Too Good not to Share

Sermon Transcript

Social media is now part of most of our lives, which makes it easier to share news from our lives with others. You had cereal for breakfast this morning; you can share that with your whole social media followership if you’d like! If you tried to submit it as a headline to the Philadelphia Inquirer, though, they’d probably reject your request for publication. Not all news needs to be shared. But then there is news that really should be shared. I think of the wildfires that ripped through Southern California last year. That was news that needed to be shared, because if you evacuated, your life could be spared! You might not have known that if no one told you, and though the news was painful, it came with good news: There is a way to escape!

 

This morning is Easter Sunday, the day of the year many associate especially with the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. In reality, Christian churches gather every Sunday to share the good news of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, and so we are happy to do so this Sunday as well. That there was a historical Jesus of Nazareth who died and rose again is not something you would know unless someone told you; you can’t figure it out just by observing the world around you. And it means something for you, whoever you are. If Jesus really did rise from the dead, there is a response he requires of you. You won’t know unless someone tells you, and there is a response it requires of you, on which depends not only your earthly life, like the news of the wildfires, but your eternal life. And therefore, Jesus’ resurrection is news that must be shared. We’ll see that in Matthew 28 this morning by looking first at the first messengers of that news, then at the fake messengers of that news, and then at the future messengers of that news. The first messengers, the fake messengers, and the future messengers.

 

The first messengers

 

The first messenger of Jesus’ resurrection is a heavenly one. Matthew begins by giving us the setting—it’s morning the day after the Sabbath, which is Sunday, and these two women named Mary go to see Jesus’ tomb. These two women had been followers of Jesus, and in Matthew 27 we read that they witnessed both his death and his burial. The tomb in which Jesus was buried was not a coffin underground the way we might think of a tomb today. It was more like a cave, and again in the prior chapter in Matthew we read that it had a great stone rolled over the entrance, and that guards were stationed there by the Jewish leadership in Jesus’ day who had also called for his execution. So as they approach the tomb, what might we expect them to find? A sealed tomb and a battalion of guards.

 

Instead, when they approach the tomb there was an earthquake, and an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone and sat on it, as if to say, “no big deal”. What about the guards? Verse 4 says for fear of him the guards trembled and became like dead men. The strong, lively guards who were sent to guard the tomb of a dead man become like dead men themselves when facing one of heaven’s warriors. And the angel doesn’t turn to them and say, “Do not be afraid.” They have something to fear! They have taken up arms against heaven, and now that they get a glimpse of what this messenger from heaven is like who they have made their enemy, they realize they have good reason to be afraid.

 

But to the women, this majestic creature says, “Do not be afraid.” Why? “For I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified.” In other words, the angel knows they’re followers of Jesus, not enemies of Jesus. But he has news for them, a message for them: “He is not here, for he has risen, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay.” Somewhat interestingly, none of the Gospels narrate for us in real time Jesus coming back to life, rolling the stone away, and walking out of the tomb. We don’t get the story from Jesus’ perspective, in other words; we get the story from the perspective of his disciples, because, after all, that’s what we are called to be. And this reveals the first basic reason Jesus’ resurrection is news that must be shared: Without the sharing of it, we simply wouldn’t know it happened.

 

You can know God exists without anyone telling you. Philosophers debate whether God’s existence can be logically proven using the laws of logic available to us, just like they debate whether the existence of other minds can be logically proven using the laws of logic available to us. Whether they can be or not, we all know that other minds, other people, do exist outside our minds, and we know in a similar way that God exists outside our minds, which is why every society in human history except those that have intentionally tried to delete the idea from their collective consciousness have held to some idea of God. You can know God exists without anyone telling you; you can even know something of what God requires without anyone telling you, that murder is wrong, that you shouldn’t lie, and so on. But you can only know that Jesus rose from the dead if someone tells you.

 

Even these women, if they could have gotten through the guards and gotten the stone rolled away, would only have seen an empty tomb, and there are other possible explanations for that, however unlikely; we’ll talk about the one that Jesus’ opponents concoct in a bit. So to make it abundantly clear to these two women, God himself sends an angel from heaven, with appearance like lightning, to deliver heaven’s interpretation of the events personally: He is not here because he has risen, just as he said. Earlier in the Gospel of Matthew, Matthew wrote that “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 on the third day be raised” (Matt 16:21). You might think Jesus having already said that and the tomb being empty would have been enough to convince people that he’d risen, but how quick would you be to believe that someone rose from the dead, even if they told you ahead of time they were going to do it?

