped Him. 

Notice the mingled feelings of the women, fear and great joy.

 

Verse 9,

And as they went to tell His disciples, behold, Jesus met them, saying, “Rejoice!” So, they came and held Him by the feet and worshiped Him.

 

This seems at first to contradict the record of this encounter in John 2 verse 17 which says this,

“Jesus said to her, “Do not cling to Me, for I have not yet ascended to My Father; but go to My brethren and say to them, ‘I am ascending to My Father and your Father, and to My God and your God.’ ” 

Obviously there were two encounters with the ladies and Jesus and between these two encounters Jesus did in fact ascend to His Father and present His precious blood in heaven’s Holy of Holies.

See we can’t just assume that all these events ran in time order which is how we sometimes read them.

 

Now verse 10,

Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid. Go and tell My brethren to go to Galilee, and there they will see Me.” 

He was making an appointment to see them in Galilee.

 

We want to take a look now at the fifth of the six miracles of Calvary.

However, we don’t see this miracle in Matthew but in the account of John.

Because of what we’ve already said that we need to get all the accounts of Jesus’s death, burial and resurrection in order to get the complete picture, we’re going to look at this fifth miracle now.

 

In John 20:6-8 we read this,

Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb; and he saw the linen cloths lying there, and the handkerchief (meaning the napkin or towel) that had been around His head, not lying with the linen cloths, but folded together in a place by itself. 

Then the other disciple, who came to the tomb first, went in also; and he saw and believed. 

 

The fifth of the Calvary miracles was the marvellous arrangement of things in the grave of the just risen Jesus.

 

Firstly, why doesn’t Mathew record this bit?

Well, Matthew’s account is quite striking in how he sequences the events. After mentioning the darkness, the sign of the sufferings of the cross, he speaks of the signs of the victory of the cross, starting at the second of the two loud cries from the cross and limiting his remarks to the effects of that cry of victory which tore the veil of the Temple, and shook the earth, and opened the graves.

Matthew states that many bodies of saints arose and came out of the tombs after the Lord had risen. That’s the sixth miracle and we’ll look at this shortly, but it would’ve broken this sequence to jump forward three days to a description of the inside of the deserted tomb because it wasn’t brought about by that cry of victory that he was writing about.

 

What Matthew leaves out, John tells us about, but John doesn’t mention the other the Calvary miracles.

So, according to John, these are the sequence of the events around the disciples coming to the tomb.

 

Very early on Sunday morning, Peter and John heard from Mary Magdalene that Jesus’s body, which was placed in the tomb on the day before the High Sabbath of Passover, wasn’t there any more.

 

Now, during the week of Jesus’ crucifixion, there were two Sabbaths. The first was the special “High Sabbath”, The Passover which is associated with the week-long Feast of Unleavened Bread.

The Passover always fell on Nisan 15.

Nisan, also known as Nissan, is the first month in the Jewish calendar. It typically corresponds to March-April on our modern western calendar.

This special Sabbath was in addition to the normal weekly Saturday Sabbath.

The day before this special Sabbath was called the Day of Preparation, when the necessary tasks were completed for the following Sabbath day of Passover.

So, both Friday (Nisan 15) and Saturday (Nisan 16) were Sabbaths in the week Jesus was crucified with the day before the Passover sabbath being the day of preparation.

Jesus was crucified on the Day of Preparation, the day before Passover. The Gospel of John specifically mentions this timing, aligning Jesus’ death with the slaughtering of the Passover lambs which was carried out on the Day of Preparation.

This is where we get 3 days and 3 nights that Jesus was in the earth in accordance with what Jesus told the disciples in Matthew 12:40.

 

So, Mary tells Peter and John that Jesus’s body was no longer there in that tomb.

Her conclusion was that enemies had taken the body away.

Peter and John race off to the tomb with John outrunning Peter and arriving first. However, it’s Peter who goes inside the tomb first.

He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the burial cloth that’d been wrapped around Jesus’s head. The cloth was folded up by itself, separate from the linen. Finally, the other disciple, John, who’d reached the tomb first, also went inside and He saw and believed!

 

When Peter and John entered they didn’t see the body of Jesus; but they did see the graveclothes, and they saw that those the clothes were in a certain order, quote, “strips of linen lying there, as well as the burial cloth that had been around Jesus’ head. The cloth was folded up by itself, separate from the linen.”

This description takes up nine verses of John’s gospel. Such a great a chunk dedicated just to this shows us how important it was, and we also see the impression it had on John. He “saw and believed!”

But what did he believe?

Did he believe Mary’s story of the body not being there? After he’d seen that the body wasn’t there, he hardly needed to add that he believed it wasn’t there! Besides, what did the arrangement of the grave clothes have to do with his seeing that the body wasn’t there?

See, it was that arrangement of the clothes which caused him to believe.

Does the passage mean that John believed, like Mary, that since the body wasn’t there, Jesus’s enemies had stolen it?

No, that wasn’t it because the order and arrangement of the clothes showed this wasn’t the case. It’s inconceivable that if the body had been stolen, an enemy would have spent the time to remove it from the clothes and then go to the trouble of arranging them back again in the exact placement as they were in when they were wrapped around the body.

There’s only one meaning. John saw that arrangement of the clothes, and he believed that Jesus was risen.

So telling was that arrangement that he became an instant believer to the truth of the Lord’s resurrection even though until then, as we see from the next verse, John 20 verse 9, that he didn’t understand the Scripture that Jesus must rise from the dead.

