The Revelation of Easter
Matthew 26-28
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As we prepare for this upcoming Easter, or more accurately, Resurrection Sunday, we need to ask the question, “What’s so important about it? What’s the big deal?
Well to start with, it was this one event that forever changed the world we live in, and since then nothing has been the same. If you think about it, even the calendars we use are set by this event. History itself is split in two by this one event.
Now, we often point to the birth of Jesus as this event since our calendars divide history by it, but without the Resurrection, Jesus’s birth would have been mute, that is, it wouldn’t have even been remembered.
For you see, it was on this Sunday that Jesus proved His claim that He was God and that He came to earth to save us.
Today I’d like to look at the events that happened in these three days, along with their implications and what they revealed. It began with the trials that revealed His purpose, His death that revealed His passion, and the resurrection revealed His power to fulfill His promise.
The Trial Revealed Jesus’s Purpose
(Matthew 26:57-68)
Fearing the Jewish populace due to Jesus’s popularity, the religious leaders secretly had Jesus arrested at night, and from that evening until the following morning Jesus endured several religious and civil trials. In the end, nothing was found that was worthy of death. In fact, there was no crime at all, no accusation would stick as witnesses continued to contradict themselves.
But there was one thing and one thing only that convicted Jesus, and that was the purpose of His coming. It was that He was indeed the Messiah, the Son of God.
“And those who had laid hold of Jesus led Him away to Caiaphas the high priest, where the scribes and the elders were assembled. But Peter followed Him at a distance to the high priest's courtyard. And he went in and sat with the servants to see the end. Now the chief priests, the elders, and all the council sought false testimony against Jesus to put Him to death, but found none. Even though many false witnesses came forward, they found none. But at last two false witnesses came forward and said, This fellow said, ‘I am able to destroy the temple of God and to build it in three days.’ And the high priest arose and said to Him, ‘Do You answer nothing? What is it these men testify against You?’ But Jesus kept silent. And the high priest answered and said to Him, ‘I put You under oath by the living God: Tell us if You are the Christ, the Son of God!’ Jesus said to him, ‘It is as you said. Nevertheless, I say to you, hereafter you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Power, and coming on the clouds of heaven.’ Then the high priest tore his clothes, saying, ‘He has spoken blasphemy! What further need do we have of witnesses? Look, now you have heard His blasphemy! What do you think?’ They answered and said, ‘He is deserving of death.’ Then they spat in His face and beat Him; and others struck Him with the palms of their hands, saying, ‘Prophesy to us, Christ! Who is the one who struck You?’” (Matthew 26:57-68)
The purpose of these trials was to reveal exactly who Jesus was, and His purpose.
So, Caiaphas began by putting Jesus under oath by the living God, which is similar but much more intense than our own, “Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God.” And Jesus, in whom there was no sin, could not lie. So He responded truthfully.
Now, Caiaphas’s statement had nothing to do with what the witnesses said, because he knew that such a charge to rebuild the temple in three days would have Jesus scorned, but not convicted. So Caiaphas asked Jesus what His ultimate purpose was by asking Him if He was the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of God.
And Jesus replied, “It is as you said. Nevertheless.” He basically said, and I am paraphrasing, , “You’ve said it, but you haven’t understood it. It’s as you said, but not in the way you meant.”
The elders of Israel didn’t understand because they were looking for a King who would deliver them from their present oppressors, the Romans, but not from the ultimate oppressor, Satan, and the problem of sin. You see, it was to settle the sin problem that defined the purpose of Jesus’s coming.
Jesus said, “For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.” (Matthew 9:13b NKJV)
“But for this purpose I came to this hour … I did not come to judge the world but to save the world.” (John 12:27b, 47b NKJV)
It was for this explicated purpose that the promised Messiah was to come as foretold through the prophet Isaiah.
“But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed … And He bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.” (Isaiah 53:5, 12b NKJV)
Caiaphas, however, didn’t stop at the title Messiah, because again he knew that while it would bring scorn, it wouldn’t bring conviction, so he added the title, Son of God, knowing full well that this would signal blasphemy. But Jesus went beyond confirming it, but added to it saying that they would see Him sitting at the right hand of Power, and coming on the clouds of heaven.
At this Caiaphas proclaimed Jesus a blasphemer, that Jesus proclaimed Himself not only to be the Messiah, but the Lord God Himself. But if he and the rest of the elders would have understood the Scriptures they would have understood that the Messiah could be no one less than the Lord God.
