Dennis Tuuri

We’ll be looking at several texts of scripture today in a survey fashion, but we’ll begin with Malachi 3:18–4:4, the central verse of which is relating to the resurrection, the rising of the sun of righteousness. This particular section of text is on your handouts for today. So if you want to read along at those, great. If you just want to listen, fine, or turn in your Bibles to Malachi 3:18, please stand.

Then once more you shall see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between one who serves God and one who does not serve him. For behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble. The day that is coming shall set them ablaze, says the Lord of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch. But for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall, and you shall tread down the wicked, for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet on the day when I act, says the Lord of hosts. Remember the law of my servant Moses, the statutes and rules that I commanded him at Horeb for all Israel.

Let’s pray. Lord God, we thank you that the sun of righteousness has indeed risen with healing in his wings. Help us, Father, to rejoice in the brand new world that he has brought into being through Jesus Christ, our Savior and King. We pray for the sake of his kingdom, not ours. Amen. Please be seated.

We began this Lenten season. For the last seven weeks, we have been reflecting upon the need to turn back to the one who strikes us because of our sins and who has promised to heal us as we return to him. Our key verse for the last seven weeks has been Isaiah 19:22: The Lord will strike Egypt. He will strike and heal it. They will return to the Lord and he will be entreated by them and heal them. And you’ll remember, if you were here seven weeks ago when we talked about this text, that the remarkable thing is that it goes on to talk about both Egypt and Assyria as “my people” and “the work of my hands.” God has made it known from long before the coming of Jesus Christ that when the Savior comes to bring healing, he’ll bring it to the whole world, not just to Israel, but to Egypt and to Assyria as well.

In fact, one of Israel’s primary sins was a failure to take the gospel of the coming Savior of the world to all the nations and instead become exclusivist about it. So we’ve thought about this and we’re actually more like Egypt in a sense than we are Israel, being not of ethnic Israel or of the people of Abraham. Now we’re united into the promise of Abraham, of course, but there’s a real sense in which the Gentiles are akin to Egypt and God says that Egypt will be healed as they cry out to him for their sins. And so we’ve thought about that the last six or seven weeks and returning to God and what that looks like.

To those who are going to be healed, the text that I just read from today is of course key to that prophecy. That healing will come to those who have been stricken. God will hear them as they cry out to him and heal them. And he’ll do this because of what we celebrate today, the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. For you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings. And so we’ll look at that text in a couple of minutes, put it in its context and think about its application to us.

Before we move on to Matthew 27 and 28 to see the implications of this healing for the whole world, for Egypt and Assyria as well as Israel, we’ll pause for a brief time in various gospel accounts of the woman with a discharge of blood healed by our Savior. And then after we look at that text, we’ll move on to Matthew 28. And I’ve got it listed at the top of your notes for today. Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” And we’ll look at that in part because it helps us to understand the two earthquakes.

We had an earthquake here Friday night at the Good Friday service and we had one this morning and those two earthquakes are recorded in Matthew 27 and 28 and they culminate in the Great Commission. So the Great Commission is this picture that the sun of righteousness has indeed been raised up from the dead. He’s risen and the sun illuminates the entire world. And so Jesus is the change that he brings is to the entire world.

So the basic message for today is a whole new world, a brand new world. Put it the way you want. I remember years ago at one of our family camps, we always have talent night and Jim B. Jordan, it might have been his first or second time out with us and he’s a real fun guy to be around. And one of our teenagers, I think she was a teenager, Becky Garrett, actually Jim went up to her and said that for talent night she ought to stand on her head and sing “A Whole New World.” There was a song back then. Well, that’s really germane to this. The sun of righteousness rises with healing in his wings to affect a whole new world. And we’ll be amazed, I think I was when I looked at the structure of Matthew 27 and 28. That is such a beautiful picture of the whole new world that has come to pass because of what we celebrate today, the resurrection of our Savior.

You know, I have one of my sons. I named him Elijah. Christine and I did and his middle name is Jason because it was in Jason’s house it’s recorded in the book of Acts. Jason was a disciple and the Romans came after them there and the Jews did because they were preaching another King, another Caesar and they were turning the world upside down. A whole new world—standing on our heads. What happened with the fall of Adam was the world went inverse, things went bad. And what happens with the coming of Jesus and the resurrection is the world is flipped and God puts it to right again. He actually does give us a whole new world. So we’ll look at that today and we’ll do that first by looking at the Malachi text. Then by looking at the healing of the woman as a fulfillment to the nation of Israel and then we’ll look at Matthew 27 and 28, the two earthquakes and how this whole new world has been affected not just for the Jews but for all of mankind and that’s what we celebrate.

