Doug McMasters: You to take your Bible, or if you don't have one, to find one in the pew in front of you and turn to the Gospel of Matthew in chapter 28.
Doug McMasters: Matthew chapter 28.
Doug McMasters: We're approaching the end of our study of Matthew.
Doug McMasters: We've been in this book for just about two and a half years, just over two and a half years.
Doug McMasters: We only have a couple more messages in it before we turn our attention to the book of Isaiah.
Doug McMasters: So if you're recently here, we do book studies and we'll be looking at uh the book of Isaiah starting the end of September.
Doug McMasters: Lou Wallace was a retired Army general who lived in Crawfordsville, Indiana, a Midwestern town my father actually was born in, and many of my extended family went to college in.
Doug McMasters: He's probably best known for his book Ben-Hur.
Doug McMasters: Ben-Hur is a historical epic that follows the life of a young man by the name of Judah bin-Hur.
Doug McMasters: He's a Jewish prince, and his life intertwines with that of the life of Jesus Christ.
Doug McMasters: The story follows Judah bin-Hur, who's falsely accused of attempting to assassinate a Roman governor by one of his friends.
Doug McMasters: He's enslaved, he's sent to the galleys, but he survives all of that and is released, and on his way back for revenge, he comes into contact with Jesus Christ.
Doug McMasters: The life of Jesus and the teaching of Jesus and his crucifixion transformed Judah bin-Hur's life.
Doug McMasters: This book, Ben Hur, was immensely popular and was the best-selling novel of the 19th century.
Doug McMasters: It's been adapted into several stage plays and also a movie, 1959, Charlton Heston, and it won 11 Academy Awards.
Doug McMasters: But there's a backstory to the story of Ben Hur.
Doug McMasters: Lou Wallace was on a train journey to meet up with other Civil War veterans in Chicago.
Doug McMasters: And on that train was a man by the name of Robert Ingersoll.
Doug McMasters: Robert Ingersoll was also an Army veteran for the Civil War, and he was headed to the same place.
Doug McMasters: He was also a lawyer, but he was most noted for being a speaker around the country, packing out uh houses in order to give lectures on various topics, one of which was his tirades against religion, particularly against Christianity.
Doug McMasters: He was known as the great agnostic.
Doug McMasters: Well, Wallace and Ingersoll ran into each other on this train journey.
Doug McMasters: And Ingersoll invited Wallace in for a discussion, and Wallace agreed only if he could choose the topic of discussion.
Doug McMasters: So they sat down together, and Wallace asked him if he if Ingersoll believed in the afterlife, if he believed in the divinity of Christ, if he believed in the existence of God.
Doug McMasters: And Ingersoll replied, I don't know.
Doug McMasters: Do you?
Doug McMasters: Wallace asked Ingersoll another question.
Doug McMasters: He asked him if he would present his best case against Christianity.
Doug McMasters: Later, Lewis described that discussion.
Doug McMasters: This is how he put it.
Doug McMasters: He said he issued a melody of argument, eloquence, wit, satire, audacity, irreverence, poetry, brilliant antithesis, and pungent excoriation concerning believers in God.
Doug McMasters: Ingersoll's views, theological and biblical skepticism shook Wallace, shook him to the core.
Doug McMasters: He said, I was in a confusion of mind not unlike dazement.
Doug McMasters: According to Wallace, however, it didn't shake him, it also moved him to action.
Doug McMasters: Wallace described his religious life at the time as, quote, one of absolute indifference.
Doug McMasters: But because of this conversation with Ingersoll, he said, as I walked into the cool darkness, I was aroused for the first time in my life to the importance of religion.
Doug McMasters: And that prompted him into an investigation of the teachings and traditions of Christianity.
Doug McMasters: And that investigation culminated in him writing the book Bin Her.
Doug McMasters: And also, as he put it, a full conviction amounting to absolute belief in God and the divinity of Jesus Christ.
Doug McMasters: However, for Ingersoll, the conversation was just another one of many private and public conversations that he had in his tirades against Christianity.
Doug McMasters: The interaction had such little influence on him that in a later letter, he even posits the question of even having had a conversation with Wallace.
Doug McMasters: It's fascinating how one conversation could be so instrumental in the transformation of one life to be so little thought of by another that it's almost totally forgotten.
