Attempting to Bury the Truth

Matthew 27:62-66 ESV

62 The next day, that is, after the day of Preparation, the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered before Pilate 63 and said, “Sir, we remember how that impostor said, while he was still alive, ‘After three days I will rise.’ 64 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.” 65 Pilate said to them, “You have a guard of soldiers. Go, make it as secure as you can.” 66 So they went and made the tomb secure by sealing the stone and setting a guard.

I always find the lengths that the natural man will go to, to suppress the truth, to be amazing. We’ve all heard the saying, “I’ve made up my mind, now don’t confuse me with the facts.” Now, we say that jokingly, but the reason why we sometimes say it is because there is a certain level of accuracy in that statement.

Indeed, it is in our nature to desire to suppress the truth if the truth is not something that we like. Now, we do this because we think that if we can convince ourselves, and perhaps even convince others that something other than the truth is actually the truth that then that which is not the truth will somehow become the actual truth.

We see it all the time. Someone doesn’t like the fact that he or she is noticeably aging, so they get plastic surgery in order to go from looking like a fifty-something to looking like a thirty-something. But even if they do look like a thirty-something, the truth remains that they are actually a fifty-something.

Or maybe someone like me doesn’t like where my hair is going; that is, off of my head, and so I decide to get a toupée to cover up what is missing.

Now if I went and did that, you may think that you got a whole new pastor when you first see me, but the reality is that all you would have to do is come and remove my toupee and you would see that I’m same bald-headed preacher that’s here every Sunday.

And I could go on and on and on about how we try to alter the truth when the truth is something that we don’t like.

Thus, it seems as though everyone is at least somewhat adverse to the truth when the truth is not something that they like. But the truth that I believe the natural man is most opposed to is the truth concerning God.

The truth is that God is Who says He is, and we know Who God says He is when we study the Bible. And the truth is that all of mankind is commanded by God to worship Him. Equally true is that God will judge and eternally condemn those who refuse to worship Him.

This is not something that the natural man likes to hear. He does not want to hear that there is a higher Being Who justly commands his worship and Who will justly condemn him if he refuses to do so.

In fact, deep down, everyone knows this to be true. Everyone knows that he or she is justly required to worship God and that he or she will be justly condemned if they refuse to do so.

But like I said, the natural man does not want to face this truth so instead, he formulates a lie and proclaims that the lie is the truth in an attempt to somehow change what the truth actually is.

He will say things like, “There is no God Who is the Creator and Sustainer of all things! Instead, there was once absolutely nothing and out nothing there was a big bang that made everything come into existence.” That is how they try to say that there is no God; they say that there is no cause but that something miraculously came from nothing… which makes absolutely no sense by the way.

But they aren’t content to remain there. The Bible also says that man is made in the image of God and because that is the case, man is held especially accountable to God and thus man’s judgment is more severe than the judgment that will come upon the beasts.

So, what is the natural man’s answer? That we too are beasts! That out of nothing, species kept evolving over billions of years until eventually a man was formed.

Of course, all of that is a bunch of nonsense. In fact, it’s pitiful and absurd. The fact that the natural man is in favor of lowering himself to the point that he equates himself with beasts in order to avoid the truth shows the utter and complete depravity of man.

And what we see in our reading for today yet another example of the natural man refusing to receive the truth and thus going to great lengths to attempt to prevent the truth from being the truth.

We see the build up at this attempt in verse 62 in our reading, where it says:

Matthew 27:62 ESV

62 The next day, that is, after the day of Preparation, the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered before Pilate

I want us to look first at the main characters in this plot; they are addressed as “the chief priests and the Pharisees”. Now, the reason why I want to point this out is because it shows us the united front of evil that came against the truth.

The chief priests, or the Sadducees were kind of like your modern-day Democrats, and the Pharisees were kind of like your modern-day Republicans. And what do we know about Democratic politicians and Republican politicians, especially in the day that we are currently living in? They don’t like each other, and because they don’t like each other, they don’t get along.

Now, because they don’t like each other or get along it then requires a very extreme situation for them to be willing to come together and mutually work on anything. And what we see here in our reading is the Sadducees and the Pharisees coming together, working together.

Thus, we find here a very unlikely alliance, united in their struggle against that which is of God as they gather together to come before Pilate, the governor of that region, with a request.

But, before we proceed to the next verse, I want to go back to the beginning of this verse which tells us that these things took place on the day after the day of Preparation. What this translates to is that the events which follow took place on the Sabbath.

Now, the reason why this is important to point out is because while someone like Joseph of Arimathea who we read of last week was very careful to perform what he had performed before the Sabbath so as not to violate it, remember it said that Joseph of Arimathea done what he had done while it was evening, just before the Sabbath began; while that was the case, these hypocritical Sadducees and Pharisees come to Pilate and request that he would command others to act in a way that is incompatible with their own Sabbath regulations.

