62 On the next day, which followed the Day of Preparation, the chief priests and Pharisees gathered together to Pilate, 63 saying, “Sir, we remember, while He was still alive, how that deceiver said, ‘After three days I will rise.’ 64 Therefore command that the tomb be made secure until the third day, lest His disciples come by night and steal Him away, and say to the people, ‘He has risen from the dead.’ So the last deception will be worse than the first.” 65 Pilate said to them, “You have a guard; go your way, make it as secure as you know how.” 66 So they went and made the tomb secure, sealing the stone and setting the guard.
Matthew 27:62–66 (NKJV)
PILATE GUARDS THE TOMB
Before His death on the cross, Jesus had told the Pharisees “you are of your father the devil…because there is no truth in him…for he is a liar
and the father of it”. (John 8:44)
Deception has always been the devil’s strategy to cause mankind to not believe God.
Jesus, on the other hand, said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6), and absolutely everything that He did confirmed that what
He said was truth. In today’s passage, the Pharisees slanderously accused Jesus of being a deceiver, because they knew that if Jesus were to actually rise from the dead there could never be any doubt that He is truly who He said He is. So, they had to try to do what they could to prevent Jesus’ resurrection from happening.
Pilate gave them permission to secure the tomb where Jesus’ body had been placed, so they sealed the entrance stone and placed guards
there.
It’s interesting to notice that the chief priests and Pharisees expressed to Pilate their concern that the disciples of Jesus would lie to the people
claiming that He had risen from the dead. And yet, when it was discovered that Jesus had indeed risen from the dead, the priests and
elders were the ones who instructed the guards to lie and say that they had fallen asleep and Jesus’ disciples had stolen His body – in keeping
with their deceptive character that Jesus had previously revealed. It’s wonderful, though, that the chief priests and Pharisees did all this in
trying to weaken the testimony of Jesus, but the end result is that their actions actually served to strengthen the evidence that Jesus did in fact rise from the dead just as He had foretold!
Steve Pascoe, Assisting Pastor