Doug McMasters: And that brings us to our passage in Matthew chapter 28, verses 11 to 15.
Doug McMasters: Of all of the Gospels, only Matthew recounts this event.
Doug McMasters: Obviously, it's of some special importance to him.
Doug McMasters: He brings it out here as one of the last three scenes of the gospel.
Doug McMasters: Let's look at verse 11 and we'll read through verse 15.
Doug McMasters: As they were on their way, speaking to the women that were introduced to us earlier, some of the guards who were guarding the tomb of Jesus came into the city and reported to the chief priest everything that had happened.
Doug McMasters: After the priest had assembled with the elders and agreed on a plan, they gave the soldiers a large sum of money and told them, Say this.
Doug McMasters: His disciples came during the night and stole him while we were sleeping.
Doug McMasters: If this reaches the governor's ears, we will deal with him and keep you out of trouble.
Doug McMasters: They took the money and did as they were instructed, and this story has been spread among the Jewish people to this day.
Doug McMasters: What an interesting account.
Doug McMasters: Jesus is not mentioned in here at all.
Doug McMasters: And when we look at this passage, it sits, as I said, as part of a set of three accounts after the resurrection.
Doug McMasters: First account, which Micah led all of us through last week, verses one through 10.
Doug McMasters: And then what we'll look at next week in verses 16 through the end of the chapter, the Great Commission and the Resurrection.
Doug McMasters: Now, if you took 11 to 15 out of there, you would see that those first and third accounts really do feel like they're seamless.
Doug McMasters: You've got the resurrection, you've got the angel appearing to the women who had come to the tomb, you have them leaving, you have Jesus speaking to them and telling them to talk to the other disciples, and then the 11 disciples go where they're instructed to go in verse 16, and Jesus appears to them in Galilee.
Doug McMasters: You could remove this whole section and not even lose one step along the way.
Doug McMasters: But Matthew includes it here.
Doug McMasters: Why is it here?
Doug McMasters: What is it that's important for us to hear?
Doug McMasters: What can we learn from this story about soldiers who left the tomb?
Doug McMasters: What can we learn from what they saw and what they said so long ago?
Doug McMasters: Well, before we answer that question, those questions, let's just take a little better look at this passage of scripture.
Doug McMasters: And there are some things that I want us to note in this.
Doug McMasters: First of all, the concerned guards.
Doug McMasters: You might recall in the last chapter, in answer to the request of the chief priest, Pilate ordered the Jewish leaders to take soldiers and bring them to the tomb and to secure the tomb of Jesus Christ.
Doug McMasters: So they did that.
Doug McMasters: They took the soldiers to the tomb, they placed a seal around the gap between the stone and the outer wall of the tomb, and the guards were posted.
Doug McMasters: And as was customary in that time, there would have been a cache of guards who would have worked on rotation at regular intervals, and it wouldn't have been a difficult or a long task for them.
Doug McMasters: They were only meant to be there for a few days.
Doug McMasters: The Jewish leaders were afraid of the body of Jesus Christ being taken away in those crucial first three days.
Doug McMasters: And so come Monday, these men would have been released of this charge and could have gone home.
Doug McMasters: And I'm sure in the light of what soldiers did, this was probably an easy task for them.
Doug McMasters: They've had to guard all kinds of people, prisoners, enemy soldiers, having to guard places that were quite dangerous, and now they're just being asked to guard a dead body.
Doug McMasters: Not a hard task.
Doug McMasters: But early Sunday morning, something happened that they weren't prepared for.
Doug McMasters: Take a look at verse 2.
Doug McMasters: There was a violent earthquake because the angel of the Lord descended from heaven and approached the tomb.
Doug McMasters: He rolled back the stone and was sitting on it.
Doug McMasters: His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing was as white as snow.
Doug McMasters: The guards were so shaken by fear of him that they became like dead men.
Doug McMasters: We lose sight of the guards for a little while as the angel addresses the women who were there in giving them assurances not to be afraid, but to rejoice that the Jesus that they'd come, who was crucified, was not in the place that they thought he was, because he was risen.
Doug McMasters: And they were instructed by this angel to go tell the other disciples.
