Now we didn't read the resurrection story this morning, so we're going to read the resurrection story tonight. Let's turn to Matthew chapter twenty seven. Matthew chapter twenty seven. Now the next day, that followed the day of the preparation, the chief priests and Pharisees came together unto Pilate, saying, Sir, we remember that that deceiver said, While he was yet alive, after three days I will rise again. Command therefore that the sepulchre be made sure unto the third day, lest his disciples come by night, and steal him away, and say unto the people he is risen from the dead. So the last error shall be worse than the first. Pilate said unto them, Ye have a watch, go your way, make it as sure as ye can. So they went, and made the sepulch a sure, sealing the stone, and setting a watch. In the end of the Sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulchre. And behold, there was a great earthquake. For the angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came, and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it. His countenance was like lightning, and his raiment whiter snow. And for fear of him the keepers did shake, and became as dead men. And the angel answered, And said unto the women, Fear not ye. For I know that ye seek Jesus which was crucified. He is not here, for he is risen as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay. Shall we have another word of prayer? Our Heavenly Father, we pray very earnestly tonight that we might hear thy voice speaking to our hearts. The story is so very familiar to us, and we know that it is the responsibility of the minister to bring forth things new and old. And sometimes, Lord, with these old, old stories, that something new evades us. But all how we thank that our hearts rejoice, that the old, old story is as precious to us today as it was the very first day that we heard it and responded to it. We want to sense thy presence. We want to hear thy voice. And we pray that among us thy will shall be accomplished. without let all hindrance and thy spirit have his way. In Jesus' name, amen. Now I think that in these few verses, and especially the early ones that I read to you, that we have a lot about human nature. I don't know how much you can identify with these things. I don't know how much you empathize. But the men about whom we are reading are men who have been opposed to the Lord Jesus that have sought to bring about his demise. And now it seems to them that they are successful, but they have enough to thought. Now you'll notice the mention of the Pharisees here. Now that word is very familiar to you because you read about it time and time and time again, and I suppose that there was no one that the Lord Jesus castigated more than the Pharisees. Now who were these Pharisees? What do we know about them? Well the name itself means separatist. They were the exclusives, if you please, of their day. They were a very closely knit society, and they made reference to each other as neighbor, just like the communist does, as comrade. They were so closely knit that although they were primarily a religious body, they found that they could wield enormous political power. Now most of the men on the Sanhedrin were Pharisees. It was very interesting to me to read what some of their very own books had to say about the Pharisees. There are three names that are precious to the Jew, and they are familiar to you. The first one is the Torah. Now the Torah was the five books of Moses and the only written work that Israel had when they came from their captivity in Babylon. Now as time went by, that law in the five books was insufficient to meet all of the changing circumstances and changing times. And so various bodies were authorized to add to the Torah, and they came up with what is called by the Jew the Mishnah. Now the Mishnah was actually an oral, handed down code of ethics and doctrine that embraced the first two centuries AD. And then came into being the Talmud. And the Talmud became the source of all religious instruction. Now here, and I jotted it down, is what the Talmud, if you please, has to say about the Pharisee. It speaks of seven classes of Pharisees. There is, first of all, the shoulder Pharisee. He wore his good deeds on his shoulder, where everybody could see them, and he was concerned not about principle, but expediency. Now, that doesn't sound very complimentary, does it? Now, the second class of Pharisee was called, wait a little while, Pharisee. And he, of course, was the man who was always putting off his good deeds until another time he was a procrastinating Pharisee. Now the third was called the Bleeding Pharisee, and he was the extremist. He walked around with his eyes shut lest his eyes should light upon a woman. And in the course of so doing, he banged into so much furniture that he bled for his self-imposed blindness. The fourth one was called the painted Pharisee, who advertised his holiness, lest anyone touch him and defile him. Number five was the reckoning Pharisee. and he was always trying to make up his mind what duty he could perform in order to make up for the odorous duty that he had deliberately neglected. Number six was the fearing Pharisee. All that he knew in his relationship with God was a trembling awe. The last one was called the loving Pharisee, and he's the only one of the seven free of hypocrisy. Now that's what the Talmud said and says about the Pharisee. Enough about that. Except to notice that the Pharisee is involved here. I want to try to draw a lesson from each of these last four verses in chapter twenty-seven. The Pharisees came along with the chief priest, and they said to Pilate, Verse sixty-three, Sir, we remember that that deceiver said, While he was yet alive, after three days I will rise again. Now what we have here is a study in human fanaticism. These