“Behold, the days are coming,” says the Lord, “That I will raise to David a Branch of righteousness; a King shall reign and prosper, and execute judgment and righteousness in the earth. In His days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell safely.” (Jeremiah 23:5-6a NKJV).
“Now this is His name by which He will be called: THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS.” (Jeremiah 23:6b NKJV)
And so, it was these trials that Jesus laid claim to His purpose, that He was the promised Messiah come to save all those who would believe on Him. Further, saying that would be sitting at the right hand of the Power, is a name of God, and sitting on His right hand meant that He would have all the power of God, and that He would indeed return and set things straight.
It was the trials that His purpose was officially revealed, that He would bring salvation to all who would believe, and to do that, He must first die, because it was for this hour that He had come, which brings us to our second point.
The Death Revealed Jesus’s Passion
(Matthew 27:32-37)
The passion of Jesus in fulfilling His purpose is clearly outlined in what Jesus endured on the day of His death. It was the most brutal and tortuous days that anyone could have ever endured. It was what the movie, “The Passion of the Christ” was meant to portray in all its brutality.
It began with Jesus flogging.
“So then Pilate took Jesus and scourged Him.” (John 19:1 NKJV)
Roman floggings were known to be beyond brutal. They consisted of 39 lashes, because any more would mean a person’s death. Scourging was far worse than a mere whipping. It involved what is known as a cat-of-nine-tails. This was a leather whip braided with lead balls and sharp bones. When it would strike the flesh the balls would cause deep bruises, and the sharp bone would cut into the flesh and rip it out. And this they would apply from the shoulders all the way down to the legs. So deep were the cuts that often a person’s bones were exposed.
One third century historian described it this way. “The sufferer’s veins were laid bare, and the very muscles, sinews, and bowels of the victim were open to exposure.”
The blood loss would be so severe that many would go into a form of shock causing the heart to speed up and pump more blood, resulting in greater blood loss. A person’s blood pressure would drop causing fainting and collapse, and the kidneys would stop, causing the person to become extremely thirsty as the body tried to replace the fluids that had been lost.
And after all of this they laid upon Jesus’s back a heavy rough-cut wooden cross where He made His way up Calvary’s Hill stumbling and collapsing along the way.
“Now as they came out, they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name. Him they compelled to bear His cross. And when they had come to a place called Golgotha, that is to say, Place of a Skull, they gave Him sour wine mingled with gall to drink. But when He had tasted it, He would not drink. Then they crucified Him, and divided His garments, casting lots, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet: ‘They divided My garments among them, and for My clothing they cast lots.’ Sitting down, they kept watch over Him there. And they put up over His head the accusation written against Him: THIS IS JESUS THE KING OF THE JEWS.” (Matthew 27:32-37 NKJV)
They would have laid Jesus out upon the cross while they put the nails, which was more like spikes, through His wrists. The palm of the hand that is usually thought of as the place there the nail went through would never have held out under the weight of a man and would have torn right through. Instead, it went between the two bones of a person’s wrist, which in that day was considered part of the hand.
Now, through the wrist runs the median nerve, the largest nerve going to the hand, and therefore it would have crushed it causing pain beyond what we could ever imagine.
What I found interesting is that the pain of crucifixion was so intense and of such magnitude that they had to find a new word to describe it. So, they came up with the word, “excruciating,” which means, “out of the cross.”
A spike was then driven through Jesus’s feet, producing even more pain and suffering.
The type of death that occurred on the cross was slow and agonizing. In essence it was a death by suffocation. What happens is that a person hanging upon the cross would not be able to breathe without physically lifting themselves up to take another breath with their arms and feet, which would then produce the searing and excruciating pain again in their bodies from being pierced through with nails.
To speed up the process, the Romans would break the legs of those hanging upon the cross, not allowing them to push upwards and they would die from suffocation. But the testimony of Jesus is that when they came to Him, they determined that He was already dead, and to verify they stuck a spear into His side, and out flowed blood and water.
What this reveals is that Jesus didn’t die of asphyxiation, rather He died of cardiac arrest, or more literally, He died of a broken heart. As the breathing starts to slow, the heart begins to beat erratically. On top of that, His body was experiencing shock due to the loss of blood, and you have all the makings of a heart attack.
This is further attested to by the fluids pouring out from the spear thrust. With a sustained rapid and irregular heartbeat, medical doctors reveal that fluid would collect in the membrane surrounding the heart and lungs, which is exactly what came out of Jesus’s body at the spear thrust, blood and water.
