The Third Day
For the Lord’s Day:  the 11^th of April 2004

Matthew 27: 62-66

Introduction:  Yesterday I was reading an article about the real nature of the big bang theory, which ignores “the first and second laws of thermodynamics and the law of conservation of mass.”  However – the scientific establishment would still swear that “all the matter and energy of the universe was compressed into a cosmic egg that inexplicably exploded.”  A religious scientific author, Kelly Hollowell observes that “the big-bang theory is largely a faith-based idea.”  But, she adds: “That somehow does not deter a great many scientists from accepting the theory as true.”

We all of course know about the ongoing cultural war being waged against the Gospel, Christianity and the Trinitarian nature of our Creator God.  Faith, any faith – unless it is aimed at the modern mythos embodied in the evolutionary model is anathema to the secular humanists.  Their privately owned media and influence in most of the educational organizations is almost overwhelming to be sure.  Thus, it should come to no one’s surprise when we announce:  the worldly today don’t much care for the facts of the gospel reports.  Even if we are able to present the careful research of Dr Luke and the honest, earnest reports of the gospel writers and the five hundred witnesses to the resurrection, the worldly - like the Jewish leaders of Christ’s time would not comprehend.  The worldly always want something more.  And furthermore – if the real manipulation and management of the news and intellectual knowledge be fully known – very much of what passes for fact these days is in reality a fictional display of information meant only to manipulate an all too easily duped citizenry.  Of course, this activity is nothing really new in our day and age alone.

Development:  In an earlier chapter of Matthew (12: 38-45): Jesus was asked by the leaders of the Jews to perform a miraculous sign so that they could judge His credibility.  Instead of gratifying their desires he promised them only the sign of Jonah as one that prefigured His own destiny.   He described what that sign would be.  He revealed that He would have to undergo an experience like that of Jonah.  He himself would have to spend three days in a tomb.  And yet, there is something much, much more to this report of Matthew:  One greater than Jonah had come!

I am certain that the Jews who heard His answer were perplexed.  Many in the world today would be just as confused!  What did Jesus mean?  A couple of chapters later, (Matthew 16: 1-4) once again Jesus is asked for a sign.  And again Jesus refers them back to Jonah 1: 17 “And the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah.  And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.”

Later in the same sixteenth chapter, Jesus explains to his disciples just what must happen.  In Matthew 16: 21 we read: “From that time on  Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised.”  Here we see a little more laid out for our understanding in faith.  Just as in the case of Jonah and the Fish, there is going to be an unexpected miracle!  Just as Jonah was delivered from certain death, so too will Jesus be delivered alive from a certain grave.

Of course, Jonah's was not the only example.  John reports another comparison in (John 2: 19-21). “Jesus answered them, ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’  The Jews then said, ‘It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?’  But he was speaking about the temple of his body.  When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.”

The Germans have a little proverb that I learned in college:  "Nacher is jeder klug!"  In our language it means: "Afterwards, everyone is smart."  John reports that it was only after Jesus’ resurrection that even His disciples remembered what Jesus had foretold.  This was not the reaction that Matthew reported when the disciples were first told what had to happen before Jesus could be raised up on the third day.  In Matthew Sixteen, Peter had taken Jesus aside and argued against such a course!  Peter was strongly rebuked and all of the disciples challenged.  It is not for Peter or any of the Lord’s followers to mind the Lord’s business!  They are to follow, just as we are called to follow in our time. Neither the disciples nor the Jews understood this sign of Jonah before the coming event. 

Very many of the commentators still do not understand the sign of Jonah even today.  The unbelief of the worldly is expected as we see in several related passages which refer to the resurrection.  Luke expands our view of Jonah’s sign in his discourse about the rich man who had died and wanted to send Lazarus back from the dead to warn his brothers.  Luke 16: 31 “[Abraham] said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.” The Priests and Pharisees did not listen, even when they were given the sign of Jonah.  In fact, these leaders went out of their way to keep that sign from even happening.  Matthew reports in our text for today, that with the blessing of Pilate – the Jewish leaders made the tomb of Christ as secure as they could with armed guards.  And as we well know from Matthew 28: 11-15 they even bribed the guards to lie about the real nature of the events that took place.  We only know of this by probable relatives of Paul or others who worked on the inside of the Jewish institutions until they became fully convinced of the truth of the Gospel in Christ.

