This morning we'll be looking at Matthew 27, verses 62 to 66. So Matthew chapter 27, verses 62 to 66. If you're using a Pew Bible, it's page 993. So Pew Bible is page 993. Well, on Palm Sunday, right around the year 30 AD, Jesus of Nazareth entered into the city of Jerusalem on the back of a donkey. This was in fulfillment of a messianic prophecy from Zechariah 9.9. It says, say to the daughter of Zion, behold, your king is coming to you, gentle and mounted on a donkey, even on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden. The condescended irony of this is that the king of kings would then not arrive in Jerusalem on the back of a stallion, on the back of a war horse, but rather that he would come on a lowly beast of burden. However, it was a sign to the people that their Messiah, their deliverer, was finally here. And so, the crowds flooded the street, laying down their coats along with palm leaves and branches, creating a makeshift processional path for Jesus. And as he made his way down the street, the crowds were cheering, Hosanna to the Son of David. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest. The people acknowledged Jesus as the Messiah, as the Christ. However, the Jewish authorities did not. In fact, they hated Jesus because He posed a threat to their power. They had a monopoly on the power and the money and all of the influence in Israel. That was theirs, but yet they regarded Him as a threat to this claim. And they also regarded his claim to be the Messiah as a great deception. That's how they viewed it. And so they plotted his murder. In truth, they had been planning this murder for over a year, but they lacked opportunity. And finally, they got their chance through the betrayal of Judas Iscariot. And so during Passover week, with the Sabbath fast approaching, the Jewish Sanhedrin has Jesus arrested on late Thursday night. He is rushed through a corrupted court process throughout the course of the night. He's then the next morning delivered over to the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, to be executed. Despite finding no fault in Jesus, Pilate gives into their demands out of fear of rebellion and orders Jesus to be scourged and crucified at a place of a skull known as Golgotha or Calvary. It is there that Jesus dies on the cross, paying the penalty for sins, enduring the wrath of the Father, before finally declaring that the work of salvation is finished. And on Good Friday, approximately 3 p.m., Jesus gives up his spirit and he dies. And in obedience to Jewish custom, the followers of Jesus, they come and they ask for his body to be buried. Pilate grants the request, and Jesus' body is taken away by Joseph of Arimathea, a rich man, also a member of the Jewish council, as well as Nicodemus, a secret disciple who's also on the council. And they go to an unused tomb in a garden that's not far away from Golgotha, and it's there that the body of Jesus is laid to rest. However, on the next day, those who put Jesus to death, they begin to worry, because their worry is turning to panic as they begin to realize and remember and recall that Jesus had something to say, a prophecy, in the days leading up to His death, and it was that that gave them cause to fear. And so that's what we're going to look at this morning, Matthew chapter 27, verses 62 to 66. Now on the next day, the day after the preparation, the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered together with Pilate and said, sir, we remember that when he was still alive that that deceiver said, after three days I am to rise again. Therefore, give orders for the grave to be made secure until the third day. Otherwise, his disciples may come and steal him away and say to the people, he has risen from the dead. And the last deception will be worse than the first. Pilate said to them, you have a guard, go make it as secure as you know how. And they went and made the grave secure, and along with the guard they set a seal on the stone. And so all of this takes place, these happenings are taking place on the next day. Now we know that this is the Sabbath at this point, the Jewish day of rest and worship. Furthermore, it is the Sabbath of the Passover, which is really the holiest day of the year for Israel. And yet the Jewish leaders are not spending this holy day focused on the Lord. Instead, they continue in their treachery. And while they're supposed to be spending the previous day, known as the day of preparation, preparing for the Sabbath, instead they're spending that day, the preparation day, that Friday, putting the Son of God to death. And as for the Sabbath, the day after preparation, Matthew says they spend this day making sure that the Son of God stays dead. How so? Well, Matthew records in verse 62 that the chief priests and the Pharisees, they gathered together with Pilate. This is strange for several reasons. Well, number one, because the chief priests, that's comprised of the Sadducees, and they gathered together with