Lesson Four • Graves Opened
Patrick Bicknell
Have you ever read something that, after you read it, it made no sense, and then you read it again and it still made no sense? This happened to me all the time in high school, but particularly happens to me when I read this passage in Matthew chapter 27. Here we get the events that took place at the time of the death of Jesus. Matthew is giving us a beautifully detailed picture of how the death of Jesus happened and what subsequently followed in the world around Him. In verse 50, we see the final moments before Jesus dies as it says “And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit” (Matthew 27:50). As this happens, some incredible things take place, the veil is torn in two from top to bottom and the earth shakes as a great earthquake takes place. Then the interesting and confusing part of this text happens as the tombs were opened nearby, their bodies were raised, and at His resurrection, they went into the city and appeared to many people. How did all of this happen? I do not know but I think I can help talk through what this means.
Jesus’ death on the cross was the means by which these physical bodies were resurrected. Once Jesus cried out, “It is finished,’’(John 19:30) many bodies within these tombs were physically resurrected. Notice that Matthew makes it clear that these were bodies that were raised. I believe what our sovereign Lord was doing here was giving us a trailer for the future resurrection of God’s chosen people. In 1 Corinthians 15:20, we read, “But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Corinthians 15:20). Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection is the means that one day believers will have physically resurrected bodies and will spend all of eternity with our Lord. This confusing event is a foretaste of what we can expect when Jesus returns. What is amazing about these details is that God was essentially giving us a trailer of what is going to happen when Jesus comes back. We are going to be physically resurrected just as He was and just as the bodies of those saints who had fallen asleep. I am a person who does not like to watch movie trailers, I feel like too often they spoil the movie for me. However, this is a trailer that gives me hope, and one that I look forward to seeing when our Lord returns.