"FOR THE SAKE OF OUR SALVATION THE HOLY SPIRIT INSISTS THAT JESUS PHYSICALLY AROSE."

Singing: (Psalms and Hymns are from the "Book of Praise" Anglo Genevan Psalter)
Psalm 115:8
Psalm 130:2,4
Hymn 29:1,2
Hymn 26:1,2
Psalm 30:1,2,3

Beloved Congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ!

Every Christian worth his salt will admit that Jesus Christ arose from the dead. That’s because every Christian worth his salt realizes that Jesus’ resurrection is so central to the message of the Bible.

Ways part, however, when you ask what is meant by Jesus’ resurrection. That there was a man Jesus who died in Jerusalem years ago on a Roman cross, yes, that’s generally accepted. That He was buried is generally accepted too. But that He literally came alive again, that He left His grave, walked and talked and ate with people again – no, that’s too incredulous to believe. After all, we all know that dead people stay dead; when was the last time a doctor verified a resurrection?!

But the thing is now, congregation, that even those Christians who deny Jesus’ physical resurrection will tell you that Jesus arose. You see, it’s a question of what you mean by the notion of Jesus’ resurrection. Easter, they’ll tell you, is not whether the dead Jesus physically came alive again 2000 years ago; Easter, they’ll tell you, is rather that Jesus Christ today comes alive in your heart. That is: are you touched by Jesus’ example of care for others, His example of self-denial so that today you deny yourself to show love for others? Is Jesus alive and real to you? If yes, we’re told, then you’ve caught Easter, and you can say that Jesus arose for you, Jesus lives. Important to the Easter message, then, is not what happened in Jerusalem 2000 years ago, but rather what happens in your heart now….

This warped Easter message, brothers and sisters, is all around us; we can’t get away from it. So we need to face it head on. That’s why I ask you this morning: does it make any difference whether you understand Jesus’ resurrection to mean that He physically arose long ago or to mean that He lives in your heart today?

Yes, beloved, it makes a difference. In the Gospel according to Matthew the Holy Spirit has made a point of insisting that Jesus physically arose from the dead; the Jesus-who-was-dead has left the grave as a man alive. We reject the message of the Holy Spirit to our peril – eternally.

I ask your attention this morning for Matthew’s account of what happened on that Easter day so long ago. As you listen to the sermon, remember that your reaction today to what happened long ago is decisive for your eternal salvation. I summarize the sermon with this theme:

The portion we read from the gospel of Matthew, congregation, has in it a goodly measure of suspense. Matthew tells us first that Jesus was truly dead; chap 27:55 relates that "many women" were witnesses to His death. Then in vs 61 Matthew tells us of Jesus’ burial, and the fact that there were witnesses here too. Point is: there can be no doubt as to whether Jesus really died on Good Friday; there were sufficient witnesses to His death and His burial to convince any media investigation into reports of His death.

But Jesus, the reader recalls, has said that He would arise. That gives suspense to the actions of the chief priests and Pharisees. The chief priests and Pharisees recall too what Jesus had said about rising on the third day, they want to prevent that that happen, and so they obtained Pilate’s permission to organize a guard around the tomb; in fact, they even sealed the stone Joseph had rolled against the door of the tomb. The chief priests and Pharisees were adamant: the dead body inside the tomb was going to stay inside the tomb.

What we have? Jesus is really dead. The women know it, Joseph knows it, Pilate knows it, the chief priests and Pharisees know it. And as far as the guards and the priests are concerned, He’s supposed to stay dead. That brings suspense to the chapter, for we want to read about His rising from the dead.

Then it’s so disappointing, brothers and sisters, to read what Matthew writes. For he doesn’t write about the resurrection! He tells us that "after the Sabbath, as the first day of the week began to dawn, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to see the tomb," and we find ourselves walking along with them, itching to see what they see – and that has to be the resurrection of Jesus. But there’s nothing of the sort. Through the eyes of the women we see an angel, we see what the angel did, what the angel looked like, what the angel said. Through the eyes of the women we see also some guards who became like dead men…. And that’s all. There are no details about how the Prince of Life came alive again, no account of how He broke through the seal the guards placed on the stone, or how He got out of the tomb. We find it disappointing, because isn’t that what Easter should be all about?? Or is His physical resurrection not that important after all; is it more important that Jesus lives in our hearts…?

We are not the first to feel this disappointment. You know that the Holy Spirit has put in our Bibles four gospels - Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. As it is, though, in the early years of church history other gospels were written, written to fill in the gaps people felt were left in the inspired gospels, or written to push a particular point of view. One of these uninspired writings is called the Gospel according to Peter. No, not that Peter himself wrote it; Peter died some 35 years after Jesus’ death on Calvary. The so-called "Gospel according to Peter" was written well over a hundred years after Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection, written by a man who put himself out as being Peter. This so-called Peter wrote his gospel in order to spread a heresy known as Docetism – that’s the belief that Jesus was not a true man but only appeared to be human.