Those in this unholy alliance were prone to be so greatly offended when they saw others not keeping the Sabbath in a way that they deemed suitable, yet here they come, seeking that others would violate the Sabbath in order to advance their own cause.

When they came to Pilate, they began by saying to him:

Matthew 27:63 ESV

63 …“Sir, we remember how that impostor said, while he was still alive, ‘After three days I will rise.’

The first thing that we see here is that when this alliance approaches Pilate, they reinforce their opinion that Jesus is a practitioner of heresy.

And they say that He is a heretic because they claim that He is an impostor. To be an impostor means to pretend to be someone you are not in order to deceive others.

The charge that they brought to Pilate before Jesus’ crucifixion is that He falsely claimed to be King. That was how they convinced Pilate to allow His execution by accusing Him of pretending to be the King when He was not.

That was the political charge that they brought. But the reason why they wanted Jesus to be crucified was because of religious matters. Jesus claimed to be the Christ, and He is. But this was not something that this unholy alliance could accept, so they attempted to suppress the truth by charging Him with blasphemy.

But now they bring something else to Pilate when they tell him that Jesus not only falsely claimed to be the King and the Christ, but that He also falsely claimed that He would rise from the dead after three days.

Now something that I find ironic here is that while Jesus’ closest disciples struggled to understand that He would rise after three days, His enemies seemed to understand it perfectly well. This makes their actions even more heinous.

Because the enemies of Jesus knew what He had spoken concerning His resurrection, they then asked Pilate what we read of in verse 64, where we read of a representative from the alliance saying:

Matthew 27:64 ESV

64 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.”

What they ask is that Pilate would deploy some of his troops to guard the tomb that Jesus was laid in until the third day.

Now this doesn’t mean that these actually believed what Jesus said concerning His resurrection, but rather, it shows that they feared that if there was not a guard present at the tomb, that some of Jesus’ disciples would break into His tomb and remove His body and then go around telling everyone that because His body is gone, He must have risen from the dead.

But they assumed that if there were men guarding the tomb then it wouldn’t be able to be broken into and the body of Jesus would remain there.

In fact, what they feared the most was that the Lord’s disciples would steal Jesus’ body away and then proclaim that His body is not in the tomb because He rose from the dead like He said He would. They said that if this happened then they would be worse off than they were before.

You see, they had hoped that after they put Jesus to death that His sect would lose all credibility, that His followers would scatter, and that His religion would quietly go away. But they reasoned that if others believed that Jesus had truly risen from the dead, then His religion would spread like wildfire, and they would be in a worse condition than the one that they were already in.

In response to this, Pilate said in verse 65:

Matthew 27:65 ESV

65 …“You have a guard of soldiers. Go, make it as secure as you can.”

Now, like we said earlier, it was probably the hopes of those in this unholy alliance that Pilate would take some of his own troops and deploy them for this purpose, but the language that is used here would make it seem as though Pilate is saying, “You already have your own temple guard, and plus, this is your problem, not mine, so use the guard that you already have instead of asking me for my troops”.

Pilate seems here to be pretty perturbed and basically over this whole situation, nonetheless, what we see here is that he gives this alliance of Sadducees and Pharisees permission to not only guard the tomb, but to make it as secure and impenetrable as they possibly can.

And thus, verse 66, the last verse in our reading tells us:

Matthew 27:66 ESV

66 So they went and made the tomb secure by sealing the stone and setting a guard.

So, we see here how this alliance went out to make the tomb as secure as they possibly could.

The first thing that they did was seal the large stone that had been rolled in front of the entrance to the tomb. This seal would consist of clay or wax pressed into the crack between the large stone and the tomb itself. What this would essentially do is cement the stone to the tomb.

But then to make the tomb even more secure, the temple guard was set before it day and night in order to ensure that no intruder could effectively enter the tomb.

And thus, the body of Jesus lay within that tomb where the Sadducees and Pharisees were hoping that it would lie forever.

The fearful disciples of Jesus could in no possible way break into that tomb. Some people who doubt the Bible will say that Jesus wasn’t all the way dead when He was laid in the tomb and so He walked out by His own power, but if Jesus were just a mere, mortal man, then there is no way that He could have opened tomb from the inside, especially after it had been sealed, and in the condition that He was in. And even if this did happen, the temple guard would be there waiting for Him.

No, if the body of Jesus was going to come out of that tomb, it would have to be by supernatural assistance.

Once again, what we see here is the natural man attempting to thwart and suppress the truth by any means necessary. But what we will see in our messages to come is that on the third day, the truth once again overcame man’s attempt to do away with it.

Beloved, this truth shall always overcome man’s futile attempts to silence it. For this reason, because God is always greater, may we never be ashamed of the Gospel. May we proclaim the truth to a wicked and perverse generation seeing that the truth will always remain!

Amen?