He is Risen | Matthew 27:62-28:15
He is Risen | Matthew 27:62-28:15
INTRODUCTION
Today we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, the very same man who just a few days before had been betrayed by his friend, deserted by his companions, falsely tried and convicted though he was innocent. He was mocked, beaten, and then lifted up on a Roman cross to suffer a humiliating, excruciating, dehumanizing death by suffocation and exposure. This man hanging on that cross was resurrected.
Matthew 28:1-5
1After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb.
2There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. 3His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. 4The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men. (The angel was the first to declare this reality of the resurrection to the women who had come to the tomb looking for Jesus.)
5The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. 6He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. 7Then go quickly and tell his disciples: ‘He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.’ Now I have told you.”
1. The Resurrection Proclaimed — He is risen
The resurrection of Jesus is not a magic trick or masterful illusion. No, the very same man, Jesus, who was publicly crucified and then laid in a tomb outside of Jerusalem, this man the angel said is risen.
ILLUSTRATION
One morning as I was getting ready for a meeting my car did not start. I am trying my best to press the ignition but to no avail. Later I found out that the car battery had died down. Sometimes when the car battery dies down we need a boost from the outside.
But there is no spark or boost from the outside that can raise a three-day-old dead body. It actually is impossible from our understanding. Into this utterly hopeless situation, the God for whom nothing will be impossible injects his power.
This is what the angel Gabriel said to Mary in Luke 1: ‘Nothing will be impossible with God.’ The power of the Most High will overshadow her. There is the spark from the outside, and in her womb, life will be conceived. That same power is at work here on the resurrection.
2. The Resurrection as New Creation — life has broken in
Fundamentally, what we’re celebrating in the resurrection is the work of divine power for abundant life. The resurrection of Jesus is the first act of the new creation that God had promised long ago. Sin and evil marred his created order and led to death, but God the Creator, the one who made you and me, who made everything that we see long ago promised to renew and remake the world (Isaiah 11, Isaiah 65). And he promised to do this not by discarding this present world, but rather by redeeming and renewing it.
And Jesus’s resurrection is the first moment of the new creation. And it assures the future re-creation of our bodies and the world.
Jesus is, as Paul says in Colossians 1:18 The Son is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead. Like that first bud to flower on a tree in springtime, the resurrection of Jesus is the sign of the beautiful, glorious life for the future.
ILLUSTRATION
In Bangalore we have the winter season and then by February we have the fall, all the leaves fall, it is dry everywhere. Everything looks lifeless. The grass is brown, the branches are empty, and the earth seems to sleep under the weight of the season. But then spring arrives. Out of the cold ground, flowers begin to bloom. The Tabebuia rosea appears first, bright and unexpected among the dead leaves. It is a quiet but powerful sign that winter will not last forever. Life is returning. Warmer days are coming. Spring has begun, and hope rises again.
The resurrected Jesus is this prototype of the new human. He is the first foretaste of the new creation bursts out of the tomb.
This is a world, as Revelation 21 declares, in which every tear will be wiped away from our eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore.
The resurrection of Jesus is the bedrock of the Christian faith. Paul says without the resurrection we have believed in vain, we are most to be pitied. And this event declares that God is a God of life whose power is deployed for abundant life.
3. The Resurrection Opposed — sealed tombs and spreading lies
Matthew’s resurrection account in 28:1-10 is sandwiched between two scenes of opposition.
Opposition before the Resurrection – Security of the Roman Seal on the Tomb
After the burial of Jesus, the chief priests and Pharisees talking to the Roman Governor Pilate, and they’re asking him to set a guard at the tomb. They had heard Jesus say while he was living, “After three days I will rise.” Now that he’s died on the cross—which, from their perspective, demonstrates for them that Jesus was in fact an imposter—they wanted to leave no opportunity for another controversy, where his disciples come by night, steal the body from the tomb, and then tell everybody that Jesus rose from the dead. They wanted to avoid that because Jesus’s claim to be the Son of God, the Messiah, the saviour of the world would be validated if the tomb is empty.
So what does Pilate say to them?
Matthew 27:65-66
65“Take a guard,” Pilate answered. “Go, make the tomb as secure as you know how.” 66So they went and made the tomb secure by putting a seal on the stone and posting the guard.
Roman guard represented the superpower of the day, highly trained soldiers who would stand watch with the authority of the Empire behind them. The Roman guard was a minimum of four soldiers, and it was the best security available. They gave it their best shot, didn’t they?
But what is the power of man against the power of God, the God for whom nothing will be impossible? Paul writes in his first letter to the Corinthians
1 Corinthians 1:25
For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.
We see that displayed here. The best security that they could come up with toppled like a house of cards when confronted with the power of almighty God.
We read in Matthew 28:2-4
2There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. 3His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. 4The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men.
Our strength is no match for God’s power.
- Sarah’s barren, a dead womb conceives the son of the promise, Isaac.
- Pharaoh’s army, having trapped God’s people, drowns in the Red Sea.
- The walls of Jericho come crashing down by the blast of trumpets.
- Gideon and his band of 300 destroy the Midianites.
- David, the lowly shepherd boy, slays the giant Goliath.
The Bible is one long record of the power of the God of the impossible and the call to place our trust in him for forgiveness, for hope, for life, for resurrection.
So go ahead—Chief priests, Pilate, crowd, Roman guards—make it as secure as you can. Your power is no match for God’s.
Having failed the direct opposition approach, the opposition though continues after the resurrection.
Opposition after the Resurrection
This is a Conspiracy Theory
The only security that they could muster was the security of the lie. They pay the guards to tell a lie—verse 13:
Matthew 28:13
13telling them, “You are to say, ‘His disciples came during the night and stole him away while we were asleep.’