Doug McMasters: And so we see in verse 8, they departed quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy.
Doug McMasters: They ran to tell the disciples the news.
Doug McMasters: And that brings us to this interesting parallel: that as the ladies are leaving to go tell the news of the resurrected Christ, at the same time, some of the guards are leaving to go tell the chief priest of the resurrected Christ.
Doug McMasters: And Matthew says that they told the chief priest everything that had happened.
Doug McMasters: Which means they also knew of the resurrection.
Doug McMasters: What they saw and what they said at the beginning was crystal clear.
Doug McMasters: They knew the facts, they told the facts.
Doug McMasters: What they saw, they spoke about.
Doug McMasters: But these guards knew they'd be in big trouble when people realized that the dead man that they were guarding had overpowered death and had escaped their grip.
Doug McMasters: For just a moment, these guards were in the exact same place as the women.
Doug McMasters: For a moment they were caught up in the wonder of something that had invaded the traditional norm of human history.
Doug McMasters: They were equally amazed, they were equally fearful, but one was joyful, and one set was concerned about their own neck.
SPEAKER_01: Remarkably, in spite of all that they had saw, they refused to have faith in this empty tomb.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus Christ.
Doug McMasters: They didn't leave the tomb with the wondrous joy that the women did.
Doug McMasters: They didn't leave the tomb with the knowledge that Jesus was alive and had conquered death.
Doug McMasters: They fled with worrisome fear for their own lives that people would discover that they were unable to keep a dead man in his own grave.
Doug McMasters: And their interaction with that empty tomb only became an instrument of their judgment rather than a place of their eternal hope.
Doug McMasters: That leads us to the second part I want us to just note here.
Doug McMasters: The crafted plan.
Doug McMasters: They came to the chief priest, reported to the chief priests everything that had happened.
Doug McMasters: And after the chief priest had assembled with the elders, they agreed on a plan.
Doug McMasters: They gave the soldiers a large sum of money, told them to say this.
Doug McMasters: His disciples came during the night and stole him while we were sleeping.
Doug McMasters: And if this reaches the governor's ears, we'll deal with him and keep you out of trouble.
Doug McMasters: They had assembled very officially.
Doug McMasters: They had agreed on a plan, which in the Greek is an indication that this was sort of a very significant, decided way of action that this group, the Sanhedrin, was putting into action.
Doug McMasters: The resolution had three parts.
Doug McMasters: First of all, to bribe the soldiers, secondly, to spread the lie.
Doug McMasters: And third, to protect the soldiers from any possible reprisal by Pilate.
Doug McMasters: The first part tells us that they gave the soldiers a large sum of money.
Doug McMasters: Well, there probably was at least a dozen soldiers.
Doug McMasters: And because of the risk that was involved, I'm sure it wasn't just a small amount that kept them quiet.
Doug McMasters: And the word for money there is silver, literally.
Doug McMasters: The exact same term that's used when these same men paid off Judas to betray Jesus.
Doug McMasters: Secondly, the lie.
Doug McMasters: The soldiers were instructed to say, his disciples came by night and took the body while we were sleeping.
Doug McMasters: It must have been a large amount of money because these soldiers were very well aware that their life was at stake for falling asleep at the post.
Doug McMasters: The penalty for sleeping on duty was death.
Doug McMasters: In Acts chapter 12, Peter is released from prison by the work of another angel.
Doug McMasters: And it says in Acts chapter 12, verses 18 and 19, that there was a great commotion among the soldiers as to what had become of Peter.
Doug McMasters: In verse 19, Herod had searched and did not find him.
Doug McMasters: He interrogated the guards and ordered their execution.
Doug McMasters: Then Herod went down from Judah, Judea, to Caesarea and stayed there.
Doug McMasters: That was the fate of these soldiers.
Doug McMasters: If they gave this lie out, they did so at the risk of their own neck.
Doug McMasters: So I'm sure they found that paycheck to be, well, good enough to risk your life for.
Doug McMasters: Oh, that threat again.
Doug McMasters: And so Pilate handed him over to be crucified.
Doug McMasters: With Pilate already bending to the will of these men once, and his new alliance that he had with Herod, he was well disposed to give in again.
Doug McMasters: And he wasn't going to risk his own neck for the neck of some soldiers and this body that mysteriously is gone.
