The Gospel According to the Reprobate

Matthew 28:11-15 ESV

11 While they were going, behold, some of the guard went into the city and told the chief priests all that had taken place. 12 And when they had assembled with the elders and taken counsel, they gave a sufficient sum of money to the soldiers 13 and said, “Tell people, ‘His disciples came by night and stole him away while we were asleep.’ 14 And if this comes to the governor's ears, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.” 15 So they took the money and did as they were directed. And this story has been spread among the Jews to this day.

I know that I have said this before, but an old, infamous saying is, “I’ve made up my mind, now don’t confuse me with the facts!”. Basically, what that saying means is, “I’ve already decided to believe a lie, even though I know that it’s a lie, so don’t tell me the truth, because then it will be harder for me to believe what I already know is a lie!”. Basically, what it means is, “I don’t care what the truth is, because I’ve already made up my mind not to believe it!”.

Now, that is really a pretty silly way of reasoning because what it attempts to do is that which cannot ever be done. When such a one reasons in this way, what he attempts to do is suppress the truth to such an extent that the truth will no longer be the truth. And in place of the truth, will be the lie that this person believes… Now it is the truth!

But like I said, no matter how hard one tries to make a lie be the truth, at the end of the day, the truth is still the truth, and that which is not the truth is still not the truth.

And one of the worst offences that mankind has committed against its Maker is that it has taken the truth about God, discarded it, and willfully exchanged that truth for a lie.

I have seen it time and time again. I explain the orthodox gospel to a non-believer, and the one who I am explaining it to will recognize the truth and validity of the message that I bring.

But though they claim to believe the truth of the message, they walk away refusing to trust in the Christ of the gospel, because what they really desire is for the truth to be something other than the truth. And though they know that the gospel is true, they hope that if they do not embrace it and embrace a lie instead, that in time, the lie, and not the gospel will be true.

There could not possibly be anything more foolish than this. It’s one thing to reject the truth of something of no real consequence even though you know it to be truth. But it is quite another thing to reject eternal truth, even though you know that it is the truth.

It is seriously the equivalent of closing your eyes and running towards Hell and telling yourself that you don’t believe that you are running towards Hell, because even though it looks like Hell, in your mind, when you get there, you will see that it is actually Heaven.

That won’t work too well for you, but it is the very same thing as rejecting eternal truth because you wish that it wasn’t the truth to such an extent that you believe that by wishing it wasn’t the truth that it will then not be the truth.

What we see in our reading for today is this same exact foolish line of reasoning, because in it, we see one party relaying the truth to another party, but the second party hates the truth so much that they tell the first party to say that something other than the truth is actually the truth, in an attempt to do away with what the actual truth is.

I know… it’s hard to keep up.

But let’s go ahead and look to our reading that we may look into the details of this situation.

First, we look to verse eleven, which tells us:

Matthew 28:11 ESV

11 While they were going, behold, some of the guard went into the city and told the chief priests all that had taken place.

Now, when we look at this narrative, the first thing that we notice is that there are similarities between this narrative and the narrative that we worked through last week.

For example, both narratives speak of groups of people hurrying away from the tomb which Jesus had risen from.

Last week we saw the female disciples of Jesus who were at the tomb flee when they were commanded to do so by both the angel who rolled the stone away and by the Lord Jesus Himself. And here, we see the guards at the tomb also fleeing from the tomb in fear after the angel appeared to them.

What we also see is that as the women fled from the tomb with a message, so do the guards. But while the women fled with a message of hope and victory for the Lord’s disciples, the guards flee with a message of confusion and failure for the priests.

We read that some of those who were guarding the tomb ran from the tomb to Jerusalem, and once there, they reported everything that had occurred to the chief priests.

This means that to the chief priests, these guards reported both the angelic encounter and the resurrection of Jesus.

Wow! That is big news! That is really big news! And this big news has now been relayed to the chief priests. So, how did theyrespond to this news? Verses twelve and thirteen tell us, when they say:

Matthew 28:12-13 ESV

12 And when they had assembled with the elders and taken counsel, they gave a sufficient sum of money to the soldiers 13 and said, “Tell people, ‘His disciples came by night and stole him away while we were asleep.’

So, the first thing that we see the chief priests doing here is communing with the elders. This was a very touchy situation and it needed to be dealt with carefully, thus we see the political and religious wisdom of Israel coming together here in order to properly handle the situation at hand.

The next thing that we see is the course of action that the priests and elders decided to take in light of this situation.

I mean, they could have always come out and said that they were wrong; that Jesus had miraculously been resurrected and therefore everyone should follow Him and trust in Him after all.

But no way! They would never do that. If they loved the truth, then that wouldn’t be a problem. But they hated the truth, so they had to come up with something else in an attempt to somehow make the truth something other than the truth.

What they decided to do was bribe the guards. Our reading says that after the priests and elders had taken counsel, they returned to the guards with a sufficient, or substantial amount of money.