men had lived three years of their lives striving to find some way to put an end to the ministry of the Lord Jesus. Human fanaticism. There are no believers are sometimes called fanatics. And I think there are at least three reasons for this. The people around say of you as a Christian, you're a fanatic. because your lifestyle does not agree with that of the world. They see nothing wrong in a social drink, even though from time to time they have to stagger home drunk. But you have no time for that. Gambling to them is not an evil. Why shouldn't a man, a man if he chooses, expend a couple of dollars here or a couple of dollars there in the hopes that he's going to reach something really worthwhile. And you say, I believe that that is not honest. And they say, you're a fanatic. Your lifestyle does not agree with that of the world. And secondly, because you're a Christian, your conscience doesn't compromise with sin. And the world says you're a fanatic. Because today you look at adultery and you look at fornication and you look at immorality exactly the same way as it was looked at many, many years ago. Incidentally the same way that God looks at it today. But they say this is a different world. People have changed today. People have gotten more progressive. It's wise to try out marriage before you take the plunge. The word of God says it's fornication. And I'm thinking of a very, very ugly word, and I doubt whether it's ever been used from this platform before. But it's a word that we find in the Bible. Women by the tens of thousands... are adding, and here's the word, and it's a very legitimate word, bastards, to the American populace. Countless thousands of babies being born out of wedlock, and countless thousands upon thousands being murdered. before they see the light of day. And your conscience says that's wrong. But the world says you're a fanatic. So your lifestyle doesn't agree with the world. And your conscience doesn't compromise with sin. They say you're a fanatic because your fellowship has not snuggled up with humanism. You recognize it for what it is. But the world says, that's the way of the world. That's our way today. That's the way we live. Let a man lift himself up. Let him use his own resources. I've talked about humanism at large from this platform. And we know that at present there is a fight going on in the Supreme Court to see if it cannot be recognized as a religion, for that's what it is. so that along with Christianity and the Bible it can be put out of the schools. You think action is likely to be successful? I doubt it very much. Because that's the kind of world we are living in. Believers then are sometimes called fanatics. Now the entertainment world is very glad to embrace the abbreviation. They call it fans, and they hope you will be a fanatic for their particular brand of entertainment and the participants thereof. And there's nothing wrong with that. But the world doesn't know when it says you're a fan that it's really saying you're a fan. And God knows there are many fanatics who's... noses are glued to the boob tube for soap, suds, stories, and lots of other things that only serve to condition them in the wrong way and cause their lives to veer away from that which is clean and righteous and good and a blessing to others. But history here has provided for us a perfect example of fanaticism. Look at what they said. Sir, now these people didn't hesitate to grovel. They formed upon this man. They wanted to get their own ends, and when they said that, sir, you can well imagine it wasn't just a polite sir, it was actually an ingratiating sir. which sought immediately to try to win him over to their way of thinking. Pilot, sir. You ever met people like that? They didn't hesitate to grovel, and there are lots of groveling people in the world, and their very groveling makes them eligible for the title of fanatic. because they'll sell themselves out to that they're fanatical about. You notice that they didn't question their own motives. They said, Sir, we remember that that deceiver. Now what evidence did they have that the Lord Jesus was a deceiver? No word that ever fell from his lips was untrue. No action that he ever performed was anything but upright and outright and exactly what it seemed to be. There was no pretense with the Lord Jesus, and yet these fanatical men, anxious to bring about his demise, they called him that deceiver. Oh, how wrong they were. How blinded by their own fanaticism they were. They didn't miss a trick. They said, we remember that this deceiver said, after three days I will rise again. Isn't it astounding that these men who sought so earnestly the death of the Lord Jesus remembered what his disciples forgot? But he said, after three days, I will rise again. It's a study in human fanaticism. They were driven by evil in their hearts and an actual horror of the Lord Jesus because he was the antithesis of what in their hearts they stood for, selfishness and sin and indulgence. Let's look at the next verse. Command, therefore, that the sepulchre be made sure until the third day, lest his disciples come by night, and steal him away, and say unto the people, He is risen from the dead, so the last error shall be worse than the first. So they find an error in the past. and they are afraid of another one in the future. Now, what was the first error? I'll tell you what, it was not. It was not that they were angry. Oh, how angry they were. They didn't see that as an error. That had become the consuming thing about them. Oh, no. In their eyes, the first error was not that they were angry. nor that they were envious. They didn't even recognize their envy. But I know someone who did, and his name was Pilate. And the Word of God says he knew that for envy they had delivered him. But that was not the first error. They