All right, let’s first talk a couple of minutes about the text from Malachi 4. And again, if you have the handout for today—and you really should, particularly when we get to Matthew 27–28, it’ll be kind of hard to see what we’re looking at if you don’t have that—but if you have those, pull it out and you’ll see that I have this little structure of the text that I just read from. And what I did was I kind of broke out the middle section speaking about the day of the Lord. And then I kind of put around it its bookend verses as sort of the beginning and end.

And what we find is if we start before the day coming in verse 18, the problem with the world as it exists before the resurrection of Christ is you can’t tell the good guys from the bad guys. It’s hard to distinguish at this point in Israel’s history when Malachi wrote and it’s kind of hard to distinguish today I think. You know, we live in a post-Christian world and there’s a lot of post-Christian ethic, a Christian ethic that exists still in a post-Christian world and it’s hard to make distinctions. And in fact the church today almost completely doesn’t want to do that and what it wants to say is that the gospel is all good news for every last person. But if we look at the text of Malachi, we see that’s not true. There’s a distinction that will be made when Jesus Christ comes.

And while we usually quote the center of the next few verses—that the sun of righteousness is risen with healing in his wings—we don’t look at the context. You know, we like to sing that verse of the song, but there are other verses as well. And what do these verses tell us?

The next few verses I’ve laid out in a sevenfold creation pattern with the sun at the very center and around the sun are promises to those who are Christ’s. You remember the third and fifth days are vegetation and then the things that are the teeming things on the world. And so the beginning of filling the world happens on the third day and then it really starts to get filled on the fifth day and ultimately the world is filled with God’s people. They’re the ones who inherit the earth. The meek shall inherit the earth. And so around the central section about the sun rising with healing in its wings, we have this wonderful depiction of the good news that is to his people.

You who fear my name, the sun rises, you shall go out leaping like calves from the stall. So that’s what we do Easter morning, Resurrection Sunday. It’s a time of great joy. The Lord is risen. He is risen indeed because the sun of righteousness has indeed arisen with healing in its wings. And so we see that great blessing promised to those who fear God, who worship him, and those who serve God are the ones that the sun of righteousness has risen upon with healing.

By the way, that word wing there is literally wing. It is used first in the scriptures when it talks about winged birds that have wings in the description of different animals in Leviticus. And you’ll remember when we talked about garments and the tassel, the garments from the case laws in Deuteronomy—that in this particular period of time when people wore robes, the robes had four corners. And those corners were referred to as wings, the wings of the garment. And so the sun has wings. You could say rays, but really the biblical term here is wings. And that’ll become important when we look at one of the fulfillments of this in the gospel account of the healing of the woman.

But the sun rises with healing in its wings. And so we have this wonderful portrayal of a movement from being stricken and being death-like. And now the sun arises and we’re represented by the floral arrangements and stuff here are those who have come to life because of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. He has healed us. And that healing is portrayed for us visually here and here in Malachi 4, it’s portrayed as a result of the coming of the sun of righteousness.

But it isn’t just that. It isn’t just an effect upon those who are his. On either side of the descriptions of the ones who serve him and that go forth with joy is a discussion of what happens to the bad people. The day which begins in the first—you know, the day—God creates light and on the second day of creation God makes a distinction between the good and the bad, between those that are passed over and those that are destroyed. And indeed, in the second part of Malachi chapter 4, we see this same thing. The day comes not with creating joy and healing for everyone, but because for some people it comes like an oven.

The arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble. They’ll be completely burned up. And matching that down in verse three, the sixth section, “and you shall tread upon the wicked, for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet.” So the resurrection of Jesus Christ brings healing to the world and to his people, those that fear him and love him and it brings joy to them, but it brings destruction to the wicked.

I’ve talked about this before, but the movie Grand Torino has that wonderful scene at the end where Clint Eastwood will give himself, you know, for the girl representing, you know, the church, I suppose, as we’ll see in a couple of minutes, another woman who does that. A girl he’s saving by his own death is also the destruction of the evildoers who would bring persecution to her. And at the end of that movie, he stands there and he knows they’re going to kill him. That’s what his whole thing is. He’s going to give up his life. But before he does it, he does this typical thing before he takes somebody out because what he’s going to do by his death is to take out the wicked and they’ll then be sent off to prison, yada yada in terms of the movie.

