The Chief Priests: A Lie Spread, the Truth Victorious

The Chief Priests: A Lie Spread, the Truth Victorious (Final Sermon in Lenten Series from CPH)

Easter Sunday T Matthew 28:1-15

INI

Alleluia, Christ is Risen!

He is Risen Indeed, Alleluia!

The chief priests present us with the one question that truly defines a Christian: what do you believe about the resurrection of Jesus? This is the primary article of faith. Without this belief – we have no faith.

St. Paul sums it up in First Corinthians 15 – “If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith… and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.” Though Good Friday secured the atonement for sin, the resurrection confirms that God accepted Christ’s sacrifice, and that sin, death, and hell have been conquered. Without the resurrection, Jesus would just be swallowed up by death, just like all the rest of humanity from the beginning of time. Without the resurrection, believers who already died would perish eternally – and so would we. Without the resurrection, this world and our lives have no real meaning or purpose. Because if you take out the hope of eternal life, what point is there to this world at all? What difference does it make if you’re a Christian or just plain evil? If there’d be no reckoning beyond our lives, then we could all join the children of this sinful creation and adopt the motto ‘Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.”

But since the God-man has risen from the dead, it changes our entire lives. It changes how we live, how we think, how we act, how we worship and with what frequency, and how we treat each other. The resurrection is what gives all of life its meaning! Without it, life is empty, hopeless, and pointless.

You can’t have it both ways – either you believe Jesus rose from the dead, and that changes fundamentally who you are, or you believe He didn’t. Many ride the fence in various ways – saying Jesus rose in spirit but not in body – and there are various ways human reason attempts to grasp the miracle of the resurrection – but they all fail. They’re all illogical and unsatisfactory.

Though, that hasn’t stopped critics of Christianity from trying to discredit Jesus’ resurrection. They do it to protect their position – to deal with their fear of God and His truth, and to undermine the confidence of believers.

In our text, the chief priests lied to protect their position. They were the first of many to cast doubt on Jesus’ resurrection. They invented the “stolen body” theory – that the disciples removed Jesus’ body so that they create the myth of the resurrection. Many other theories have arisen since. One of them was that an angry gardener wanted people to stop coming out near his garden, so he moved Jesus’ body to a different grave. Of course, this is problematic – a resurrection could be dispelled in a flash with the discovery of the body. One of the most illogical ones is that Jesus had a twin brother that no one knew about and was kept hidden until they swapped places before the crucifixion. But as you can imagine, such a deception wouldn’t have held up against the eyewitnesses of Jesus’ ministry and resurrection. So, the fact that the resurrection was preached without hardly a dispute – it goes to show the truthfulness of the disciple’s claims.

The danger of a lie is not that it’ll destroy the truth. The truth will always stand. But it’s that the lie undermines the belief in truth. It can cause doubt. Even if a listener knows the claim is false, with each time they hear it, the more likely it’s to be believed. Eventually, they may just take it as truth, or at the very least, a very real possibility.

That’s the subtle power of a lie – it doesn’t need to erase the truth, it just needs to make you just make you question it. And so it is with the lies told about the resurrection. The various lies about the resurrection have one thing in common: they acknowledge the fact that the tomb was empty. How strange! Wouldn’t it have been a more effective attack on Christianity to prove that Jesus’ body was never missing? But there’s a reason this was never used: because the tomb was empty. Accounts even outside the Gospels attest to this fact of history.

But let’s say that the disciples did steal Jesus’ body – where was he buried? You’d think the chief priests and Pharisees would check every tomb they could to dispel the power of this truth. But Jesus’ body was nowhere to be found. At least, not in a grave. Because He was appearing to His followers – testifying to the victory over death itself.

Okay, but let’s say the disciples pulled off the most improbable hijacking of Jesus’ body in history. But then you also have another problem – on Good Friday, what did the disciples do? They hid. They were cowards. They didn’t want to be numbered with Jesus because they thought they might be crucified next. If Christ didn’t rise from the dead – how would eleven cowardly disciples change into the most bold and courageous witnesses of Christ? How could anyone willingly die for something they knew was a lie? Point is, something changed them. Of course, we know that it was the resurrection that changed them – a real, bodily resurrection of the crucified one from the grave that was guarded by Roman guards. And by the Spirit of living God, the resurrection has the power to change you and me too.

The chief priests spread a lie, but the truth is victorious! Jesus is alive! We have a living Lord, a living God. Because He lives, there is a tomorrow. Because He lived, we have the blessed assurance of hope for our future. We can face each day with the reality that we’re not alone. All our days are changed. All our feelings rest on the foundation of joy in the forgiveness of our sins! All our behaviors are motivated by the fact that Jesus was raised to life for our justification (Rom 4:25). Therefore, we live in the reality of Easter as God’s people. We worship Him. We are not afraid to say that we believe in the living Lord. We stand firmly on the faith that has been passed down to us, by which we are saved.

Alleluia, Christ is Risen!

         He is Risen Indeed, Alleluia!

Pastor Joshua Ralston