didn't even recognize that. And in their eyes it was not that they were dishonest, though they were. They even paid false witnesses to open their mouths and lie so that the Christ of God could be condemned. No, this was not the first error that they were angry or that they were envious or that they were dishonest. It wasn't even the first error in their eyes that they had murder in their heart. Do you know what the first error was as far as they were concerned? That they had not wiped these Christians off the face of the globe. That was the first error. That was what they wanted. This Christianity had grown so they couldn't understand it. They said the whole world is gone after him. He turns the world upside down. What was the last error? They did not want anybody to believe, now that Jesus was dead, that he could possibly rise from the dead. Now do you know what we have there? An exhibition of human fear. These men were still afraid, although Jesus was dead. although it had been laid in the tomb, their fears are still haunting them, and they say, Command of the sepulchre be made sure, until the third day, doesn't matter after that, lest his disciples come by night and say, and steal him away, and say to the people, he's risen from the dead. So the last error shall be worse. than the first. Look at the next verse. If in verse sixty-three we have a study in human fanaticism, and in verse sixty-four we have an exhibition of human fear, in verse sixty-five we have a testimony to human folly, Pilate said unto them, Ye have a watch. Go your way, make it as sure as ye can. I want you to notice those words. Ye have a watch. That is, you have gods. Legally, the Jews had no no right. They did not have the power. to put a man to death. They had a God. They had a watch. But you see how skillfully they have manipulated Pilate. You see how skillfully they have worked things round to what they wanted and brought about his death. How stupid. This was the will of God. And in their folly they imagined that everything was now over, his body was in the tomb, and it was not going to be stolen away if they could possibly help it. They had not the vaguest conviction or even thought that what Jesus said about rising from the dead could possibly be true. I wonder how many of those Pharisees went up to the tomb while the stone was still at the door, saw the seal intact and the sentry there, and then went their way, and snickered to themselves, It's working, it's working, first day, second day, third day. The testimony to human folly, ye have a watch. They did. They were able to provide centuries. So says Pilate, go your way. That, you know, is the center of human folly. Going your own way. Go your way. Go and do what you want to do. Now, that's always an invitation to disaster. Your way. He says, listen, you've got to watch, then make it as sure as you can, and then go away and forget it. Go your way. I don't know whether there's anyone here, and you haven't yet learned the folly of going your way. It's a sure path to disaster, you know, because it makes a man self-centered, and it makes him selfish. It makes him unconcerned about any other way. I want what I want when I want it. Met people like that. Do you find a little bit of that in your own heart? Pilate says, go your way. Make it as sure as you can. Do your utmost, he's saying, and then go away and forget it. He also thought that this thing could be brushed away. Had he not washed his hands and said, I am innocent of the blood of this just person, see ye to it? Do you know what happened to Pilate? Thousands of people, intelligent people, learned people have said for numbers and numbers and numbers of years, Pontius Pilate never lived. He's a figment of biblical imagination. You don't find his name anywhere in history. He never was. But do you know within the last few years an ancient tablet came to light? and whose name you think was on it, connected to the Roman emperors, the name of Pontius Pilate. God allowed them to, he gave them enough rope, and these brilliant men, they hung themselves, because here was evidence from their own field that they could not dispute, and suddenly their mouths were stuck. Make it as sure as you can. Do your utmost. It was folly because these men were fighting against God. And only a fool fights against God. It's a testimony to human folly. You have a watch. Set up that watch. Make it as sure as you can. Do your utmost. And then go away and forget it. They're not going to steal his body. After three days it's still going to be there. And so don't sweat, no sweat. A testimony to human folly because it didn't turn out that way. The last verse is an exercise in human futility. So they went and made the sepulchre, sealing the stone, and setting a watch. First of all, he was in the sepulcher. Now, that sepulcher is very interesting because it was a new tomb. It's a reminder, you know, that they're always digging new graves because people are always dying. It was a new tomb. It was a rich man's new tomb. And that's a reminder that money cannot buy an escape from death. It is said that the Queen of England, on her deathbed, cried out a half of my kingdom for a quarter of an hour of time. Nobody claimed the half of her kingdom because nobody could give to her, promise to her a quarter of an hour. of time. Even rich men and rich women die. But it was also a rock-hune, rich man's new tomb. Now it wasn't the rich man that was rock-hune, it was the tomb that was rock-hune. Now imagine how much hard work that would take. All done by hand, no modern machinery. Just think how men slaved and worked hard to hew out that huge rock. And if indeed the garden tomb is it, it's a very big rock. And all of it is opened for the graves that lie there. Strong men have to make provision for death along with rich men. And it's