You can return in your Bibles
now to the 27th chapter of Matthew. I've entitled this message, Strange
Happenings or entrances and exits. What we read earlier, in particular,
that part about some of the saints being raised from the dead and going into Jerusalem and
being seen by many people. Matthew's the only one that records
that. Only one. Now, there are other
things which are unique to Matthew and probably some things unique
in the book of Mark and unique to Luke and John. In particular,
the sayings of our Savior on the cross. It's like each one
of them picked one or two things. John records our Lord saying,
it is finished. Gospel writers record our Lord
saying, Father, forgive them. They know not what they do. Others
record, I thirst. I believe the Lord made seven
statements while he was on the cross. But Matthew records a particular statement
of the Lord into your hands. I commit my spirit. Excuse me, that's not recorded
here in Matthew. It just says that he cried out
again. He said, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani. But then it mentions that just
before he died, he cried out with a loud voice. And another
one of the gospel writers says that he cried out with a loud
voice, Father, into your hands I commit my spirit. But this, I was drawn to this
event that immediately when our Lord died, well, the curtain,
the veil of the temple was torn in two. There was an earthquake,
the rock split open, and that caused graves to come open, the
kind of great... Back then, they buried some by
digging a hole in the ground, but primarily people were buried
back in caves, and some of them maybe natural caves, others of
them have been carved into a rock, but that was the normal method
of burial. So the earthquake caused some
of those tombs to open up, and it says that after the Lord raised
from the dead, that there were some saints, which means essentially
believers, who raised from the dead, came out of their tombs,
went into the holy city, and appeared to many. Now, I'll be
honest with you. You know, when I would read that,
that strains credulity. In other words, that's hard to
believe. And you say, you know, why? Well, it's not hard for me to
believe, though I think it would be difficult for God to make
that happen. But there is a principle in scripture,
at least I think I can safely say this, nothing happens or
nothing is recorded unless it has some connection to the gospel
of Christ and is put there to teach us some principle about
the gospel. And I looked at this, I've read
it, and I mean this has been for years. I don't know that
I've ever even preached from this particular story, primarily
because I didn't know what to do with it. It sounds like the kind of stories
you read in the mythologies of pagan religions. But I looked at it and I said,
well, it's here in the Bible. It can't be said that, well,
someone snuck this little bit of supposed history into it and
it shouldn't have been there. Matthew didn't write this. Because
there have been times people have tried to insert stories
in the scriptures that the original authors didn't put there. But
so far as I know, there is no ancient copy of Matthew that
doesn't contain this story in it. So you can't say, well, they
were using the wrong text when they did our translation. Nope,
every text has this in it. The scriptures are not full of
wild tales serving no other purpose than to amaze us. The miraculous
works of God have always been designed to illustrate some aspect
of the gospel to us. None were performed merely as
some show of power to kind of wow us. There is no sense in
which we expect that after God performed some miracle, we would
hear a divine ta-da afterwards. These things were not done just
so God could show off. Without some connection to gospel
truth, we're kind of at a loss as to what this story is about. Well, when I studied this scripture,
and I just thought, well, it's time, you know, you've wondered
about this for long enough, dig in, see if you can find out.
may be why God did this and inspired Matthew to record it for us,
this strange event, strange happening. And it's often the case when
I begin to look in the scriptures seriously, and look into the
scriptures, even read some commentaries of faithful men, because they
had to wrestle with it and come to some kind of understanding
of it. I discover that this portion of scripture, once
you look at it and note exactly what it's saying, it is not simply some fantastic
story. That it is firmly rooted in gospel
truth and is designed, actually I believe God had this done to
assure those early believers that the things that have been
promised in the gospel would surely come to pass at the appointed
time. And that's another thing to note.
