Matthew 28, 1 through 10. As I read this I remind you that this is the word of the Lord and I charge you to listen accordingly. Matthew 28, 1 through 10. 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 great fear. great joy and ran to bring his disciples word and As they went to tell his disciples behold Jesus met them saying rejoice so they came and held him by the feet and worshiped him Then Jesus said to them do not be afraid Go and tell my brethren to go to Galilee and there they will see you the reading of God's Word And we pray that he would bless it to our hearts. Amen. I Here comes my story. Growing up, I had a lot of experience going to Greek Orthodox services. My grandparents were still Greek Orthodox to this day, and the whole family was. So, as you might imagine, going to weddings, going to funerals, and they have service 40 days after a person has died. So we went to our share, also a few baptisms in there of extended relatives. So we've had definitely our share of going to Greek Orthodox services. And my father's family is Catholic, so I've been to many of their services too. One striking difference that anyone would notice, I didn't really notice it when I was young when I was doing this, but upon reflection I did, is the architecture and the way things are laid out within the church. In the Greek Orthodox world, first of all, they have icons. And if you've been to a Greek Orthodox church, you know that there are just icons everywhere and they have their own distinct flavor. You can always tell an icon when you see it. There's no mistake in it. It has its own distinct, it's called iconography. But one enduring image I remember from these icons and that I've seen in many churches and many icons of is Jesus sitting at the right hand of God, resurrected from the dead. And he often has his finger up like this in the manner of the Roman emperors. But you can take what you want from that. But that's how they they did it. But the message is clear. Jesus is sitting at the right hand of God. He is ruling and reigning overall. He has died. He has resurrected. He has ascended. And now he rules and reigns there at the right hand of God. On the contrary to that, contrasting with that, is the enduring image I've had from going into many Roman Catholic churches. Now, of course, when you go to a Roman Catholic church, it's just different because there are statues rather than icons, and things are arranged in a different way. But to me, the biggest difference was the enduring image, and that was a crucifix. Jesus is on the cross. And of course, they would tell you that this is signifying that Jesus died for our sins, this, this, and that, and et cetera. But that is the enduring image that you get, the crucifix, Jesus on the cross. And let me say that, although the images aren't here in Protestant churches often, and especially ones of our persuasion, I think we have followed more the Roman Catholic, rather than the Greek Orthodox, at least emphasis. In the West, we have emphasized the death of Jesus Christ. We have emphasized preaching Christ crucified. Now, I feel a certain bit of irony saying that we have emphasized this perhaps too far, because how can you emphasize too much the death of Christ? But I do think that we in the West need to balance that with a thorough understanding of Jesus Christ as he is resurrected, ruling, and reigning over all. I think there is a danger of focusing so much on the cross of Christ that we forget the resurrection. And in the scripture, they're always together. You can't have one without the other. It makes no sense. So, I think that we do need to swing the pendulum back toward the middle again and have a clear focus on the resurrection, but not just focusing on it as an event. But understanding in greater detail its significance, because I think if we understand the significance of the resurrection better, we'll actually be able to understand the death of Jesus Christ better as well. So that's my purpose here this morning, is to focus on the resurrection. It's clearly an appropriate passage to do that, but to focus more on its significance, what it means. In doing so, I'll break down the sermon into four parts. The first one is just going to go over the actual story itself and to say what happened here and point out a few details about it. And the next three parts I'm going over the different meanings of the resurrection as they relate to one another and as they are portrayed to us in scripture. So, first beginning with just the resurrection itself as it is portrayed here in the Gospel of Matthew. Now each of the Gospels has their own purpose, so it's important here to notice and to note that not all Gospels have to slavishly follow one another in what they choose to portray in these events. Each Gospel writer has their own purpose, and therefore, what they select to put forth before their reader is going to be different than what the other gospel writers do. It doesn't mean that they're contradictory. It means that each had its own purpose, and I think this is the case for any telling of a story. If three or four of us had witnessed one event, and if we were especially in different places, we would each tell the story, and each of us would probably get it right for the most part, but We would tell it from a different angle. We'd select different