 

So you see, the story of Jesus’ resurrection didn’t begin because of wishful thinking or because ancient people were just gullible. If anything, they were just as skeptical as we are, so much so that God had to send an angel from heaven to announce that Jesus was risen. And the angel didn’t even ask the women to take him at his word; he told them to come, and see the place where Jesus lay. Then what was it their responsibility to do? Go and tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead, and he is going before you to Galilee, where you will see him.

 

And sure enough, when these women run to tell Jesus’ disciples, Jesus himself meets them in verse 9, and we read there that when they saw him, they fell at his feet and worshiped him. You’ve maybe seen the videos or been at the airport when a soldier gets off the plane and his wife runs to greet him and jumps into his arms because she’s so glad he is alive and home. The emotion is ecstatic, but I’ve yet to see any of those videos in which the wife takes hold of his feet and worships him. He may be her man, but he is still just a man. These women, though, are realizing something more about Jesus: We aren’t just glad that he isn’t dead; we saw him die! We saw him buried, and now he’s alive! He rose from the dead, just like he said he would! And that means everything else he said about himself can be trusted too: He is the Christ, God’s promised savior and ruler over all nations, he is the Son of the living God, one in being with the Father, and he is therefore worthy of our worship.

 

If you are here today and you aren’t a Christian, maybe you’ve heard some things about Jesus you appreciate. He taught people to love their neighbor as themselves, even their enemies, to turn the other cheek, and he rebuked the oppressive religious leaders of his day. Maybe you’ve even met a Christian you admire. Maybe you feel like you can get behind that, take some good things from Jesus, but then also take some good things from Islam, some good things from Buddhism, some good things from Confucianism, and so on. But fall down at Jesus’ feet and worship him? Surrender to him, do whatever he says, reorder your whole life around him? Seems a bit much, no? Why do people do it, then? This is why. It’s because in our world, in real time, in a land you could still go visit and walk in, he died, was buried, and then came back to life, thus proving that he really was and still is the Christ, the Son of the living God. If you really start to take him seriously, you will no doubt have questions, and that’s fine; the Bible has a lot of answers, and a lot of very intelligent people have fallen at Jesus’ feet and used their minds to think deeply about whatever questions you’re asking. But don’t get the order of operations wrong. If Jesus rose from the dead, he is Lord, and we should all fall at his feet and worship him, whatever questions remain. Then we ask our remaining questions, not as judges sitting above him demanding that he give satisfactory answers. We ask our remaining questions beneath him, down at his feet, from a posture of worship.

 

And to my brothers and sisters in the room, this is why we are Christians! Praise God that being Christians often brings great joy into our lives, as we read it did to these women in verse 8, but there are also times when following Jesus is costly. We never quite fit in in the world, we have the added stress of struggling against sin instead of just giving in to it, and even our experience of Jesus in this life is as in a mirror dimly compared to what it will be when we see him face to face. We wrestle with our own doubts and questions, and it can appear attractive when we do to just scale it back or give it up altogether. Where do you go when you find that happening? Here’s one place to go: “But he rose from the dead.” And if he did, he really is who he claimed to be. Following him can be hard, but what else are you going to do? Fight him? Try to ignore him? None of that can or will change the fact: He has risen, as he said.

 

Or has he? Maybe there’s another explanation. Let’s look next at the fake messengers.

 

The fake messengers

 

Remember that as the women were having this conversation with the angel, the guards were still there. So not only did they see the angel coming down from heaven and feel the earthquake, but they heard the angel tell the two Marys that Jesus rose from the dead. So they too go, while the Marys are going, and tell the chief priests all that had taken place. The chief priests then meet with the elders. Bear in mind these are the people who led the charge to crucify Jesus; now that they hear he’s risen from the dead, you might think they would all say something like, “Wow guys; we got this one wrong. We thought this guy was a blasphemer, but it turns out when he said all that stuff about rising from the dead, he was right, and now we know! Let’s go beg him for forgiveness, fall at his feet, and worship him.” But that’s not what happened. Instead, they go back to the guards and pay them to spread a report that the disciples stole the body while the guards were sleeping, and the guards do so, to the point that two or three decades later, when Matthew was writing, the story had spread among the Jews as the explanation for the empty tomb.

