Be Careful with Conspiracies

Sovereign Grace Family Church iconSovereign Grace Family Church

2 views

0 comments

00:03
Hello, welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist.
00:07
This is a daily conversation about scripture, culture, and media from a Reformed perspective.
00:15
Get your Bible and coffee ready and prepare to engage today's topic.
00:20
Here's your host, Pastor Keith Foskey.
00:24
Welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist.
00:26
My name is Keith Foskey and I am a Calvinist.
00:29
Today is January 13th, 2021.
00:35
As I was doing my daily Bible reading yesterday, I came across a passage that I wanted to share with you, the listener.
00:45
I was reading through the book of Matthew and I was in Matthew chapter 28.
00:52
Now, Matthew 28 is the last chapter in Matthew's gospel and in this chapter what we have is the resurrection narrative from the Apostle Matthew and in verses 11 and 12, actually from 11 to 15, we have a very interesting side note to the narrative of the resurrection.
01:26
And I'll read it to you now.
01:27
Matthew 28, 11, while they were going, behold, some of the guard went into the city and told the chief priests all that had taken place and when they had assembled with the elders and taken counsel, they gave a sufficient sum of money to the soldiers and said, tell people his disciples came by night and stole him away while we were asleep.
01:59
And if this comes to the governor's ears, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.
02:07
So they took the money and did as they were directed.
02:13
And this story has been spread among the Jews to this day.
02:22
A few years ago, I did a sermon on the subject of how folks had come up with different ideas about the resurrection of Jesus, theories about the resurrection.
02:40
And I talked about how some people believe that Jesus didn't really die on the cross, that he simply fainted.
02:46
That's typically called the swoon theory.
02:50
And the idea is that Jesus wasn't really dead.
02:53
He simply passed out on the cross and was thought to be dead.
02:58
But when they put him in the cold tomb, he was revived and after three days, he was able to come out of the tomb healthy enough to walk and to convince people that he had risen from the dead.
03:14
And in that sermon, I explained how foolish that particular theory was.
03:22
Romans are really, the Roman soldiers are really good at killing people.
03:26
They were professionals at killing people.
03:28
They knew what it was for someone to be alive and for someone to be dead.
03:34
And certainly, the narrative of Jesus' death shows us that he was dead.
03:41
Not only did he die before the other two because they didn't even have to break his legs.
03:47
They broke the legs of the other two so that it would increase the expediency of their death and increase the pressure on their chest so that they could no longer breathe because they couldn't push up with their legs to take the pressure off their chest.
04:03
And so we know that Jesus was already dead because they didn't do that.
04:07
But to ensure that he was dead, they went ahead and stuck a spear in his side.
04:10
The Bible says, out of his side came blood and water.
04:14
And there's some debate as to what the reasoning for that was.
04:17
Some people believe it was because the blood had already began to separate from the clear portion of the blood.
04:29
Basically, he'd been dead long enough to where his blood would separate and the plasma would look like water coming out.
04:37
Other people believe they stabbed the pericardium, which is the sac that surrounds the heart.
04:42
And that sac has clear liquid and they said that's what came out.
04:47
Either way, the idea is that Jesus was dead.
04:52
And so the thought that he was just passed out on the cross is absolutely ridiculous.
05:00
Well, that was one theory that I talked about in that sermon.
05:05
But another theory that I discussed is actually in our text today.
05:11
And this text refers to what is typically referred to as the stolen body theory.
05:18
And there are still people today who hold to this idea that Jesus Christ didn't really rise from the dead.
05:26
But what happened was his disciples, in wanting to perpetuate the myth of his divinity, broke into his tomb late at night while the soldiers were asleep and they snuck away with his corpse.
05:48
And then through a series of some events, they convinced people that the empty tomb was proof of Jesus being alive.
06:00
And so they went about trying to prove that Jesus was alive by simply proclaiming that the tomb was empty.
06:10
And we see the beginning of this particular theory here in Matthew's Gospel.
06:18
He tells us that when the guards, who were supposed to be watching the tomb, went to tell the chief priests what had happened, that Jesus actually did rise from the grave, they gave the soldiers money and said, tell the people his disciples came by night and stole him while you were asleep.
06:40
That's exactly what some people still believe today.
06:43
And obviously this was what was believed even then, because the text goes on to say this story has been spread among the Jews to this day.
06:56
And if you think about it, I've thought about this particular narrative several times and I've thought about how did these soldiers, how could they have done this? Because certainly such a massive failure to allow themselves to be overtaken in their sleep by a ragtag group of fishermen and itinerant ministers to sneak past them in the darkness of night and to steal the body and essentially make fools of them.
07:26
How in the world did they, how in the world did they not all forfeit their life? Because such a thing would have been massively, would have been an insult that they were, that they allowed that to happen, would have been a massive embarrassment.
07:47
And this was not a particular time in history where those types of shames were easily overlooked.
07:54
And so when it says that they would satisfy him, that being the governor, and keep them out of trouble, I've just always had trouble just thinking about, I think what may have happened, these guys may have just skipped town.
08:08
It doesn't say that, and again, that's my idea, but it says they gave them money and perhaps these soldiers took the money and just left because such a massive shame that obviously spread around and people found out about it.
08:25
Either the governor never heard of it or if he did hear about it, these particular Jewish leaders had some real clout and were able to protect these soldiers.
08:37
But the soldiers were willing to go along with the ruse because they, here's the thing, they knew Jesus hadn't been stolen.
08:44
They knew Jesus had risen.
08:47
They had essentially bore witness to the resurrection of Jesus.
