Sermon Tone Analysis

He is risen!

Go tell his disciples.

This was the message that the angel gave to the women outside of the tomb.

This was a message that would turn the world upside down.

This is a message worth sharing.

It is also a message that the enemies of our Lord hate.

They will do anything to discount the resurrection of Jesus.

They will make up false tales.

They will lie.

They will persecute.

But, the fact remains.

He is risen.

No matter what the world does, it cannot change the truth.

I.

The Report of the Soldiers

Here in this scene, recorded only by Matthew, we have an account of the enemies of Jesus trying to deny the reality of the resurrection.

They knew that no one overpowered these soldiers.

They knew that the disciples were nowhere near the tomb that Sunday morning.

They knew that nothing natural could explain what happened.

But they absolutely could NOT believe what really did happen.

See, they had already decided that Jesus was not God and nothing could convince them anything different.

So, they conspired to make up a lie.

Guards came to the priests

They took the time to assemble the council and the elders

They debated the issue and decided to bribe the soldiers into lying.

The issue was that the soldiers were Roman soldiers.

Imagine what they were asked to admit to.

A group of disciples who were nothing more than fisherman and a tax collector attacked this group of soldiers, overpowered them, opened the tomb and stole the body.

The normal penalty for failure of this magnitude would be death.

The council promised the soldiers that if they kept up the lie, they would make sure the governor didn’t punish them.

So, the soldiers agreed to lie, for a price of course, and that is the story that went around the region.

Of course, there are a few problems with this lie: 1) There is NO way a terrified group of 11 men and a few women are going to be able to overpower a band of soldiers.

2) There is NO way that this same group of 11 men and a few women steal Jesus’ body, spread a resurrection rumor, and then be willing to die for what they knew to be a lie.

3) If this was really what happened, they should have eventually been able to find the body.

The disciples could not have been able to hide it for long.

II.

The Worship of the Disciples

The disciples went where Jesus told them.

They fell down and worshiped Jesus

προσκυνέω (proskuneo) - to kiss towards.

Used a few times of people bowing before a king or authority, but used primarily of those bowing before God.

It is an act of submission.

Mixed with the worship was a little doubt!

APPLICATION - we are all a mixture of faith and doubt.

We struggle often between the two.

Goal - increase faith and decrease doubt.

III.

The Commission of Jesus

A. The Source of the Commission

Illustration:

Roger Clemens (Boston Red Sox) - July 15:1986 in his first All-Star Game.

Dwight Gooden (Cy Young previous year) was pitcher.

Gary Carter was catcher.

After first pitch from Gooden, Clemens turned to Carter and said, “Do my fastballs look like that?” Carter replied, “why do you think they’re so hard to hit?” Clemens had a renewed respect for his own fastball when he recognized the power.

John MacArthur – “Were it not for knowing they had the Lord’s sovereign demand as well as His resources to guide and empower them, those five hundred nondescript, powerless disciples would have been totally overwhelmed by the inconceivable task of making disciples for their Lord from among every nation on earth.”

B. The Method of the Commission

1. Going

Illustration

Titanic sunk on April 15, 1912.

Eva Hart was one of the ones who made it into a lifeboat.

She was in lifeboat #14 out of 20 lifeboats.

As people were screaming and drowning in the water, only lifeboat 14 attempted to save them.

Hundreds died because the other 19 lifeboats rowed away from the screams, afraid that the people trying to get out of the water would capsize their own boats and they too would drown.

2. Baptizing

3. Teaching

C. The Power of the Commission