Double Check

A friend of mine called me and asked an unusual question.  He told me he was away on vacation with his family, and he wondered if I would go and double check to see if his house was locked up.  I obliged and checked the house for him, and all was good.  3 days later he called again and asked, would you mind checking the back door too?  I assured him again, the house was as secure as it was earlier.

My friend was not the first one to have this issue.  There is a story of a man who lived a long time ago.  He was a man of great power and fame.  Yet this man was very insecure about making sure things were secure as well.  His name was Pilate. After the death and burial of Jesus, we find some religious leaders confronted Pilate and said, remember this Jesus said in 3 days he would rise again. What are you doing to make sure there is no funny business happening with his followers?  The Book of Matthew gives us Pilate’s response, 65 “Take a guard,” Pilate answered. “Go, make the tomb as secure as you know how.” 66 So they went and made the tomb secure by putting a seal on the stone and posting the guard.”  Pilate was double checking the locks! He heard enough about the testimony of the things Jesus had said concerning rising from the dead. The fearless Pilate put things in motion, “make the tomb as secure as you know how.”  In that day, this meant putting a seal of the emperor on the stone and setting up around the clock protection unit of guards. In other words, the tomb was put on high alert!

I find it quite fascinating that the people who opposed Jesus remembered his promise of rising from the dead in three days. At this time the disciples were in grief and in hiding, after all their lives were threatened now as well.   But the people who felt the most threatened were the enemies of Jesus.  They remembered His words! Pilate knew enough of this man to know, just in case I better ask for a  double check of the locks and set up security. The death of Jesus had happened, but His words still haunted them.

72 hours can be a long weekend for some.  I wonder how much sleep Pilate and the Pharisees got that weekend?  Friday evening and nothing happened.  Saturday morning and the guards reported all was secure.  Saturday night and not a sight of any disciple near the grave. They had captured this teacher that drove them crazy. They had falsely accused Him, wrongly prosecuted Him and brutally beat Him. They shamed Him to the maximum, they mocked Him unmercifully, and they whipped him to the point of near death. The abuse shown toward Jesus leading up to the cross was beyond our comprehension.  And after all of that they ended it with the harshest of deaths, execution on a cross.  Yet for 72 hours following His crucifixion, they watched the grave of Jesus and worried themselves to death over a dead man who had already been buried.  Saturday night they triple-checked the facilities and there would be nothing or nobody that could get inside that grave.  Their biggest mistake was simple. They guarded people from getting inside the tomb but they had no power of who was already inside the tomb!

Two days had passed and the guards seemed to have done their job. For 48 hours they made it as secure as possible from the outside in, but they couldn’t help what was going to happen from the inside out!  But on the third day, security would give way to insecurity for the guards, the Pharisees and for Pilate, because …Sunday Morning had arrived.  Saturday night all seemed well but on Sunday Morning all of heaven broke loose! On that Sunday morning the earth was shaking, the guards were sleeping, the angels were waiting, the heavens rejoicing, the stone was rolling and Jesus is alive!  Even today, you can double check and triple check all you want but the message is still the same… He is not here, HE IS RISEN!