This is a Conspiracy Theory. The disciples conspired together and stole the body at night and staged a resurrection. But one would have to ask, “Why would these disciples die and suffer as they did for such a hoax?” It’s a little hard to believe that they would go into the nations of the world and face beatings and imprisonment, all for a lie.
There are other lies people have invented:
“The disciples invented the resurrection decades after Jesus’s death.” This one’s clearly refuted 1 Corinthians, about 20 years after the death of Christ.
Another lie: “The disciples experienced a hallucination.” But Jesus appeared to more than 500, it was claimed, and people don’t have group hallucinations.
“They were just so grief-stricken that they couldn’t help themselves; they convinced themselves that Jesus was still alive and they experienced his presence much like you or I might experience the presence of a loved one who’s passed away.”
All of these theories, at one level, can sound convincing, but an empty tomb is a matter of historical record.
There are eyewitnesses who claimed to have an encounter with the risen Jesus. In 1 Corinthians 15 Apostle Paul claims that Jesus had appeared to 500, most of whom were still alive.
The Jews who affirmed resurrection all understood that resurrection was something that happened to everyone at the end of time. No one expected resurrection to happen to one man in the middle of time. Jesus had been resurrected in the middle of history.
The Christian faith and belief in the resurrection are not irrational; it is not wishful thinking; it is reasonable based upon the historical evidence. And the earliest disciples of Jesus—Paul especially—made this point over and over and over again.
The resurrection is an invasion into the world of the power of God. How will we respond?
Transition: So we’ve seen there’s opposition, but there’s also embrace in our text.
4. The Resurrection Embraced — the women worshipped Him
We see embrace as the response of these women who go to the tomb that first Easter morning.
Matthew 28:9-10
9Suddenly Jesus met them. “Greetings,” he said. They came to him, clasped his feet and worshiped him. 10 Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”
The worship here is a spontaneous acknowledgment that the resurrection authenticates Jesus’s claims to be the Son of God, the Messiah. The resurrection demonstrates that the cross of Good Friday was not the defeat but was rather the great moment of victory in which sin, evil, and death (our great enemies) are once for all defeated that we might be liberated and set free.
The Christian is the one who trusts in Jesus, who, like these women, responds to the power of God and takes hold of his feet, bows before him and worships him—which is to say, “Jesus, you are Lord. You are above my life, you’re above my world, you’re above all of my hopes, all of my fears, all of my ambitions. Jesus I fall before you and I worship you as the living King.
We celebrate this week after week, but especially today on Resurrection Sunday. We celebrate the life that Jesus has come to bring. If you’re a Christian here this morning, I want you to know that this power that we celebrate this morning is a power that is at work in you.
5. The Resurrection Applied — do not be afraid
Response to those who embrace Christ: Do not be afraid.
This message was first given by the angel, then by the risen Christ. And it is a simple word, and this word is: “Do not be afraid.”
Do not be afraid. There is so much for us to fear, so much for us to cower before, so much uncertainty, so much powerlessness. We are living in times where there are wars going on. Some of you are facing terrible situation in your lives. Some of you sitting here have had that same experience in the not distant past. Others of you are facing challenges and situations in your lives and you have no idea how you’re going to walk through them. If you are in Christ, then I want you to hear this word of exhortation: “Do not be afraid.”
“In this world you will have trouble,” Jesus says, “but take heart; I have overcome the world.”
What Paul prays for the church in Ephesians 1 is he prays that the eyes of their hearts would be enlightened. Why, or for what purpose?
Ephesians 1:18-21
18I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, 19and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength 20he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, 21far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come.
The power of the resurrection, the power that we’re here to celebrate, the power of God for life—that power is at work in you if you are in Christ. And that means that if God is for you, who can be against you? And that means, as Paul continues in Romans 8, that there is nothing in this world—nothing at all: not bankruptcy, not divorce, not cancer, not the premature death of one you deeply love, not the loss of a business or a job—nothing, nothing can separate you from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
The resurrection of Jesus is the guarantee of all of this. It is the first flower, the unmistakable sign that life prevails, that the power of God is unleashed for life. Life conquers death, light prevails over darkness. Will we oppose it or embrace it, and so come to experience this power in the depth of our own hearts? There is nothing which we must fear, for the Lord is on our side.
Close with these words from Paul from 1 Corinthians:
1 Corinthians 15:20
20But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.
54b-56
“Death has been swallowed up in victory.”[h]
55“Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?”
56”The sting of death is sin ,and the power of sin is the law.” 57But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Life Application Points from Jesus’ Resurrection
1. Your present pain is not the end of your story.
The resurrection reminds us that suffering, betrayal, disappointment, and woundedness do not have the final word. What feels final is not always final in the hands of God.
2. The world is more broken than we admit, but more hopeful than we imagine.
We often look at life and conclude, “This is just how things are.” But the resurrection declares that this fallen world is not the final version of reality. God is bringing new creation.
3. Your failures do not define your identity.
Moral failure, repeated sin, shame, and weakness may feel like your permanent condition, but the resurrection says that in Christ, failure is not your final name. There is grace, forgiveness, and real transformation.
4. Jesus has entered the human condition to redeem it.
The resurrection tells us that Jesus did not stand far away from human pain and evil. He entered our brokenness, took responsibility for our sin at the cross, and overcame it in victory.
5. Change is possible through resurrection power.
What seems impossible in you—habits, fears, broken patterns, bitterness, despair—need not remain as they are. The risen Christ opens the door to a new future.
6. Hope is not wishful thinking; it is anchored in history.