The angel here appeals to the sensesof those who stand about the tomb to attest the truth of Christ's actual resurrection from the dead.
I. The empty tomb at once proclaimed the actual resurrection of the Saviour. The Resurrection is proclaimed to be a fact (1) by the testimony of human witnesses. The disciples were men of probity, and had no worldly advantage to acquire from the publication of such a circumstance, but quite the opposite. They had known Christ, surely, long enough to recognize Him again when He appeared amongst them; and with one concurrent voice they testify, "He is risen from the dead." (2) This is strengthened by the testimony of angels, and by their various appearances as bearers of the news. (3) The resurrection of Christ was not denied, even by His enemies, but was covertly recognized and admitted, even while the Jews agreed to a traditional falsehood to conceal from their posterity that which they knew to be a fact. (4) The Apostles constantly attested the fact, as also did the Fathers of the primitive Christian Church Ignatius, Polycarp, and the other venerable custodians of the truth. (5) Christ rose, likewise, in precise accordance with Scriptural types and predictions, and with the same body as that in which He had lived and died.
II. The language of the text expresses the great humiliation of Jesus Christ. "Come, see the place where the Lord lay."
III. We cannot meditate beside the place where the Lord lay without learning something of the infinite love of God.
IV. Neither can we look upon His empty tomb without being convinced of the Divine faithfulness faithfulness as to promises, types, shadows, and predictions.
V. This visit to the place where the Lord lay must bring with it, too, a striking evidence of His Divine sovereignty. "I have power to lay down My life, and I have power to take it again." And if He thus held in His sovereign hand the issues and the destinies of His own career, He can, in like manner, overrule and control the destinies of His people.
VI. Is not this vacant tomb an almost satirical evidence of His triumph over His enemies and ours?
VII. Lastly, "Come, see the place where the Lord lay," that you may behold in it the certain and the glorious pledge of a perfected salvation.
A. Mursell, Calls to the Cross,p. 286.
(with 1 Corinthians 15:44)
The Resurrection from the Dead.
We still assert, in words, a literal resurrection of the body, but none of us believe it. Our hymns, our prayers, our epitaphs, and too often our sermons, imply that the dust of our bodies shall be reanimated in some far-off future, and joined to the waiting soul. At the same time, we know that science declares it to be impossible; our reason revolts from it; it is sustained by no analogy; it is an outworn and nearly discarded opinion. There is, however, a general feeling of perplexity in regard to it. The view now offered is substantially this: that the resurrection is from the dead, and not from the grave; that it takes place at death; that it is general in the sense of universal; that the spiritual body, or the basis of the spiritual body, already exists, and that this is the body that is raised up, God giving it such an outward form as pleaseth Him, and thus preserving that dualistic state essential to consciousness, if not to existence itself. Let us notice some considerations that render these views probable.
I. The butterfly gains its perfect form, not by assimilating the. worm, but by getting rid of it. It is the most beautiful analogy in nature, its very gospel upon the resurrection at first a creeping thing, dull and earth-bound, a slight period of dormancy, and then a winged creature floating upon the air and feeding upon flowers, one life, yet possessing from the first the potency of two forms.
II. The entire significance and value of the doctrine of the resurrection from the dead centre in the fact that it sets forth human identity. The question now arises, in what does identity consist? Identity does not lie in matter, nor is it dependent upon matter. Man is not the matter that makes up the perpetual flux known as the human frame; he is nothing that the chemist can put test to. He must be something, not material, that endures, on which the shifting phenomena of animal life play themselves off. The body is not the man, and it is the man who is raised up. He goes into the other world simply unclothed of flesh, there to take on an environing body suited to his new conditions. As here we have a body adapted to gravitation, and time, and space, so doubtless it will be hereafter; the spirit will build about itself a body such as its new conditions demand.
T. T. Munger, The Freedom of Faith,p. 295.
References: Matthew 28:6. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. i., No. 18; vol. xviii., No. 1081; J. Keble, Sermons on Various Occasions,p. 523; D. Rose, Christian World Pulpit,vol. i., p. 321; G. W. McCree, Ibid.,vol. xxix., p. 314; Preacher's Monthly,vol. ix., p. 214; vol. x., p. 117; J. M. Neale, Sermons in Sackville College,vol. i., p. 313; Homiletic Quarterly,vol. ii., p. 562; Armitage, American Pulpit of the Day,vol. i., p. 251.Matthew 28:7. S. A. Tipple, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xv., p. 24; H.W. Beecher, Ibid., vol. xix., p. 52.