But here it’s the same thing. When Jesus rises from the dead, it is the prosecution of those who won’t bow the knee to him and who want to be manipulative and hurt people and kill people etc. for no good reason. And it is strength and empowerment to his people, to the church. They’ll rule the world. Now they’ll rule it differently as we’ll see in a couple of minutes. But that’s what this sun of righteousness rising is. That’s the rest of the story: yes, it brings joy to the righteous, but it brings judgment to those who refuse to bow the knee to Jesus. And actually the people of God, you are the ones who tread those people underfoot.

Now, we’ll see how that’s done at the end of the sermon, but that’s what it says is going to happen here. And then the distinguishing factor is reminded us of at the end, “Remember the law of my servant.” Remember the law of my servant. Keeping the law of God, being faithful covenantally to him is how all this is brought to pass.

So God brings healing. He brings it through the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, pictured in Malachi 4 as the rising of the sun of righteousness bringing justice making the world right again which is the Lord Jesus Christ and he’s got healing in his wings. Now that healing in his wings—you know, the most direct reference perhaps that commentators have said we have to that is a story recorded in all three of the synoptic gospels and this is the story of the healing of ultimately I think Israel but a healing of a woman who had a discharge of blood for twelve years and on your handouts this is the second set of texts that I’ve given you and I’m not sure I’ve listed all three gospel references here and I want to start talking about this text.

This is the healing of the woman. The sun is risen with healing in his wings and this woman is the woman who when Jesus has a whole crowd around him, he’s on his way to heal somebody’s daughter, to raise her from the dead. This woman touches the garment of Jesus. But one of the synoptic gospels tells us explicitly that she touches the edge, the border, what’s referred to in Deuteronomy as the wing of his garment. So here’s the incarnate Lord Jesus Christ walking around in a robe and she touches the wing of that robe and she’s healed. She’s healed after having twelve years of a discharge of blood. She’s paid all the money she’s got and it’s not getting better.

And in fact, the synoptics tells us it’s getting worse, her condition. She does it in spite of suffering much at the hands of many physicians. This text tells us that’s what happened to her. It’s a very moving story of a woman who suffered twelve years of illness, continual bleeding, who’s suffered from her uncleanness.

You have to understand that a discharge of blood creates one unclean in this context of the people of God, Israel. I’m not sure it did for the Gentiles, but for Israel, it did. And because this discharge of blood is like a perpetual death, so she’s symbolically dead and she’s ostracized because she’s unclean. And what the scriptures say is that when you’re unclean, if you touch somebody that’s clean, you’ve made them unclean. So nobody wants to be around her, she’s an untouchable. ‘Cause if you come in contact with her, you’ll get unclean.

Now, uncleanness wasn’t sin. Uncleanness was the effect of the fall. It shows the effects of sin that death is rolling through the world now, right? The world is upside down. The world needs to be healed. The world has a death flowing throughout it. Unclean just flows out from touch and contact and uncleanness is a picture of the death that results from sin. It doesn’t mean she’s sinned. So it isn’t that so much. Although, you know how it is. You know, if you’ve got somebody that seems kind of leprous or you know has a problem, a physical problem, you know what you start thinking immediately, even though you know you shouldn’t, there’s something wrong with that person.

So put yourself in her shoes. I can do this a little tiny bit. I’ve had seven weeks of an eye situation that just waters, waters, waters. I didn’t think about it till a couple of days after last week’s sermon. I talked about God wiping away every tear. And then I realized I’ve had tears for seven or eight weeks straight now since March 1st when they scraped this cornea. Let me tell you something: nothing compared to what I was going through last year. And if you want to know more, you can talk to me about it later. But I’m praising God that this is basically as much suffering as I’ve had to do this season.

But in any event, I sort of a little bit with you always or I have other health conditions. And you know what it’s like? This woman twelve years suffering at the hands of physicians, wasting all of her money. No physician can heal her. And here comes Jesus and she touches his garment. She has that much faith. And I don’t know if she was thinking specifically of the sun of righteousness with healing in his wing and in his robe or not, but that’s what she does. And she believes it will heal. And it does.

She immediately senses that the hemorrhaging has stopped. It’s dried up and she’s healed. Jesus says, “Well, what? Hey, who touched me?” And they say, “Well, there’s all kinds of people touching you, master.” The disciples do. No, no, somebody touched me. And power went out and you know, he’s indicating that they were healed. She comes to him trembling with fear and shaking and says, “Yes, I touched you.” Now, see, she’s not supposed to be touching people. She’s supposed to be a transporter of uncleanness, right? But when the sun comes with healing in his wings, God wants us to see that in from one perspective, we’re all unclean. We’re all manifesting the fall.