 

It’s clear that the Jewish leadership in Jesus’ day did not want people following him or his disciples after him. It’s clear that they joined forces with the Romans and killed him. And it’s clear that in the years that followed, many nonetheless did follow Jesus. How do you explain that apart from the reality of the resurrection? If Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, why wouldn’t the Jewish leadership just produce the body? Then all those going around saying he did wouldn’t be able to accumulate any followers. Well, here’s the other possible explanation: His disciples stole the body. But remember this was a guarded tomb sealed with a heavy stone, and we obviously have God’s word telling us that that version of the story is a result of an intentional plot to spread misinformation.

 

But maybe you’re still skeptical; that’s kind of how my brain works. Consider another data point, then: All but one of these disciples went on to be killed for proclaiming the resurrection of Jesus, and that one ended up in exile, so not much better. How likely is it that they’d be willing to die for something they knew was a lie? I remember when I first heard that argument, I thought, “Well I don’t know; Muslims die for their faith. That doesn’t necessarily make it true, does it?” No; that doesn’t make it true, but what it does demonstrate is that those Muslims really believe their Islam. If they didn’t, why would they die for it? So also, if the disciples were willing to die for proclaiming the resurrection, what’s it show? It shows they really believe it happened, which of course they wouldn’t if they were the ones who stole the body and fabricated the story of the resurrection.

 

I get that it’s hard to believe that someone really rose from the dead; it was hard for them to believe! But there’s no question they did end up believing it, and if you’ll even just allow for the possibility that a real God exists who could raise the dead, then when you go to explain how so many of Jesus’ disciples ended up believing that God did raise Jesus from the dead, you find that “he really did” is the most plausible explanation. But here’s one of the things to learn from this story of the meeting between the guard and the chief priests: None of us are disinterested, objective evaluators of the facts. If anyone knew the facts, it was the guards, and even they accept a bribe to spread fake news about it rather than falling at Jesus’ feet and worshiping him.

 

Why? Because something in us doesn’t want to fall at Jesus’ feet and worship him! If he really rose from the dead, then we would really have to surrender our will to him, do what he says, and trust him with all our future happiness. So you know what looks attractive to us? Rejecting or ignoring him entirely, or holding on to just enough doubt that we can still maintain some sense of lordship over our own lives. “Of course, I would do what Jesus says, but I’m still not 100% sure that he really is who he claimed to be, or of some other theological question.” I’ve struggled with doubt my whole Christian life; I still do, though God has strengthened my faith over the years. But when I struggle with doubt, I often feel like a victim of it. “I wish I could just believe!” and there’s an element of truth in that, but I’ve also had to confess that part of me likes my doubts, because that part of me then has an excuse to stay just a little independent of Jesus.

 

Maybe you’ve thought, like I have, that if Jesus just came down from heaven and appeared to me personally, I’d never doubt again. Is that really the case, though? Wouldn’t you be checking flight records to see if anyone went skydiving that day and maybe that’s how he appeared out of the clouds? Wouldn’t you be looking into flotational device technology to see if that’s how he could land softly without a parachute? Wouldn’t you be looking into facial recognition software to see if his face matches someone with a known birthdate that wasn’t 2000 years ago? Unbelief is powerful, and it is not purely rational. It wants something, namely to preserve the independence of the self. So don’t take your unbelief for granted. Put it on trial, instead of just putting Jesus on trial. Subject your doubts and objections to the same kind of scrutiny to which you subject the Bible, and you may find that they aren’t as solid as you had assumed. Have you ever really done that?

 

And if you are convinced of Jesus’ resurrection, this is another reason that news must be shared: Because, like the chief priests and guards, others are spreading a different message, and if their message is the only message people hear, it’s the message they are likely to believe. I remember visiting a friend in central Pennsylvania and a bunch of us were hanging out in his backyard; they have those in central PA. While we were back there two people walked into the backyard and started talking to us about the Baha’i faith, a religion that originated in Iran that basically teaches that all religions are the same and that we all need to unify in one worldwide government. It teaches Jesus to be a manifestation of God along with Muhammad, Buddha, and, of course, the founders of Baha’i. My point in bringing it up is not to point out its falsehood, but simply to point out that there are in fact people out there spreading it! If you live in Philadelphia long enough you will likely encounter Jehovah’s Witnesses, Black Hebrew Israelites, Mormons, and others spreading fake news about Jesus Christ.