Well now, this Peter writes a report about the resurrection of Jesus that –at first reading- satisfies our curiosity about how Jesus arose from the dead. What do you think of this:

That’s the resurrection account as found in the Gospel according to Peter. What do you think, congregation, of that account? Certainly it satisfies some of our questions; here’s a description of how Jesus actually arose from the dead, how two angels entered the tomb, did this and that to Jesus, then came out of the tomb supporting Jesus on either side. And there were witnesses too: the soldiers standing guard saw it all. We’re also told what Jesus did while in the grave; He used His time to preach the gospel to the thousands and millions who had died earlier. There’s even miracles here, for the stone rolls aside by itself and Jesus’ head reaches to above the heavens, etc. In terms of sheer graphics and capturing our imagination and satisfying our curiosity, the gospel of Peter wins out any day over the Gospel of Matthew.

But now to the point, beloved. Why did the angels come from heaven to earth? In ‘Peter’ the reason for their coming was to fetch Jesus out of the grave. That’s to say: Jesus needs a hand to come alive again, needs a hand to break out of the tomb. Sure, the stone rolls away by itself, but even then Jesus cannot come out by Himself…. Think it through, brothers and sisters: that means that the tomb was for Jesus a prison; He could not get out on His own!

That is not what the Holy Spirit records in the Gospel of Matthew. The Holy Spirit says in Matthew that the angel came to roll back the stone from the door of the tomb. Once he completed that task, the angel did not go inside to help Jesus out, but instead sat on the stone. That is, the angel had no more work to do and therefore sat down.

The point is important, brothers and sisters, and marks the point of difference between the Scriptures given us by the Holy Spirit and the apocryphal writings of man. Why did the angel come to earth? Did God send an angel from heaven (or angels if you will) to fetch Jesus out of the grave? Or did God send an angel (be it one or more than one) to pass on some good news to the women? Did God send the angel for Jesus’ sake or for our sake?

We say: the gospel accounts of the Bible are disappointing because they don’t tell us about how Jesus arose. So the gospel of Peter appeals to our imagination; here we get some details. But, beloved, if we consider this fundamental question about why the angel came to earth, we suddenly see the poverty of Peter and the wealth of Matthew.

How so? Listen again to the so-called gospel of Peter. "The stone which had been laid against the entrance to the sepulchre started of itself to roll and gave way to the side, and the sepulchre was opened, and both [angels] entered in. [Then] three men come out from the sepulchre, and two of them sustaining the other" – the ‘other’, of course, being Jesus. But here, beloved, is the nonsense of this Easter legend. The stone can roll aside by itself, but Jesus cannot come out of the grave by Himself. Is that your Savior, beloved, so weak – even in His resurrection?? Is Easter this that the grave can come open by itself, but Jesus can’t come out by Himself? With such a message, what’s left of the triumph of the Son of God over that great enemy Death? Then sure, we’d like a witness report of just how Jesus got out of the grave. But any witnessed report of the how of the resurrection is going to downplay the marvel of the resurrection. Any witnessed report of the how of the resurrection is going to put into finite, human words something that is too majestic for human words to grasp. More, any attempt to describe the how of the resurrection is going to place that resurrection under the scrutiny of our limited and sinful minds – and that can never do justice to the greatness and grandeur of Jesus’ departure from the realm of the dead. ‘Peter’ –human gospel as it is- wants to satisfy human curiosity about how the resurrection took place, and in the process Peter has emptied Easter of its power, has in fact denied the kernel of the Easter gospel.

What that kernel is? Listen to the Holy Spirit in our text. The angel came to do a job, ie, to roll back the stone from the door of the tomb. Why? Was that to let Jesus out? No, beloved, no! For when the angel came Jesus was outside the tomb already! Vs 5: the angel says to the women that Jesus "is not here; for He is risen, as He said." "He is risen," says the angel, and the point is that Jesus’ deed of arising from the dead was completed, completed even before the angel came to earth. He didn’t come to earth to fetch Jesus from the dead, or to help Him out of the grave. He came to open the door so that the women might be able to look inside and see for themselves that "He is not here." Vs 6: "come, see the place where the Lord lay." Come along, says the angel, the door is open; you’ve seen with your own eyes –for you were here when I arrived- that I’ve not been inside, but you go in now and witness to the fact that the grave is empty. There’s the point, beloved: the angel came to open the grave so that the women could see that Jesus was not there anymore. And having seen it, they could go and testify to others that indeed Jesus was not in the tomb anymore when the angel rolled the stone back. That’s to say: they could tell others that Jesus had in fact left the tomb before dawn, left the tomb while the tomb was still sealed. While the guards were on the job, while the seal remained unbroken, the Jesus-who-died-Friday departed from His resting place among the dead to join the world of the living.

