Matthew 28:9-15
9 And behold, Jesus met them and greeted them. And they came
up and took hold of His feet and worshiped Him. 10 Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid; go and take
word to My brethren to leave for Galilee, and there they will see Me.” 11 Now while they were on their way, some
of the guard came into the city and reported to the chief priests all that had
happened. 12 And when they had assembled with the
elders and consulted together, they gave a large sum of money to the
soldiers, 13 and said, “You are to say, ‘His
disciples came by night and stole Him away while we were asleep.’ 14 “And if this should come to the
governor’s ears, we will win him over and keep you out of trouble.” 15 And they took the money and did as they
had been instructed; and this story was widely spread among the Jews, and
is to this day.
What we choose to believe will make a huge difference in our
lives. We need to realize that there is
an enemy at work all around this world that is planting lies in our minds and
in the cultures of this world. These
lies erode man’s trust in God and fill our hearts with doubt. God is truth and has revealed the truth to us
in His Word. We must be careful to trust
that truth even when surrounded by the lies that are planted in the culture
around us. We continue to live in a battle
about truth. May the Lord grant us wisdom
and discernment and may His truth permeate our hearts and minds.
A TRUTH THAT WAS NOT BELIEVED: When Jesus appeared to the
women and they worshiped Him, they were instructed to go tell the disciples
that they had seen Jesus and to go meet Him in Galilee. They followed the instructions and went to
the disciples, but they still doubted.
As we have seen so often, these were the men God had told all about His
death and resurrection. The women were
telling the truth, yet they were not believed.
One thing that is important to understand about truth, is that it does
not matter whether or not you believe it, it is still truth. Today there are many who continue to doubt the
resurrection or even the existence of God, for that matter. This unbelief does not change the fact that
God created the universe, sent His Son to die to pay the price for our sin and
then resurrected Him from the dead because the Father’s justice had been
satisfied. Make sure that you are believing
and resting in the truth.
A LIE THAT WAS BELIEVED: When the guards the Pharisees were
paying to watch the tomb reported the miraculous events surrounding the
resurrection of Jesus, their worst dreams came true. They were faced with a choice. They could admit the implications of the
resurrection, that Jesus was the Messiah, they had crucified Messiah and that
God had raised Him from the dead. They
could have repented of their sin, fallen before the Lord and begged for His
forgiveness. The result of this would
have been eternal salvation and a spiritual revival in Israel the likes of
which we have yet to see. Instead, they
chose to double down on their lies, try to save face and ignore the truth. They paid the guards to lie. The interesting thing about lies is that they
are very hard to keep straight. The
first lie was that the disciples came and took the body away. This would obviously raise a lot of questions
as to how some fishermen overpowered a bunch of Roman soldiers. So, another lie had to be fabricated; that
they were asleep when this happened. There
are only two problems with that plan.
The first was that they could lose their jobs for sleeping on duty. The Pharisees promised to protect them and
take care of them if there was a problem.
The second is how in the world would they know that His disciples were
the one who came to take His body away if they were sleeping? Despite the obvious flaws in their reasoning,
the poorly formed lie was believed and continues to be believed to this day.
APPLICATION: Know that Satan is the father of lies. It is easy for us to fall into the trap of
believing those lies because the usually align with the desires of our hearts
and what seems to be an easy or advantageous position. When confronted with the truth about our
false beliefs or sinful practices, repent instead of doubling down on our sin. Trust the truth of God’s Word even when is seems
impractical or impossible. He is the God
of the impossible.
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