Matthew 27

Matthew 27:55-28

Subdivision 3. (Matthew 27:55-66; Matthew 28:1-20.)The Resurrection. The atoning work, then, is done: we are now to have before us the answer on God’s part to it, an answer which certainly cannot be long delayed. Indeed, as we have seen, there has been already answer; but not yet the answer. That will be no less than in raising Christ from the dead, and setting Him at His own right hand in heavenly places, with all authority given to Him in heaven and earth. We do not see Him in Matthew at the right hand of God: that is reserved for Mark. Nor do we even, as in Luke, see His ascent into heaven. But in accordance with the character of Matthew, we do find all authority put into His hand, - the Kingdom of heaven begun; with its administration committed to men, but with the assurance that He is with them to the end of the age.

1. The Lord having gone down to the depths of His humiliation, from this point all is changed. God permits no more indignity, and, marked out still, as every thing here is, by the voice of prophecy, the rich man comes forward to bear testimony to Him, and give His body its temporary resting place. “They assigned Him a grave with wicked men,” says the prophet, “but with the rich man when He had died” (Isaiah 53:9, Heb.). He is numbered with transgressors no more, but in the hands of disciples, tender, if feeble hands, which though it be the shadow of death upon hopes lately so bright, will anoint Him for His burial. These women that have followed Him from Galilee, ministering to Him, wait on Him still with their eyes through all the terror of the Cross, too intent for fear or sorrow to divert their riveted gaze until the stone closes the sepulchre. This Joseph, too, just at the hour when all seems lost, comes forward openly to join himself to the disciples of a crucified Master.

He goes to Pilate to beg the body of Jesus, and having obtained it, lays it in his own new tomb. For this death cannot mingle with the common deaths of men, but is that which dispels death. Nor can the Holy One enter into the abode of corruption - He who is to know none. The instinct of the heart goes, as it would seem, beyond knowledge; and God is over all, guarding and guiding. 2. The enemy, too, is at work to make more secure His coming triumph. His disciples shall not come and steal the body away, and make men think that He is risen. Upon the supposition that they were dealing with imposture merely, that would be well enough: but did they think so? Could they, fresh from the spectacle of such a death as He had died, imagine it? They remember the words which His own disciples had forgotten; words which had contemplated what they had done to him, and asserted His own final triumph. On the third day He would rise again. If that were indeed true, how vain any effort of theirs to avert the consequences! Yet fear has its fascination; which compels its subjects to follow to the end they dread, - to know and face the worst that can come. Perhaps there were mingled motives, the result of contradictory thoughts which urged them on. At any rate they do all they can with their company of soldiers and their seal upon the sepulchre to make fraud and illusion both impossible, and to certify the only hope available for man. 3. Matthew gives us very briefly the resurrection of the Lord; and of all His manifestations of Himself to His disciples at Jerusalem only that to the women visiting the sepulchre. In His message given through these also He speaks of meeting them, not at Jerusalem, but in Galilee, the scene of His former labors. There the .commission with regard to the Kingdom is given them, and it is the Kingdom with which Matthew, as we know, is occupied. The connection of our Lord with Galilee was from the first the token of His rejection by Israel. In His infancy Jerusalem under the sway of Herod had refused Him, and the rule of Archelaus there had turned Him aside from Judea to Nazareth. Galilee of the Gentiles was the witness of the ruin of Israel, as largely given up to these, the land of the former kingdom of the ten tribes, who had not returned from their captivity in Assyria. Out of Galilee, said the scribes, no prophet could arise. Yet it was there, among a people sitting in darkness and the shadow of death, that the Light was to arise. The passing by of Jerusalem in the close of Matthew is easily seen, therefore, to be significant of the world-wide aspect of the Kingdom now to be proclaimed, a remnant of Israel sharing in it, in the time of their national rejection; the blessings of Christ’s rule. But not even into these does Matthew enter deeply: the air of reserve which we have noticed in Matthew clings in measure to him, to the end. There is one expression only which seems to break through it, and carry us on towards the complete revelation, - “Go and tell My brethren.” But it is not developed further, and by itself might only apply the language of the Lord’s prophecy (Matthew 25:40) to His present followers. The separation which some would make between an evening visit of the women to the sepulchre, and a morning one, when the angel addresses them, seems neither necessitated by the words themselves,* nor consistent when the account is taken as a whole.** The stone had been rolled away when they got near enough to see; and thus the resurrection had already taken place. They may have felt the trembling of the ground and seen something of the lightning-like flash that had scattered the watch. But He was risen; and the opening of the tomb was to publish to all that it was empty. The victory is gained; and, as of old, the women celebrate it. Mary of Magdala here comes into prominence, out of whom seven demons had been cast by the word of Christ. And now that He has spoiled principalities and powers and led captivity captive, she in whom the complete power of Satan has been met and conquered is fittingly the leader of this company.

