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MATTHEW 27:51b
(Reading: Ex.19:1-25; Mat.27:50-54)
The Violent Earthquake
Miracles at Calvary – No. 4
Congregation in our Lord Jesus Christ…
An earthquake isn’t really such a unique thing.
Having been brought up in and lived at various times on the shaky isles, as some call New Zealand, we got the odd tremor or two - or three or four!
We have even had the bigger quakes.
Napier city was devastated by one in the 1930’s.
And just recently Christchurch was even more devastated by a series of earthquakes, with one in particular decimating the Central Business District and coastal surburbs.
Here, on the eastern side of Australia, we’re on an earthquake plate as well.
Perhaps you too have experienced tremors.
The Middle East is also a similar geological area.
That is also part of one of those fiery rings, with volcanic activity, earthquakes, and so on.
The frequent earthquakes in Turkey show this.
So earthquakes weren’t anything the people of Jesus’ time didn’t know about.
They would have experienced them before.
But certainly not this way!
Because why did it happen now, and in this way?
Of all the times that an earthquake had to strike why at this time?
And why in this precise place?
You see, there has been so much happening around the death of Jesus.
There was that incredible darkness.
So heavily black you could feel it!
Then there was the loud voice.
No one had ever heard some one cry out with that much force after six hours on the cross.
At that moment also, the curtain tore from top to bottom.
A curtain of the most carefully constructed skill and strength.
It was less than fifty years old - while it was made to last for centuries!
And it was ripped clean!
It was split in a way that was right against natural wear and tear.
And that was with a power no ordinary man could have!
And now there was this!
Verse 51 ends by stating, “And the earth shook, and the rocks were split.”
A coincidence?
No way!
For as any detective will tell you when investigating a number of very unusual events that have happened in a period of a short time, “There are no such things as coincidences.”
Especially at this time, congregation!
Do you think we can dismiss anything out of the ordinary here?
Definitely not!
This is where our modern, rationalist age can blind us.
For in previous centuries people have been very quick to see something special in these kinds of happenings.
And you can go to parts of the world now where people will see a connection.
In our society, though, there’s a scientific explanation for everything.
And that blinds us.
We can begin to think the answer is in us.
And that’s something which this earthquake is definitely not telling us!
Congregation, our first aspect this morning is this:
THE EARTHQUAKE PROVES IT’S TRUE.
For a moment here, though, let’s consider how all those other pagan religions in the world see natural disasters, such as earthquakes.
What do they mean for them?
Well, it’s not good news, is it?
The gods are angry.
Somehow humans are not pleasing those powerful beings enough.
This is a punishment.
In our Christian faith, we know we could never do enough to please God.
The Lord reminds us of that often in His Word.
But He also tells us we will be accountable for whatever we do.
So there is a view amongst Christians that this earthquake represents judgment.
They say that God addresses the Jews in their own language.
They who looked for signs, as Paul tells us in 1st Corinthians chapter 1, got a sign alright!
The earthquake to them serves as a ‘woe’ which heralded an advent.
But an advent this time not of Jesus as the Saviour, but of Jesus as the Judge.
The difficulty with this view is that while it is true there is a coming judgment, and there are events which characterise that coming Day, this here is testifying to a different coming.
This is a miracle at the end of Christ’s first coming - not a catastrophe pointing to the beginning of His second coming.
We need to ask, instead, how this represents the saving work of our Lord.
And while you will find passages tying in earthquakes with judgment, particularly when Jesus speaks of the time before His second return, you will find even more passages, especially in the Old Testament, describing it as a covenant confirmation.
David pictures such a situation in Psalm 18.
When the Lord delivered him from the hand of all enemies, he used the scene of the earth shaking to show the power which delivered him.
The Lord God would keep His covenant with His own.
Isn’t that what we read in Exodus chapter 19?
When God came down on the Mount of Sinai, and gave Moses the First Word, there was darkness because of the dense cloud, and the whole mountain trembled violently.
The sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder.
Would we imagine, then, when God gives His Final Word, that He wouldn’t confirm it again in the same way?
He is there on the Mount after all!
The Church today so often forgets the Old Testament.
It is treated like a hiccup, an obstacle, or at best giving a few handy moral lessons.
But when the letter of Hebrews begins with the words, “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our forefathers by the prophets” it means there’s a line right through to the Messiah.
What’s happening is nothing new.
The Jews had to see that line.
This is why Matthew wrote about the earthquake.
Congregation, think of the Bereans in Acts 17:11.
They searched intently through their scriptures when the apostle Paul preached to them.
And those scriptures were only the Old Testament.
But what a testament!
Because that’s why the author to the Hebrews goes on to say, “but in these last days he - God - has spoken to us by his Son”!