the Pharisees. Now, these two groups are two groups of political enemies. They oppose one another. They're two extremes of the religious spectrum, and yet they come together. The old saying, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Well, that's what they're doing. They come together in a unified purpose for another strange thing. Again, these two warring factions are gathered together on the Sabbath during Passover, but the other strange part about it is that they're gathered together in this praetorium, which they couldn't set foot in the day before, but now they're gathered together with Pilate, the Roman governor, a man they otherwise despise. Frankly, no Jew in Israel had any business gathering together with a pagan Gentile on the Sabbath, and yet there they were. Why were they there? Well, they're there to ask a favor. Look at verse 63. They said to him, Sir, we remember that when he was still alive, that deceiver said, after three days I am to rise again. Therefore, give orders for the grave to be made secure until the third day, otherwise his disciples may come and steal him away and say to the people, he has risen from the dead, and the last deception will be worse than the first. I wanna look at this request here. The first thing to note here is how they address Pilate. They refer to Him as Sir. The Greek word here is Kyrie, Kyrie, which also could be rendered Lord. Now certainly this is a generic sense of the word here. They don't mean capital L, God, Lord, but you have to notice here the irony of the whole thing. They're giving Him this title of honor, Sir or Lord, and yet in the very same verse they're referring to Jesus as the deceiver. So Pilate is Lord, Jesus is the deceiver in their minds. It just shows the destitution of their consciences. And yet they're calling to mind something that they heard Jesus say while he was still alive. Specifically, they remember him saying, after three days, I am to rise again. They remember the promise that Jesus was going to resurrect from the dead, and we might, of course, ask, well, when did they hear this? Truthfully, they could have been hearing this on a number of occasions. Jesus talked about this quite a bit over the course of his ministry. Even just in what's recorded in Matthew alone, it is pervasive. For example, in Matthew 16, 21, we read that from that time, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed and be raised up on the third day. Very specific. This is mentioned again in Matthew 17, 9, also Matthew 17, 23. But then just prior to Palm Sunday in Matthew 20, verses 17 through 19, it records that Jesus tells the disciples that they're going to Jerusalem. This is happening this very week in the scriptures. And then he says that the Son of Man will be delivered to the chief priests and scribes, they will condemn Him to death, they will hand Him over to the Gentiles to mock and scourge and crucify Him, and on the third day He will be raised up. Now, to date, everything has happened and been accomplished to the letter. The only thing left that has not been accomplished, according to Jesus' prophecy, is his resurrection on the third day. But up to that point, all of it would have been hearsay. And yet, more than a year earlier, several members of the Jewish Sanhedrin had heard the prediction directly from the mouth of Jesus. In fact, in Matthew 12, we looked at this quite a while ago now, but in Matthew 12, we read this. Some of the scribes and Pharisees said to him, Teacher, we want to see a sign from you. But he answered and said to them, an evil and adulterous generation craves for a sign and yet no sign will be given to it but the sign of Jonah the prophet. For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so will the son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. And the men of Nineveh will stand up with this generation at the judgment and will condemn it because they repented at the preaching of Jonah and behold, something greater than Jonah is here. What's remarkable about this prediction is that it's built on a prophetic type from the Old Testament. Jesus then likens himself to Jonah the prophet, whereby Jonah is swallowed up in the sea, in the depths of the sea, into the belly of this great fish, we don't know what kind of fish this was, but some great beast in the ocean swallows him up and for all intents and purposes he's swallowed up into death. Even from within the stomach of the fish Jonah utters this, I called out of my distress to the Lord and he answered me, I cried for help from the depths of Sheol, from the place of the dead, from Hades, as some translations render this. I cried out from the depths of Sheol, for you cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the currents engulfed me. Water encompassed me to the point of death. A great deep engulfed me. I descended into the roots of the mountains, the earth with its bars around me forever. So Jonah is describing being buried in the depths of the sea, going down