 

If you are a Christian, maybe you know that and you feel pretty impervious to their appeals, but what about your neighbor, or your co-worker? Who’s telling them the true news of Jesus’ resurrection? Granted that just going door-to-door to do it or doing it from a megaphone like some of those groups do may not be the best way to gain a hearing for it among your particular neighbors and co-workers, but what are you going to replace that with? May the love of Christ and love for our neighbor compel us to share the true news of Jesus’ resurrection with them. It’s not arrogant to claim you know that news, any more than it would have been arrogant for the women in this passage to claim that they know Jesus rose from the dead. An angel from heaven has testified to it, these women who were eyewitnesses of it reported their testimony, there ended up being many more eyewitnesses, and God had them commit this to writing so we too could hear the true message of Jesus’ resurrection. That brings us to the last part of the story, because though these women did report what they saw and heard from the angel, we didn’t hear it directly from them. So let’s look next at the future messengers.

 

The future messengers

 

Matthew switches back to the disciples in verse 16, who now ostensibly having heard the report of the women, go to Galilee. And there, verse 17 tells us, they saw him, and when they saw him, they engaged in the same response in which the women had engaged when they saw him: They worshiped. They worshiped, but, there’s a but in verse 17: Some doubted. You see again, it was no easier for them to believe than it is for us! They saw him, and even then, some doubted. And you see that unbelief tries to exert its power even among those who truly are disciples of Jesus. The difference between true believers in Jesus and unbelievers is not that unbelievers have doubts while true believers have none. The difference is that unbelievers follow their doubts, whereas true believers, disciples, follow Jesus. They trust him more than they trust their own fallible interpretation of things.

 

And Jesus doesn’t wait for them to clear up all their doubts before he starts leading them. Instead, the very next verse tells us Jesus comes and says to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” This is the big deal of the resurrection. This is why they fall at his feet and worship him. When Jesus said he was the Christ, the Son of the Living God, he meant that he was the one who came to exercise all authority over heaven and earth, and now risen from the dead, he has received it. That means everyone, every human being on earth, from every nation, and every angel in heaven, ought to do whatever he says, because he is the one in a rightful position of authority over all. If you’re a boss in a workplace, and someone doesn’t do what you told them, that carries a weight to it that isn’t there when that employee doesn’t do what their co-worker told them, because you are the boss. Authority in that company has been given to you. Well, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Jesus, and that means the ultimate, final judgment, will be a judgment based not on what other people think of you, or how well you measured up to their standards, but based on what Jesus thinks of you, and how you responded to his standards. If he hasn’t risen from the dead, then you can go live by whatever standards you please. But if he has, it means all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to him.

 

And that’s another reason why his resurrection is news that must be shared. There’s a response now called for from us because all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to him. So Jesus tells his disciples, those who are already worshiping him, though some doubted, to go and make disciples of all nations. Jesus’ ministry during his life on earth spanned from Galilee to Jerusalem and the surrounding regions, but that was all still Jewish territory. So he sends these disciples to go to all nations. In rising from the dead, he was declared Lord of those nations too, and Jesus knows this about them: They aren’t following him yet! They aren’t worshiping him yet! From the day they were conceived the same unbelief has been at work in their hearts that we saw in the guards, chief priests, and elders, and that we see in ourselves. So here’s the incredible thing: If someone has enemies who have wronged them, and that person then comes into power, what would we expect that person to do? We expect them to execute justice on their enemies!

 

The nations have all been in rebellion against God, now Jesus has been given all authority in heaven and on earth, and what does he tell his disciples to do? Go wipe out the nations? Go execute my judgment and vengeance on the nations? No. Go and make disciples of all nations. Call them in, all of them! Certainly that includes warning them of the coming judgment if they reject the one who now has all authority in heaven and on earth, but it means also telling them that there is a way to escape that judgment, and there is a way to escape that judgment because before Jesus was exalted to the position of judge, he died to take the judgment of God that people from every nation deserved. On the cross all the sins of everyone who would ever believe in him from every nation were placed on him, and he satisfied the demand of God’s justice against them in full. It’s because he first did this that his resurrection could actually be good news of salvation to you and me, rather than bad news of judgment.