things, especially if our audiences were different. And so there's no contradiction in their resurrection accounts. It's simply that they choose to focus on different aspects. And this is what Matthew focuses on, the women coming to the tomb. Two Marys, Mary Magdalene and what Matthew calls the other Mary. There's speculation as to who that is. It's most likely perhaps the mother of James or the wife of Clopas. But it's not my purpose to get into speculation about who that is Matthew simply calls her the other Mary and they go on the day after the Sabbath It's called in Greek the first of the Sabbaths, which is the way they talk about the first day of the week in in their language they go to the tomb and They see an angel of the Lord and the angel the Lord descends from heaven and The gravestone is rolled back. There is a great earthquake. The guards are fearing for their lives. They act as if they are dead. The angel is white as snow. Confidence is bright. This is an appearance of God's angel and the angel says 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. Come see the place where the Lord lay. Now, this is important. That last phrase is very important. Come see the place where the Lord lay. Sometimes you'll get people saying that, well. The resurrection simply happened in the heart and in the minds of the disciples, they loved Jesus so much and his teaching was so enduring in their thinking that it was as if he was resurrected from the dead. If you ever seen the movie Cool Hand Luke, that's the portrayal of the story about Christ in the end. That's the portrayal of Christ that they're given. Remember, if you've seen the movie at the end, they're talking about him. Oh, he had that great smile and they promised to go and propagate whatever he was teaching them. That's the wrong version. That's the liberal version. And that is not only wrong, it's foolish. Notice what the angel says, the place where the Lord lay. Notice the past tense. He used to lay there. He is no longer there anymore. His body has been resurrected. It's not just some sort of mirage or some sort of vision, nor is it some sort of spiritual resurrection, whatever that might mean, as if Jesus was spiritually raised from the dead, although his body is still in the tomb. You get that, too. His body has been raised from the dead, the angel says, come and see the place where the Lord lay. And so the angel calls these two women. And they see Jesus has been risen from the dead and he's going before them to Galilee. Now, these two women on their way back, obviously, as verse eight says, they have great fear and joy. I can imagine having both of those feelings after seeing what they have just seen. And they go back and they run to tell the word to the disciples. And on their way, Jesus meets them and he says, greetings. The word here is translated rejoice. That's actually a literal translation. That's wrong. And in in Greek to this day and in the ancient world, you said rejoice to greet someone just kind of like how we say, how are you doing? We don't really mean how are you doing? We're just saying hi. That's just something we say. It's just. If you take it too literally, you'll start giving your life story. But that's not what people mean when they say that. It's the same here. When they say this, they don't mean rejoice, like jump up and down with joy, although that would be appropriate in this case. They simply mean hello, greetings to you. And most modern translations get this. The NKGB does not. This, by the way, is a good lesson. It's not always right to take things literally. Things are meant to be taken the way they were meant to be taken. and not necessarily literally. Now, if something is meant to be taken literally, and you start taking it figuratively, then you have problems, and that's what people sometimes do. But we don't read the Bible literally. We read it, as I've heard before, literarily. That is, as it is meant to be taken. We don't take Jesus literally when he says, I am the door, right? We know, we recognize that as a metaphor. And here, this is meant to be a metaphor or just a way of speaking, interjection it's called, which means greetings. So Jesus comes and he greets these two women and they come and they rejoice and they worship him at his feet. They bow before him. Jesus, instead of denying it, like the angels often do when people worship them, clearly indicating, by the way, that he is God as well as man. He says to them, do not be afraid. Fear not. Same thing that the angels tell the shepherds back in the beginning. Fear not. