SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 10/19/2024 9:27 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-3 “The Propagation”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
Matthew 28:15
Message of the verse: “15 And they took the
money and did as they had been instructed; and this story was widely spread
among the Jews, and is to this day.”
I continue quoting the commentary from John
MacArthur’s comments on this verse, which are very long and will probably not
finish it today.
“It
was highly implausible that all of the soldiers would have gone to sleep long
enough for the disciples to have moved the stone and stolen the body, and even
more implausible that the noise from moving the stone would not have awakened a
single soldier.
“The
Roman military divided the night into four watches of between two and three
hours each. A certain number of the men
would deep watch while the rest slept, keeping up the rotation until dawn. Three hours was not a long period of time to
stay awake, especially if one were under threat of imprisonment or death for
sleeping on watch.
“Perhaps
the most patently absurd problem with the proposed lie was that, had the
soldiers all been asleep, how could they have known who stole the body? And if some onlooker had told the soldiers
what happened, why did they not immediately search for the thieves and try to
retrieve the body rather than run to the chief priests to report their failure?
“The
testimony of Jesus’ enemies was in some ways even more astounding than that of
His friends would be. It was because the
soldiers and the Sanhedrin could not deny that the tomb had been supernaturally
opened and Jesus supernaturally released that the lie was concocted. Had the resurrection been a hoax, it would
have been an easy one to expose.
“Some
commentators have suggested that the disciples were the first to bribe the
soldiers, asking them to report the empty tomb story to the Sanhedrin. But as just mentioned, the disciples had no
motive for doing such a thing. Besides
that, where would they have come up with enough money to make a bribe
attractive to the soldiers?
“Other
people have suggested that the disciples cleverly distracted the soldiers and
sneaked the body out while the guards were not looking. But had they found such courage, how did they
manage to draw all the soldiers far enough away to prevent their hearing the
giant stone’s being moved. And how did
they manage to keep the grave cloths just as they had been when covering Jesus’
body. Had the disciples tried such a
maneuver, they would have been in the utmost hurry to get Jesus’ body out as
quickly as possible. They had no reason
to take off the wrappings, because the body would already have started to
decompose. In addition to that, the body
would have been much easier to carry while wrapped.
“Why,
we might ask, did Matthew sound such a negative note on the climactic event in
Christ’s work almost at the end of his gospel account? Brief as the passage is, it is still longer
than his final few words about the Great Commission.
“The
answer would seem to be twofold. First,
the account serves to demonstrate Israel’s full and final apostasy as a nation,
of whom those Jewish leaders were representative. They denied Jesus’ resurrection just as they
had opposed everything else He said or did.
Second, the efforts of those enemies is perhaps the strongest human
testimony to the reality of the resurrection, causing it to have the exact opposite
effect from what was intended.”
Lord
willing I will finish this section in my next SD, but there is one thing that I
want to mention, something that I think must have happened when Jesus rose from
the dead and left the tomb. I think of
the story of when King David went down into the camp of King Saul as he was
thirsty and wanted to get some water to drink.
The soldiers who were to be protecting King Saul were sound asleep
because the Lord put them into a deep sleep, and I think that perhaps that is
what happened to the soldiers guarding Jesus’ tomb. Jesus did not need the great stone to be
moved in order to get out of there as He could pass right through it, which He
probably did. The stone needed to be
moved to let people in to show that He was resurrected from the dead.
10/19/2024 9:53 AM
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