The Anatomy of a Lie: The First Fake News Text: Matthew 28:11-15
Introduction: Two Responses to Earth-Shattering Power
The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the central, pivotal, unmovable fact of all human history. It is the hinge upon which everything turns. It is not a lovely story, not a helpful metaphor, not a spiritual feeling in the heart. It was a physical, historical, geological event. An angel descended, the ground shook, a stone that took multiple men to move was tossed aside like a bottle cap, and a detachment of professional Roman soldiers fainted dead away like terrified schoolgirls.
When this kind of raw, cosmic power is unleashed in the world, you cannot remain neutral to it. You cannot simply shrug and go about your business. You must react. And in our text today, we see the two fundamental reactions to the resurrection of Jesus Christ, reactions that have echoed down through the centuries and are still the only two options available to every person in this room. The first reaction is worship, which we see in the women who met the risen Lord. The second reaction is to lie. It is to suppress the truth in unrighteousness. It is to see the blinding light of God's glory and to immediately start building a thicker, blacker set of curtains.
What we are about to witness is the birth of the first great anti-Christian conspiracy theory. This is the first organized attempt to manage the "resurrection problem." The enemies of Christ knew He had predicted His own resurrection. They had even taken extraordinary measures to prevent any deception. They had the governor's seal, and they had a squad of guards. They had everything buttoned down. But their problem was not with a few fishermen from Galilee. Their problem was with the Lord of Glory. And when God decides to act, all the seals and soldiers and schemes of men are like cobwebs in the path of a battleship.
This passage is a master class in the psychology of unbelief. It demonstrates that the problem for fallen man is never a lack of evidence. The problem is always a rebellious heart. These men were not skeptics in need of more data. They were rebels in possession of too much data, and they had to figure out how to bury it. What we see here is not intellectual doubt; it is willful, calculated, well-funded suppression of a known truth. And this is the very taproot of the secularism that surrounds us today. It is not an honest search for truth; it is a desperate flight from it.
The Text
Now while they were on their way, behold, some of the guard came into the city and reported to the chief priests all that had happened. And when they had assembled with the elders and took counsel together, they gave a large sum of money to the soldiers, and said, “You are to say, ‘His disciples came by night and stole Him away while we were asleep.’ And if this is heard before the governor, we will win him over and keep you out of trouble.” And they took the money and did as they had been instructed; and this story was widely spread among the Jews, and is to this day.
(Matthew 28:11-15 LSB)
An Inconvenient Report (v. 11)
We begin with the immediate aftermath of the angelic visitation.
"Now while they were on their way, behold, some of the guard came into the city and reported to the chief priests all that had happened." (Matthew 28:11)
While the women are running with joy and fear to tell the disciples the good news, the soldiers are running with a very different kind of fear to tell the chief priests the bad news. Notice who they report to. These were Roman guards, assigned by Pilate, but they were assigned at the request of the chief priests. They knew who was really in charge of this operation. They go straight to the men who hired them for this special detail.
And what do they report? They reported "all that had happened." This is a crucial phrase. They did not report a theory. They did not offer an interpretation. They reported the facts. They were eyewitnesses. They saw the earthquake. They saw the angel whose appearance was like lightning. They saw the stone rolled away. They saw the empty tomb. And they were paralyzed with terror. They gave a full, unvarnished, terrifying account of a supernatural event. The chief priests, from the very beginning, were not operating in a vacuum of information. They had a direct, firsthand report from the guards they themselves had posted. They knew. Let that sink in. They knew.
This demolishes the modern idea that unbelief is a matter of insufficient evidence. The problem is never a lack of light. The problem is a love for the darkness. As the apostle Paul says, men "suppress the truth in unrighteousness" (Romans 1:18). The truth is plain to them, but they hold it down, they smother it, because they hate its implications. These priests were not agnostics; they were antagonists.
The Council of Cowardice and Corruption (v. 12-13)
Faced with this irrefutable evidence, the religious leaders convene a council. But it is not a council to consider the truth; it is a council to conspire against it.
"And when they had assembled with the elders and took counsel together, they gave a large sum of money to the soldiers, and said, 'You are to say, ‘His disciples came by night and stole Him away while we were asleep.’'" (Matthew 28:12-13 LSB)
Look at their response. There is no investigation. There is no cross-examination. There is no awe, no fear of God, no hint of repentance. Their immediate, reflexive action is damage control. They hear a report of God's mighty power, and their first thought is, "How do we spin this?" They had one job, to keep the body in the tomb, and they failed spectacularly. But instead of admitting that they had picked a fight with Almighty God, they double down on their rebellion.
Their solution is as old as sin itself: bribery. They gave a "large sum of money" to the soldiers. The Greek is emphatic. This was a hefty bribe. They used the same tool, money, that they used to procure Jesus's betrayal through Judas. The love of money is indeed a root of all kinds of evil. Here, it is the currency of deceit, used to purchase a lie that will damn the souls of men.