One thing actually that made me look into this scripture is
I was watching a video, and it's a rather famous atheist, and
he was mocking the scriptures. And that's funny, I never hear
any of them mocking pagan religions. The only thing they ever mock
is Christianity. But at least that's all I've
ever heard them mock. And this atheist said, well,
the resurrection's no big deal. Evidently, there's resurrections
going on all the time. There was Lazarus, there was
the widow's son. And then he said, evidently,
a lot of them were raised from the dead about the same time
as Christ. And he went on to say, it seems
like his resurrection was kind of banal. And I sort of know
what that word means, but I had to look it up to make sure. But
I know this, when you hear people start using words that most people
wouldn't know, They're just trying to impress you. Banal means so
ordinary, nobody would take notice. Well, resurrection wasn't banal.
It wasn't a usual event. Now, these events happened immediately
upon the death of our Lord. And that's an important point.
It says, chapter 27, Verse 51, at that moment, what
moment? Well, verse 50, he cried out
again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit, he died. Immediately, right then, right
then, the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rock split. Now, that cues us into this,
the death of Christ had something to do with those events, or they
wouldn't have used the word immediately. They would have said, well, coincidentally,
you know, the temple curtain tore in two, and there was an
earthquake, you know. No, they said immediately. The death of
our Lord brought these events to pass. or in respect of the
death of the Lord, God made these events come to pass. So they
are connected. We do not ever want to gloss
over the events of Calvary or use those events simply as a
time marker. The crucifixion of our Lord Jesus
is the central event in human history. Everything before that
was pointing to it, and everything after has been looking back to
it. And it is the central event of what you and I believe. You
take the cross out of the Bible, you might as well get rid of
the rest of the Bible too. It means nothing. Paul said, I determined to know
nothing among you other than Christ and Him crucified. Isn't
the resurrection important? Yes, it is. But why did He have
to be raised from the dead? Because He was crucified. Paul
said, May it never be that I should glory in anything other than
the cross of my Lord Jesus Christ. I know he used things like Christ
crucified and the cross. These were symbols of the entirety
of the gospel. But it's telling that when he
would want to summarize all of the gospel in one or two words,
he uses words like crucified and cross. This, as it were, is the axis
upon which spins all of God's eternal purpose for our universe. You say, well, if I was God,
if it was that important, I'd have done it. I'd have gone to
Rome and done that so that the whole world can see it. Well,
you see, that's not God's way. He does his greatest works. His
most powerful works have been done in insignificant places. I remember the first time I went
to Brother Scott Richardson's church, and we're talking about
1985 now, so it's almost 40 years ago. I had known Scott for six,
seven, eight years, something like this, and I'd heard about,
you know, Katie Baptist Church, and in my mind, It must be like,
you know, you'd come around the corner of one of those, curve
of one of those West Virginia roads, and suddenly, it'd be
like you, you know, entered, there'd be lights and a glow.
I mean, I know that's over much, but I just thought, this, that
church must be something. Everybody's gotta know where
that place is. Well, I was pastor in Owensboro,
Kentucky at the time, and he wanted me to preach at his conference,
so I drove up there and, Didn't have GPS back then, so I guess
I had some handwritten instructions how to get out to this, because
it's, you know, you get among the mountains of West Virginia,
it's not like these checkerboard roads, you know, like this. So I got my, looking, and I came
around the curve, and I almost had to slam my brakes on, because
I didn't see it. I almost drove right past it.
Now, there's lots of other churches in Fairmont, West Virginia, churches
everywhere. the one church that I know of
in that area where the gospel was being preached. I almost
drove right past it. The church wherein God was doing
wonderful things in the salvation of his elect. So we should not be surprised
that this pivotal event of history happened in a rather small nation
which at that time was under the dominion of another nation
and didn't even happen inside the city, but was on a little,
you know, we talk about Mount Calvary, but understand it's
kind of like, it's just a little high spot. And they did it there
so that, you know, everybody could see what was going on. And in truth, in truth, had it
not been for the day of Pentecost, the coming of the Spirit which
enabled the apostles to be bold in the declaration of God and
to go into all the world and preach the gospel, if it had
not been for that, that pivotal event would likely hardly have
ever been mentioned again. That's how insignificant it looked
on that day. One more criminal being crucified. All of God's glorious attributes
are in full display at Calvary. And for us who believe, those
events are the clearest display of God's love and mercy toward
us. We're gonna celebrate the Lord's
table here in a little bit. Isn't it interesting that, you
know, the Lord gave the church two ordinances, two ceremonies,
and both of them are about his death. No celebration of his resurrection.