They then gave the guards this very substantial amount of money and said that it would be theirs if they agreed to report to the populous that the disciples of Jesus snuck by while they were asleep and stole the body of the Lord.

Now, what makes this so ironic is the fact that the guards were placed at the entrance of the tomb in order to prevent the Lord’s disciples from tampering with His body, so, in making up this story, what the priests and elders, as well as what the guards are saying to the populace is that their plans were thwarted, and thus they failed at their mission.

But they figured that it was better to let the populace think that they had failed in this regard than it would be if they knew that Jesus had actually risen from the dead like He said He would!

And, as we have already mentioned, the money that was being offered to the guards as a bribe was a substantial sum of money, and indeed, it had to be a sizable bribe, because the circulation of this false account would most certainly cost the guards their reputation.

They are supposed to be guards and according to this report, they were all found sleeping, this would certainly cause widespread humiliation for them. So, in order for them to take on such unwarranted humiliation, they needed to be paid handsomely.

But then there was the question of, “what will the governor do if he finds out?”. And in order to ease any anxious feelings concerning this that may be in the hearts of the guards, the chief priests and elders offer them assurance of their safety in verse 14, where we read the priests and elders saying:

Matthew 28:14 ESV

14 And if this comes to the governor's ears, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.”

Now this, I believe, reveals to us that these were temple guards and not Roman soldiers. If a Roman soldier fell asleep when he was supposed to be keeping guard, the punishment was execution, and I don’t think that even Pilate, being as greedy as he is, could accept a bribe for a capital offense.

Temple guards though, were local troops, kind of like the modern-day city police. And while this was a local guard and not national soldiers, they were still set up under the governor’s knowledge. Remember, the priests and Pharisees came to Pilate and asked that he set up a platoon of his own soldiers to guard the temple to which he told them to use their own guard.

And thus, while Pilate did not use his own soldiers for this task, he still had knowledge concerning it, thus, if word got back to Pilate that the body of Jesus was not in the tomb, he may be expected to discipline these guards.

The guards knew this, and thus, the priests and elders told them not to worry because if by chance the governor did get word of it, they would “satisfy him” which is a softer way of saying that they would bribe him as they had just bribed the guards.

And these guards, after accepting their own bribe, knew that money talks. So, they were convinced that if push came to shove, such a bribe to the governor would keep them out of trouble.

Then in verse 15, we see the response of these guards to the bribe that was offered to them, when we read:

Matthew 28:15 ESV

15 So they took the money and did as they were directed. And this story has been spread among the Jews to this day.

The guards heard what they were to do, and they did it accordingly. They took the money that was offered to them, they took the bribe, and they did as they were told.

They went out and spread a false report saying that as they slept at night, the disciples of the Lord snuck into His tomb and stole His body away. And anytime that anyone would personally question them about the incident, they would give them the same false report.

And Matthew, writing this gospel primarily to Jews and Jewish Christians adds the parenthetical that this was an effective means of deception, as at the time of the publication of this gospel, the false report that the disciples of Jesus stole His body away was still circulating amongst the Jews, those who were enemies of God.

So it is with the reprobate. The reprobate are quite simply; those whom God has chosen not to save. Many scandalously wonder at how God could ever choose not to save some, when in reality, what we should wonder at is the fact that God chooses to save anyone at all.

And those whom God chooses not to save He does not force to be unsaved. It’s not like those whom God chooses not to save really, really want to be saved, but God won’t let them. No, those whom God chooses not to save, He simply leaves to their own deserts.

Now, what I mean by that is that anyone who legitimately wants to be saved, will indeed be saved. But those whom God has not chosen to salvation will never legitimately want to be saved. And the only reason why those who are saved want to be saved is because God first regenerated that person. And when God regenerates that person, that person now truly wants God.

Thus, a change has been made in the person, but without the overriding intervention of God, this change would never have occurred. If God would have never intervened on our behalf, none of us who are saved would have ever been saved. But because God intervened on our behalf and chose us, we are saved.

We know this concerning the elect. But when it comes to the reprobate, God sovereignly makes that decision to not save them, but He does not force them to be unsaved.

In other words, it’s not as though such people were saved or, were in a state of neutrality and then God made them unsaved, no, they were already unsaved, and God sovereignly chose to allow them to remain in the state that they are already in.

And as the elect increase in sanctification throughout their lives, so does the reprobate increase in their hardness of heart as they continue in their lives.

Because these have not been chosen to salvation, they naturally reject God, oppose God, stand contrary to God. And they do this perpetually. In other words, their hardness of heart increases to such an extent to where, like these priests, elders, and guards, they reject and hate the truth even when it is most non-sensical to do so, even when the truth is so obvious that it’s practically smacking them in the face.

But beloved, may we, those who are truly among the beloved children of God, may we do contrary to the reprobate. May we stand firm in the truth and be ever transformed by it.

Amen?