EXPLORE IT - Matthew 28

For those who have not made a commitment to Jesus, accepting Him as Savior, our passage this week creates doubt.  Matthew 28 begins with “Mary Magdalene and the other Mary” coming “to view the tomb.”  This passage does not give the account of how Jesus rose from the grave, but how it was discovered that He had risen, “just as He said.”

Alternative explanations of the resurrection have been given over time in attempt to make sense of this supernatural event.  Some believe that the women must have visited the wrong tomb (not likely with the presence of the angel of the Lord).  Others suggest Jesus merely swooned on the cross and was later revived and walked away on His own accord (again, with the tomb sealed with the large stone, Jesus would have been shouting from within, not able to move it by himself in a weakened state.)  The most outlandish theory is that the disciples were overtaken by wishful thinking and collectively hallucinated seeing Jesus as risen (really?!?).

All of these alternative solutions to Jesus’ “disappearance” are faulty.  If the disciples were going to make up this story, certainly they would have made up a better lie.  First, they would never have had the women go to an empty grave or be the first to see the risen Jesus.  Women in this era were seen as foolish and not reliable witnesses.  If the disciples were making this up, they would have had men discover the empty tomb.  This one key detail is the same in all the Gospel accounts of this discovery of the empty tomb.

Accepting that Jesus was raised from the dead does take a leap of faith.  We don’t witness people being dead one moment and then alive the next.  We try to analyze this story and try to wrap our heads around it in order to come up with an explanation, but in the end, we have to accept on faith that Jesus rose from the grave, “just as He said.” 

Blessings,
Pastor Amy