On This Day: Conflict Over the ‘Three Days’ Conspiracy

The next day, that is, after the day of Preparation, the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered before Pilate and said, “Sir, we remember how that impostor said, while he was still alive, ‘After three days I will rise.’ Therefore order the tomb to be made secure until the third day, lest his disciples go and steal him away and tell the people, ‘He has risen from the dead,’ and the last fraud will be worse than the first.” Pilate said to them, “You have a guard of soldiers. Go, make it as secure as you can.” So they went and made the tomb secure by sealing the stone and setting a guard. (Matthew 27:62-66)

 

   One of the ways the Bible stands out as the only “word of God” in the whole wide world is by weaving together such complexities and requirements that could never have worked by the conspiratory strategizing of people.

   We are now up to the day after Jesus’ burial. The religious elite obviously understood that Jesus had made the claim that he would rise from the dead. However, in their concerted efforts to prove this did not happen, they ended up proving it did.

   Not only was Jesus’ death prophesied in Scripture, and not only were his statements about his death and resurrection somewhat public knowledge, but even his burial was prophesied. Isaiah wrote 700 years before Jesus came, “And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth” (Isaiah 53:9).

   This was fulfilled when

“a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who also was a disciple of Jesus… went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Then Pilate ordered it to be given to him. And Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a clean linen shroud and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had cut in the rock. And he rolled a great stone to the entrance of the tomb and went away (Matthew 27:57-60).

   This fulfilled Scripture. No one understood it. Jesus’ disciples could not grasp that he planned to die and rise from the dead, so they were now grieving the most horrible loss any of them had ever experienced. Jesus’ enemies did not believe Jesus was the Messiah, so they were focused only on stopping a “fraud” from taking place.

   But as surely as the crucifixion itself fulfilled Scripture without Jesus doing anything to force it upon himself, the burial also fulfilled Scripture even though it was because a disciple had the means of providing it, and so the resurrection prophecies would be fulfilled as well. We will look at that when we come to it.

   For today, we are invited to marvel at the way God’s enemies were duped into making it impossible for Jesus to escape the tomb without notice, or for his disciples to steal his body away and claim a resurrection, so that when the resurrection occurred, every generation would know it was real.

   The question is, if Jesus “was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord,” what will you do in response to him as we watch the world, the flesh, and the devil doing everything they can to keep people from believing “the good news of great joy” that we now have “a Savior… who is Christ the Lord”?!  

 

© 2024 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)