An Empty Tomb, Mathew 28:1-10
Introduction
A woman wrote J. Vernon McGee: “Our preacher said that on Easter Jesus just swooned on the cross and that the disciples nursed him back to health. What do you think?” McGee replied, “Dear Sister, beat your preacher with a leather whip for thirty-nine heavy strokes. Nail him to a cross. Hang him in the sun for six hours. Run a spear through his heart. Embalm him. Put him in an airless tomb for three days. Then see what happens.”
Transition
Today is Easter Sunday and we have gathered together to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We have come together to celebrate a miracle of God. A miracle upon which rests our entire faith.
Apart from the resurrection of Christ Christianity has no meaning and no power to save. If Christ is not raised from the dead then the sum of Christian thought is little more than yet another of the world’s moral philosophies.
In I Corinthians 15:13-16 the Apostle writes, “But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ is not risen. And if Christ is not risen, then our preaching is empty and your faith is also empty. Yes, and we are found false witnesses of God, because we have testified of God that He raised up Christ, whom He did not raise up – if in fact the dead do not rise. For if the dead do not rise, then Christ is not risen.” (NKJV)
Today I am as excited as any child who awaits the Easter egg hunts because I get to talk about the grandest subject in the entire Bible – the resurrection of our Lord!
We are living in the postmodern era. Our times are characterized, perhaps most fully, by a general skepticism which denies that any absolute truth is either available or at the very least that absolute truth is unknowable.
There are many – even within the Church – who, for the sake of expediency, have bought into the postmodern worldview which denies miracles, denies all things spiritual, and absolutely denies that the Bible has any kind of authority in our lives.
Today, I want to take the next several minutes to offer you some insight into the historicity of the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ. There really is an empty tomb and a risen savior who is available to us today.
The biblical account of the resurrection is just that – an account of an actual historical event which is better documented than perhaps any other event in human history! It does not require blind faith to trust in a risen Saviour.
As believers we have good scientific and historical evidence which supports our faith. To be a spiritual person we need not walk blindly. We can embrace the whole truth of God with our minds as learn more about Christ and with our hearts as grow in our knowledge of Christ.
This morning my goal is to strengthen your faith and to help you to be better able to defend that faith as the Scriptures tell us to be prepared to give to every man an answer for the hope that is in is.
Exposition
From the very beginning there have been people who doubted the resurrection. In the very next verse following today’s Scripture reading it says, “Now while they were going, behold, some of the guard came into the city and reported to the chief priests all the things that had happened. When they had assembled with the elders and consulted together, they gave a large sum of money to the soldiers, saying, “Tell them, ‘His disciples came at night and stole Him away while we slept.’ And if this comes to the governor’s ears, we will appease him and make you secure.” So they took the money and did as they were instructed; and this saying is commonly reported among the Jews until this day.” (Matthew 28:11-15 NKJV)
This is known right up to this day as the Stolen Body Theory. There is even a record of a debate which occurred in the second century between the early Church Father Justin Martyr in the writing known as the “Dialogue with Trypho” where Justin Martyr debates with Trypho – a Jewish philosopher – over the resurrection of Jesus.
Trypho asserts that the only valid explanation for the supposed resurrection of Jesus is that the disciples must have come by night and stolen away the body of Christ and then commenced to perpetrate the greatest hoax ever committed in all of human history!
The stolen body theory is easily dismissed on its own merits. First, it must be taken into account that the Roman guards who watched the tomb of Christ were very well trained and extremely disciplined.
For a Roman soldier to fail in an assigned task meant scourging and even death.
There is simply no way that the disciples would have been able to overpower the guards and certainly no way that they could have had enough money to bribe them to allow them to take the body of Jesus.
And what of the stone which sealed the tomb? Some historians have estimated that the stone weighed as much as 1-1/2 to 2 two tons, which is the approximate weight of a midsize car! (www.riverpower.org/resurrection)
If the disciples could have made it past the sleeping Roman guard, which likely consisted of many guards since Mathew says that some of the guards went into the city to report what had happened – surely the disciples could not have managed to move an automobile sized stone without waking the guards.
The stone was also affixed with the Roman seal. Breaking it meant that one would incur the horrible death of crucifixion upside down. The disciples had been scared and scattered upon Jesus arrest and crucifixion. It is not imaginable that apart from seeing Jesus rose from the dead they would have even had the courage to attempt to move his body under such circumstances.
Some have even suggested that perhaps the Roman or Jewish authorities stole the body of Christ but this makes even less sense. If the authorities who disapproved of the rising Christian Church had the body no doubt that would have produced it to put an end to the rise of the Church.
The stolen body theory falls apart as quickly as it was constructed as a fast way to dismiss the resurrection of Christ. There are other theories which have been put forth though to explain away the uncomfortable fact of the resurrection of Jesus.
