Matthew 28:13 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Matthew 28:13

Comments

Certainly the consciences of these soldiers were going to be silenced with a lie! The chief priests pile one burden after another on these troubled men. They are to become the authorities’ false witnesses against what they knew to be the truth. The story they are to tell is the very thing the authorities feared in the first place: that his disciples would come and steal away his body. This was why they set the watch. But the watch having failed, they would rather claim that the thing they tried to stop has actually happened, than admit the truth. The soldiers knew what had happened; they still felt the dread of that supernatural appearance within themselves. The authorities had no reason not to believe the account of the soldiers, and they had seen Christ’s miracles, but they were going to deny with all their power that what he had said would happen, had happened – that after three days he had risen again. Anything was better than that. How the schemes of men break down under the relentless advance of God’s purposes.

Application

How many times has an unbelieving world fabricated a lie to suppress the truth of God. Men and women do it every day within their own hearts to try to pacify their consciences. What are the lies they tell themselves? That their sins are not so serious after all; that they were justified in the wrongs they did; that there is no God watching them; that there is no day of account; that if he is there, then together they can withstand the Lord; and a thousand other excuses and devices of the heart.

They also speak lies publicly to try to prevent others coming to faith. They make up accounts of the world that attempt to remove God from his own creation. Evolution is a deception. How hard the unbelieving mind has to work to convince itself that it is true! How many problems it has to battle against in order to try to make the theory look feasible.

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Matthew 28:13 Commentary and Bible Study