to where the mountains begin. And then Jonah 1.17 records that he was in the stomach of this fish for three days and three nights. After which time, Jonah 2.10 says the Lord commanded the fish to vomit Jonah up onto dry land, and the Bible tells us that he lived again. And so Jesus is imploring this sign of Jonah. and revealing that he too would die and descend into the depths of the earth and then come back to life three days later. Of course, Jonah isn't the only prediction in the resurrection from the Old Testament. There are several other allusions in the Old Testament to this resurrection. I'm just thinking about Isaiah 53 contains sort of a veiled reference to the resurrection. We've already read that text this morning before the message here. But in Isaiah 53 10, we read, but the Lord was pleased to crush him, putting him to grief, if he would render himself a guilt offering. That's referring to the sacrificial death of Jesus on the cross to pay for our sins. And then Isaiah prophesies, he will see his offspring. He will see His offspring. How is He going to go and see His offspring if He's dead? Well, the Bible says he will prolong his days and the good pleasure of the Lord will prosper in his hand. Scholars have seen this prolonging of days and the seeing of his offspring in the future as a reference to the resurrection of the suffering servant. Even in Isaiah 53, we see this implication embedded in the text. But the most lucid prophecy of the resurrection comes to us in Psalm 16. So if you wanna turn over to Psalm 16 with me, we can look at that together. Psalm 16 is written by David. This theme here is the refuge of the Lord. It's a psalm of trust. Even when David is in the clutches of death, he looks to the Lord to sustain him. And so that's the main focus of this psalm. A trusting in the Lord, even under the pains of death. We read about this in Psalm 16, verse 8. Look at verse 8 with me. David cries out to the Lord, I have set the Lord continually before me, because He is at my right hand, I will not be shaken. Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoices. My flesh also will dwell securely. For You will not abandon my soul to Sheol, nor will You allow Your Holy One to undergo decay. You will make known to me the path of life. In your presence is fullness of joy. In your right hand there are pleasures forevermore. So these verses, specifically verse 10, articulate this hopeful promise of resurrection. We know this because Peter in Acts 2 and then Paul in Acts 13, they both cite this verse as prophetic proof of Christ's resurrection. when Peter is preaching at Pentecost. He addresses the crowds regarding the reality of Jesus having been raised and he declares to this crowd in Acts 2.29, Brethren, I may confidently say to you regarding the patriarch David that he both died and was buried and his tomb is with us today. And so he looked ahead and spoke of the resurrection of Christ that he was neither abandoned to Sheol or Hades or death, nor did his flesh suffer decay. So the rationale is this, David's body underwent decay in the tomb. Peter says his grave is still with us, his body has undergone decay, even though his soul has not. And this is why Peter declares that Psalm 16 is ultimately about Christ. It's Christ who will not undergo this decay. He will not be abandoned. Paul corroborates this interpretation in Acts 13. He tells the saints in Antioch that as for the fact that God raised Jesus from the dead, no more to return to decay, he has spoken in this way. I will give you, the Holy One, the holy and sure blessings of David. He's quoting Isaiah 55. And then he continues, therefore, he also says in another psalm, which is a reference to Psalm 16, you will not allow your Holy One to undergo decay. Same verse. For David, after he had served the purpose of God in his own generation, he fell asleep, and he was laid among his fathers and underwent decay. But he whom God raised did not undergo decay." Acts 13, 34-37. And so the testimony has been there all along. Not just in the words of Jesus, but in the scriptures for over a thousand years at that point. And so again, in several places in the Old Testament, we see the promise of resurrection, but certainly all throughout Jesus' life and ministry, he has made these promises that he will resurrect again on the third day. Go back to Matthew 27. Of course, the chief priests and the Pharisees, they didn't actually believe that Jesus was going to resurrect from the dead. In fact, the Sadducees didn't even believe that there was such a thing as resurrection. That was one of the bones of contention between the Pharisees and the Sadducees. The Pharisees believed in a resurrection of the dead for the future, but the Sadducees did not. They thought it was hogwash. But rather, their biggest concern was not with the issue of resurrection. Their biggest concern was what they called the deception. The deception because they believed there was a rumor floating around that Jesus