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I am using readings from the 49 Week Bible Challenge as the basis for these devotions. I encourage you to join me in this discipline. Today’s readings are Matthew 27:11-66; Genesis 20; Zechariah 6.
Matthew 27:62-66
The next day, that is, after the day of Preparation, the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered before Pilate 63 and said, “Sir, we remember how that impostor said, while he was still alive, ‘After three days I will rise.’ 64 Therefore order the tomb to be made secure until the third day, lest his disciples go and steal him away and tell the people, ‘He has risen from the dead,’ and the last fraud will be worse than the first.” 65 Pilate said to them, “You have a guard of soldiers. Go, make it as secure as you can.” 66 So they went and made the tomb secure by sealing the stone and setting a guard.
I was not the culprit, but I am to blame for leaving Diane’s iPad in a place where the true culprit could steal it. And steal it he did. We tracked it down to a place in Peru, apparently known for being a hotspot for stolen electronic devices. As far as we are able to tell, we managed to erase the contents and secure our identity and passwords. But who knows! How secure can you be?
Recently we had a very strange thing happen with my passwords, stored on my iPhone and in the iCloud. They suddenly showed up on our son’s phone! Apple security is supposed to be the best, but we’re not entirely sure how it happened. Secure. Yeah. Sure.
I think of those two incidents when I read here of Pilate’s words to the chief priests and the Pharisees, “Go, make [the tomb] as secure as you can.” I think also of a YouTuber known as the Lockpick Lawyer who manages to pick every lock he encounters.
Human security is a self-deceiving illusion at worst, and a deterrent to honest people at best. Like they say, Locked doors keep out the honest people. If a thief wants to break in to your house, he’ll find a way to do it.
But the security of the tomb of Jesus is proven to be ineffectual not because of honest people or thieves. It will be shown to be ineffective from inside the tomb – although perhaps it was the angels’ who first breached that supposedly-secure location. These Jewish religious leaders undertook a futile effort when they made the tomb as secure as they could.
We can be secure, however, in the love of God and his gift of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ his Son. We can be secure in knowing that God desires that we and all people would be saved and come to the knowledge of his Son. He has sent the Holy Spirit for that reason – and to propel us toward witness, service, love, and good works.
We can be secure because Pilate, the Jewish religious leaders, and Satan himself could not secure the tomb and prevent Jesus from bursting forth in glorious victory. He has won our salvation, and of that we can be sure.
David Bahn - Reflections 
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