How Jesus got out of the tomb? Matthew doesn’t know, and so he doesn’t fantasize about it either. The how is God’s business; the details are not for us. Important is that Jesus’ word about rising on the third day came to pass, and that’s sufficient for God’s people! Here’s no place for fantasy, here’s no place for speculation; here’s place only for accepting the evidence – the grave is empty, according to Jesus’ prophecy; the women witnessed it.

I come to our second point:

God has chosen to withhold from us the details of how Jesus came alive again and how Jesus departed from the sealed tomb. Through the eyes of the women He told us instead what the naked eye saw in the cemetery that Easter morning so long ago. The thing is now: what do you think about God’s Word in Mt 28? The Holy Spirit prompted Matthew to record the events in that cemetery in the manner he did so that we might believe the fact of Easter and so be saved. But the tragedy is that people around us today consider another question more important. Not His physical resurrection is seen to be so vital to salvation, but the question of whether Jesus has arisen in your heart. But the minute you make that the critical question, congregation, you have put yourself in the spotlight, with your feelings and your heart. That is subjectivism, mysticism, and leads you away from God.

God, though, has told us what He in wisdom determined we needed to know about the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Do we need to know exactly how it happened? No, God has withheld details from us and so prevented us from trying to understand the how of Christ’s resurrection from the dead – something human, sinful minds cannot fathom. Instead, our God has told us of the fact of the resurrection – the sealed and heavily guarded tomb was empty; these witnesses testify to that! That’s what God told us, and now the critical question is: how do you respond to that Word from God? God says that Easter is a fact, Christ is risen: do you believe it, or do you insist on keeping your mind busy with a different question, the question of whether Christ arose in your heart? You see, with that second question –whether Christ has arisen in your heart- you’re dodging the question of how you’re responding to God’s proclamation of what happened 2000 years ago. But you can never dodge God’s questions and get away with it. You have to face that first question first: do you believe what God says concerning that first Easter, or do you not? Has God told you the truth when He proclaims that Jesus is risen and the tomb is empty – or has He not?

Is our response to God’s word about Jesus’ resurrection so important then? Says Paul to the Romans: "if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved" (Rom 10:9). Important?! Congregation, your salvation hinges on your response to God’s Word about Easter! Whoever does not believe that Jesus Christ was once as dead as those presently buried in Fremantle and on Easter Sunday became as alive as you and I are today cannot enter eternal life! And we’re to understand: the whole gospel is caught in the notion of Jesus’ resurrection. In Paradise God had told our forebearers Adam and Eve that if they would disobey God, if they would sin and eat of the forbidden fruit, they would surely die (Gen 2:17). That’s to say: death is the wages of sin (cf Rom 6:23). In Adam and Eve we did sin, ate of the forbidden fruit, and so we must all die, must all face in death the penalty of God’s judgment on our sin. But here’s the good news: holy and eternal God gave His only Son so that Christ might bear the penalty of God’s judgment on our sin in our place. That is why He also had to die. And die He did – Good Friday. But He died after He satisfied God’s justice, after He stilled the wrath of God on our sins. On the cross He paid for sin, and that’s why He could not stay dead; Jesus took sin away and therefore death had no right to Jesus! That’s the wonder of Jesus’ resurrection as Matthew describes it: Jesus was more than Death, Jesus had paid for our sins and so Death could not maintain its hold on Jesus. That is why He arose on the third day from the dead. How? I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter. But critical is the fact that He arose, for with His resurrection He demonstrated His victory over Death-as-penalty-for-sin.

So the question comes to us directly again: what do you think of God’s announcement in Mt 28? Has Jesus in fact arisen from the dead – physically? Did the man who died on Good Friday in fact eat and drink and walk and talk with His disciples again? Or do you want to dodge the question by focusing instead on whether this Jesus lives in your heart today? I repeat it: you can’t dodge the question; you must face head on the question of whether Jesus in fact arose. And by facing that question head on, you must grapple also with the gospel-in-its-entirety: has Christ triumphed over sin or has He not? If He has, you are saved, for the wrath of God against your sins is stilled. If He has not, you are damned, for the wrath of God remains against you. So: how do you respond?

Paul wrote his letter to the Romans some 25 years after Jesus’ death on the cross and His resurrection on Easter Sunday. Amazing, isn’t it, that Paul already had to insist on the reality of the Lord’s resurrection back in his days. That’s because the human heart bucks against this revelation, bucks it because so much is at stake in one’s response to the Lord’s resurrection. There’s nothing new under the sun; today’s so-called Christian world follows in the footsteps of the unbelievers of Paul’s days. The preaching of the resurrection has gone out to the ends of the earth, but –as Paul says- "they have not all obeyed the gospel" (10:16). People would demythologize the gospel, would sanitize it of its offence….

And you? Remember: the righteousness that is by faith clings to the good news God has revealed in Matthew 28. This faith confesses with the mouth the Lord Jesus and believes in the heart that God raised Him from the dead, and so you are saved. Amen.