What about those who say that perhaps Jesus never really died on the Cross? This is known as the Swoon Theory. Proponents of this theory suggest that Jesus merely fainted on the Cross and then was revived by the cold damp tomb.
Imagine for a moment the brutality of the scourging that Jesus went through. After he had been taken to King Herod he was sent back to Pilate who had Jesus scourged with a Roman flagrum.
This was a whip with a short handle, perhaps 14 inches long with anywhere from 3 to 12 leather straps that would have lead balls at the end of each strap which would also contain bits of nails, glass, or sharp bone which was often from the forehead of a ram.
It is not known whether the number of lashes given Jesus was limited to 39, in accordance with Jewish law. There is no evidence that the Romans had any set limit to how many lashes they gave.
According to the ancient historian Flavius Josephus, “certain rebels Jews were torn to pieces by the scourge before being crucified.” Many people who were scourged with this horrible instrument of torture didn’t even survive to be crucified. It was bruised and battered, beaten and bleeding, that Jesus was crucified.
Crucifixion was a horrible affair in and of itself, notwithstanding the terrible beating that Jesus had already taken. Jesus condition was very grave by the time he even went to the Cross. The Romans were very through in their executions.
It is incredibly unlikely that Jesus could have survived the Cross and it made even more unlikely by the fact that when Jesus appeared to the disciples they hailed him as their risen Lord.
If Jesus had fallen into some kind of coma on the cross and then had survived the spear that punctured his heart and lungs causing water and blood to flow from his side and then had managed to awake in the tomb, roll the two ton stone to the side and then walk back into the city and appear to the disciples, they would not have hailed him as their savior – they would have looked for a doctor!
Jesus died on the Cross. Perhaps the most conclusive evidence that Jesus did not survive the Cross is the blood and water which flowed from his side when the Roman soldier pierced his side with a spear.
While there is great theological implication for the Church in terms of the saving power of the blood of Christ and the washing and renewing power of water baptism, there is also medical evidence in the blood and the water which flowed.
Frederick Zugibe is a renounced medical examiner who took it upon himself to examine the death of Christ and the nature of crucifixion at some great length. He reported his findings in his book, “The Crucifixion of Jesus; A Forensic Inquiry.”
He determined that the water which flowed from the side of Jesus was the result of pleural effusion – that is watery fluid that is know to fill up around the lungs of victims of sever trauma to the chest, is in the scourging of Jesus.
The blood was the result of the right atrium of the heart of Jesus being pierced.
The evidence compels us to know that Jesus indeed died on the Cross on that most fateful of Fridays and it further compels us that Jesus was literally raised from the dead the following Sunday morning.
Of all of the evidence which supports the resurrection of Christ I am most compelled by what occurred in the life of the disciples following their having seen the resurrected Jesus.
There are at least seven extra-biblical ancient historical sources which attest to the martyrdom of nearly every one of the original disciples and the persecution of nearly all of the early Church.
Even ardent skeptics to the resurrection of Christ agree that at the very least the early Church believed that Jesus had risen from the dead. They did not steal the body as the early Jewish authorities claimed and perpetrated. Jesus had not swooned on the Cross and then been revived.
The simple fact of the matter is this – you don’t die for a dead man! The early Church believed that Jesus had been raised from the dead because they were eye witnesses to it!
Acts 1:1-5 says, “The former account I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach, until the day in which He was taken up, after He through the Holy Spirit had given commandments to the apostles whom He had chosen, to whom He also presented Himself alive after His suffering by many infallible proofs, being seen by them during forty days and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God. And being assembled together with them, He commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the Promise of the Father, “which,” He said, “you have heard from Me; for John truly baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.” (NKJV)
The source of power for the early Church was two fold; the Holy Spirit indeed empowered them just as He does us, but they were also filled with one conviction that gave them the courage to face persecution, trials of all sorts, and even death – they were eye witnesses to the fact that Jesus, though He had died, is alive!
Knowing that Jesus lives is the reason that the Church flourished in spite of violent opposition. Knowing that Jesus has conquered sin and death is the reason that the Church grew and it is the only sure source of strength and hope for us today. In an age of skepticism – we know the truth.
Conclusion
A.W. Tozer once wrote, “Oneness with Christ means to be identified with Christ, identified with him in crucifixion. But we must go on to be identified with him in resurrection as well, for beyond the cross is resurrection and the manifestation of his presence.”
The resurrection is the defining event in ancient and modern history, it is the defining event in the life of the Church, and if we allow it to be it is the defining event of our very lives.
John S. Whale, the Congregational theologian and historian wrote, “The Gospels do not explain the Resurrection; the Resurrection explains the Gospels. Belief in the Resurrection is not an appendage to the Christian faith; it is the Christian faith.”
Today, allow yourself to be filled with the same hope and the same strength that the early eyewitnesses to the resurrection were filled.
Christ is indeed raised and our hope lies in Him alone! Galatians 2:20 says, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” (NKJV)
Amen.