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee. and there they will see me." So Jesus will come and meet them in Galilee, where it all began, and he will tell them and instruct them what to do at that point. So Jesus has been raised from the dead. We're getting slight indications here. It's not clear exactly what that means. By the very fact that he is in different places, it seems that His body is perhaps not exactly like it was before. We know that from other scripture. It's a different kind of body. Yet at the same time, since it's not in the tomb, the tomb is empty. He is raised from the dead bodily, that he is raised with his body, not just some sort of phantom or ghost or spirit. This is what happens when Jesus is raised from the dead. This is told from Matthew's perspective. And like I said, there are different perspectives. They go together as one. Now, the question then becomes, what does it mean? We see what happens. We understand Jesus raised from the dead bodily. But what does that mean? The scriptures, including the gospels, but also Acts and the epistles and all the way through the New Testament and even back in the Old Testament, teach us what it means that the Lord was resurrected. And I would offer just three meanings right now, three ways of understanding the resurrection. And this is what they are. The vindication of Israel's King, first. Secondly, the proof of sin's payment. That is, the proof that sin has been paid. And thirdly, the defeat of the greatest enemy. The defeat of the greatest enemy. These three things, I would argue, are the meaning of the resurrection. It doesn't exhaust it, of course, but those are three important ones that we're going to look at this morning. First, the vindication of Israel's king. This is one that we often skip over, but it is highly important that we understand this because this is what the Old Testament often envisions resurrection as, as vindication. What do I mean by that? Well, vindication is not merely saying that someone is right and another person is wrong. When someone is vindicated, they are proved to be in the right when it seemed like, when it appeared as if they were in the wrong, condemned. And God's people often prayed for vindication. We read this in the Psalms over and over and over again, particularly in the Psalms written by David. David is in trouble and he prays to God, vindicate me, justify me. It's the same word. Because I am in the right and they are in the wrong, but it looks different right now. It looks as if I am being condemned and they are being exalted. So why would Israel need to be vindicated? Why would God's king need this justification? Well, first and foremost, it goes back to the promises God made to both Israel and to her king. God made a promise to Israel in many places, but the most central place and the most foundational comes to us in Genesis, the early parts of Genesis, when God's dealing with Abraham. In Genesis chapter 22, right after Abraham is tested with the incident where he nearly sacrifices his own son, the angel of the Lord comes and he promises something to Abraham. He says that, because you have obeyed my voice, In your seed, that is in your descendants, all nations of the earth would be blessed. What a promise that is. And that promise was given beforehand several times and also it's given afterward to Abraham's children. All nations of the earth would be blessed through the descendants of Abraham, through Israel who became, who were the descendants of Abraham. That is the promise God gave to Israel. But as Scripture unfolds, God not only gives promises to Abraham's descendant, to Israel, but also to Israel's king, that is, David. As Scripture unfolds, we see that Israel gets a king. The true king is David, and David receives a promise from God. In 2 Samuel chapter 7, we read of it, that one of David's sons, the son of David, would rule over not just Israel, but the whole world, and there would be no end to his kingdom. We saw this in Psalm 89, in Psalm 89, 34 through 37, right before the part that we said. Verse 35 says, Once I have sworn to my holiness, I will not lie to David. His seed shall endure. Forever in his throne as the sun before me it shall be established forever like the moon even like the faithful witness in the sky God's God's King the son of David will rule Forever and we need to see the connection between these two promises Between the promise given to Abraham's seed and the promise given to David's descendant the way in which a scripture the way in which it works is this Because God made these promises to Abraham. Of course, he will fulfill them and he will fulfill them through. The ruler, the king, the son of David, so these two promises go together. So they're two, but they're two that are so closely related. All nations of the earth will be blessed when God's ruler, the son of David, sits at God's right hand and has universal dominion over all, has his reign over all the earth. This is when God's promises would be fulfilled. And this is not only the hope of Israel. It is the hope of the enemies of Israel, too, though they don't know it. Because it's in this promise that all the nations would be blessed. when God's King sits at his right hand and rules over all. Now, of course, God's promises are called into question by the exile. We read earlier, and we sang in Psalm 80, how the psalmist there is pleading with God, you made these promises to us. And we were numerous. We were everywhere. Our shadow wrapped the mountain. But now look at us. We were in exile, and the psalmist urges and pleads with God to remember his covenant, to remember who they are, and to remember his promises. We read the same thing of the king, the son of David in Psalm 89, which we also sang. You've cast off your anointed or your Messiah, your Christ, the psalmist says. You made promises to this person, yet they are cast off. And one of the main questions that the Old Testament leaves unanswered is how is God going to vindicate his servant king and how is he going to vindicate his himself, his own promises? How can God on one hand