And so, Jesus died of a broken heart as His heart exploded, and in that He revealed His passion for all of us. Jesus revealed His passion for His purpose by dying upon the cross.
God’s word says that whatever we sow in this life is what we can expect to reap. It says that if we sow trouble we’ll reap the same (Job 4:8), or if we sow righteousness we’ll reap mercy (Hosea 8:7).
If we break man’s laws then we can expect to pay man’s penalties, but if we break Gods’s law, which is sin, then we’ll have to pay God’s penalties, which the Apostle Paul says, “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23a).
But God in His mercy set forth a way by which our sins could be forgiven known as the law of sacrifice, that is the shedding of innocent blood to take the place of the guilty.
“For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul.” (Leviticus 17:11 NKJV)
And it was to pay for our sins that Jesus, who knew no sin, became sin for us as He hung upon the cross taking our place and dying the death we all deserve so that our sins can be forgiven and that we can come into a right relationship with God. And so, when Paul stated that the wages of sin is death, he didn’t leave us in doubt as to Jesus’s gift of love.
“For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 6:23 NKJV)
When we look at the cross what we see is the passion of Jesus’s heart in the purpose of His coming.
“In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace.” (Ephesians 1:7 NKJV)
We didn’t deserve it, but His grace, the passion of His heart, provided for our eternal salvation and relationship with Him.
The Resurrection Revealed Jesus’s Power
(Matthew 28:1-8)
At His trial we see Jesus’s purpose, and in His death we see His passion, and in His resurrection we see His power.
“Now 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 behold, there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat on it. His countenance was like lightning, and his clothing as white as snow. And the guards shook for fear of him, and became like dead men. But the angel answered and said to the women, ‘Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for He is risen, as He said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay. And go quickly and tell His disciples that He is risen from the dead, and indeed He is going before you into Galilee; there you will see Him. Behold, I have told you.’ So they went out quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy, and ran to bring His disciples word.” (Matthew 28:1-8 NKJV)
When Jesus died, they laid Him in a tomb, one dug out from the side of a hill close by. When they finished wrapping His body they rolled a very large stone in front of the entrance. The next day the religious leaders came to Pilate and asked that a guard be set around it, because they remembered His words saying that in three days He would arise.
In all of history, this is the first and only time guards were ever at someone’s grave for the expressed purpose of keeping someone inside. But they couldn’t keep Jesus in the grave, and this is the whole essence of Christianity. Jesus rose from the dead, or the resurrection.
And if there were no resurrection, then we’ve all wasted our time here at church.
The Apostle Paul said, “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 … And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.” (1 Corinthians 15:13-14, 17 NKJV)
The resurrection reveals the power of God, the power of Jesus to fulfill His purpose, and that is to forgive sins and save all who come and believe in Him. Newsweek, not necessarily known for its pro-Christian viewpoints said,
“The risen Christ is the center of the Christian faith. The mystery without which there would be no church, no hope of eternal life, no living Christ to encounter today. No other historical figure has ever made the claim that He was raised from the dead. It was this appearance of the resurrected Christ that lit the flame of the Christian faith. It wasn’t the morality of the Sermon on the Mount, which enabled Christianity to conquer Roman paganism, but it was the belief that Jesus was alive. He’d been raised from the dead.” (Newsweek)
The Apostle Paul said, “Concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh, and declared to be the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead.” (Romans 1:3-4 NKJV)
When Jesus was hanging on the cross the religious leaders began to mock Him saying, “‘If You are the Son of God, come down from the cross.’ Likewise the chief priests also, mocking with the scribes and elders, said, ‘He saved others; Himself He cannot save. If He is the King of Israel, let Him now come down from the cross, and we will believe Him.’” (Matthew 27:40-42 NKJV)
Yet, Jesus was going to show Himself in a much more powerful way than merely coming down from the cross, if we can call that merely. He had something far more spectacular in mind. It was if He were saying, “I’m going to let you kill Me on the cross, and bury Me in a tomb for three days, and then I’m coming back to life to prove I am who I say I am.”
And so it is in the resurrection that Jesus portrayed the power that said what He died for would be fulfilled in every person’s life who would believe, which was the very purpose of His coming, and the very purpose of His death. And that is to save us from our sins.
Conclusion
And so, next Sunday, which the world knows as Easter, or again, more accurately, Resurrection Sunday, is in reality the revelation of the purpose, passion, and power of Jesus Christ. But it isn’t just for Easter or Resurrection Sunday, but it is each and every day that the purpose, passion, and power of Jesus is being worked out in our lives, and in our midst.