And what’s going to happen is the sun of righteousness has brought about a whole new world. Uncleanness doesn’t leap from person to person through touch. He doesn’t become unclean. What happens? She becomes clean. The hemorrhaging stops. She’s clean, ceremonially clean. And she’s clean in terms of being healed from her disease. And the flow of blood is certainly a sign of death. And she’s not only ceremonially clean, she’s cleansed now. She’s reversed the symbology of death. Now she’s got life again. And the text tells us that her well of blood is what it actually says, has stopped when he touches her. And I think that we can infer some ability now for childbearing.

But in any event, do you see how a whole new world has arrived since the fall of Adam? Uncleanness is being pictured when the book of Leviticus is written as coming out and flowing. Death flows. Death goes from man to man. All sons of Adam and Eve are dead. All women born are essentially dead. Why is there so much barrenness in the Old Testament? Because the world needs to be healed. The world has been stricken because of its sin, of its forebears, Adam and Eve, and it needs healing. And here comes Jesus. And this fulfillment of Malachi 4 is a beautiful picture of the healing that the sun of righteousness has in his wings for the world.

Now, she’s more than just an individual. She’s that and we don’t want to miss that. You know, the gospel stories are wonderful pictures that bring hope to us that Jesus heals us and understands us, our state, and has compassion. And in a sense, even if we’re not physically healed, it makes everything better. It really does. I read these stories and they give me great hope for my situation. I know that the only way I’m getting a new body is the old body goes away and so it’s okay.

So certainly there’s an individual thing but there’s a corporate thing here as well. The story of the healing of this woman is in the middle of a bigger story. What’s happening is Jairus, a ruler of the synagogue. The texts tell us in the gospel accounts comes to Jesus and says I got a little daughter. She’s dying, near death. Jesus says okay let’s go. So he starts going. Crowd comes around and then this situation with a woman who has been bleeding for twelve years happens and Jesus, by the way, calls her daughter. This is unusual in Matthew. It only happens a couple of times—two times he calls her daughter. So she, in terms of the story in the gospel, she’s related to this daughter of Jairus. He got two daughters going on.

And after he heals her, he goes on and then he heals this daughter. And we find out from the gospels this daughter is twelve years old. So you got a twelve-year-old daughter of a ruler of the synagogue and she’s not just ceremonially dead like the woman is. She’s dead. Now, he says she’s sleeping because death is not death ultimately the way they’re thinking about death, but she’s dead physically and he’s going to bring her back to life by touch. He touches her. And the same thing with the woman who’s been bleeding. She touches him. Touch is what does it.

Okay, we could talk a lot about that. The need to touch people, the need to get out there in people’s lives to, you know, interact and not be, you know, isolated from people. We could talk about being missional as is related to this. But in any event, the stories are deeply bound together. It’s a double miracle essentially. It’s put together this way. And it’s put together because it gives us, I think, ultimately a picture of a partial fulfillment of Malachi 4:2.

The sun of righteousness has risen with healing in his wings for Israel. Israel is dead. She’s called to be the people of life here. We’ve got, you know, relate two Jewish women, both referred to as daughters, and one of them’s the daughter of a ruler of the synagogue. They both have twelve in reference to their story. Twelve is the number of the twelve tribes, and it’s the number of Israel, indicating Israel. And this is these are Jewish people. So I think what we have here is a partial fulfillment with the coming of Jesus. He’s come to bring healing in his wings and to reverse the effects of the fall with death and imagery of death and uncleanness. He’s come to get away with that, get rid of that stuff in terms of the nation of Israel. He’s called to bring Israel back to life.

And if we look carefully at the healings, the miracles of Jesus in the Gospels, most of them are directly related to conditions of uncleanness listed for us in Leviticus. He’s restoring his people. He’s bringing a people oppressed who by horrible rulers, bad physicians, right? She, the physicians won’t help her. She’s getting worse. They’ve got bad physicians. And now the great Physician has come with healing in his wings. And he brings the reversal of ceremonial uncleanness, the reversal of death itself.