 

Maybe the news that someone has authority over you doesn’t immediately hit you as good news, but what’s the alternative? Anarchy never lasts long; someone inevitably seizes authority, and it’s usually just the most powerful, regardless of their character. Not only does anarchy never last, but has trying to run your own life really gone well for you? And if each individual is their own final authority, how can you ever bring two or more individuals together to form healthy communities? It is not good for man to be alone, but for men and women of all nations to really come together, men and women will need to together submit to some authority higher than themselves. Who can really handle such authority? Who is worthy? If you need an authority you can trust for your own life, if communities can only really form under shared authority, and if you’re going to be under someone’s authority anyway, to whose authority will you submit? Why not the one who made all things, made you, and proved his love for you by his willingness to die for you? He’s not only powerful; he’s good. He’s not only the greatest man who ever lived; he is truly God. He can handle all authority in heaven and on earth.

 

And so this really is good news: Because of Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection, if you are not his disciple today, you can become one. Though you deserve his judgment as much as I and everyone else does, he hasn’t yet executed it on you! Instead, he is calling you today into a new life of discipleship under him, following him, learning from him, falling at his feet and worshiping him. And if you will fall at his feet and worship him today, if you will set all your hopes for salvation on him, he will save you, even when your doubts resurface. And he will commission you also to go, even before your doubts have all been cleared up. These disciples were the future messengers when Jesus first said these words, and they did go, and they did make disciples by proclaiming the good news of Jesus’ resurrection and calling people to repent and believe in him before he comes again in judgment. They also wrote down their eyewitness testimony in books like Matthew, from which we are reading today. Then the people they went and made disciples of, they baptized, and taught them to observe all Jesus commanded, including the command to go and make disciples of all nations. So they went and did the same, proclaiming the same message, making copies of the same writings, and passing them on, generation after generation, until one day you heard, perhaps even today for the first time, this same news: That Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ, the son of the Living God, he died of our sins, he was buried, and on the third day, he rose again from the dead, just as he said he would. Now all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to him. Repent therefore, fall at his feet, worship him, and go, make disciples of all nations.

 

Do your neighbors and co-workers know that Jesus is risen from the dead, that he will come again to judge the living and the dead, that our natural state is one of rebellion against him, but that there is a way through faith in him to become his disciple and be saved from the coming judgment? How will they know unless someone goes and tells them? How would the Marys have known without the angel telling them? How would Jesus’ disciples have known without the Marys telling them? How would we have known without the disciples going and telling others who went and told others? Jesus’ resurrection is news that must be shared.

 

Do the nations know that Jesus is risen from the dead, that he will come again to judge the living and the dead, that our natural state is one of rebellion against him, but that there is a way through faith in him to become his disciple and be saved from the coming judgment? When this text says “all nations”; it doesn’t mean all modern nation-states; those are a fairly recent historical development. It means something more like ethno-linguistic groups—the Sudanese of Indonesia, the Berbers of Morrocco, the Kurds of Iraq, and so on. We know with a pretty high degree of certainty that many such nations do not know the good news of Jesus’ resurrection. Radius International, an excellent missionary training institute, estimates that there are still about 3,000 unreached language groups in the world, meaning groups of people who share a common language that have no viable church preaching the good news of Jesus in that language. And how will they unless someone goes to them? And how will someone go unless they are sent? That’s why we are giving our money as a church to sending missionaries, that’s why we pray for more to go and pray for those who are there, that’s why we are praying that even people in this room will go and share the good news of Jesus’ resurrection. It is news that must be shared.

 

It’s a high calling, a weighty task that Jesus has commissioned us with as his disciples, and so look at where Jesus ends in closing: And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age. We’re still here, the end of the age hasn’t come yet, and so guess what I know today if you are a disciple of Jesus? He is with you today. We can tell stories about dead heroes. We can share the news of things they did. But only a living savior can be with us always, to the end of the age. Some of you are trying to observe all that Jesus has commanded you, and you still see so many ways you fall short. You’re trying to go and make disciples of all nations, but you feel how weak you are to the task. But the true Jesus, the Christ, the Son of the Living God, who is risen from the dead, is not disappointed with you or keeping his distance from you until you finally get it; he is with you, always, on your best days, and on your worst days. He is with you to strengthen you, he is with you to forgive you, he is with you to sympathize with you, and behold, he will be with you always, to the end of the age.