Therefore order the tomb to be made secure until the third day, lest his disciples go and steal him away and tell the people, ‘He has risen from the dead,’ and the last fraud will be worse than the first.
Matthew 27:64
The scribes and Pharisees made one more post-crucifixion power move to attempt to permanently silence Jesus’ message. The disciples of Christ were still hiding in numb disbelief, but the authorities remembered that Jesus claimed He would be raised from the dead three days after He was buried. They went to Pilate, secured an elite Roman guard, and did everything humanly possible to secure the tomb from any fraudulent claim of resurrection.
In so doing, they made the gospel all the more powerful! Their fear made our faith real…because an entire legion of Rome’s finest could never have kept the angel from rolling that stone away from Jesus’ borrowed tomb! If anything, nobody could ever claim that the disciples outmuscled Rome’s finest to steal the body. When resurrection morning dawned, an angel and an earthquake led those Roman soldiers to faint in fear in front of two women who stayed quite conscious to bear eyewitness to it all! (Matthew 28:1-7)
The leaders were afraid of a fraud. But what they did to attempt to “secure” the tomb backfired. The truth would shake the very earth, would send a fearsome angel warrior to roll away a stone and turn the Roman army’s finest into tunic-soiling cry babies! No power on earth will stop our salvation from being accomplished. No human scheme can change God’s plans.
Jesus is risen, we are redeemed, our Lord has defeated sin and death! The tomb could not be secured to prevent His resurrection! It was secured to prevent fraud. And so we can be confident in the historical, physical reality of the gospel’s completion as Jesus left behind an empty tomb to claim His authority as King of Kings, Lord of Lords, defeater of death for us! Amen!
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