And now everything’s different. Death doesn’t flow. Uncleanness doesn’t flow. Touch with him, the source of all life, means cleanness flows. Life is flowing forth from the Lord Jesus Christ. So Jesus has risen with healing in his things. And we see an implication of that in these two stories of two daughters of Israel essentially being restored and blessed by the coming of Jesus.

But we see a bigger picture because after all, you know, it’s too light a thing for God to give Jesus just as the one who’ll bring Israel back to life. Israel was to be the nation priest to the whole world. And Jesus’s mission is to bring the whole world to life. The sun doesn’t just shine over one country or one people. The sun of righteousness has risen and he rises over the entire world and that world is the total subject of what Jesus Christ will bring healing to which takes us to Matthew 27:27 to 28:20.

So now you can turn the page if you have your notes and we can look at this last set of verses and see the ultimate fulfillment for this. Now, I’ve got the text laid out for you there. This is not my outline. I got this off of Peter Leithart’s website. So this is Peter’s, but Peter actually gives most of the credit to it to Toby Sumpter, who pastors with Peter at Trinity in Moscow, Idaho. So I’ll be talking to Toby tomorrow on the phone. I’m going to thank him for this outline, but I think it’s pretty good. It’s not, you know, the sort of tight chiastic matching stuff that I tend to do and my wife tends to do. It’s a little more thematic and topical, but I think it’s good and I think it gets a lot of things right here in helping us to understand a very big picture that goes on here.

And what I want to do is I’m going to leave the closing sections. I’m going to actually start at the middle and give you just a little bit of a picture. Oh, I pray Lord you keep me not from getting confused with all these papers in front of me that I can’t see really. And you can pray for me that way, too. But it should be easier for you. It’s smaller print. It’s all on one page. For me, I’ve got it in big print. So it’s on multiple sets of pages. Okay. At the very center then of the text, the way that Toby has outlined it is this statement of Mary Magdalene and the other Mary. Are there sitting opposite the tomb. And so that would be a fun verse to preach a whole sermon on. Mary and Mary Magdalene sitting opposite the tomb.

And then around this are a couple of texts that involve Pilate. And in the first one, Joseph of Arimathea—this is in verse starting in verse 57—the F sections of the text—Joseph of Arimathea asks Pilate for the body so he can bury him. And then in the matching F prime section in verse 62, again there’s people asking Pilate for something and in this case Pilate is being asked to set a guard over the tomb of Jesus.

So this request of Pilate is on either side: Joseph of Arimathea and then the soldiers and the chief priests by the way conspiring with them. These are really those physicians that not only take up all the money of the people and don’t make them any better but they make them worse. And that’s who these men are here that we see. And so they’re on either side of the very center are the soldiers and Pilate. And on the other hand, the contrast with that is the disciple of Jesus, Joseph of Arimathea.

Now either side of that, we have another reference to women at the tomb. The E sections—like the center section has a description of Mary Magdalene and Mary. So both sides to that in verse 1 of chapter 28 and verse 55 of 27 or verse 56 actually. So right at the very center there’s some pretty easy matchings to see. You know you got Mary Magdalene and Mary opposite the tomb at the center and then you got people asking Pilate for stuff on either side and then on either side of that you got another specific reference to Mary Magdalene and Mary. So that’s a very tight little section that seems pretty clear that’s a center of something before us here.

And so I think that it makes it kind of easy to see that what we have here really is a thematic flow of something that’ll be quite interesting for us.

Now, I was looking at this text, as I said at the beginning of the sermon to talk about the two earthquakes. You know, why do we have an earthquake on Good Friday and another earthquake this morning on Easter Sunday or Resurrection Sunday? And the answer is because that’s what happened. The answer is that here in Matthew 27 and 28, we have the record of two earthquakes. So and these are the next two matching sections, the D and the D prime section are earthquake sections, and they’re interesting in and of themselves, of course. But just notice that they’re a match because they discuss these two different earthquakes.

The first earthquake happens at the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. And while we don’t have a lot of time to talk about it, I wanted to mention a couple of specific things about that. But as I feared would happen, I’ve lost one of my pieces of paper. Give me just a minute. There’s B. There’s C. And sure enough, there’s my missing D. Okay, so the first earthquake is recorded in verse 51 and if you saw Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ you saw a pretty good depiction of this I think.

So we read in verse 51 that the curtain of the temple was torn from top to bottom and the earth shook and the rocks were split and then people come out of their tombs and then down in verse 54 it uses a specific word earthquake. So the soldiers then keeping watch over Jesus saw the earthquake and what took place. They said, “Surely this is the Son of God.” So we have an earthquake here and a couple of things happened and I want to just touch briefly upon them and then get to the matching earthquake, the great earthquake on the resurrection side of it.