happening every day. Now the Lord Jesus' body has been laid in the sepulchre. Now that was not enough for them, so there is a big stone rolled to the mouth of it. Well, it was fune, so that that circular stone could be rolled along a gutter to cover the mouth. of the tomb. And that was such a heavy stone, as we were reminded earlier today, that when the women were making their way to the tomb they said, Who's going to roll the stone away for us that we may anoint his body? So here's a sepulchre, and a huge heavy stone rolled across the mouth of it, and then smacked a big Roman seal attached to stone and and wall so that nobody can budge that stone without breaking the seal and becoming answerable to the Roman government. Boy, they are certainly making sure, aren't they? A sepulchre? Closed with a huge stone. a stone that bears the Roman seal. And because then they weren't satisfied, they stationed their sentries around the tomb. Nobody was going to go in and steal that body, and nobody did. But something happened. An angel came and disregarded the seal, pushed back the stone, and then sat upon it. That was his way of laughing at all their efforts. He rolled back the stone, and do you know what he says about those centuries? The keepers became as dead men. An exercise in human futility. The sepulch are the stone, the seal, and the sanctuary. None of it. could prevent the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. So on the church calendar we have an Easter Sunday. And there are some people who only go to church on Easter Sunday. I don't know why they bother. I really don't know whether it's an attempt the sort of assuage their consciences. I don't know whether it does a little of something to them on the inside to make them feel better, but they might just as well stay away, except that they become an added member of the congregation that the preacher might be able, through the message of the gospel, to reach. Whether there was an Easter Sunday on the church calendar or not, whether it was celebrated or not makes no difference. Up from the grave he arose. And this morning I reminded you that the grave clothes themselves were mute evidence of the fact that the Lord Jesus slipped through them his resurrected body not being contained for a second. by those grave clothes. What is the real force of the truth of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus? Only a living Savior, and this we were saying this morning too, only a living Savior can meet a man in his need, meet a woman in her need. Only a living Savior can be comfort for a sorrowing heart. Only a living Savior can be company for a lonely person. Only a living Savior can deliver a sinner from his sin. Only a living Savior can save. And the Lord Jesus can save to the utmost. And as we used to say in England, from the gutter most. But most of us are believers here. The resurrection of the Lord Jesus is meant to be to us a daily, hourly, moment-by-moment challenge. Because he is raised, we too are going to be raised from the dead. His resurrection is the guarantee of our own. But God our Father looks for a resurrection in our lives every day that we live. He looks for us to be delivered from the grave clothes of our habits and our selfishnesses and our carelessness and casual dealings with other people. He expects every day for the risen life of the Lord Jesus to be allowed to flow through your life and my life. Can I quote it again? Galatians two twenty. I am crucified with Christ. Nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in thee. And the life which I now live in the flesh. I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. My, that's her verse to analyze. It tells me, and I've reminded some of you before, many more times than one, that the Christian who opens his eyes in the morning and prays, Lord, I want you today to help me to live a good Christian life. is the Christian who probably prays in vain. God has no intention of helping you or me to live a Christian life than he had to help us save ourselves. The Christian life is the life of Christ, and it is only as Christ lives his life in us and through us. that we can live a Christian life. So that the way to begin the day is by faith, to take a look at the cross on you, and by faith to put yourself there and say, Lord Jesus, today I want you to clothe yourself with me and to live your life through me. Now that's what the resurrection life of the Lord Jesus should mean to the believer. Here's the verse again. I am crucified with Christ. Nevertheless I live yet. Not I. But Christ liveth in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God at my own the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me it might be on this resurrection day someone is going to come and say Lord Jesus I'm so glad that my heart revels in the realization that you are a risen Christ. But I look at my life and I don't see the evidences of that life in my life. Lord Jesus, forgive me. Lord Jesus, hear me now as deliberate. I put my life long time I've been saved but deliberately at this moment in a brand new way I put my life into your hands and I want you to enable me to let you live your life through me there's all the world of difference between letting Christ live his life through you and you trying to live a Christian life with his health. The one is on the inside, the other he's on the outside. I know it dwells in your heart that sometimes our efforts are all our own. Shall we pray? Our Father again we thank you for the familiar words that we have been reading and speaking about and thinking about. And we do want to realize in a very real, a very positive, but a very powerful way, what it means to be able to say, not I, but Christ. Impress that upon our hearts. As this day comes to a close, we pray. In the name of the Lord Jesus.