Doug McMasters: Let's back up a little bit and just take a little extra look at the conspired lie for a moment.
Doug McMasters: We see these concerned soldiers, we see this crafted plan, but it contains a lie, and there's a reason why we need to pay some attention to it.
Doug McMasters: Now, notice, first of all, that these men do not try to deny the empty tomb, they try to explain it.
Doug McMasters: And I think that's an important point because they're looking at an empty spot there where Jesus was placed.
Doug McMasters: And they're not denying the resurrection, they're trying to explain the disappearance of Jesus.
Doug McMasters: And the concocted story that they posit raises more questions than it answers.
Doug McMasters: Their device story was weak and easily discredited.
Doug McMasters: And it becomes an argument for the resurrection that they were trying to deny.
Doug McMasters: And because it comes from Jesus' enemies, I think it carries all the more weight.
Doug McMasters: Let's just examine it with a few different things.
Doug McMasters: First of all, if this story was true, the Jewish leaders could have found the stolen body without a whole lot of difficulty.
Doug McMasters: They had already been given soldiers to guard the tomb.
Doug McMasters: If they had requested more soldiers to find the body, I'm sure they would have been given to them.
Doug McMasters: They could have had hundreds of men out scouring the city looking for the body of Jesus Christ.
Doug McMasters: Probably would have been very difficult for these 11 men to.
Doug McMasters: To succeed in eluding the search of the Roman soldiers.
Doug McMasters: The simplest way to have disproved the resurrection was simply to find the body.
Doug McMasters: But there's no evidence, obviously, that they found the body, and there's no evidence at all that the Sanhedrin even attempted to find the body.
Doug McMasters: They simply tried to explain it away.
Doug McMasters: And because they didn't search for the body, they knew there was not a body to be found.
Doug McMasters: They already knew the resurrection was true.
Doug McMasters: Secondly, this whole argument doesn't take into consideration the state of the disciples after the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
Doug McMasters: When we read the Gospels, one of the strongest arguments about the authenticity of the Gospels is that the men who write these Gospels put themselves in the worst light possible.
Doug McMasters: Peter is always contradicting his Lord and put into his place, time and again.
Doug McMasters: As uh I think it was John MacArthur said that Peter was the apostle with the foot-shaped mouth.
Doug McMasters: He was always putting his foot in it.
Doug McMasters: And when the crucifixion happened, they scattered.
Doug McMasters: And the scriptures tell us that they were hiding for fear of their lives.
Doug McMasters: Does this sound at all like the kind of men that are going to be traipsing into a cemetery and trying to overpower Roman soldiers in order to steal the body and fabricate something about there being a resurrection?
Doug McMasters: No, I don't think so.
Doug McMasters: These men had even less belief in the resurrection than they did before the death of Jesus Christ.
Doug McMasters: And when the women reported the resurrection to us in Luke chapter 24, it said, these words appeared to the apostles as nonsense and they wouldn't believe.
Doug McMasters: He's finally getting the credit he deserved for his whole life.
Doug McMasters: He's put into a place of prominence in one of the best tombs in the area.
Doug McMasters: There's no reason they had to counterfeit the resurrection.
Doug McMasters: And they certainly didn't have the wherewithal to muster the courage and the ingenuity to steal the body and then boldly proclaim he was resurrected.
Doug McMasters: Now, the time will come when the apostles very bravely and boldly proclaim that grand truth of the resurrection of Christ, and they do so with great joy.
Doug McMasters: But that's because they saw the resurrected Christ, not because they contrived a story.
Doug McMasters: Also, it's really improbable that the soldiers would have gone to sleep long enough for the disciples to do this.
Doug McMasters: Remember, there was a stone rolled over there, there was a seal put on it, and there was a watch that these soldiers would have.
Doug McMasters: They would only be on duty for about three hours at a time in rotation.
Doug McMasters: Staying awake for three hours isn't too difficult.
Doug McMasters: And then there's a number of bullet point questions that this argument really can't answer.
Doug McMasters: If the soldiers were asleep after all, how do they know who stole the body?
Doug McMasters: Right?
Doug McMasters: Yeah, you've been woken up from a dead sleep, and what do you do?