would rise from the dead on the third day in the Jewish Sanhedrin. They were going to do all they could to ensure that not even a fabrication of a resurrection was possible. They were worried that if on early Sunday morning the disciples would come and they would steal away the body of Jesus and then they would go tell everybody in Israel that he'd risen from the dead. They were worried about a fake resurrection. Because as long as Jesus is dead, the movement is also dead. Because there have been many others who claim to be the Messiah and as soon as they died, their movement got wiped out, their disciples went away. And so that's what they're hoping. They want Jesus to be dead and gone, and the disciples gone, and the movement dead, and go back to where the things were. But if people start to believe that he's alive, now there's hope that he'll return. And that's something that they can't handle, is the hope or the possibility of His return. And here's the thing, if Israel started to believe that Jesus would return, the Sanhedrin was worried that the last deception would be worse than the first. Well, what is the first and the last here? The first deception is that Jesus is Messiah. That was their view. He's deceiving the nations because He's saying that He's the Messiah. And the last deception, they say, was that he had risen from the dead and is victorious. And so they didn't want any of this. And so the Sanhedrin, they go to Pilate on the holy Sabbath during Passover. They defile themselves by going into the praetorium. They bow the knee before him and they call him Lord. And they say, give orders for the grave to be made secure until the third day. Here's the sadly ironic thing about all of this. The disciples had fled, seemingly forgetting that Jesus had promised to rise again. They weren't thinking about resurrection. In fact, in John 2.22, it records the disciples didn't even realize until after the resurrection that when Jesus declared, destroy this temple and in three days I will rebuild it, they didn't remember. They had no idea until after he had resurrected and then they remembered that he was referring to his own resurrection. But on Saturday, on the Sabbath, resurrection was the farthest thing from their mind at all. So how does Pilate respond to this request in verse 65? Pilate said to them, well you have a guard. Go make it as secure as you know how. Some had been raising questions about what Pilate's talking about here. One reading of this text is that Pilate is saying, well, you have a Jewish temple guard, so why don't you go and secure the grave with them? In other words, don't bother me asking me for anything else. I've already gone against my good judgment and I've already delivered him over to you. He's an innocent man. I've washed my hands of his blood. You had an opportunity to take Barabbas and let him go to the cross and have Jesus be free, but you didn't do that. So Pilate's at his wit's end with the Jewish nation at this point. So one view is that he's saying, I'm done. You have a guard. You go deal with it. But another view held by a large number of scholars is that Pilate's actually referring to the Roman soldiers who've already been assigned to police the temple area. In this way, he would be saying, listen, you already have a detachment. So go and use those people. I think that is what the text furthermore supports, even though his feelings would have been about the same as what I mentioned before. Why do we think this? Well, because on the next day, when Jesus does rise from the grave, the soldiers who are guarding the tomb on that day, they panic, they pass out from fear, and at some point they wake up again and they flee. And when the report comes back to the Jewish leaders about what happened, they're worried about getting in trouble with the governor. And so the chief priests, they promised to protect them. If the soldiers had been the Jewish temple guard, they wouldn't be worried about Pilate. And yet they are. They're worried about their jobs, they're worried about their lives, they're worried about being punished. So again, I believe this lends itself to believe that these are Roman soldiers assigned to the Sanhedrin to do their work, and so he puts it back on them. He says, if you're so worried about the disciples coming and stealing Jesus' body away and faking a resurrection, then fine, take the guard that's been assigned to you and go and make it as secure as you know how. Knock yourself out. do whatever you want." And so verse 66, and they went and made the grave secure and along with the guard they set a seal on the stone. At this point now they secure the grave. First they assign this Roman contingent of soldiers to the gravesite to guard it through the night, so they're going to stand watch until the third day, until they're out of the danger zone, so to speak. And then they go and they set a seal on the stone. This involved taking some kind of a cord and dipping it in wax and then