So they went, and made the sepulchre sure, sealing the stone, and setting a watch.
So they went, and made the sepulchre sure, sealing the stone - which Mark (Mark 16:4) says was "very great,"
And setting a watch - to guard it. What more could man do? But while they are trying to prevent the resurrection of the Prince of Life, God makes use of their precautions for His own ends. Their stone-covered, seal-secured grave shall preserve the sleeping dust of the Son of God free from all indignities, in undisturbed, sublime repose; while their watch shall be His guard of honour until the angels shall come to take their place!
Remarks:
(1) How grandly was the true nature of Christ's death proclaimed by the rending of the veil at the moment when it took place! He was "by wicked hands," indeed, "crucified and slain." He died, it is true, a glorious example of suffering "for righteousness' sake." Yet not these, nor any other explanations of His death, however correct in themselves, furnish the true key to the divine intent of it. But if the temple and its services were the center and soul of the Church's instituted worship under the ancient economy; if that portion of the temple which was the holiest of all, and the symbol of God's dwelling place among men, was shut to every Israelite by a thick veil through which it was death to pass, and was accessible to His high-priestly representative only on that one day of the year when he carried within the veil the blood of atonement, and sprinkled it upon and before that mercy-seat which represented the Throne of God; if on that one occasion, and upon that one action, in all the year, Yahweh manifested Himself in visible glory, as a God graciously present with sinful men, and accepting the persons and services of sinful worshippers-thus symbolically proclaiming that without the shedding of blood there was no remission, and without remission, no access to God, and no acceptable worship-while yet it was manifest that the only blood which ever was shed upon the Jewish altar, and sprinkled upon the mercy-seat had no atoning virtue in it at all, and so could not, and never did take away sin; and finally, if after all this teaching of the ancient economy up to the moment of Christ's death, as to the necessity and yet the absence of atoning blood, it came to pass that at the moment when Christ died-without a hand touching it-the thick veil of the Temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom, and so the holiest was thrown open: who can fail to see that this was done by a Divine Hand, in order to teach, even by the naked eye, that the true atoning Victim had now been slain, and that, having put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself-having finished the transgression, and made an end of sins, and made reconciliation for iniquity, and brought in everlasting righteousness, and sealed up the vision and prophecy, He had anointed the holy of holies (Daniel 9:24), in order that not the high priest only, but every believer, not once a year, but at all times, might have boldness to enter by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way which He hath consecrated for us through the veil, that is to say, His own flesh" (Hebrews 10:19-20). Nor is it possible to give any tolerable explanation of this tearing of the curtain at Christ's death, if its sacrificial, atoning character be denied or explained away. To talk of its signifying the breaking down of the wall of partition between Jew and Gentile, as some do, is altogether wide of the mark. For the veil was intended to shut out, not Gentiles, but Jews themselves, from the presence of God; and the liberty to pass through it once, but once only, with atoning blood, both showed what alone would remove that veil for any worshipper, and the absence of that one thing so long as the veil remained. And thus the great doctrine of the sacrificial design and atoning efficacy of the death of Christ was proclaimed in the most expressive symbolical language at the moment when it took place.
(2) Do Christians sufficiently recognize the fact, that sin is "put away" as a ground of exclusion from the favour of God; so that the most guilty on the face of the earth, believing this, has "boldness to enter in by the blood of Jesus" to perfect reconciliation. As no worshipper was holy enough to have right to go within that veil which shut out the guilty under the law, so no worshipper is sinful enough to be shut out from the holiest of all who win enter it by the blood of Jesus. As all were shut out alike under the law, so all are alike free to enter under the Gospel. This is that present salvation which Christ's servants are honoured to preach to every sinner, the faith of which sets the conscience free, and overcomes the world; but want of the clear apprehension of which keeps multitudes of sincere Christians all their lifetime subject to bondage.
(3) What a grand testimony did the rending of the rocks and the opening of the graves at the moment of Christ's death bear to the subserviency of all nature to the purposes of Redemption! As when He walked the earth all nature was at His bidding, so now at His Death-which was the reconciliation of Heaven, the life of the dead, the knell of the kingdom of darkness, and Paradise regained-Nature felt the deed, and heaved sympathetic.
(4) How beautifully does the resurrection of those sleeping saints of the Old Testament, by virtue of Christ's resurrection-that they might grace with their presence His exit from the tomb-proclaim the unity of the Church of the redeemed under every economy, and the fact that, whether they lived before or live after Christ, it is 'because He lives that they live also!'
(5) How remarkable is it to find a heathen officer-who probably knew little or nothing of Christ except the charge on which He was condemned to die, that "He made Himself the Son of God" - unable to resist the evidence which the scenes of Calvary furnished of His innocence, and consequently of the truth of His claims, little as he would understand what they were; while those who had been trained to the study of the Scriptures, and had been favoured with overpowering evidence of the claims of Jesus to be the Hope of Israel, were His bloody murderers!
(6) How precious to Christians should be those testimonies to the reality of Christ's death which even His enemies unconsciously bore, since on this depends the reality of His resurrection, and on both of these hang all that is dear to God's children! So little did they doubt of His death, that their only fear-whether real or pretended-was that His disciples would come and steal away His dead body, and pretend that He had risen from the dead. Then, having gotten what they wanted from Pilate-full power to see to the sealing of the stone and the placing of a military guard to watch it until the third day-they thus themselves unconsciously attested the reality of the resurrection which, on the morning of the third day took place, when, in spite of all their precautions, the sepulchre was found empty, and the grave-clothes lying disposed in grand orderliness, as they had been laid calmly aside when no longer needed!
(7) Have we not here one of the most striking commentaries imaginable on those words of the Psalmist, "Surely the wrath of man shall praise thee: the remainder of wrath shalt thou restrain"? (Psalms 76:10). For as the death of Christ, which the wrath of man procured, was infinitely to the praise of God, and the "remainder of that wrath" might have extended to the infliction of indignities even upon the dead body, had it been exposed, it pleased God to put it into the heart of Pilate to give the body for interment into the hands of Jesus' friends, and so to "restrain the remainder" of His enemies' wrath that they themselves sealed up the grave and set the militant guard over it-thus securing its sacred repose until the appointed hour of release. O the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out!
(8) How sweet should be the grave to Christ's sleeping saints! Might we not hear Him saying to them beforehand, "Fear not to go down into Egypt; for I will go down with you, and I will surely bring you up again"? And indeed He has gone down, and lain in as cold, and dark, and narrow, and repulsive a bed as any of you, O believers, will ever be called to lie down in; and has He not sweetened the clods of the valley-or haply, the great deep-as a perfumed bed for you to lie down in?