Doug McMasters: Where am I?
Doug McMasters: So, what happened 10 minutes ago?
Doug McMasters: I have no idea.
Doug McMasters: I was dreaming.
Doug McMasters: If some onlooker had told them that the disciples had come while they were sleeping and stolen the body, why didn't they just get up and run after them and find these guys toting a body away?
Doug McMasters: And then there's the question of the grave clothes.
Doug McMasters: They were found inside the tomb.
Doug McMasters: Do you really think the disciples would have come in there and unwrapped Jesus and left the clothes and carried off a decomposing body?
Doug McMasters: No, they would have just grabbed the whole thing and run off.
Doug McMasters: This conspiring lie is full of confounding puzzlement when you really look at it.
Doug McMasters: It can't hold water.
Doug McMasters: That leads us to one last point to look at here.
Doug McMasters: The conflicting opposition.
Doug McMasters: We looked at the concerned soldiers, the crafted plan, the conspiring lie, and now the conflicting opposition.
Doug McMasters: Matthew says right at the end of this in verse 15 that the soldiers did as they were instructed.
Doug McMasters: They took the money and they ran to go tell a story that they knew risked their own lives.
Doug McMasters: And it says, This story has been spread among the Jewish people to this day.
Doug McMasters: Matthew wrote this gospel about 30 years after the events of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Doug McMasters: This story has continued for three decades.
SPEAKER_01: These tomb guards were the first to offer it.
Doug McMasters: The Sanhedrin also took it up, and it kept on moving forward for 30 years.
Doug McMasters: But not only for 30 years, Justin Martyr in the second century, in his dialogue with Trephoe, wrote this.
Doug McMasters: He said, You Jewish leaders have sent chosen and ordained men throughout the world to proclaim that a godless and lawless heresy has sprung up from one Jesus, a Galilean deceiver, whom we crucified, but his disciples stole him by night from the tomb, and now deceived men are asserting that he's risen from the dead and ascended into heaven.
Doug McMasters: This exact same lie is not only 30 years old by now, it's over 130 years old by now.
Doug McMasters: And you can still hear that same falsehood told today.
Doug McMasters: So what are we to learn from this?
Doug McMasters: This little interjection of the resurrection story, this scene where Jesus is absent.
Doug McMasters: All of us thinking about the resurrection of Christ would be filled with delight if we had more information about what Jesus did in those times on earth while he was alive after the resurrection.
Doug McMasters: Where did he go?
Doug McMasters: What did he say?
Doug McMasters: How did he interact with the disciples?
Doug McMasters: What was his body like?
Doug McMasters: We've got a million and one questions.
Doug McMasters: Matthew just sets all of that aside in order to tell us this.
Doug McMasters: Why?
Doug McMasters: Why, Matthew?
Doug McMasters: Why did you interrupt all of that you had to say for this moment?
Doug McMasters: Well, there's some significance to this narrative, and one of the significances that we get out of this is that God's people will face opposition in this world.
Doug McMasters: Remember, Matthew's writing 30 years after the events to people who are disciples of Jesus Christ and are being confronted with this question: what happened to the body?
Doug McMasters: Well, the guards say it was stolen by the disciples.
Doug McMasters: They're facing from family and friends these accusations that the resurrection actually never happened, but something more nefarious had taken place.
Doug McMasters: And so before we get to the Great Commission, which is what we'll look at next week, Matthew wants to set us up for the realization that we're bringing the message of the good news of Jesus Christ into a world of opposition.
Doug McMasters: A world filled with its own set of explanations that are going to be running contrary to the gospel message.
Doug McMasters: Not to be surprised by that, and not to be worried by it either.
Doug McMasters: Second thing that we learn here, a second point of significance, is that the deception is deep.
Doug McMasters: The deception is deep.
Doug McMasters: Now, for these Jewish leaders, there were three reasons why this was a repulsive event, the resurrection.
Doug McMasters: First of all, it ran totally contrary to their theology.
Doug McMasters: They did not believe in a resurrection of anything at all, not even a resurrection of the dead at the last day.
Doug McMasters: They believed that there was no resurrection.
Doug McMasters: And that's why they would taunt Jesus with these questions when he was on earth and teach in his teaching ministry.