There's nothing wrong with celebrating it, but our Lord did not command
a ceremony to celebrate it. No ceremony commanded for his
birth. No ceremony commanded in memory
of any of the great works that he did, this single thing. He died. His body was broken
for us. His blood was shed for us. He was buried. Calvary is the grand display
of Paul's statement that Christ loved the church and gave himself
for her. I was talking with our guests
this past week, which I'm sure you're not surprised I was talking.
But we were talking about that particular text of scripture.
And how I remember as the whole counseling business began to
take over the job of pastors. Instead of being preachers, they
became counselors. And so family counseling comes
in there. And whenever they talked about
marriage, the primary thing they talked about was women being
in submission to men. That's just something like that
was a subject that always came up. And nobody ever seemed like,
you know, it was important to say, men, love your wives like
Christ loved the church. Wow, that's a pretty high standard,
isn't it? He gave himself for her. Why does the church so readily
submit to Christ? because he so readily gave himself
for her. And that man who will exercise
the headship in his home by this pattern that he gives himself,
his energies, his wisdom, his work, he exerts himself, stretches
himself to his full length for the benefit of his wife and children,
there's probably not going to be any problem. in the relationship
between the husband and the wife. When I say probably, there's
not going to be much. We're sinners. We can make a problem in the
midst of the best circumstances. I tell you, when men love their
wives like Christ loved the church, generally speaking, wives are
quite happy, quite happy to practice, and I'll just say biblical submission. Don't have time to go into all
the details of that, but it's not a slavish thing, believe
me. But we must never think upon
these events of the cross in a purely academic way. Calvary
is holy ground. It's as holy, even more holy
than the ground upon which God met Moses in the burning bush.
More holy than the floor of the most holy place in the temple
where God was enthroned between the cherubim. As awesome as the
temple events on the Day of Atonement were, they were just a picture
and illustration of a truth. Calvary was the reality. If all those things going on
on the Day of Atonement in the Jewish economy They're in the
holy city, in the holy temple, in the most holy place, by the
holy priest, offering holy offerings. I mean, you know, just holy everywhere.
The priest even had upon his head a plate that says, holiness
unto the Lord. That's a lot of holiness, but
not even that compares with the holiness of Calvary and what
it represents. We don't treat it flippantly. We don't joke about it. We don't
study it simply as a scholar would to find out what happened. We behold it. And we are overwhelmed in our
hearts, if we understand it, we are overwhelmed in our hearts
with what God did there on Calvary. On Calvary, our great high priest
offered himself without spot to God, poured out his own blood
upon the mercy seat, paid our redemption, accomplished atonement,
satisfied divine justice, and brought in an everlasting righteousness. Now all that the soldiers and
the chief priests and all that they saw was Jesus dying, which
they took to mean, okay, he put up a fight, we win. We win. He's dead. Even though they had the book
of Daniel that laid out everything Messiah would do when he was
cut off, they didn't see it. And if we'd have been there,
we wouldn't have seen it. You know, even the disciples
didn't see that. They didn't. They were crushed. They were bewildered. His death
to them looked like the end of everything, not the beginning
of everything. No one understands the cross
apart from the work of the Spirit of God. Well, knowing the significance
of Calvary's events and the fact that the miraculous events that
are mentioned happened immediately, upon the death of our Lord, provide
for us the very purpose of these events, these miraculous things.
They show us what the death of Christ accomplished. They aren't just like, you know,
magic tricks that God did to impress everybody. They are a
an illustration and a sort of first fruits of what the death
of Christ brings to pass. The first thing is the temple
curtain was torn in two from top to bottom. Now this is no
small matter. Now we might think ripping a
curtain's no big deal, but from what I, I did some reading on
that. Now the temple curtain is the curtain that hung between
the holy place and the most holy place. And the most holy place
was where the Ark of the Covenant was. And God's, shall we say,
symbolic presence was there in what, it doesn't ever say this
in the Bible, but the Jews refer to it as the Shekinah glory.