make these grandiose promises, but because Israel has sinned, they've gone into exile. How can he fulfill them? The answer, of course, is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We began many moons ago in the Gospel of Matthew with the statement, the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ. The son of David, the son of Abraham, he is the seed of Abraham, the one in whom all nations of the earth would be blessed. He is the son of David. the true king who would rule and reign over all. And just like Israel, it seemed as if he were condemned. It seemed as if God's curse was upon him. But when God granted him new life, new life, not like the old life, not just a simple resuscitation, but new life. That would never end like the promises said. God vindicated the name of his king and in doing so vindicated his own self, his promises and. His word, his covenant, so first of all, and this is how we need to view things, because this is how the Old Testament first sees it. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the vindication of God's King, of Israel's King, and, in turn, the vindication of God himself. God's promises are made good in the resurrection. His promise that David's son would sit on the throne forever is made good in the resurrection and then, of course, in the ascension. And then we see his promises being filled out more and more, the promises to Abraham, as all nations of the earth are blessed now in the new covenant. As Paul says in 2nd Corinthians 1.20, in Jesus Christ, all of God's promises are yes and amen. Have you ever doubted God and his promises? It's easy to do. We don't see it. We are so conditioned by what we see, what we taste, what we hear, all of these things around us. And we seem to doubt what God has spoken to us. A great thing to remember is the resurrection of Jesus Christ, because if anything looked bleak, it was that. It was the Son of God himself in the tomb decaying. But God, by his immeasurable power, raised him from the dead and therefore vindicated his own name and fulfilled his promises. So the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the vindication of God's king and his promises. Secondly, the resurrection of Christ is the proof of sin's payment. That is the proof that sin has been paid for fully and finally. This is what we normally think of when we think of the resurrection. We know from, I mean, Paul says in Romans chapter four that Jesus was given over to death for our sins. So we know that in the Bible, it's repeated over and over and over again. Jesus died for our sins. He died for our sins. And this is true. It's something we always need to confess and something we always need to emphasize. However, we wouldn't know it was true. We wouldn't know it was complete. We wouldn't know that it had been dealt with. fully unless we saw the resurrection. Why? Because the resurrection is proof that Jesus has paid the debt for sin. What is the debt for sin? Well, I mean, it's right there in Romans chapter six. The wages of sin is death. And once Jesus has fulfilled that, completed that, took care of that, he's raised to life, proving that sin has been dealt with once and for all. Like I was talking about earlier with the forgiveness of sins, when God forgives someone, when God deals with sin, it isn't some sort of abstract transaction in the air and nothing is changed. Think of Isaiah chapter 40. In Isaiah chapter 40, God, in a prophetic way, Isaiah calls to the people in exile and says, your sins are forgiven. Your iniquity is pardoned. You have received double from the hand of the Lord for your sin. And he's giving this as a word of comfort. And what he means by that isn't simply that, OK, now your sins are forgiven, but you can go on living the way things were. You'll still be in exile and all that. It means that you are coming back, that not only is sin taken care of. But the effects of sin is also taken care of, that is death, and of course, for Israel was exile. And so when Jesus takes care of sin once and for all, It's dealt with. That means not only is sin dealt with, but the effects of sin, which is death. So what does this mean? It means that the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Is proof that sin is dealt with fully and finally. No longer. Do we need to worry at all of whether our sins are forgiven? This is, by the way, is one of the great privileges of living in the new covenant era and the old covenant era. The, uh, the writer to the Hebrew says the sin offering had to be offered over and over and over again. And our consciences never could be cleared of the sins on our mind because we had to keep offering sins over and over and over again. But by one sacrifice, he writes, he has made perfect forever those who are being sanctified. One sacrifice, and it's over. It's dealt with. And the resurrection is proof that sin has been dealt with fully and finally at the cross. So in fact, the resurrection must go with the death of Christ, otherwise The cross of Christ loses its meaning without the resurrection. We would never know that sin was dealt with completely unless we had the resurrection. The resurrection is proof of the payment of sin. This is very important because sometimes one of Satan's biggest lies to us is that, oh, God, God can't love you. You've sinned too much. And you keep