The Burial of Jesus | John 19:38-42
Sermon Transcript
Good morning missionary named David Livingstone was a missionary to the continent of Africa in the 19th century, reaching deep, dark places with no gospel presence and a missionary society wrote him a letter, and that's how he communicated way back then, and said, Have you found a good road to where you are? Is there a good passable road to where you are? If so, we want to know how to send other men to join you in your work. Well, he wrote back and said, If you have men who will come only if they know there is a good road, I don't want them. I want men who will come if there is no road at all. We're looking today at a passage of scripture about what it means to be a disciple as we look at two men who risked a lot to give the body of Jesus a proper and honorable burial. Discipleship means many times doing things that without Jesus in our life, we would not do. We would not even perhaps think about doing them, but following Jesus enables us to do these, and engenders us to do these, and we do them because we've been changed by him, and he's worth it. John 19 verse 38 as we finish our series on the betrayal of Jesus. We've been going through the life of Jesus the whole year of 2024 next week, we get to the good part, the resurrection and the ascension. We've been covering his betrayal and his trial, His death, His crucifixion, today, the short time where he was dead in the ground, amazing to think about John 19 verse 38 after these things, Joseph of Arimathea, who was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly, for the fear of the Jews, asked Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus. And Pilate gave him permission, so he came and took away his body. Nicodemus, also, who earlier had come to Jesus by night, came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes about 75 pounds in weight. So they took the body of Jesus and bound it in linen cloths with the spices, as is the burial custom of the Jews. Now in the place where he was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb in which no one had been laid. So, because of the Jewish day of preparation, since the tomb was close at hand, they laid Jesus there Father in heaven. As we look at this passage of Scripture, it seems to be a passage of defeat. It seems to be a passage of of realization that Jesus was defeated and killed. But it's not. It is the darkest part of our spiritual day before dawn, and it is a day where we see two disciples who are following you, encouraged by what you had done for them and their belief in you show us today, Lord, how looking at their life and their actions can show us how we could be better disciples of You. Lord, I pray that you speak through me today. I pray that my words will reach those who listen, that they are filled with the Spirit, that your spirit is here today and receives these words, Jesus, name Amen. Wanna give you three traits that we see in these disciples as they sought to follow Jesus. Three traits in these disciples as they sought to follow Jesus. Number one, it takes courage to follow Jesus. It takes courage to follow Jesus. It would be great if it didn't Amen. It would be great if the day we're saved, it's just everything's hunky dory for the rest of our life, and it's a smooth sailing. But it's not because we're still living in a world that hates Christ. We're still living in a world that is filled with sinners, which we used to be, and it takes a certain amount of courage to follow Christ and to give him honor. Verse 38 after these things, Joseph of Arimathea, who was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly for fear, the Jews asked Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus. Pilate gave him permission, so he came and took away his body. In this time, when someone was crucified, their dead bodies were typically left on the cross as a warning, and they would hang there until the decayed and fell off. Exceptions, however, could be made, and they were made, typically by wealthy and or influential people. Many ways, the world has not changed. Still the same influential, wealthy people have ways of making things happen, sometimes for the good of us. This is cases in the biblical times. Well, and Joseph of Arimathea was such a man. He was a wealthy, influential member of the Jewish Council, the ruling council called the Sanhedrin. Yet he was a believer, but because of his position, he still had fear of the Jews. The Bible tells us so. He had the ability to come speak to Pilate of the Roman Empire and ask a favor, instead of letting Jesus's body hang up there on the cross and rot decay, can I give him a proper Jewish burial? And it seems reasonable to ask, since Pilate, who he even said personally, found no fault in Jesus, he conceded to this request. And so we see two facts about Joseph through this request. First, he was a believer. He was a disciple, and he used his influence, he used his means to honor Jesus in this way. But secondly, he was fearful, yet he proceeded in the face of fear. We call that courage. Courage is not the absence of fear. You may have heard, courage is acting in the face of fear, and we see Joseph doing this. He risked his position, which he had probably worked so hard throughout his life to attain. He risked his reputation. He risked a lot to ask this question. From 1958 to 1964 Nikita Khrushchev was the premier of the Soviet Union. Now he had denounced many of the policies that his predecessor, Joseph Stalin, had led from 1922 to 1952 but he was getting heckled one time at a meeting, and he was denouncing the policies of Stalin, and a voice shouted out, you were one of his colleagues. Why didn't you stop him? Khrushchev roared. Who said that? Looked around the room and nobody admitted to saying it. Then Khrushchev replied quietly, now you know why you fear it takes courage to not only shout out from the shadows, but to admit that you were the one that did so. It takes courage to speak to an evil, autocratic dictator that can have you killed. It takes courage to approach a powerful man like Pontius Pilate and ask a favor in doing so so your own countrymen don't know you're doing it. There's nothing inherently wrong in asking this favor in private. Courage doesn't have to be dumb. In fact, courage is best performed with intelligence, with common sense. Jesus Himself said, You need to be like a snake, sometimes, in a good way, to be strategic. And we see Joseph doing this, and his act was recorded. Scripture for all time and for us to see discipleship in our day often