Saturday, October 19, 2024

PT-3 "The Propagation" (Matt. 28:15)

 

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

 

           

 

No comments:

Post a Comment