It was God's token presence among the Jews. And no one went back
there except the high priest, and he only did that one day
out of every year, always went there with blood. He would go
there with coals taken off of the altar of incense. He'd put
that in ahead of him so that the room would fill with smoke,
because not even he could safely look upon the glory of God. But that curtain stood there,
and it testified of a couple of things, and I said, it's no
small thing that this curtain tore in two. I was, I can't remember
which of our studies it was here in the past year or so, but I
was doing some study on the temple, and in particular, that curtain,
that veil. That thing was six inches thick.
It wasn't a shower curtain. It wasn't a nice blanket. It
was six inches thick. I remember when I was a kid that
when strong, you know, guys had beefed up and everything or whatever,
they wanted to impress you with your strength, they would grab
the phone book from some larger city. And I know, you know, everybody
around here, they think a phone book's that thick. Well, when
I was in Springfield, Virginia, it was that thick. And they would
grab it and they would tear that phone book in half. What was
that, two and a half inches? And really they said there was
a trick involved. They had worked out a way. They
were just kind of tearing it a page at a time or a little
chunk at a time. But it looked like they were just ripping it
apart. Can you imagine grabbing a piece of fabric six inches
thick and ripping it? I don't think you could do that. It was six inches thick because
it stood as a barrier between the unapproachably holy God and
sinners. And it was thick like that for
two reasons. First of all, it was thick to
protect anyone who might be, shall we say, on the sinner side
of the of the curtain, because the priests had to go in there
every day and put fresh showbread there on the table of showbread,
and they had to put oil in the lamps and new incense on the
altar of incense and all that. There was work to be done in
that holy place. Well, if there had been no curtain
there, the moment one of those priests walked in there to do
something, he'd have been dead like that. So the curtain was there to protect
those who must work there in the temple. And then that curtain
was there to keep anyone from trying to approach God. In fact,
Hebrews says that so long as that temple was in place with
all its furniture, and it's spoken about the division between the
holy place and the most holy place, it says it was a testimony
that the way to God had not been made known. It's a barrier. There's a barrier between us
and God, naturally speaking. And for the present time, you
know, that is in our life on earth, that barrier, in a sense,
protects us. Now, I'm talking about this just
from the viewpoint of humanity in general. It's good there's
something that divides us from God, or we couldn't continue
to live. But that curtain, according to
the book of Hebrews, represents the flesh of Christ. It's Christ
who stands between God and man. And in the old covenant economy,
it was an uncrucified Christ. It was a Christ whose body had
not been broken. And so as it stood there as a
shield, it also meant it was a barrier. You can't get to God. I hear people that do not understand
anything about the scriptures. They say, well, I don't believe
all the miracles. But you know, Jesus was a good man. You know,
and I respect him and I think his morals are good morals to
follow and all that. Well, they're right. He was a
good man. And the morals that he spoke of, they're good morals
and would that we could all live by them. But an uncrucified Christ. will forever bar us from going
into the presence of God with safety. It can't be done. The only reason the high priest
could get away with it on the Day of Atonement is as he was
representing Christ, our high priest. And he was going in with,
yes, it was the blood of an animal, but it represented the blood
of Christ. And that's how he could go in there into that Temple
which was simply an illustration of heavenly things. He could
go in there and not die. But then our Lord Jesus Christ
died. And the moment he died, the moment
his body was broken to the point of death, that curtain ripped. And it says from top to bottom.
