Matthew 14:12

Matthew 14:12

(with Matthew 28:8)

The grave of the dead John, and the grave of the living Jesus. The grave of John was the end of a "school." The grave of Jesus was the beginning of a Church. Why? The only answer is the message which the women brought back from the empty sepulchre on that Easter Day: "The Lord is risen." The whole history of the Christian Church, and even its very existence, is unintelligible, except on the supposition of the resurrection. But for that the fate of John's disciples would have been the fate of Christ; they would have melted away into the mass of the nation, and at most there would have been one more petty Galilean sect, that would have lived on for a generation, and died out when the last of his companions died.

I. The first point to be considered is that the conduct of Christ's disciples after His death was exactly the opposite of what might have been expected. (1) They held together. The natural thing for them to do would have been to disband; for the one bond was gone. (2) Their conceptions of Jesus underwent a remarkable change on His death. The death that should have cast a deeper shadow of incomprehensibleness over His strange and lofty claims poured a new light upon them, which made them all plain and clear. (3) Another equally unlikely sequel of the death of Jesus is the unmistakable moral transformation effected on the disciples. Timorous and tremulous before, something or other touched them into altogether new boldness and self-possession.

II. The disciples' immediate belief in the resurrection furnishes a reasonable, and the only reasonable, explanation of the facts. There is no better historical evidence of a fact than the existence of an institution built upon it coeval with it.

III. Such a belief could not have originated or maintained itself unless it had been true.

IV. The message of Easter is a message to us as truly as it was to the heavy-hearted unbelieving men that first received it. The one proof of a life beyond the grave is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Therefore let us be glad with the gladness of men plucked from a dark abyss of doubt and uncertainty, and planted on the rock of solid certainty.

A. Maclaren, The Secret of Power,p. 159.

I. Our text tells of a death. It was a sudden and violent death. It was a solitary death. No congenial spirit was with the departing, to cheer him with a thought of hope or with a breath of prayer. The life itself went out in inactivity. It might seem, man might call it, a failure. Its latest days were its least brilliant.

II. His disciples came and took up the body and buried it. They who might not minister to the life shall minister to the death. No jealousy, no tyranny, survives death; so now the disciples are free to come and take the body. There is scarcely one tie in life stronger or more indestructible than that which binds the scholar to his master, if each be what he ought to be. If indeed the relation has been at once paternal and brotherly and ministerial, cemented by mutual love, and consecrated by a common love for One in whom each has his being, then the co-existence is delightful beyond words, and the separation in death bitter only not to despair. How much more then this discipleship to one actually sent of God to one who was the kinsman, the friend, the harbinger of Jesus. Scarcely any funeral was ever like that one, the surprise, the shock, the anguish, the indignation, yet also, let us believe, the thanksgiving of heart and soul which accompanied the laying of that still young life to its latest and only satisfying rest in the enjoyment of a world where doubt is not, where God is. When we think of it we can almost place ourselves beside that tomb, and then go straight with these mourners and tell Jesus.

III. Unhappy that sorrow which cannot tell itself to Jesus. There are such sorrows. The burning fever of passion, whether in the form of baffled lust or dissatisfied ambition or self-defeated speculation, will not, scarcely can, go, quite as it is, to tell Jesus. And yet if it would, it would not be cast out, Little do we know, the best of us, of the largeness of that heart. We, who feel ourselves grieved and wearied, we scarce know why, by the search for something which never comes, by the perpetual baffling of hope undefined and effort misdirected, we are the men sought. Part with the dead lord, with the usurper of the heart's heart, bury him out of thy sight, and come and tell Jesus.

C. J. Vaughan, Words of Hope,p. 233.

References: Matthew 14:12. Preacher's Monthly,vol. viii., p, 41.Matthew 14:13; Matthew 14:14. A. Scott, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxii., p. 266. Matthew 14:13. A. B. Bruce, The Training of the Twelve,p. 120; Preachers Monthly,vol. iii., p. 291.