bringing up past sins and past sins. And yes, Scripture clearly teaches us to live a holy life and has given us that power to do so by the Holy Spirit. But we need not be afraid that our sins are going to garner God's judgment. Because they have been dealt with as sure as Christ has been raised from the dead, that is a sure. as our sins have been dealt with once and for all. The resurrection of Christ is the vindication of Israel's king, but also the proof of sin's payment. Thirdly and finally, the resurrection is the defeat of the greatest enemy, the defeat of the greatest enemy. If you look out through scripture, you'll see that the greatest enemy to Israel was not the Moabites, was not It was not the Babylonians, it was not even Egypt where they were slaves. The greatest enemy, ultimately, is death. We see it throughout. We see David losing his own child. We see the people of Babylon coming and slaughtering and then taking the people into exile. We see the effects of sin. And ultimately, we see death over and over and over again. And the problem with many of Jesus's contemporaries was not that they misunderstood God's promises, but they misunderstood the great enemy. They thought the enemy was Rome. They thought the enemy was these were these great empires around them. Meanwhile, they were just simply pawns of sin and death and Satan himself doing their bidding. Jesus understood from the beginning who the true enemy was. And this is what happens when he is tempted in the wilderness. We see this. He understands the true enemy and he goes and he faces the true enemy, death itself, head on. Paul himself in 1 Corinthians 15 teaches us this truth that the last and greatest enemy of humanity is death. And we should expect nothing else. Death, after all, was what God threatened Adam and Eve with if they disobeyed him. Back in Genesis chapter 2, the day you eat of it, you shall surely die. Jesus, understanding this, knew that the greatest enemy was not Rome. nor any other power. The greatest enemy was death. And so he turned his face toward Jerusalem, not to be the conquering king, at least at that time, but to be the one who faced death itself. But when sin is removed, therefore death is removed. Jesus, in his sin bearing death, takes away that which caused death and removes death of its power and is therefore resurrected from the dead. And having died once, he is never going to taste death again. So he has defeated it like the conquering king, he has defeated Death itself, as Paul said, made a spectacle of it, triumphing over it in the cross. That's the irony of it all, the means of death. How can that be used to triumph over it? But Jesus died to defeat death itself. And by removing sin, he defeats the effects of sin. That is death. And he's raised again as the conquering king. One can tell a lot about a philosophy or a religion by their view of death. We hear in our world today that death is just a natural part of life. It's the circle of life, after all, right? You're born, you live, you get old, and you die. And that's just that. And things are just moving over and over again in sort of an aimless circle. The Greek philosophers dreamed that death really was an escape from these terrible bodies, that the body was the prison house of the soul, and that when we died, we were really free. Some religion, death is really made a mockery of by having these grandiose and ridiculous views of heaven. But try telling that to a couple who has just lost their child. Try telling that to people who have just been through unspeakable tragedy. That's no comfort. Anyone who has been to a funeral where the casket is the size no bigger than a shoebox knows that death is so much more than just that. It's not just a happy medium for Christians or even for anyone. Death is gross. It is disgusting. It is a perversion of God's good creation. And what Christianity offers is not a lessening of death sting. It's its removal and its death. Christians are to be the ones, first and foremost, to note just how disgusting and terrible death is. Jesus wept at the death of Lazarus, even though he knew he would raise him from the dead. But that's not the final word, the final word, and the only thing that can give comfort And the only thing that can give truth and power is the fact that death has been defeated, is the fact that, as the poet said, death thou shalt die. Let's pray. Father in Heaven, we are faced with tragedies among us. We mentioned some this morning in prayer, but we see it everywhere. We see the world so many ways spinning in chaos. People dying, fighting, all these kinds of things. And we ask ourselves, is there any hope? But we know because of the resurrection of your Son that there is hope. We know that the true king is ruling and reigning overall because of that resurrection. We know that you are faithful to your promises because of that resurrection. We know that our sin is taken care of because of that resurrection. And we know that our greatest enemy has been defeated. So it is with confidence that we come before you and pray that you would hasten that day, that in the meantime, you would give us strength, that you would give us courage and that you would give us faithfulness, knowing that you are faithful to your word, to your covenant and to your promise. And this we pray in Jesus name. Amen.