And I've been told, and I have no way to verify it. I don't
have a curtain that big. But generally, things hanging
like that, under normal circumstances, would rip from the bottom up. They said this one ripped from
the top down. Why? Because the tearing of the curtain
representing the death of Christ, the breaking of his body, was
a work of divine grace coming from above and down. Now can you imagine what effect
that must have had to those who served in the temple? I mean, they gloried in that
place. And I'm sure the high priest himself, who at this time,
Caiaphas or Annas, I'm not sure just which one, you know, they
kind of ping-ponged the high priesthood back and forth between
them. So I don't know which one of them was truly the high priest
at this time. But they were godless men. And I'm sure they took a
great deal of pride. They were the only ones who knew
what it looked like back there. They were the only ones who could
ever go back there and live to tell about it. And now, it's
ripped. Anybody, and you know, even a
Gentile, now think of this, he could be outside the wall around
the temple, but there's a gate right there. And if that gate
was open, he could look in, and he could look all the way into
the, You know, look all the way, the face of the temple, those
doors were opened. Now, he could have looked that
far, even a Gentile. But on this day, that curtain
ripped, even a Gentile could see all the way in to the Ark
of the Covenant, the presence of God. Like I said, it was a picture
of heaven, is what it was. opened the way to God by the
breaking of his body. We had no way to enter safely
so long as the curtain hung there untorn. Then it says there was an earthquake.
Now this earthquake is actually spoken of in secular literature.
Earthquakes are kind of hard to ignore. And I read in one of the accounts
of it, you know, that it was felt as far away as, you know,
way down in the southeastern part of Israel. So it was no
small thing. And as a result of this earthquake,
many rocks were split. And among the rocks that were
split were the stone caves and the rocks that covered them.
in which people were commonly buried. Now, that's all that happened
because of the Lord's death. What happens afterward came about
after his resurrection. Now, that's an important note.
Our translation is kind of muddy on that, but I looked at it in
Greek. Earthquake, rock split. After the Lord's resurrection,
the bodies of many saints were raised and they came out of the
tombs and went into the holy city and were seen by many. Now, what does all this mean? And why is there a division between
the events that occurred immediately upon the death of our Lord and
then events which occurred after his resurrection. Well, here's
what I believe this is about. Look over at Micah chapter 2. Now I said that this is, the
title of this message is Strange Happenings or Entrances and Exits. Micah chapter two, verse 13. One who breaks open the way will
go up before them. Now this is a prophecy of the
return of Israel to, you know, from the Babylonian captivity.
One who breaks open the way will go up before them. They will
break through the gate and go out. When our Lord died, he entered death. Remember when he was speaking
to Peter and he said, on this rock, I will build my church.
And the English translations say the gates of hell will not
prevail against it. Whenever we hear the word hell,
we think of the eternal hole of the wicked. But the word that's
translated hell is the Greek word Hades, and all it means
is the region of the dead. At least from the Greek view
of things, everybody went to Hades. That's just where the
dead go. And that's where our Lord went.
He died. And that's the region of the
dead, death. Instead of calling it the gates of hell or the gates
of Hades, you could say the gates of death will not prevail against
the church. Now, why is it that the gates
of death cannot prevail against the church? Because the gates
of death could not prevail against Christ. When he died, what did
that earthquake do? Now think symbolically here,
because the Lord's using historical events as symbols. Somebody dies. They wrap him up in a sheet. They take him in a cave, and
usually there's ledges there, you know, and they lay that body
on it, then they go out and they roll a stone over it. That person
is in death. And there's a gate, that stone,
keeping him in. I realize he's dead, he can't
walk out. But remember, when our Lord raised Lazarus from
the dead, the first thing he said to do was roll away the
stone. Not even a living man can get
out if the stone's there. Our Lord, by his death, that
earthquake happened, and what did he do? He broke the gates
of death and went in. Right? I mean, he literally did
that in being buried in a tomb, but he spiritually did that.
He went into the very region of the dead and he broke his
way in. Now, we normally think of a break
in as, you know, it's against the law. You're charged with breaking
and entering. Well, that's what our Lord did.
He broke the rocks, as it were, broke the gates, and he went
into the region of the dead. That's where his people were. But that's as far as the death
got him. And that's as far as his death
got his people. They're still in the region of
the dead. So what do we read? After his resurrection. What
does it say here? One who breaks open the way.