Mere humans attempted to stay the will of God.  And how pathetic, only Jesus/ enemies appear concerned with the possibility of His resurrection!  But, we should not be too harsh.  We live in the afterwards of and the disciples had not our advantage.  Yes, to the disciples, Good Friday was a dark day.  Our Lord Jesus Christ was sentenced early that Friday morning.  About nine o’clock he was hung on the cross.  He suffered for six hours and died about three in the afternoon.  Since the Jewish Sabbath was to begin at six o’clock, the body was quickly taken down and buried in a borrowed tomb.  All was said and done.  If we were indeed there on that Friday long ago, to all appearances, the tale of the Christ would have ended.  We, like the disciples, Mary and the others would have to wait for the sign of Jonah to be fulfilled.  They would wait a long time; if the Sanhedrin’s military watch had had its way!  “Make [the tomb] as secure as you can,” Pilate had ordered.  So watch after watch, the countdown began, the world watched, even as the disciples grieved.  Three days and three nights in the depths of the earth - the worldly still watch and question!

Once I was asked in Seminary how Jesus could spend three days and three nights in the tomb between Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday?  A worldly professor had questioned the sign of Jonah.  To him and his toadies, an obvious flaw in the Scriptures was gleefully found.  After all, my questioner pointed out, if Christ is really God and Scripture is really true, than all must be fulfilled exactly.  The world is hoping that the risen Christ can still be undercut by careful watching.  After all, if popular authors can cast doubt through works of fiction and fable, the resurrection can be and regularly is ignored.  Not only is the truth of the book of Jonah not accepted, neither is the Sign of Jonah.  The actual resurrection is considered by many to be only mythically true and not historically true.

The world still seeks signs.  Of course those of us who claim Jesus Christ as Lord of our lives realize that when He specified that He would be three days and three nights in the earth, he was saying plainly that death’s claim on Him had a limit.  His word was a promise that He would break the chains of death and rise in resurrection power on the third day.  But more than just history is at stake here.  Paul writes these words in a letter to the Corinthians:  (1 Corinthians 15: 14-22) “And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised.  For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised.  And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.  Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.  If in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.  But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead.  For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.”

Conclusion:  If we are to have any hope of glory, any hope of salvation, it is in the fulfillment of the sign of Jonah.  Three days and three nights in the tomb the sacred reports tells us, but the world still wonders.  When I was confronted in Seminary about three full days, all I could mumble was Friday, Saturday and Sunday.  But, the accuser pointed out that was only two nights.  At that time, it was my faith that God’s word was true and the known character of the accuser that kept me safe from doubt.  Since then, I have read of several possible answers to that unbeliever’s question about Jonah’s sign.  But, you know, I would think, that like the Pharisees and leaders of Jesus’ own time, none of these would have been sufficient for my questioner.

Eight years ago I would have argued that the fulfillment of Jonah’s sign is documented outside of the promise of God’s Word.  The argument would have gone something like this: “Much information has been lost to the Church of the exact chronology of the first Holy Week.  But, there are three possibilities for the actual fulfillment of that sign.”

My understanding was informed from “significant evidence that the Jewish calendar may have inserted a leap year day at Passover time.  By this explanation, there would then have been two Sabbaths in that first Holy Week.  26 AD, would be the most likely year for these events to have happened literally as Matthew points out in 28:1”:  My Interlinear Greek & English text translates literally:  “But late of [the] Sabbaths, at the dawning on toward one of [the] Sabbaths, came Mary the Magdalene and the other Mary to view the grave.”

While there is still some confusion as to the use and context of the plural form of “Sabbaths” here, Professors Albright & Mann, writing in 1971 declare:  “It is hard to understand the opening phrase in this verse as meaning other than ‘as the sabbath ended,’ or ‘when it had ended.’  In context Matthew goes on to describe events which belong in all the traditions to Sunday morning.  Thus, the next clause towards dawn must be understood as meaning ‘when the Sabbath had already passed into the next day.”