fastening that cord between the gravestone and the outer portion of the rim of the cave here. And so in doing this, it's a makeshift anti-tampering device. So if somebody had tried to roll away the stone, it would have ripped off the seal and they would have seen it. Or if they rolled away the stone and rolled it back and they tried to reattach it, the wax would have made it look as though it had been tampered with. And so this is their way of protecting against this tampering of the gravestone. And so at this point, they had done all that they could, and the grave had been sealed, and a detachment of highly trained Roman soldiers is now guarding the tomb. And so in the words of Pontius Pilate, they had made this as secure as they know how. So this now is going to stop the resurrection of Jesus Christ. But it brings to mind now Psalm 2. What did God see? As he's looking down from the throne of heaven as the Jewish leaders in Israel are making the grave as secure as they could. Why are the nations in an uproar? Asks the psalmist. And the people's devising a vain thing. The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against his anointed. In their rage, the Jewish leaders, they counseled together to put Jesus to death, and now they're conspiring together, along with the Gentiles, the rulers of the nations, to go and seal up this tomb so He can't resurrect. How foolish. How vain is such an effort. Psalm 2-4, the Lord sits in the heavens and laughs. The Lord scoffs at them. And as the members of the Sanhedrin, they scurry away like cockroaches on the Saturday night, the heavens would have been filled with the sound of the Lord's laughter. Because He knows. He knows what's about to happen, and not a single force on planet earth can stop it. Because who is like the Lord, says Isaiah? It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, its inhabitants like grasshoppers, who stretches out the heavens like a curtain and spreads out like a tent to dwell in. It is he who reduces rulers to nothing and makes the judges of the earth meaningless. The Lord has foretold that he would go to Jerusalem and be arrested. It happened. He foretold that he would be mocked and scourged and crucified. It happened. He would die and be buried with a rich man in his death. It happened. Everything happens according to his sovereign, providential, foreordained, omnipotent, and magisterial plan. And not a sparrow falls to the ground apart from his decree. And so I ask, is anyone able to thwart the plan of God? When the Lord said that he would be buried and raised to life on the third day, who could stop it? The Sanhedrin couldn't stop it. The Roman government couldn't stop it. A two-ton gravestone couldn't stop it. A military guard couldn't stop it. Even death itself could not stop it. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the King of Kings, Lord of Lords, Captain of Salvation, Sovereign over creation, He is rising again on the third day. And there is nothing that anyone can do about it. That is cause for rejoicing, isn't it? And so let me ask, in terms of application, If Christ is able to conquer the grave, if he is able to defeat death and defeat the powers of worldly governments and defeat the powers of hell, is there anything in your life that he also cannot conquer? The answer is nothing. Nothing. But here's the thing, you must know him. You must know him, you must believe in him. You must believe that He is the Christ, the Son of the living God. You must believe that He came in the flesh, born of a virgin, gave up His life, a perfect life, a righteous life, and died on the cross at Calvary to pay for your sins. You must believe that all your sins have been taken away. You must repent of those sins. You must agree with God about His standard of righteousness. You must believe that He went to the cross, was buried in the ground. You must believe that He rose again the third day. You must believe that He conquered death. You must believe that there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ. But furthermore, in believing, in believing and receiving a new heart that loves the Lord God, you must obey Him. You must obey Him. and you must love Him. Again, obedience is not how you get into heaven, but obedience is the fruit of the Spirit that shows that you belong to God. If He is your Lord, your Kyrie, the Bible says no one can say Jesus is Lord apart from the Holy Spirit, so if He's your Lord, and you profess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, then the fruit and the evidence of that is that you will follow. You will do what he says, you will live your life in response to his grace. You'll live your life in thankfulness to him. You'll live your life as a servant of the Most High God. And you will give praise and glory to his name. First Peter 1.3, blessed is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. It happens through the resurrection. His death ensures and secures that our sins have been paid for and