“The Gospel According To The
Guards” Matt.
28:1-15
Intro.: All around the world this morning, Christians
are proclaiming one message, and that message is: “CHRIST IS RISEN! [HE IS RISEN,
INDEED! ALLELUIA!]” Its amazing isn’t it that after nearly 2000
years and after all the attempts to silence it that Gospel proclamation
continues to be heard. For those of you
who missed our Lenten journey this year we saw over and over again that the
Gospel is of such moment and magnitude that it cannot and will not be hidden,
but must and will be proclaimed even from the mouths of Jesus’ enemies. The last of those enemies from whom we will
hear the Gospel this year are the Roman soldiers who stood guard over the
garden tomb where Jesus lifeless body had been placed after it was taken down
from the cross.
For over 20 years I have been declaring
the Easter Gospel from the perspective of Jesus friends, people like the women
who went to anoint His body, Mary who was overjoyed to hear Jesus speak her
name, Peter and John who raced to the empty tomb, or the other disciples who
heard the Good News that day, but I never thought about Jesus’ enemies being
there also. I never realized that even…
I.
The Guards Were Witnesses Of The Empty Tomb.
A. They were there among “the whole company of
soldiers” when Jesus was stripped, mocked and beaten in the Praetorium. Some of them may have marched him out of the
city, nailed his hands and feet to the cross, cast lots for his clothes, and
heard their officer confess, “Surely this was the Son of God!” Whatever part they played in those events,
their job on Easter morning was to stand guard over Jesus’ tomb to make sure
that no one could say that He made good on His promise to “rise from the dead
on the third day.”
But they failed in their duty. All of a sudden they felt a great earthquake
which they correctly understood to be a sign of God’s presence and
judgment. Then they saw an angel of the
Lord with supernatural brilliance and holiness who rolled
away the massive stone that covered the opening of the tomb. This angel made the guards into the first
witnesses of the empty tomb. Jesus was
not there; He had already risen!
The experience of the earthquake, the
sight of the angel and perhaps most of all the realization that the man they
had tortured, mocked and crucified was truly the Son of God, risen
from the dead, frightened the soldiers so much that they shook and became like
dead men. Afterwards, they did what anyone
would do in that situation, they ran away.
B. These
first witnesses of the empty tomb also became the first ones to announce the
resurrection Gospel.
Before the women even arrived at the tomb the
guards had gone into the city, to report what had happened.
If a
Roman soldier faced death for letting someone under their guard get away from
them, imagine how bad it would be if Pilate found out that they let a dead man
get away.
These men were in some serious trouble, so
rather than going straight to the governor they went to the chief priests under
whose authority they had been placed for this detail. Some of them reported to the temple priests
all that had taken place. They knew why
they had been posted there. They had
been told about Jesus promise to rise again on the third day and that the
priests feared that His disciples might come and steal His body, but nothing
could prepare them for what happened.
They could have made short work of the disciples, but they never came
near the tomb. Instead, the earthquake,
the fiery angel rolling the stone away, and the empty tomb could only mean one
thing: Jesus had risen, just as He
said. Isn’t it curious that the first to
announce the resurrection Gospel were the guards and the first to hear it the
priests. God sent the message of the
resurrection to Jesus’ enemies through their own witnesses, through the
soldiers they themselves had posted, making them the most unimpeachable
witnesses possible.
What’s
more interesting is that the priests did not question the testimony of the
guards over what had happened. They knew
that it was true, but it did not change them.
They only had one thought: “We
have got to hide this. We must not let
the truth be known.” So they met
together with the rest of the members of the Sanhedrin and passed a resolution
to pay-off and protect the soldiers if they would change their story.
II. So The Guards Were Persuaded To Hide
The Gospel.
A. The priests convinced the guards to keep to
themselves what they had seen and to hide the resurrection from the world. They used a couple of tried and true methods
of persuasion: money and fear.
The first thing the Jewish leaders offered
the soldiers was money, not the measly thirty pieces of silver they had given
to Judas, but they bribed them with a large sum. They gave it to the soldiers and told them
not to tell anyone what really happened but instead, "Tell
people, 'His disciples came by night and stole him away while [you] were
asleep.”
The other thing the Jewish leaders did was
use the soldier’s fears against them.
The soldiers had to know that Pilate would not so easily believe a story
about an angel rolling the stone away and showing them the empty tomb. The story about falling asleep was much more
plausible. To admit to falling asleep on
duty, however, could lead to their deaths.
So the chief priests offered to protect them, since they had been placed
under their authority. They told the
soldiers that they would “satisfy the
governor” and “keep them out of
trouble”, but with the understanding that they would only do it if they
went along with the lie.
B. Can we really blame the faithless guards who
were only out to make a “buck” and save their own skins? After all, we claim Christ as our Savior and
regularly confess that “on the third day He rose from the dead” but have,
ourselves, become very good at hiding the Gospel. The methods of persuasion used by the Jewish
leaders still work on us today.
We
allow ourselves to be bribed and frightened into silence about Jesus and His
resurrection. Every day we make choices
in our jobs, at school and with our families that make our lives a little bit
more comfortable. All we have to do in
exchange is tone down our Christian witness and keep quiet about the
Gospel. We regularly strike deals with
the world to cover-up the truth about Jesus and what His resurrection means for
us, so that we can get ahead or make an extra “buck”. We also give into our fears, just like those
guards. We do not want to risk
friendships and family relationships by being labeled Jesus Freaks. We don’t want to speak up about Jesus
because we are afraid that someone will cut us down. We, like the soldiers, imagine that no one
will believe us anyway, so why put ourselves out there? So when people tell us to just pretend that we
are spiritually asleep and promise that they will protect us and keep us out of
trouble if we just go along with the story that Christianity and the
resurrection Gospel is a lie, we give into our fears, and keep quite.