So there’s an earthquake and then there’s a great earthquake and of course the great earthquake is the resurrection morning itself. Now people talk about the veil of the temple being rent in two from top to bottom and usually that’s shown as a sign that with the death of Jesus Christ entrance into the Holy of Holies is secure. Well, I’m okay with that. But I think because of the description, the rocks are being split and the ground is shaking, that what we’re to see is the Holy of Holies of course is the beating heart of the temple itself. And when the Holy of Holies represented by the curtain is split in two, I think we can legitimately look at that as the rending of the temple itself.

In Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ, when Jesus dies on the cross, there’s an earthquake that happens. The ground starts to split in two and it goes right into the temple, which you could see from that cross, by the way. It goes right into the temple and the temple kind of cracks and then the veil gets torn. Now, I think that’s kind of more the idea. The temple is a representation of the world. You know, the seventy bulls representing the seventy nations were slaughtered in the temple as sacrifices for the whole world.

The temple is a picture of the temple has corners. The altar representing the temple has four corners just like the world has four corners. There’s lots of associations between the temple and the earth. We’ve been looking at Exodus 25 through 40 and the beauty team meetings. And what’s interesting about it is if you know the last half of the book of Exodus, it’s duplicated. You know, God says, “Well, here’s what you do. Build this way. Build this way. Build this way.” And that goes on for a while. And then he says, “Okay, now the people built this way. Then they built this way, then they built this way.” It’s a doubling up. And the other place that should come to mind when that doubling up happens is in creation. God said, “Let there be light.” And there was light. And so in the creation account, there’s God saying this, and then it happens.

And in Exodus 25–40, God says, “Build the tabernacle and the temple this way.” And then it happens. It’s a new creation. That’s what the image of the temple is, I think. And what’s different about it is that rather than God doing it directly, he uses spirit-filled men. In Exodus 25–40, the spirit of God comes upon men to create this tabernacle and temple. So the spirit of men and of course what’s going to happen is the great spirit-filled man, Jesus Christ, will tear apart the old world and he’ll build the new world. Tear down this temple, his body, and the temple is also human form. It represents man. Tear that down and Jesus is going to raise it up. It’s a whole new world. That’s what’s happening in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

That’s why it’s an earthquake rather than just the veil being ripped in two and that’s it. No, it’s an earthquake because the earth’s foundations are shaking. It’s as if God ripped the earth in two and said, “I’m done with that.” And then creates a new one and there’s an earthquake with the creation of the new world.

So, I think that’s what ties these texts together. The death of the old world, the coming of the new world is the representation of these two earthquakes. And what God tells us is that the second earthquake never really stops. Hebrews says there’s a perpetual shaking that’s going on so that everything that can be shaken will be shaken and only what can’t be shaken will remain. And that’s the kingdom of God.

Now, the premise for healing in its wings is you’re a servant of Jesus. And what I said last week from Revelation 7, the premise of those great blessings is that you’re to those who serve him day and night 24/7 servants of God. Now, if you’re not serving Jesus 24/7, and I know none of us really do 24/7, but that’s the goal. But if to the extent that we’re not, we’re serving things that are going to be shaken and thrown away. They’re nothings. They’re idols, and idols really are nothings.

Focus your efforts, Jesus says, on the things that can’t be shaken because the earthquake continues. The new world has earthquake going on all the time, shaking out the echoes and characteristics of the old world. So I think that these two matching earthquakes describe for us the removal of the old world as represented by the temple and of course that will be done away with totally in AD 70. So there is this transition happening and then the great earthquake happens and that represents the coming of the new world.

One other thing you might wonder about—these saints coming out of their graves. In the Matthew 27 account, when the earthquake happens, saints who had fallen asleep were raised and coming out of their tombs after the resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many. It’s always an interesting thing and without spending a lot of time on it, I think this is pretty clearly a fulfillment of the prophecy that God gave to Ezekiel. You remember the account of Ezekiel’s dry bones and there’s dry bones and then they stand up and they come to life and then God breathes his spirit into them and they start moving around and they’re renewed Israel, right? They’re Israel coming back to life, at first in the restoration from the exile, but ultimately here in this account in Ezekiel, we’re told, let me read from Ezekiel 37.