Her heart is not empty since the unclean spirits left, but Another has filled it. The dead Christ still lives in her and controls her; and now she is a true “Mary of the watch-tower,” even while yet she has no knowledge nor expectation of what has taken place.
It is John who details to us the way in which the risen Lord reveals Himself to her, during an interval of time passed over by Matthew, in which she has left the company with which she had come to the sepulchre to bring Peter and John to see that it was empty. The other women, less bold than she, must have waited for her to rejoin them before they went on to the tomb. If so Mary Magdalene must have already been gladdened with the knowledge that He was risen before she went back with them there. Matthew certainly intimates that Mary was with them at this time, as he only mentions “the other Mary” as her companion; and to these the angel addresses himself.* Now they are told that not only is He risen, but that He is going before them into Galilee, and there they should see Him.
Galilee is in fact the gathering place of the disciples, characterizing the circumstances under which the new faith begins to be published, as we have seen. Presently an unexpected joy is theirs; for Jesus Himself meets them on the way, and while they worship at His feet, repeats to them the message given to them by the angel. 4. Meanwhile some of the guard bring word to the chief priests of all that has taken place. The impotence of all their efforts is revealed; and they have even to publish it, along with the manifestly false account of what had happened while the witnesses were asleep. Spite of all they will continue the vain struggle with omnipotence itself; and such are Israel’s chosen leaders. 5. The Gospel closes with the appearing of the Lord in Galilee, where by appointment the eleven meet Him; with others also, as is plain, for it could hardly be of the eleven, after all that we know to have taken place in Jerusalem, that it is written; that “some doubted.” From His words to the women also Galilee seems to have been appointed, as already said, for a general gathering of the disciples, and it was probably here that He was seen, as the apostle tells us, “of more than five hundred brethren at once” (1 Corinthians 15:6). The institution of His Kingdom would naturally call for such a gathering; and here it is that He declares all authority to have been given to Him in heaven and upon earth, and sends them out to disciple all nations to it. It is not a Kingdom set up as yet in power, but established as a Kingdom of the truth by the sowing of the “word of the Kingdom” in the hearts of men. This the parables of it (Matthew 13:1-58) have already shown us. “Discipling” is therefore the mode of introduction into it; but this has two parts, which the Lord joins together here. The great essential for a disciple is, of course, reception of the Word; but since it is a Kingdom into which men are discipled, there is added to this an outward recognition to be made of the authority under which they come: and these are assuredly the “keys of the Kingdom,” of which the Lord spoke to Simon Peter (16: 19). The “key of knowledge” He had spoken of elsewhere (Luke 11:52); here we have the external authoritative admission on the part of those to whom the Kingdom is committed: “disciple all the nations, baptizing them” the name to which they are baptized being that of the Triune God, now fully revealed. “All nations” shows the whole world to be the sphere in which the Kingdom is to be proclaimed, and cannot be the Gentiles only: Israel cannot be left out of such a commission. Certainly, they have not received the Kingdom, nor the King: they cannot be looked upon as an inner circle from which His messengers are to be sent out; and in Luke “repentance and remission of sins” are to be “preached among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem” (24: 47). This is in fact the course that was pursued. By and by Paul is raised up of God to lead in the special Gentile work, and the other apostles, owning what God has done, give it up as apostles to Paul and Barnabas; but this is no failure on their part, nor change in the original plan. Paul still preaches “to the Jew first”; and if of the other apostles we have little scriptural notice, tradition scatters them variously among the Gentiles. Moreover, the commission given here in Matthew to baptize and teach is not one that we can limit in any way to the apostles, but must have wide enough application to embrace all who, in fact and according to Scripture, baptize and teach. Thus the Kingdom takes its place outside all nations, while having its door wide open towards all, its blessed gospel call for all that have an ear to hear. The King is, as we know, to be away; and just on this account He gives to those who represent Him here the assurance of His being ever present with them. Faith may reckon upon Him as securely all the way as if He were still bodily and visibly in company with His disciples; “all the days” - every single day - cloudy or bright - until the consummation of the age is reached, and the opened heavens yield Him once more to earth.