They laid our Lord in a tomb. And when women showed up there
in the morning, lo and behold, The gate, the rock, the stump
had been rolled out of the way. And it's pictured by this earthquake
had been broken. And our Lord came out. He went
in by breaking them, and then he broke out. What's the result
of this? After he raised from the dead,
The bodies of many saints came out. He opened the door. He broke
down the gate. And they walked out. And it's
interesting that Matthew does not say they went into Jerusalem.
It says they went into the holy city. And years later, John would
say, I saw the holy city. coming down from heaven. Now,
they went into Jerusalem. It's the only holy city that
was available to them at that point. But again, the Lord does
things in history to serve as illustrations. They came out
of death. They were locked in. The Lord
broke them out. They came out with him. Paul
says we were crucified with Christ. We've been raised with Christ.
They came out of the tombs with Him. I don't mean necessarily
His particular tomb there, but I mean their tombs, where they
had been buried, they all came out. The Lord said, the day is
coming when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God,
and those that hear shall live. And what does Matthew say? He
cried out with a loud voice, gave up the ghost, Earthquake,
rocks split open. A few days later, the dead come
out. What did he say? Part of me would
wish that what he said was, it is finished. But where that's
recorded in the book of John, it doesn't specify a loud voice
or anything like that. But what he did say with a loud
voice and then died was, Father, into your hands, I commit my
spirit. And our Lord Jesus Christ, as
he did that, we were in him. Isn't that not true? That's what
it means, we're crucified with him. We're in him, and so when
he says, Father, into your hands I commit my spirit, he was committing
the spirits of all his elect from every age. I commit them
to you. And when we went with him into
death, and we came out, and God gave a little sample of that
on that day. Christ had raised Lazarus from
the dead, but Lazarus later died again. Because God, when he was
raised from the dead, it was not the result of Christ's resurrection,
literally. It was just Christ calling him
out, demonstrated who Christ is and this kind of thing. So
he came back out of the dead, but he came back to the same
kind of life he had before. Now it is my belief that when
these came out of the tombs, they did not raise back to the
kind of life they had before. This was real resurrection. This was God doing a couple of
thousand years ago what He's going to do on a wholesale scale
sometime in the future. He's going to come and the graves
of the dead shall be opened. And they shall once again hear
the voice of the Son of God, for it says, He shall descend
from heaven with a shout, and those that hear Him shall live. They shall come out of their
graves. And they will, spiritually and literally, be in that holy
city, the new creation, that place made as the dwelling place
of the people of God. It says they were seen by many. I'm sure part of the reason for
them being seen was that those who saw them might testify of
it. Which tells us that these who
had been raised, it couldn't have been that long ago they
died or nobody in the city would have known who they were. But they went in there and they
were recognizable. And maybe their loved ones who had buried
them six months ago or a year ago or a few years ago. Can you
imagine that? Somebody you've buried shows
up at your door Dinner ready? Wow. But they didn't pick up where
they left off and then later die and be buried again. We don't
have a record of this, but you've got to assume once they made
themselves known, and maybe they stuck around for 40 days like
the Lord did, and when the Lord ascended on high, they went with
him. They just disappeared from this
world and went on to the next one. Now, this is not an idle
story. This is God's confirming work
to people like you and me. Christ has died, raised from
the dead. It is absolutely certain that
everyone in him will likewise raised from the dead. And as
much as they died with him, they will live with him. He has broken
in, and he has broken out. And those gates can't prevail
against the church. People think that when the Lord
said to Peter, the gates of death will not prevail against the
church, means that the church is in some kind of warfare with
death, and death closes up the gates for protection, but we
break in. No, he's the one that broke in.
Those gates can't keep us from breaking out. Now, unless the
Lord comes pretty soon, most of us will eventually die a natural
death, and they will put us in a box, and they will dig a hole,
and they'll cover us up. But if we are in Him, as surely
as the rocks were split, And some of the saints of God
came out of their graves, their bodies made alive again. So shall
we. The most fruitless work ever
done by man was the burial of one of God's saints. It's not
going to last. I don't know when our Lord will
return for him, but when he does, the bodies of multitudes of saints
will come out of their graves and will go into the holy city
and be seen by an innumerable multitude of angels in joyful
assembly. And this strange event