We read the same in 2nd Peter 1 verse 19.
There the apostle says, “we have the word of the prophets made more certain, and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.”
THE EARTHQUAKE PROVES IT IS TRUE.
The word of the covenant laid before the people at Mount Sinai was fulfilled in the One on the cross at the Mount of Calvary.
He was the man greater than Moses.
He was not to be left outside the Promised Land, but He went all the way in.
The Majesty is on the Mount.
In the further words of Hebrews 1, in verse 3, “The Son “…is the radiance of the glory of God’s and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by his word of his power.”
This is no coincidence.
THE EARTHQUAKE PROVES IT’S TRUE.
And so secondly we note … THE ROCKS SPLITTING CONFIRMS IT TOO.
Seismologically speaking, there are tremors occurring all the time.
The real worry is that big one.
And it’s certainly coming.
We saw that vividly in Japan some years ago!
That was a 9 on the Richter scale!
And how many didn’t perish as a result of that – not to begin counting the huge property damage bill!
Congregation, that’s the kind of quake that splits rocks.
For a tremor will move them round a little.
But to actually split rocks takes a very powerful force.
It’s interesting, then, that the words for “shook” and “split” in our text are passive in the original Greek.
So this is something which is done to the earth and to the rocks.
And the One who does it to them is certainly no mere man!
This is no early experimentation in underground explosions!
The rocks split because they have to.
Some see this as the fulfilment of what Jesus said in Luke 19:40.
In reply to the Pharisees who were condemning the disciples for praising Him, Jesus said there, “I tell you, if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.”
But while these stones are now crying out their confirmation it’s not because the disciples weren’t any longer praising Him.
And that was even though at this point most of them had deserted Him.
There is a connection, however, because any genuine response to God’s grace in Jesus Christ cannot be stopped.
It will come out.
Nothing can stop the effects of the great victory Christ has won.
The “Amen” will be sung!
In the words of the apostle Paul in 2nd Corinthians 1:20, “For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ.
“And so through him the “Amen” is spoken by us to the glory of God.”
Congregation, as a biblical miracle the earth shaking and the rocks splitting is tied in with what Jesus Christ is doing.
There is this sign because the great Sign Himself is right there!
It’s a sign exactly because it’s pointing to what is happening to Him right there and then.
And you know what He’s there for!
Then it comes home to us all.
None of us can get away from who this miracle is for.
Each one of us is asked this: Are the shock waves hitting you?
You know they ought to!
You know they won’t skip past you!
These are not little tremors - this shakes your whole life through and through!
Look at a few verses further down.
Verse 54 leaves us in no doubt the way this has to strike human hearts.
As Matthew writes there, “When the centurion and those with him, keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake, and what took place, they were filled with awe and said, ‘Truly this was the Son of God!’”
The power that splits even the hardest rocks is shocking them, too.
They can’t get away from it.
This miracle is a true miracle - because it’s got the message!
The Gospel is being shouted out!
And they’re hearing it - loud and clear!
The hardest rocks of all - their hearts - are being broken!
Congregation, with this covenant confirmation, God’s people should be in no doubt.
The Lord Himself has come down.
And now through His doing and dying His people are empowered to break through.
While under the old covenant no one except Moses and Aaron could force their way up to the Lord, now He himself opens the way for us all to come through.
There’s nothing holding us back because it’s Christ’s Spirit in us.
There’s a story further on in the New Testament which shows this.
It’s the account Luke writes, in Acts 16, of Paul and Silas in prison in Philippi.
In the verses 25 and 26 there we read, “About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them.
“Suddenly there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken.
“At once all the prison doors flew open, and everybody’s chains came loose.”
You see, what for any one else is a disaster becomes the believer’s victory!
What reminds them of judgment for their sin points us to being free from that sin forevermore!
This earth shaking and the rocks splitting cry out creation’s response to the greatest victory of them all.
Friends, it’s not the same anymore.
While Israel knew about what they had to do, their history constantly showed that they couldn’t do it.
Their sacrifices were never enough.
The Law only kept proving they would never do.
But now it is all done.
This is God’s one and only Son!
Amen.
PRAYER:
Let’s pray…
O LORD of all, please help us also to echo this call.
As the earth shook and the rocks split, so may those shock waves also hit us, and change us.
Each time we hear Your Word - the Word which is about the Final Word - may we become more like that Living Word Himself, Jesus Christ.
Then there are no disasters - only liberators.
Because then we show in everything the only thing that matters at all.
In His precious and saving Name, we pray, Amen.
* As a matter of courtesy please advise Rev. Sjirk Bajema, if you plan to use this sermon in a worship service. Thank-you.
(c) Copyright, Rev. Sjirk Bajema
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