Doug McMasters: So a man married a woman and she died, and then another one the man died, and the woman married her brother, and another one, and he died, and another one, and he died.
Doug McMasters: Whose wife will she be in the resurrection?
Doug McMasters: We don't believe in a resurrection.
Doug McMasters: They were just taunting Jesus with these questions.
Doug McMasters: And so this idea that there was really a resurrection and it was the Jesus, the Messiah, well, they couldn't, they couldn't handle that.
Doug McMasters: But they also couldn't handle it for personal security reasons.
Doug McMasters: If it got out that Jesus had been resurrected from the dead, and they were the ones that convinced the crowds to cry out, crucify him, crucify him, and he really was the Messiah, oh boy.
Doug McMasters: If the whole world knows that we're the ones that instigated the death of the Messiah, we are in serious trouble.
Doug McMasters: We've got to have reason here.
Doug McMasters: And then it was a threat to their authority as religious leaders, not only a theological threat and not only a personal threat, but a threat to their status.
Doug McMasters: They were loving the places where they lived, the finest houses in Jerusalem, in the best situated place that you could be next to the temple.
Doug McMasters: They loved being greeted as rabbi in the street corners.
Doug McMasters: They loved all the flowing robes that they could wear that made them stand out from the rest of the populace.
Doug McMasters: They loved that with a word together they could control the destiny of the nation and turn the mind of Roman governors.
Doug McMasters: They loved all of that.
Doug McMasters: This was a threat.
Doug McMasters: The only alternative was to let go of their erroneous theological positions, to let go of their self-protection, and to let go of any claim to status that they had and acknowledge Jesus Christ as Lord.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus' claim on us is no different today than it was to them then.
Doug McMasters: The guards, well, they had a lot to lose too.
Doug McMasters: We've already talked about that.
Doug McMasters: With this tomb empty that they were charged to guard, well, they came back worrying that their neck was going to be off of their head was going to be off of their neck.
Doug McMasters: In their desperation, they chose to conspire with these Jewish leaders.
Doug McMasters: And they became the propagators of a pathetic rumor that lasted to Matthew's day and beyond.
Doug McMasters: You see, evidence has no sway in a heart determined to say no.
Doug McMasters: That's something we learn here.
Doug McMasters: The deception is deep.
Doug McMasters: Jesus had been raised from the dead.
Doug McMasters: Did they believe that?
Doug McMasters: No, they did not.
Doug McMasters: They would not believe what was right before them.
Doug McMasters: These leaders had been get trying to get rid of Jesus seemingly from the very beginning.
Doug McMasters: Herod tried to eliminate Christ by slaughtering all the mill babies in his province to remove him as some threat to the throne.
Doug McMasters: These religious leaders accused Jesus of working miracles in the power of Satan, of being associated with sinners, of breaking God's law on the Sabbath, of blaspheming for claiming to be the Messiah and God's son.
Doug McMasters: They perverted justice, both biblical justice and even the justice of their own rabbinic teaching, in order to convict Christ.
Doug McMasters: They used blackmail to get Jesus crucified, and they used an armed force to try to keep his body in the grave.
Doug McMasters: And now they've engaged in bribery to cause a false rumor to be said about the resurrection.
Doug McMasters: These men were in no position at all to try to verify the claims of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Doug McMasters: They didn't want to know, and therefore they weren't going to know.
Doug McMasters: It didn't matter that Jesus had performed marvelous miracles before their eyes.
Doug McMasters: And it shows us just how much they lied.
Doug McMasters: John, your question from a few weeks ago, right?
Doug McMasters: Let him come down from the cross and we will believe him.
Doug McMasters: Let him come out of the grave and we'll believe him.
Doug McMasters: They didn't then and they didn't again.
Doug McMasters: They were informed about the resurrection.
Doug McMasters: They didn't try to deny it, they just wanted to explain it away, to keep the news from other people, from having its sway and influence, so that they can continue to walk down the pathway that they're accustomed to walk down.
Doug McMasters: But now their duplicity is exposed.
Doug McMasters: And yet they drive themselves deeper and deeper and deeper into the deception.
Doug McMasters: Someone said nothing is harder to kill than a lie.
Doug McMasters: That's probably true.
