As we come to the end of the gospel of Matthew, the glorious story is complete. Christ, the obedient Son of God, has fulfilled all that the Father has sent Him to do. He has given His life on the cross, He has been buried, and on the third day He has risen!
We know what comes next as we read about it in Matthew 28. The angel that came down from heaven announced the good news at the empty tomb. “Don’t be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here, for He is risen as He said.” The women are told to look at the place where the Lord lay and then to go and tell the disciples that “He is risen from the dead.”
It only gets better after that, for as the women go to tell the disciples, “Behold, Jesus met them.” How glorious!
We then come to the scene of the ascension, to the mountain that Jesus had appointed for them. Then notice verse 17, “When they saw Him, they worshiped Him, but”, then we come to it, “some doubted.”
Some doubted. There’s something about those words that at first glance seems to ruin the “perfect story”. “Oh, come on, don’t put that in there, Matt! That just spoils it all.”
But I think we can think the opposite. This adds that much more realism, indeed credibility, to this totally true story. Matthew wasn’t hesitant to write down reality - this is how it happened, unlike a legend which would PhotoShop out all of the warts and blemishes.
I don’t know, maybe it’s making a lot of nothing, but it seems that if Matthew put all of the facts forward here, including the less than inspiring, doesn’t that give us even more reason to believe the rest of the story is true?
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I agree. Sometimes I’ll read through a passage and think to myself that I would have never included some of the information that’s there, but that’s just our human tendency to want to appear better than we are. (seems like we heard about that in a message recently) So, I don’t think it’s making a lot out of nothing, it points toward the authenticity and the ‘unfooledaroundwith’ quality of God’s word.
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