Not only do we fail to speak the truth
about Jesus and His resurrection, too often our lives do not tell the truth
about Him either. We say we are
Christians, but continue to live like unbelievers. We tell the world by our actions that Christ
has not risen because we do not live new lives in Him. How well hidden have we been keeping our
faith? Would the people with whom we
work be shocked to hear that we claim to be Christian? After all they can easily see that we do not
put God first, above everything else in our lives. They recognize that we do not honor God’s
name with prayer and praise and thanksgiving.
What about our neighbors?
Certainly they can look out their window and see that we do not keep the
Sabbath and worship as we should. And
what about the way we treat them and our family? How well do we keep our faith hidden from our
children? Too often our lives are a lie
and if they were the only testimony others had to know the living Christ and
the Gospel, it would remain hidden. But
praise God neither the plans of Jesus’ enemies, nor the lies of the guards, nor
even our own failures and sins can hide what happened on this day!
III. The Gospel Cannot Be Hidden – Christ
Is Risen! [He is risen,
Indeed. Alleluia!]
A. The fact remains that all the lies and
attempts to deny the resurrection Gospel have failed. Matthew records that the story about the
disciples stealing the body of Jesus while highly trained Roman soldiers slept “has been spread among the Jews to this
day.” (v.15)
But the Jewish leaders could never support
the lies they had invented. For all
their efforts they could never produce the body the disciples were supposed to
have stolen. They could not give a good
reason why the frightened disciples would endanger themselves by robbing the
grave or why they would eventually lay down their lives for in defense of the
message of Christ’s resurrection if it were not true. They could not counteract the testimony of
over 500 witnesses who saw the risen Christ in
Still, today, every effort to deny the
truth of the resurrection fails. The
blasphemous efforts of Martin Scorsese’s “Last
Temptation of Christ”, Dan Brown’s “DaVinci Code”, Simcha Jacobovici and James
Cameron’s “Lost Tomb of Jesus”, along with all the other fruity and fanciful
claims cannot make their case. They
cannot change the Gospel truth that:
Christ is Risen! He is risen
indeed. Alleluia!
B. Just as the Jewish leaders and modern
scholars cannot negate Christ’s resurrection, our own failure to be faithful
witnesses and our sin cannot hide the Gospel.
Despite our failure to witness as we
should the Gospel still goes forth as our Lord promised it would. Still today, the message of repentance and
forgiveness of sins is proclaimed throughout the world in Jesus’ name. People everywhere are being given the opportunity
to hear the Good News of Christ’s holy life, sacrificial death, and glorious
resurrection for them.
And that Gospel still comes to us. Our sin and guilt cannot hide the truth of
the Gospel for us. We know that we have
not been living the way Christ intended us to live. We know that we have often abused His grace
to us and been poor witnesses of His resurrection power for us. But none of this can change the fact that He
really died for our sins and rose again on the third day to give us eternal
life. That Gospel is especially for
those of us hear today who know that we have been dead in our trespasses and
want to be made alive with Christ. It is
for us who want to return to our baptism and have our old sinful nature put to
death with Christ, so that we may share in His resurrection and live a new
life.
C. Praise God that the Lord’s messengers and
Christ, Himself, still proclaim the resurrection, especially for sinners like
us.
Just as the angel of the Lord showed the
women the empty tomb and declared, He is not here, for he has risen, as he said. Come,
see the place where he lay.” the
Lord’s messengers still proclaim to us today:
“He has risen from the dead!”
Here, in the reading of the Scriptures and in the preaching of the
Gospel, in your homes and at your bedside the Lord sends His undershepherds to offer you the Gospel, and to assure you
that your Savior lives and because He lives you will live also, and you will
live in His love. In this fellowship of
believers He sends messengers to you, your brothers and sisters in Christ, to encourage
and comfort you with the Word, to uplift you in your faith in your spiritual
conversation, and to inspire and instruct you in your shared Bible Study. As messengers together we continue to declare
to one another: “Christ is risen! He is risen indeed.
Alleluia!”
Not
only does the Lord send His messengers to us, but He Himself comes to us just
as He did the women that first Easter morning.
He comes to be with us, even to be with us in a way that we can take
hold of Him and worship Him. He comes to
us here in His very risen and glorified body and blood for us to touch and eat
and drink. At His table He continues to
come to us and bless us with forgiveness, life and salvation.
Because we know that He is risen and lives to bless us the message to us continues to be the same as that to those outside the empty tomb that first Easter morning: “Don’t be afraid, rather go and tell!” Truly, because Jesus is risen we have nothing to fear. We know by His resurrection that the sacrifice for our sins He offered has been accepted by the Father and we are forgiven. We know by His resurrection that all the promises He has made to us regarding our eternal life and everlasting inheritance are true. We know by His resurrection that He is the true Son of God whose power is at work in us and for us and through us. Such a wondrous Gospel cannot and will not be hidden. We will tell it loudly: Christ is risen! He is risen, indeed! Alleluia! Amen.