The Stone is Rolled Away

The Stone Is Rolled Away
Matthew 28:2-6
A sermon given for Awaken Fellowship at Ithaca College on April 10, 2015
by Hunter Irvine

Matthew 28:2-6
After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb.  There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it.  His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men.  The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified.  He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay…” (NIV).

  The message of this passage is that Jesus is risen from the dead!  Yet how does this involve us today almost 2000 years later?  I start by examining why Jewish people rolled stones in front of tombs.

  Around the time of Christ, Jewish people practiced what is called “secondary burial.”  After 20 B.C., dead bodies were put in tombs which were often carved within the limestone cliffs.  A stone would be rolled over the entrance so wild animals would not get in there.  The flesh would slowly decay off of the bones.

  About one year later, someone would go back in the tomb and collect the bones.  Most often the bones were collected and put in another room carved out in the foothills, often with many other bones.  Yet for religious or wealthy families, the bones were put into an ossuary, also called a bone box.  Ossuaries were made of limestone, which is a softer stone.  The wealthier would be able to afford carvings in the ossuaries whereas other bone boxes where plain.  A typical size was about two feet by one and a half feet.

http://members.bib-arch.org/publication.asp?PubID=BSBA&Volume=27&Issue=05&ArticleID=17

  Archaeologists have dug up thousands of these bone boxes!  They have been digging them up for years!

  Why did they do “secondary burial?”  For the sake of time, the short answer: Pharisees started saying bones needed to be preserved for resurrection.  They were misinterpreting Ezekiel 37:1-14, making a double entendre of this vision, which is a bad Biblical interpretation practice.  Granted there are some “types,” which come from concrete items or events which foreshadow an important future event in the Hebrew Scriptures, but a “type” never comes from a metaphor, which is what the vision from God to Ezekiel was.

  God’s plan for resurrection had nothing to do with bones.  God’s plan for resurrection had to do with the Messiah!  Jesus was both physically and spiritually resurrected!!!

  We know He was physically resurrected.  Mary Magdalene hugged him! (John 20:17).

  Yet He was also spiritually resurrected!  John Stott: “His birth was natural, but his conception was supernatural.  His death was natural, but his resurrection was supernatural.” [1]

John 20:3-8   “So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb.  Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first.  He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in.  Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb.  He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head.  The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen.  Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside.  He saw and believed” (NIV).

  When Lazarus was resurrected by Jesus, he came out of the tomb wearing his grave clothes.  When Jesus was resurrected, His graveclothes were still lying in the tomb.  Why did Jesus lose His clothes?  John Stott explains: “What then should we have seen, had we been there [in the tomb]?  We should suddenly have noticed that the body had disappeared….transmuted into something new and different and wonderful.  It would have passed through the graveclothes, as it was later to pass through closed doors…”[2]

  In fact, no one ever saw Jesus come out of the tomb.  I think a careful reading of this passage suggests Jesus was already gone before the angel rolled away the stone!!!

  So Jesus is alive, physically and spiritually!

  And there is a personal message for us (the hermeneutical message): The message is that you can be spiritually resurrected in Christ!  How?  By believing in Jesus!!

“We all like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:6 NIV).
The “him” is Jesus.  He is the Lamb of God who was the sacrificial atonement for sins.

  This is a classic story from the 1800’s by Dwight Moody: “A farmer was once found kneeling at a soldier’s grave near Nashville.  Someone came to him and said, “Why do you pay so much attention to this grave?  Was your son buried here?”  “No,” he said.  During the war my family were all sick, I knew not how to leave them.  I was drafted.  One of my neighbors came over and said: ‘I will go for you; I have no family.’  He went off.  He was wounded at Chickamauga.  He was carried to the hospital, and there died.  And, sir, I have come a great many miles, that I might write over his grave these words, ‘He died for me.’”[3]

  Jesus Christ died on a cross for the forgiveness of sins of anyone.  He was the atonement for the consequences of sins, which is spiritual death in hell.  If you believe in Jesus, you have eternal life with Him.

  If you have never opened your heart to Jesus, you can do so right here and now.  Jesus loves you.
Hunter

[1] John Stott, Basic Christianity (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1958), 46.

[2] John Stott, Basic Christianity (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1958), 53.

[3] D.L. Moody, Prevailing Prayer (Chicago: Moody Press, [no date, no copyright]), 58-59.