08:52
It says this in verse three, it talks about that the, well it says verse two, it says, and behold, there was a great earthquake for an angel.
09:02
The Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone and sat on it.
09:06
His appearance was like lightning, his clothing white as snow.
09:09
And for fear of him, the guards trembled and became like dead men.
09:15
So the text tells us the guards saw the angel.
09:19
They saw him descend from heaven.
09:21
They saw the, they felt the earthquake.
09:27
They saw the stone rolled back.
09:32
This is an amazing reality.
09:34
These disciples, or rather, excuse me, these soldiers knew those disciples did not steal that body.
09:41
That is clear.
09:45
So they could have told the truth and perhaps some of them did.
09:51
Perhaps at some point in their life, some of them were even converted to Christ.
09:55
Would not be surprised to find out that that were true when I get to glory and have an opportunity to learn more than I know right now.
10:03
But here's the thing about this particular narrative.
10:08
These men knew the truth, but at least some of them were willing to perpetuate the lie for the sake of financial gain and the sake of protecting their own reputations.
10:23
Hear that again.
10:25
These men were willing to perpetuate a lie for the sake of financial gain and the sake of perpetuating their own reputations and their own safety, their own positions.
10:44
All of those things must be considered for really the subject of today.
10:48
Because as I said, I read this yesterday.
10:52
This was part of my daily Bible reading that I'm doing with my wife.
10:55
We're reading through the Bible in six months.
10:57
We're reading about six or seven chapters a day.
10:59
And so we're in Matthew's gospel.
11:02
And as we read this passage, as I read this passage, I got to thinking, what we have here is we have a conspiracy theory that was concocted by people in power, and it was perpetuated by people who benefited from it, both socially and financially, and we could even say professionally.
11:29
So let me say that again.
11:30
We have a conspiracy theory concocted by people in power and perpetuated by people who benefit from it socially, financially, and professionally.
11:47
And is that not an absolute analogy to what we see going on around us today? We live in an age of conspiracy theories.
12:03
And here's the thing.
12:05
Often these conspiracy theories are being perpetuated by people who want us to not know what the real truth is.
12:16
And it is becoming ever more increasingly difficult to determine what the real truth is because we are so inundated with lies.
12:30
Our elected leaders are willing to lie to us.
12:33
Our media is willing to lie to us.
12:39
Even our families are getting caught up in conspiracies.
12:45
And they're not lying necessarily, but they're perpetuating things that they don't know are true.
12:51
And therefore, it is so hard to know what is and what is not the truth when it comes to all of the things going on.
13:00
I've had the opportunity over the last few days and the last few weeks to have conversations with various folks in my family and in my immediate circle of friends and even within our church.
13:12
And so many of them, have you heard about this pastor? Have you heard about that? Have you heard about this thing going to happen and that thing going to happen on this day and on that day? And it's so difficult because so much of it is based on lies or half-truths or miscommunications because there are those who are benefiting by keeping people riled up, keeping people misinformed, keeping people misunderstanding what the truth is.
13:46
And here's the thing that really is frightening.
13:49
The truth behind all of this is probably worse than any of the conspiracy theories could ever really touch.
13:57
The truth behind all of it is probably really, really bad.
14:03
And see, that's the thing.
14:06
Go back to the passage in Matthew.
14:09
Why is it that the soldiers were willing to perpetuate a story that made them look bad? Because the truth behind it was worse for them, because the truth behind it was that Jesus was alive.
14:24
The truth behind it was that the Messiah really was Jesus Christ and they would rather perpetuate a lie to their own shame.
14:37
Yes, we fell asleep and these itinerant ministers came and stole the Bible.
14:42
They would rather perpetuate something to their own shame than to tell the truth that Jesus Christ had risen from the dead.
14:53
So I just got to thinking conspiracy theories are nothing new.
14:58
Conspiracy theories are often perpetuated by people in power and they're concocted by people in power, perpetuated by people who benefit from them in some way socially, politically, professionally, financially, whatever.
15:14
So as the old saying goes, don't believe anything you hear, believe only half of what you see.
15:22
Be careful out there when it comes to perpetuating things that you hear on the Internet, things that you hear on television, things that you hear in the media, things that you read on Facebook.
15:37
Be careful, my friends, because there's a lot of people who are lying right now and some of them who are perpetuating lies and they don't know it.
15:49
And remember this, that in the end, in the end, the truth will be known, if not in this life, in the next.
15:59
And so we must trust that God has a plan in all of this, that he is working out his will for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose.
16:10
And if you are his and you have the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior and Lord, I can tell you this, no matter what happens, God's got it and he's going to work it out for your good because that's the promise of the scriptures.
16:29
The Bible says that even if we are led like sheep to the slaughter, that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor powers, nor things present or things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, our Lord.
16:54
And that is no conspiracy theory.
16:58
That is the truth.
17:01
Thank you for listening today to Coffee with a Calvinist.
17:04
My name is Keith Foskey and I've been your Calvinist.
17:08
May God bless you.
17:09
Thank you for listening to today's episode of Coffee with a Calvinist.
17:14
If you enjoyed the program, please take a moment to subscribe and provide us feedback.
17:20
We love to receive your comments and questions and may even engage with them in a future episode.
17:27
As you go about your day, remember this, Jesus Christ came to save sinners.
17:33
All who come to Him in repentance and faith will find Him to be a perfect Savior.
17:39
He is the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through Him.
17:46
May God be with you.