requires us to step out of what we find comfortable and to do risky things in order to honor Jesus Christ. There's several different types of comfort zones we had. I want to go through some of them today, that maybe today, Jesus is asking you to step out of as you seek to honor Christ who has saved you. The first type we see is what we will call a social comfort zone, stepping out of our social zones, our social comforts. It might involve speaking out about what we believe, even though we might have ridicule from our Facebook feed or ridicule from our family or for from our classmates, it might mean sharing the gospel with others who need to hear it, because we know that the number one reason we don't share our faith is the fear of rejection, the fear of our message being rejected. So we feel like we've been rejected, the fear of ridicule. So it might be that socially speaking Jesus today is calling you to step out of your social comfort zone. Maybe it's financial. When we follow Jesus, we are no longer in charge of our checking account he is and so many times following Jesus may require us to give sacrificially. May require us to use our resources in ways that challenge our financial security challenge, our comfort and it's hard today. I know in this economy that we have I read an article that said that each child you have living in your house costs you about today, $25,000 a year, which is why I'm trying to kick some of mine out. That's expensive. And so I understand where you might say I can't give to the Lord right now, because I I can't make it. But that's a worldly way of thinking, because God says no, give to me, and I'll bless you in many ways. And I'm going to bless the kingdom, and I'm you are going to honor Christ through your giving. So maybe it's a financial comfort zone that the Lord is calling you to step out of. Third, maybe emotional we might need to confront, work through emotional issues, past hurts that we have in our life, past traumatic events where we've been a victim that maybe we haven't forgiven people with we haven't dealt with it yet. Jesus says for you to get where you need to be. You need to give me your past. You need to give me your hurts so I can work through you and work through them. Maybe it's cultural, embracing, following Jesus will lead us to challenge what our culture says is right and what the traditions say is right, and many times what Jesus says is right is going to be shunned by the culture. It's going to be dismissed by our society. So we we might have to risk cultural cultural embarrassment, cultural cancelation, if we were going to honor Christ as a disciple, fifth, maybe it's intellectual. Maybe you have a difficult time understanding what Jesus is calling you to do, because you have long held beliefs, long held perspectives, long held understandings of the world, and that needs to reevaluate. Did you know that when you get married, you treat your spouse in like a default programming the way you kind of were brought up, or you might go the extreme on purpose, but there's a default programming there. And then you raise your children kind of how you assume how you were brought up and how you think it should be done. And then you get in the word and you realize you're doing some things wrong, and the Lord starts changing your heart. Well, it's like that anything in life you. You have a default programming, an idea of how you should act, and sometimes we can't get it through our skulls that our way is not working. Maybe our heart is convicted, but we can't intellectually figure out how to do it. The more we read Scripture, we see our stubborn, hardwired brainwaves, where they start to melt a little bit in a good way, and we start acquiescing to what God tells us to do. Six, maybe it's spiritual following Jesus ultimately requires us to step out in faith. You can't follow Christ without faith. Amen, you can't follow him without faith. Faith isn't some blind wishing. It's putting your life, trusting your life in his hands, and so he trusts him with our social life and our financial life and our emotional life and our cultural life and all these things we trust Him as we step out in obedience because of what he's done for us. So stepping out of these zones that we're comfortable in, our little our little holes, our little caves We like living in stepping out of this requires courage, requires faith, a willingness to trust in God's plan and purpose for our lives. Secondly, not only does it take courage to follow Jesus, it takes conviction. It takes conviction. I had a friend tell me years ago that he liked to tell people that, is there enough evidence in your life to convict you of being a Christian? Is there enough evidence? And that's not the type of conviction I'm talking about. Well, that is a good saying, talking about when Christ convicts you of certain things in your life that you hold on to, that you know need to happen. Look at verse 39 Nicodemus, also, who earlier had come to Jesus by night, came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about 75 pounds in weight. We first heard about this, Pharisee Nicodemus, when he visited Jesus at night, likely seeking to avoid public attention, seeking to avoid public scrutiny. And somewhere along the line, Nicodemus seems to have become a believer, and so we see him now assisting in this burial. And so he uses these spices and these linen cloths to give Jesus the proper Jewish burial to honor the deceased as the Bible, his Bible, his old testament, would teach. And the amount of spices he brought is what you would bring to a royal funeral. And so was fit for a king. So it costs a lot of money. Verse 40, so they took the body of Jesus, and they bounded in linen cloths with the spices, as this is the burial custom. Now, this burial, it had to happen fast. Jewish law required that executed people had to be buried before sunset. And as you know, it was getting late in the day, especially before the Sabbath which it was a Friday evening approaching, or else it would defile the land. The last thing Nicodemus was going to let happen was the body of Jesus Christ defile the land ceremonially. So there was urgency in bearing Jesus before that Sabbath, which began at sundown, and so just as Joseph had to summon courage to ask for the body of Jesus, Nicodemus was convicted by his faith that it had to happen now it happened in the Right Way. David Hume was an 18th century British philosopher who rejected Christianity, and he once met a friend hurrying along a London street, and he asked him, Where are you going? And