Doug McMasters: Daniel Defoe, the guy who wrote Robin Caruso, also wrote a little poem called The True Born Englishman in 1701.
Doug McMasters: And in it he says this wherever God erects a house of prayer, the devil always builds a chapel there.
Doug McMasters: And twill be found upon examination that the latter has the largest congregation.
Doug McMasters: Sometimes the good news seems too good to be true.
Doug McMasters: And the devil wants us to make it that is perhaps too good to be true.
Doug McMasters: That the hoax becomes more believable than the truth.
Doug McMasters: These religious leaders and these guards had the opportunity to know the truth that could transform their lives, but they rejected it.
Doug McMasters: And they put out a message that has continued to be deceiving to people for generations and centuries to come.
Doug McMasters: So we realize, as God's people, what we deal with today is opposition.
Doug McMasters: An opposition that's not merely an opposition of argument, but an opposition of heart, an opposition of something core within the soul that says no to God, no matter how blaring his truth is in their ears.
Doug McMasters: And so we learn from this not to be afraid and not to be daunted by this, but to continue to share the message of Christ with joy and with generosity of heart, that he truly is alive, that he saves all who call upon him.
Doug McMasters: There's one more point here, and I don't want to address us as a church in this point, but to address perhaps those of us who are here or maybe listening later through the um through the YouTube video, you have an answer, but you need more.
Doug McMasters: We live in a day when religion is looked on as merely a matter of preference or opinion.
Doug McMasters: When many people believe that all religions really fundamentally are the same, and the differences, well, perhaps crucial to those who want to argue about them, are just superficial things.
Doug McMasters: Go about your life, choose the way that's best for you.
Doug McMasters: And along the way, the question of truth, well, that can be completely avoided because it really is just a matter of one's own truth that matters anyway.
Doug McMasters: But I have to say, living that way is a costly mistake, not just for life, but also for eternity.
Doug McMasters: Belief that is empty of truth is an irresponsible belief.
Doug McMasters: We don't operate that way in most areas of life.
Doug McMasters: We certainly wouldn't go to a bank and ask for a withdrawal of our money and have the teller say to us, I just feel today that you don't have any money in your bank account today, and uh we're not going to give you any cash.
Doug McMasters: And you're gonna say to that bank teller, Well, what you feel about my bank account right now doesn't really matter.
Doug McMasters: Because I know there's money in there and I would like it, please.
Doug McMasters: Can I see your manager?
Doug McMasters: We don't operate on feelings or opinions, or it's all really all truth anyway, or it's your truth, not mine.
Doug McMasters: We don't operate that way.
Doug McMasters: Why would we operate this way about one of the most eternally important questions?
Doug McMasters: Would we think that God really just leaves it up to our own opinion on how we think it's best to approach him?
Doug McMasters: No.
Doug McMasters: He's given us facts of a human person who is also God, who came to this earth and lived a sinless life, who taught us things that no other human Ever contrived, who lived a life that no other human has ever lived, who said before he died that he would be brought to Jerusalem and crucified, and yet on the third day rise from the dead.
Doug McMasters: And he did.
Doug McMasters: Listen to him.
Doug McMasters: Matthew records not the opinions or the feelings or the perspectives of a religious ideal, but the facts of a man.
Doug McMasters: And the body matters because your body matters.
Doug McMasters: Our eternity hangs on what happens here with Jesus Christ.
Doug McMasters: Did Jesus rise from the dead?
Doug McMasters: That's the question.
Doug McMasters: We're not talking about resuscitation or some notion of reincarnation.
Doug McMasters: We're talking about resurrection.
Doug McMasters: Was Jesus dead on the cross?
Doug McMasters: Was he taken down, prepared for burial, and stuck in a tomb for three days, and then come out alive or not?
Doug McMasters: This is not a question of preference.
Doug McMasters: This is a question of truth.
Doug McMasters: Paul takes up that very question in 1 Corinthians chapter 15.
Doug McMasters: And he says, basically, if Jesus isn't really risen from the dead, we're wasting our time here.
Doug McMasters: Everything that we've done here is worse than useless.
Doug McMasters: It's actually a fabrication of a lie.
Doug McMasters: He said, we are to be more pitied than anyone if in this life only we have hope in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: But he doesn't stop there.