 

John saw “the linen clothes lying,” that is, not just strewn on the floor of the tomb, but lying there precisely as the body had lain there inside them.

They were in exactly the position they were when the body’d been inside them.

The verse, John 20:7, says,

and the handkerchief (the towel or napkin) that had been around His head, not lying with the linen cloths, but folded together in a place by itself. 

You see it wasn’t just mixed in with the other body-clothes, but on the very spot where Jesus’s head had rested.

In other words, the head cloth wasn’t removed, it just collapsed as Jesus’s head just disappeared from inside it. It hadn’t been unfolded, and none of the fastenings were undone, showing that it hadn’t been unwrapped and taken off the head but that the head had been taken from out of it.

The rest of the linen clothes and burial cloths had not been undone or unwrapped either. They weren’t disturbed, only folded as they’d been applied to the dead body. The body had just disappeared from inside the wrappings.

Luke, in his gospel in chapter 24 verse 12 also says that John saw the linen cloths lying by themselves.

These descriptions of the grave clothes just lying there minus the body are what affected John so much and caused him to believe in the resurrection of the Lord.

 

Jesus’s natural body had dissolved within its wrappings and became merged in His spiritual body that no ties or fastenings or wrappings could keep enclosed.

His body just vanished from within the grave clothes and moved through the great stone at the door of the tomb which, as yet, hadn’t been removed.

 

This is the picture of the resurrection that was left behind in the grave clothes of the risen Jesus, even though it’s not a description of the act of the resurrection itself. The Lord’s resurrection is everywhere in Scripture, but the act itself is never described. We don’t read even as much as, “Then he arose and left the tomb,” but only, “He has risen!”

 

The fact remains that if Jesus’s friends had taken His body away they would hardly have removed the clothes from His body. If enemies had taken Him, they’d have hardly arranged the clothes, even if they had taken the time to strip the body, which is pretty much inconceivable as well. No human hands could’ve removed that body from its clothes without leaving behind marks and evidence on them.

 

It was God who’d been there! Those shrivelled, undisturbed clothes that still clung to the body that had vanished is as much a testimony to the presence and power of God, as are any of wonders of nature all around us. The difference in this case, is that the power of God was present in a miracle.

 

The arguments supporting the fact of Jesus’s resurrection are powerful.

Jesus really had died and was buried. The Jews, the Romans, and the disciples were all equally in agreement that this happened.

On the third morning His body was missing from the tomb, and again all were in agreement.

That Jesus’s body was not taken away by His disciples was also evident to all. It would’ve been impossible for them to break through and overpower the Roman guard, even if they did have a reason to. Remember, the disciples had no understanding of the resurrection so why would they steal the body? What would they do with it?

There are other confirming arguments, but these three in themselves alone, demonstrate the truth of the event as much as any fact in history has ever been demonstrated.

 

Scripture tells us that the resurrection of Christ is the model of our own resurrection. As with Jesus, the spiritual, incorruptible body will come from the base of our natural and corruptible body, but, at a time that’s still future.

However the particles of our bodies may be scattered, the mysterious identity of them remains perfectly known to God Who created them.

Our resurrection body, just like Jesus’s resurrection body, is still a body, but it’s a body not according to the flesh, but according to the spirit. It’s a real material body, but at the same time spiritual. It isn’t turned into spirit, but it’s reconstructed, and refined and perfectly fitted to the human spirit but not bound by the natural earthly dimensions of matter, energy, space and time that we live in today.

We see this in the vanishing of Jesus’s body from out of those grave wrappings!

The resurrection of Jesus is much different from the resuscitation of Lazarus that we read about in John 11.

Jesus left the grave clothing in the tomb, but Lazarus came out of the tomb “bound hand and foot with graveclothes, and his face was wrapped with a cloth” as John 11:44 tells us.

The difference with Lazarus was that he returned to the same life as before. Jesus didn’t. Lazarus came back to a body of flesh, with the same natural abilities and obstacles as before. Jesus’ body did not. Lazarus died again; Jesus will never die again. Those bodiless grave clothes in the Lord’s tomb shows us this!

After Jesus was risen, He talked with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, but when their eyes were opened to recognise Him, He vanished out of their sight, exactly as He had vanished from within those grave wrappings, without disturbing them.

A true resurrection is very different from a mere revival. Lazarus, though in one sense risen from the dead, was still a mortal man living among other mortals.

The true resurrection body, while still a recognisable body, is a body not according to the flesh but according to the spirit. When Jesus Christ left behind His grave wrappings, it was a symbol that He’d got rid of the flesh as it’s born into this world.

Emptying Himself and vanishing from within the cloths, displayed that His body was now different, a spiritual body, not subject to the laws of matter, energy, space and time. This is the state of an incorruptible body like us believers’ll have some day.

Even now, in our present state, through faith in Jesus Christ, our life is hid with Christ in God, and our citizenship is in Heaven, and we look to the blessed hope of the changing of our body of sin to be like His own glorious body!

When we look to this blessed hope, we realise how false and temporary the pride and self-sufficiency of our natural man is! We’re consumed with progress and improvement, personal and social advancement, and from a natural point of view, that’s fine, but there’s never any getting above the ills and weaknesses of this mortal life, and so nothing’s ever a long-lasting radical, satisfying improvement. Our perfecting is only in Christ and in the hope that faith brings.

Next time friends, we finish our study of the Gospel of Matthew. We’ll see how the religious rulers got around explaining the empty tomb by bribing the Roman guard and we’ll also look at the last of the six miracles of the cross. May the Lord give us revelation knowledge of all these truths that’re recorded for our learning.