Commentator Allen, writing in 1913 observes:  “It is, however, very difficult to believe that ‘late of [the] Sabbaths, at the dawning on toward one of [the] Sabbaths’ can mean anything else than either ‘as the Sabbath ended,’ or ‘when it had ended,’ i.e. ‘on the evening after the Sabbath had drawn to a close,’ which is exactly what the parallel phrase in Mark means.”

Calvin too weighs in, writing in the 16^th Century:  Concerning Mark 16:1 he writes: ‘And when the Sabbath was past.’ The meaning is the same as in Matthew, ‘In the evening, which began to dawn towards the first day of the Sabbaths, and in Luke, on the first day of the Sabbaths.’ For while we know that the Jews began to reckon their day from the commencement of the preceding night, everybody understands, that when the Sabbath was past, the women resolved among themselves to visit the sepulcher, so as to come there before the dawn of day. The two Evangelists give the name of ‘the first day of the Sabbaths,’ to that which came first in order between two Sabbaths.

Today, I am less sure of that explanation whereby we can make something more of the plural “Sabbaths” that are clearly in the Greek texts.  However, there is a second explanation that some commentators sense that in the jumble of holy week chronology, the crucifixion may have actually occurred on Thursday, thus fulfilling exactly the three days and three nights in the tomb.  There are of course other variants – several people have emailed me their favorite opinions in response to an earlier version of this sermon posted on the web.

These varied and assorted arguments are seemingly allowed in Albright & Mann’s commentary of thirty-some years ago:  “The proliferation of recent studies on the calendar, both sectarian and orthodox, prompts us to add a note of caution here.  The Greek phrase which we have translated the first day of the week and which is found in all four gospels is not as obvious an indication of a particular ‘day’ of a ‘week’ as the English suggests … the notes of time in our gospels concerning the resurrection, together with the confused chronology of Holy Week, make it hazardous to say with any confidence whether the evangelists wished us to understand Saturday or Sunday at this point.”

Certainly, we must all agree to the veracity of the scriptural reports even when we are not given as much information as we would like to have!  However, we are told enough to engage our faith whenever it is informed by the power of the Holy Spirit.  There remains a third and common theory of understanding the third day:  many commentators and the Church at large interpret the Jewish idiom of the first century to allow a portion of a day to represent a whole day.  Thus, my response in Seminary of Friday, Saturday and Sunday is the usual and still the best understanding.  This is where I am again today, after all of those years – I have decided that I really don’t need to understand all of the details to believe that God the Father raised His only Son Jesus Christ from the dead. 

After all, when the two crowds on Palm Sunday greeted Jesus and welcomed Him as their Messiah – we have to remember that the crowd coming into Jerusalem had just seen or heard that Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead.  That was what all the excitement was about.  Clearly Jesus had the power as the scriptures report and either we take His words and witness as face value: that He is the Son of God, or he was a charlatan or a madman.  At least we within the Church have known Him as Lord and King:  God with us!  And when it comes down to all of the worldly evidence or to the perceived clarity of the biblical texts – it is still by faith that we come to believe and know that on the Third Day Jesus Christ was raised from the dead!  Will you believe it or no?

- - - - Christ Covenant Reformed  (PCA)   01 April 88 & 07 April 96 - - - -

RESOURCES USED

Albright & Mann.  The Anchor Bible: Matthew.
Allen, Willoughby C.  The International Critical Commentary on the Gospel According to S. Matthew.
Hollowell, Kelly.  “Scientific Integrity & the Gospel of Christ,” WorldNet Daily. (10 April 04)
Lindsell, Harold.  “After 3 Days & 3 Nights,” Christianity Today. (01 April 77)
Marshall, Alfred.  The Interlinear NASB-NIV Parallel New Testament in Greek & English.
Tasker, RVG.  Tyndale New Testament Commentaries:  The Gospel According to St Matthew.
Good News Publishers       The Holy Bible: English Standard Version.

(Historic Background Only)
Barclay, William.  The Daily Study Bible: The Gospel of Matthew  2.

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