God says to me, “Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. Behold, they say, ‘Our bones are dried up and our hope is lost. We are indeed cut off.’ Therefore, prophesy and say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord God, behold, I will open your graves and raise you from your graves, O my people, and I will bring you into the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the Lord when I open your graves and raise you from your graves, O my people, and I’ll put my spirit within you.’” So, I think that’s what being fulfilled here. Again, it’s an image as the two healed women were. This is an image of Israel coming back to life. And so it starts with that, but then the great earthquake, the resurrection of Jesus Christ is its complement. And as we get to the end of the text today, we see that has implications not just for Israel, but for the whole world.

So those are the D sections, the matching earthquake sections. The C sections are the last and first words of Jesus. His last words are “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me” and then an undistinguished word Jesus cries out in verse 50 and matching that are his first words. We read in this particular account in the C prime section in verse 9: “Behold, Jesus met them the women and said greetings” and then he says “Don’t be afraid.”

The first words of Jesus in the new creation is greetings. Well, greetings is a bad translation I think. The word means rejoice. It isn’t “Hallelujah.” It’s “Chaire.” But it means boy, rejoice today. It doesn’t just mean, oh, how you doing? Jesus’s first words says that the new world is a time to rejoice. And then he says, “Don’t be afraid.” Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the spirit killer. So don’t be afraid. Those are the first words of Jesus, and they’re recorded for us here after that great earthquake that symbolizes the coming of the new world.

The B sections are these bad physicians. The B sections are the chief priests and the scribes and the elders and they’re mocking Jesus. Now, the soldiers had just mocked Jesus. So when the chief priests mocked Jesus, clearly, as Psalm 2 said, the people and the Romans and the Jewish nation would conspire together against Jesus. And the chief physicians, the chief priests, the elders are joining with the Roman soldiers in mocking the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, the other side of the resurrection or the other side of the crucifixion rather, they’re joining in a conspiracy to keep Jesus from being raised up. So, again, they’re with the Roman unbelieving soldiers in mocking and in trying to prevent the gospel, the good news, the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. Those are the bad guys.

Now, this brings us to the bookends of the section and the bookends of the section are in the A and the A prime section beginning at verse 27. The soldiers of the governor. Now the word governor here is a guy who has been given official responsibility from Caesar over a district. It’s a word of power and government. Obviously they took Jesus into the governor’s house. This is the place where great decisions are made. The commands go forth from the governor’s house. This is ruling authority of the representative of Caesar, in this case, Pilate. This is where that ruling authority dwells. And it isn’t just like a house. It’s like the place where commands go out from, okay, into all the world.

And they gathered the whole battalion before him, before Jesus. So Pilate gathers together. He’s the rule and authority of Caesar in the land. He from his call gathers together a battalion of men, big, burly Roman soldiers, mean, nasty, you know, headcrushing sort of fellows, and they’re gathered together and they mock Jesus and they give him a false set of rule and authority, right? They put a crown on his head and a scepter in his hand and a ruling robe on his shoulders and then they call him King of the Jews.

So, the first section is about Pilate gathering together in his authority and command, delegated from Caesar, people to put to death this Jesus and control history by doing that to keep peace with the Jews. Now, think of that as we see what happens in the matching section in chapter 28:16.

Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. Jesus gathers his people. Now, do you remember how he directed them? He used women. He told the women in this account, “Go tell my disciples to meet me at this specified mountain in Galilee.” He doesn’t give the royal announcement with the trumpets and stuff. He uses women unlike soldiers and the women are contrasted in this account with soldiers.

Jesus’s ways are different. The new world exists in a different manner totally than the old fallen world of power and corruption and conspiracy and brute force. That’s what the old world is. But now we have the picture of the brand new world, this side of the second earthquake, this side of the great earthquake where the new world is brought into being through his resurrection.

And when they saw him, they worshiped him. But some doubted. Oh well, this is interesting, too. This battalion aren’t a bunch of guys that get in line and command and no, they’re gathered by women speaking forth the words of Jesus. Come meet with the Savior. They’re not gathered to a house. They’re gathered to a mountaintop because Jesus is ruling from heaven, not from a praetorium, not from the house of the governor who’s going to send out authorities. He’s going to do rules and authorities, but he’s on a mountaintop because he’s representatively in heaven. That’s where Jesus is. The rule and authority comes from heaven, not from below, but from above. And they’re gathered there. And they’re gathered just like you are today. They’re gathered to worship him. And just like you today, there are doubters here. And if we were to tell the truth, if we were to really tell the truth to one another, we have a little bit of doubt, all of us, about things in life and what the Savior is doing and maybe even about whether we really are sure it’s true or not. There’s a little doubt, I think, in all of us. Don’t you think? We’re gathered together as very weak people before the Savior, those who worship him and love him and want to do what he wants us to do, but we’re also, some of us have quite a bit of doubt and probably all of us have a little doubt.