forgiven, but his resurrection brings us new life. If you have life in Christ, even though your body will die, all of us will die in this life. There's gonna come a day, and only the Lord knows when that day is, there's coming a day when every single heart in this room will stop beating. Our body will die, it will decay, we'll be buried, we'll be mourned, but you have an eternal soul. You have an eternal soul. So where will that soul live forever? Will it live in heaven with the Most High God, glorifying Him, praising Him, worshiping Him, serving Him? Or will your soul be punished in hell forever? If you reject the gospel of God's grace, if you reject His holiness, if you reject His righteousness, if you reject His standard for you, If you continue to live in your sin and refuse to give it up, you will not be with Him in heaven forever. Your soul will be eternal, but it will be punished eternally. But if your heart and your mind and your soul and your life is in Him, if you live and move and have your being in Christ, beloved, then you will live forever. And not just live, you will flourish in a new body imperishable, full of light and glory and corruptible. And you will behold the glorious Christ and His new kingdom. And you will live forevermore and enjoy, the Bible says, pleasures forevermore in Him. That's what the resurrection is ultimately about for us. For Him, it's glory. For us, it's to behold His glory forevermore. Do you know Him? Because here's the thing, He's coming soon. No man knows the hour, but He's coming soon. Do you know Jesus Christ as Savior? Do you know Him as Lord? Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we lift up your name and we praise you. We thank you for this text that maybe on the surface might not seem as important in our human thinking. It might not seem as dynamic in our human thinking. It might seem like textual garnish to us. And yet, even inside of these verses, You have laid under them a weight of truth. The weight of truth that this promise wasn't just heard by the Pharisees and Sadducees. It was heard by the disciples. It was heard by the people. But it was heard even in the ears of those in the Old Testament. That this promise has been forevermore. That you would send your Son to live and die and rise. This was your eternal plan. And even in their human attempts to stop it, even in their human attempts to conspire and vilify the Son and call Him the deceiver, even that can't stop your holy plan. You are the sovereign Lord and all things work according to your plan. And we know also that all things work together for good to those who love you and who are called according to your purpose. that nothing happens by accident and there is not a thing, human, plan, machine, program, nothing on earth that can stop your providential plan. And so Lord, we ask you to have your way in our lives. Draw us to yourself. Lord, if there are those here today who don't know you, maybe they've come to the end of themselves and they have realized that they don't have you in their life, that they do not know you, they don't love you, they haven't obeyed you, that you are not Lord for them. I pray, Lord, that you would reach through and open up and crack open their stony heart and revive it again, that even though our bodies waste away, that our spirit would be renewed day by day, that you would give them a resurrected heart, a regenerated heart that sees you clearly, believes on you. understands the cross, that's their place of salvation, and understands the open tomb, that's their place of new life in Christ, that they might be saved even today. And Lord, maybe there are those who've been walking with you or walking around you for a long time, and yet they come to realize that they don't actually know and believe and obey you. Maybe they've been lying to themselves. Maybe this is false. Lord, would you restore their mind and their heart and draw them to you to repent of sin, bow the knee and put their faith in you and live their lives for you, consecrated to you. And Lord, for those who do know you, who do love you, who do belong to you. Yet, Lord, even on days like today, our hearts can still be low. We can still struggle, even as believers. We feel the weight of the world. We feel the bounds of spiritual depression. We feel oppression. Lord, we struggle in this life, and yet we know that we have a present hope. We have a sovereign Lord, a God who loves us, who gave up his only begotten son for us. Who loves us and cares for us and has made a way. You've told the disciples that you did not leave them as orphans. You haven't done that for us either. We are children of the Most High God. So why do we worry? Why do we fear? Why do we grow dim? We know that you are there. You are our eternal hope. So let us continue to put our trust in you. God, you are wonderful. You are glorious. And in your light, we see light. We thank you for your wonderful kindness to us in Christ. We pray all these things in his name. Amen.