Doug McMasters: He says, but as it is, Christ has been risen from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.
Doug McMasters: His body matters because your body matters to God.
Doug McMasters: His resurrection is the hope for our resurrection, that this life is not all there is to existence for humanity, that there is something after death, and there can be for those who believe in Jesus Christ a reception into the throne of God with full acceptance and no condemnation.
Doug McMasters: This is the good news.
Doug McMasters: For in Adam all die, but in Christ all shall be made alive.
Doug McMasters: The question is, are you still walking in the disobedience of Adam?
Doug McMasters: Or are you hidden in Christ, in his obedience, and in his suffering death?
Doug McMasters: Matthew's account shows us forcibly that the truth of the resurrection is absolutely vital.
Doug McMasters: And even a lie is used to help purport its truth.
Doug McMasters: Simon Greeleaf, who was a 19th-century professor of law at Harvard, wrote this All that Christianity asks of men is that they would be consistent with themselves, that they would treat its evidences as they treat the evidences of other things, and that they would try and judge its actors and witnesses as they deal with their fellow men.
Doug McMasters: When testifying to human affairs and actions in human tribunals, the result, if they do that, will be an undoubting conviction of Christianity's integrity, ability, and truth.
SPEAKER_01: But you need more.
Doug McMasters: Because the problem isn't a problem of information, the problem is a problem of the heart.
Doug McMasters: And it's not about being persuaded with your intellectual questions.
Doug McMasters: It is rather, will you submit yourself to this risen Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior?
Doug McMasters: Will you give up the things that are dear to you?
Doug McMasters: Just like the chief priests were confronted with giving up their theological constructs, giving up their personal safety, giving up their status and prestige.
Doug McMasters: Are you willing to give up those things that are cherished by you?
Doug McMasters: To give them to Jesus Christ.
Doug McMasters: Now hear it with welcome.
Doug McMasters: If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you shall be saved.
Doug McMasters: For with the heart man believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.
Doug McMasters: Those were the very words on September 11th, 1983, that cracked the will of me and caused me to bow my heart before Jesus Christ and to ask him to forgive me of all the things that I had done.
Doug McMasters: Was it a question of information?
Doug McMasters: I needed something more.
Doug McMasters: And this is what Paul is saying: give yourself to him who has conquered death on the behalf of people just like you, who has gone to the cross, so that the words from God, you are forgiven, might be your words, so that those who were once enemies could now be reconciled to God through the death of Christ.
Doug McMasters: Is that not worth giving yourself to?
Doug McMasters: Is he not one worthy of your allegiance and your life?
Doug McMasters: Is he not one to give up your constructs, your safety, your prestige for?
Doug McMasters: What you lose in this life is nothing in comparison to what you gain in Christ.
Doug McMasters: Salvation belongs to those who not only believe in the resurrection, but those who confess Him as Lord and Savior.
Doug McMasters: This little episode here teaches us a lot, doesn't it?
Doug McMasters: It teaches us that as believers in this world, we're going to face opposition, that the deception is deep, that lies have legs.
Doug McMasters: But we also need to remember to continue to tell folks, yes, the truth of the resurrection, but we need to press home to the conscience of those that we're talking to, not just to the arguments of those that we're talking to.
Doug McMasters: Let's pray together.
Doug McMasters: Our Heavenly Father, we're so grateful for Christ is risen, risen from the dead.
Doug McMasters: We're so grateful that we can look death in the eye and say, Oh, death, where is your sting?
Doug McMasters: Oh, death, where is your victory?
Doug McMasters: Because we know that the victory has already been won through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Doug McMasters: Thanks be to you, God, for the victory that is found in Him.
Doug McMasters: And Lord, I pray for anyone who doesn't yet submit themselves to Jesus Christ as their only Lord and Savior.
Doug McMasters: Lord, that you and your mercy and grace would awaken them with fear until they find rest in him.
Doug McMasters: Awaken them to a dissatisfaction of the life that they've lived until they find an eternal satisfaction in Christ.
Doug McMasters: Awaken them, Father, for your glory's sake as you display your mercy and grace upon another undeserving person just like us.
Doug McMasters: And we pray this, Father, in Christ's name.
Doug McMasters: Amen.