the friend said he was off to hear a man named George Whitfield preach, famous preacher. And Hume said, Surely you don't believe what Whitfield preaches. Do you Hume was a skeptic. That's literally what he was. You don't believe what wilfre preaches. Do you the friend replied, No, I don't think I do, but he does. He. Our convictions are noticeable to people Amen, if we don't act like we believe when we say we believe, there's a disconnect. He knew that Whitfield knew what he believed, and he wanted to hear what he believed. Our convictions are what enable us to follow Christ, and when we follow Him, we start to have convictions that guide our lives. It starts with with the basic convictions that we're convicted that Jesus Christ was fully God and fully man and the Son of God. And we're convicted that Jesus is the ultimate truth, the ultimate wisdom. And we become convicted that we must place our faith in the power of God for our lives. We become convicted that we must share the message of Jesus to people, and we become convicted that we must believe in the promise of eternal life through faith in Jesus only, we become convicted in the power of grace and the power of redemption through Christ's sacrifice. We become convicted in the presence of the Holy Spirit guiding us and empowering us. We become convicted in the ultimate victory of good over evil through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It takes conviction to follow Jesus, our faith, our conviction, is not malleable. It's not bouncy. It is firm. It is immovable, or else people will not have any use for it takes conviction to follow Christ. And finally, number three, it takes commitment to follow Jesus. Commitment. Verse 41 now in the place where he was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid. So because of the Jewish day of preparation, since the tomb was close at hand, they laid Jesus there the new tomb and this garden likely belonged to Joseph of Arimathea, the man who got him down, fulfilling the prophecy of Isaiah 53 nine, which says this and they made his grave with the wicked and with the rich man in his death isn't amazing, although he had done no violence and there was no deceit in his mouth, in this location was near the Crucifixion site, so they could quickly get him buried before the Sabbath. And these tombs were carved from the rock, and they were sealed with a stone, as we're going to hear about next week. And they laid Jesus within this tomb. And Joseph was so committed that he got Nicodemus to help him and gave him his own place of burial because he was committed to following Christ in the right way. Commitment. Matthew 1624, says this. Then Jesus told his disciples, if anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me. John 1027, My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow Me. John 1226, if anyone serves me, he must follow me. And where I am there will my servant be also. If anyone serves me, the father will honor him. In many ways. You're going to be like a shadow following Jesus everywhere. Last night, I was watching the Carolina game, and I was stressed out, and I was walking around from room to room to TV to TV, watching it because my little five year old wouldn't wouldn't leave my wouldn't leave my shadow. I now, he wanted to, he wanted to be with his father, even though, like he was talking about other things I don't want to hear about. That's how we are to be. We are to be following Jesus. He says, Where I go, you go. Now, Jesus is a much God's a much better father than we are. He listens to us. You don't care about no game. He listens to us everything we say, but we follow him. First, Peter, 221, for to this, you have been called because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example so that you might follow in. In his steps, and part of that is suffering, but Lord gives us the commitment to get through it. When Julius Caesar landed on the shores of Britain with his Roman legions, he took a bold and decisive step to make sure they would be successful. He ordered his men to march the edge of the cliffs of Dover, and he said, look down the water below. And to their amazement, they saw that every ship that they came in on had been burned, engulfed in the flames. He cut off any possibility of retreat, and now that his soldiers were unable to leave the island, there was nothing left for them to do but to advance and to conquer. And that's exactly what they did, because Caesar burned the ships. If I heard that phrase before you're going to commit to something. You burn the ships. No looking back as we close today, as you're following Jesus. What ships Have you still not burned for Christ? Maybe you've burned them all, but you got one over here, off to the side it's got a cover on it. Maybe you take out every now and then. You already got the GPS program to where you're going to go. It's your escape route, just in case life gets too hard. Just in case life gets a little bit too difficult and you don't want to Jesus. You got this ship over here. You haven't burned. Maybe Christ is telling you today, no, burn them all, because that little ship you think that's good for you. It's not. I am good for you. I am the best for you. Advance and conquer, not that we're conquering countries, but we are conquering the spiritual battlefield and our own lives and the lives of our families and lives of our own communities. And Jesus says, burn the ships come to me all who are weary and heavy laden, give your burdens to me, and I will give you that peace, Heavenly Father, we thank you to close our time together today. Thank you so much for who you are and what you've done for us as we close our time together and we worship you together. I thank you for those that are here, Lord, every single one that is here today woke up this morning and made a commitment to be here. They didn't have to, but they're here, so I thank you for their obedience. I thank you for their obedience. I thank you for their commitment, and Lord, I pray that you still give them the courage and the convictions they need to continue to follow you, and that as they do, they feel your presence. Lord, it can be easy to follow Jesus on the day he's resurrected, but can we follow him on the day he's put in the ground? Can we follow him in our darkest day? Joseph did? Nicodemus did? Lord, let us have that courage, let us have that conviction and that commitment to where, even in our darkest day, we look to you, the founder and perfecter of our faith, but we love you. We ask these things in Jesus name, amen. Amen.