Now, that’s the contrast between Caesar’s men, his place in whom he’s called together through Pilate and Jesus Christ and his battalion gathered in front of him. And then he comes and he says to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” Oh, authority. Another power word, not the same as the power words about Pilate. This is a comprehensive specific authority that will be accomplished. But look at Jesus like Pilate. He’s a delegate, isn’t he? He’s been delegated authority. All of power and authority in heaven has been given to me by who? By the Father. So really in this case, the Father is more Caesar-like. And Jesus is the is the anti-Pilate. He’s the opposite of Pilate in the way this text is laid out.

The flow of the text, the arc of the text is from Pilate gathering strong big bullying sorts of guys. to carry out his orders as a battalion using raw force. And Jesus in the name and authority of Caesar, Jesus the Father has given him all authority in heaven and on earth. All authority, not these limited delegated authorities that Pilate had and all civil rulers in the world have. Jesus Christ says, “All authority has been given unto me.” Quite a contrast.

And because of that authority, I now commission you to go into all the world. That’s what he goes on to say. He says, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age.”

He doesn’t send us out with clubs. He doesn’t send us out with AK-47s. He doesn’t send us out with drones. He doesn’t send us out with nuclear suitcases. He sends us out with the word of the gospel, the good news that the sun of righteousness has risen with healing in his wings. Do you want to skip like calves out of a stall? Do you want to find springtime again and beauty and delight? We tell people, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ that he’s risen and the world has changed. It will never be the same again. It is a brand new world, not populated now in its ultimate sense, not controlled. The future isn’t controlled by battalions of Pilate’s men. The future now belongs to the Lord Jesus Christ and his people.

He gathers us together. And in the same way, he gathers us together today. The coloring picture today for the kids—I’m not sure this is the right picture of this is what was going on. But I liked it. I like this picture because there you’ve got Jesus talking to his people who are worshiping him. And you know this guy down here, he seems like he’s got some problems, difficulties, and doubts going on. That’s you and me. Is front of the order of worship today, too. And it’s the coloring page at the back of the thing. That’s who we are. And you need to hear today who you really are. You’re the battalion of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Jesus has been given all power and authority, and the world belongs to you. You will tread down the wicked. You will go like this, as Clint Eastwood did at the end of Grand Torino, against the wicked who refuse to repent, who don’t want to skip like calves would rather crush people’s skulls. We’re the ones who will actually end up crushing skulls, not through crushing them literally, but through the proclamation of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. And then God will take care of the acts of history to bring some people up and to take other people out.

We’re the new army of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is a brand new world. The world has been on its head for 4,000 years when Jesus comes. And now it’s righted and it is a brand new world. And the contrast couldn’t be more dark or more beautiful. This is the right way. Surely we look at Pilate and his torturous thugs and we look at Jesus gathering together a doubting people like he’s gathered us together today to tell us this is what the resurrection is. From now on, everything has changed. It’s a whole new world. All authority has been given unto me. This is the way it should be.

We’ll go out and we’ll slay the wicked with the sword not in our hands, but the sword that comes out of our mouth calling people to come to the Lord Jesus Christ to be healed and return to joy to honor the Lord Jesus Christ come to true freedom in him to skip like calves. That’s what the new world is about and God has commissioned you and he’s commissioned me today just like he did on that mountain in Galilee. We meet in the heavenly places to hear the good news of what the resurrection of Jesus Christ is all about: the sun of righteousness, justice, beauty, peace, and delight has risen with healing in his wings.

You are the wings as it were, the boundaries of the church of Jesus Christ to go forth and to heal this world through the proclamation of our Savior’s word, baptizing people and teaching them to observe all things that he has commanded us, seeing everything that we do 24/7 from a perspective of the instructions and commands of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the brand new world that we live in. Let’s give God thanks.

Lord God, we do bless your holy name for the beauty of this portrayal in Matthew 27 and 28 of the old world and the new. We bless your holy name for assuring us again today that we are your people living in that new world and all authority and power comes from the Lord Jesus Christ. Help us not to doubt. Strengthen us in our doubt. Remove it from us and may we skip like calves today released from the stall in Jesus’s name we ask it. Amen.