And the lie they concoct is laughably absurd. "His disciples came by night and stole Him away while we were asleep." Think about the foolishness of this for a moment. First, if the guards were asleep, how could they possibly know who came and what they did? How could they identify the thieves as "His disciples"? Their testimony is self-refuting on its face. They are testifying to what happened while they were unconscious. It is a legal and logical impossibility.
Second, we are talking about a guard of Roman soldiers. For a Roman soldier to fall asleep at his post was a capital offense. The idea that an entire detachment would fall asleep simultaneously, so deeply that they wouldn't be woken by a group of men wrestling with a massive stone at the mouth of the tomb, is beyond incredible. And third, what happened to the disciples? These were the men who had scattered and fled in terror when Jesus was arrested. Now we are to believe that this motley crew of defeated fishermen suddenly mustered the courage to take on a unit of armed Roman soldiers in the dead of night to steal a corpse? It is preposterous. The lie is transparently stupid. But a lie does not have to be clever if the audience is determined to believe it.
Securing the Lie (v. 14)
The priests knew their story was flimsy, and they knew the soldiers were taking a massive risk. So they offered another layer of protection, another form of corruption.
"And if this is heard before the governor, we will win him over and keep you out of trouble." (Matthew 28:14 LSB)
The soldiers' great fear would be what happens if Pilate hears they were sleeping on the job. The chief priests reassure them. "We'll handle Pilate." The phrase "win him over" means to persuade, but it carries the strong connotation of using influence, or more likely, another bribe. They are promising to corrupt the governor just as they are corrupting the soldiers. This is how systemic sin works. One lie requires another. One act of corruption necessitates a dozen more to cover it up. They are building a fortress of falsehoods, a conspiracy of deceit, to protect themselves from the one great, shining Truth.
They are promising to make the soldiers "secure," to keep them out of trouble. But in buying this lie, the soldiers are trading a temporal security for eternal peril. They are siding with the corrupt establishment against the God who just shook the earth beneath their feet. They are choosing a bag of silver over the Lord of life. They saw the power of God and chose to cash in on a lie about it.
The Propagation of Unbelief (v. 15)
The final verse shows us the tragic effectiveness of this campaign of disinformation.
"And they took the money and did as they had been instructed; and this story was widely spread among the Jews, and is to this day." (Matthew 28:15 LSB)
The bribe worked. The soldiers took the money and became the first missionaries of the anti-gospel. They became evangelists for a lie. And the lie found fertile soil. Matthew, writing his gospel decades later, notes that this ridiculous story "is to this day" still the official explanation among the unbelieving Jews. Justin Martyr, writing in the second century, confirms that this story was still being actively promulgated by the Jewish authorities.
Why would people believe such a thing? Because they wanted to. Because the alternative, that Jesus of Nazareth really was the Son of God, the risen Lord, was an alternative that demanded their repentance, their submission, and their worship. It required them to admit that they were wrong, that they had murdered their own Messiah. And their pride would not allow it. It is always easier to believe a comfortable lie than an uncomfortable truth. The human heart is an idol factory, as Calvin said, and it is also a very efficient lie factory.
Conclusion: Whose Report Will You Believe?
This pathetic episode at the end of Matthew's gospel lays bare the two paths that lie before every human being. You have heard two reports. The first report is from the angel, delivered to the women: "He is not here, for He has risen, just as He said." This is the gospel. This is the report of life, of victory, of sins forgiven and death defeated. To believe this report is to have everything.
The second report is from the chief priests, delivered to the world: "His disciples came and stole Him." This is the anti-gospel. This is the report of unbelief, of cynical power-plays, of truth suppressed for the sake of convenience and control. To believe this report, or any of its modern descendants, is to have nothing. It is to choose the darkness because you prefer your sin to the Savior.
Do not fool yourself into thinking this is a purely intellectual exercise. Your response to the resurrection is not determined by your IQ. It is determined by the posture of your will. Do you want it to be true? The chief priests did not. They had too much to lose: their power, their prestige, their system. And so, when the truth was presented to them by their own hand-picked witnesses, they paid a fortune to have it buried.
The world is still full of people who are paid, whether in money, or in academic prestige, or in social status, to keep telling the same foolish story in more sophisticated language. They will tell you that the resurrection is a myth, a legend, a hallucination, a conspiracy. But all of these are just updated versions of the lie that was bought and paid for on that first Easter week. It is the story you tell when you cannot bear the alternative.
The question for you is simple. You have the report of the angel, and you have the report of the elders. One is the truth of God that leads to everlasting life. The other is a self-serving lie that leads to destruction. Whose report will you believe?