BY THE REV. JOHN MACLEOD, M.A., KAMES.
“Come, see the place where the Lord lay.”—MAT. xxviii. 6.
THERE were two companies at the grave of Christ this morning. There were those that had been sent there to keep guard. They were the emissaries of His enemies—their deputies on the spot. The task committed to them was to see that the Jesus who was already got out of the way should be kept under ground. The stone did not keep Him; the seal did not keep Him; death and the grave could not keep Him; much less these poor soldiers. The soldiers were the one company, and we may say that they were there with hostile intent. Personally they might have no lively interest in the special task allotted to them, but all the same, in their official character, they were the servants of this world’s malice—sent to see to it that the Son of God should be kept out of the way. The other company that we find on the scene was a very different one. It consisted of a few poor women who came in their love as friends of their revered Master to pay what they thought to be the last attentions that were called for at their hands. We see in what friendly and encouraging words they are addressed by the heavenly embassy—“Fear not ye.” Be not afraid. Ye have no reason to fear. It is true that these soldiers have fallen as dead men to the earth, but ye have no reason to fear. They have reason and more than they know, but ye have none, for I know that ye seek Jesus of Nazareth that was crucified. Loving devotedness has given you an early errand here; ye have come to find your Lord, but He is not here. He is risen as He said unto you. You might have known that this would be the case, but your eyes were holden, your understandings were but blank, and ye received not as ye might and should the pre-intimations He Himself gave of how matters would come to pass. But although ye are not altogether uncensurable for not receiving His word, yet fear not, but come, see the place where He lay and satisfy yourselves that now His words have been fulfilled. The grave holds Him no longer. Such were the two companies, and such was the message that Christ’s resurrection conveyed to each company.
We may briefly attend to a few things that present themselves in the words of our text.
I.—Who it is that lay in the empty grave?
II.—He did lie there, for it was His place.
III.—He lay there now no longer, it was His place no more.
IV.—The message that His resurrection conveys.
V.—The invitation to see the empty grave, and how this teaches.
omnipresence. But the fact that this body was His, assumed into union with His glorious Person, tells us that He was here in a very special way. Never was the grave honoured as it was by such a guest. The Lord of life, and light, and glory became its tenant. The Lord lay where His body lay. He was brought to the dust of death. Sin imputed reign’d unto the death of the sin-bearer, and as the great sin-bearer laid down His life, the grave was His place for a season. Thus we see:—
II.—He lay there. Why did He lie there? Ah, it was His place. Had it not been His place He had never lain there. It was His place, for He was numbered with the transgressors. He was numbered with transgressors and so was numbered with the dead. The grave is the place for the dead. His death was a real death, and this was His place while He remained under the key of death. There is an intimate alliance between death and the grave. Death is more than to die, it is also to remain among the dead. Had reviving on His own part, or resuscitation on the part of God been the immediate consequent of Christ’s death, we might say that He died. Yet though the death were real and the reviving real too, the evidence of death and reviving and resurrection would not be the full evidence that it is. Death lasts so long as life is out of the body. So long as the parting of soul and body endures so long does death, and while death lasts we may say that you the grave as death’s brother whispers in his ear, “Now that you have done your work let me have my prey.” That there might be proof of the reality of death, the lying in the grave must have place. “Thus,” said He on one occasion, “it becometh me to fulfil all righteousness.” Whatsoever things were written before hand of Him must now have their fulfilment. They must now come to pass, and that they might come to pass He must go to the grave. If His soul made an offering for sin was not the grave His place? Yes it was. But not only must proof of the reality of death be given, there must be an opportunity of resurrection, and without the lying down there could be no rising up again. The grave then was His place that the reality of His death might be made apparent. The grave too was His place that it might be possible for Him to rise out of it. He was not to be left in the grave, and that meant that He must be in it before it could be possible for Him not to be left in it. Nothing is left in a place where it never was. No one is left in a town where He never was, and that such language might have its meaning and its intention carried out, He who came to be the grave’s destruction must need be in the grave as its guest or as its prey.
Sin, we have said, was imputed to Him, and the load of imputed sin brought it about that He must die. When He died then was the grave’s opportunity. It had hitherto never said, “I have enough,” but now it received in the Person of Immanuel what it had to confess to be, if not enough, at least more than enough. It received in Him what it could not hold, for in the blood of His sacrifice was
the power that burst its gates asunder. Its gates were not battered in as of old the walls or gates of a besieged city might be. They were broken from within, for into the confines of the tomb He had come, who had come expressly to bruise the serpent’s head. The power of the old serpent was now broken. The power of him who had the power of death was taken away, and as this was done the power of the grave was like the instability of an arch, one side of which has been undermined; a change has been laid there that shall splinter the arch in pieces. When evidence was afforded of the reality of death, when an opportunity was forth-coming of showing the triumph thus secured, for through death He destroyed him that had the power of death, that is the devil, then was humiliation turned into a triumph. No longer was the grave His place and so He left it, from within its gates were burst open, or from within He who entering into the other world took with Him the key of return in His perfect obedience, He who by His one offering hath for ever perfected them that are sanctified, turned the key in the lock and the door not loth to do its Master’s bidding, turned on its hinges and forth He came. Thus He cannot any longer be said, the place where the Lord lies. He did lie there, but He there lies no longer. It is not His place. III.—He lies no longer where He lay once. Christ came not that death should overcome Him, but that He might overcome death. He came not that the victory should be with the grave, but that He might be the grave’s destruction. The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. That death might be deprived of its sting, the sin that was to be removed was connected in its very nature with law. The law’s penalty must be endured. The law’s honour must be vindicated. The curse otherwise must remain in full force. The work undertaken by Christ embraced nothing less than that death should be spoiled of its power and that the curse of the law should be removed by being borne. It was no surprise sprung upon Him that He must needs suffer what in course was appointed for Him to suffer, and so from the outset of His course the Cross was in view. The Cross was in view of something else. The humiliation was not to be the end of all. Nay, it is but the necessary step to something further. He must needs, as the Father’s servant doing the Father’s will lay down His life; but the command to lay it down was tied to another, that He should take it to Himself again. There must be provision made in the laying down for the fulfilment of the compatriot injunction. Nay, the very laying down itself secured the desired result.