Joseph Asked For The Body Of Jesus

Well, as we gather together to remember the Lord's death, there's a difference between us and those who would have been there when Jesus died. And it's that we live after the resurrection. Okay? I remember hearing one time about a tactic, a missionary tactic. And the tactic was that these missionaries would go to these unreached people groups and they would try to take the people. They would start with Genesis and they would work their way all the way through the Old Testament. And then eventually they would get to Jesus. In an effort to sort of reproduce or bring the people through what the Israelites would have gone through. And I'm not opposed at all to people learning. I think we need to know the history of Israel. But I think it's a failed tactic because it doesn't tell you how the thing ends.

And I think it's a disservice to people to hide from them the way that it ends. And so when Jesus was crucified and he was on the cross, he had told his people, I'm going to die and in three days I'm going to be raised from the dead. I'm going to come back. Death can't hold me. He said things like this. But we also know that they didn't ever comprehend it. And on Sunday in our text, when Mary and Martha, when they come to the tomb, The angel says to them, why are you here? What are you here looking for? Why do you look for the living among the dead? And it says, then they remembered what had been said. And so this resurrection, Jesus' resurrection was sort of, you know, it was like the sun breaking the horizon to them. It was news. They hadn't seen it. They hadn't tasted it yet. They hadn't lived in it. Well, that's not the case for you and I. And so we have a different perspective looking at Good Friday than they might have. Because to them, when they watch Jesus,

hang on the cross and die, they went, all is lost. And they didn't have the confirmation of his resurrection, his victory over the grave yet. They hadn't seen it with their eyes. And so they viewed his death from a different place than we did. And so my goal this evening is not for it to take us back and say, we need to see this exactly how they would have seen it, because we would be lying about what we actually know to be true. We actually know that Jesus was raised from the dead, that death couldn't hold him and that he conquered death. Praise the Lord. And so as we remember his death and as we grieve why he had to die and the agony and the pain that he went through, we ought not to grieve as those who have no hope, those who are unaware of the fact that he actually conquered that for us. And so I don't want to, on the one hand, I don't want us to grieve without hope.

because we're only paying attention to his death outside of its context, which is his resurrection. On the other hand, I don't want the fact that he is raised from the dead and sitting at the right hand of his father right now to do away with any grief that we might have as we look at the agony and the pain of his death and his burial. And so we have to live sort of in this tension where we understand our place and we look on it and our hearts are grieved by what we see and strengthened by what we know to be true. and what we will remember and celebrate this Sunday. And so our text for this evening is Luke 23. Excuse me. It's verses 50 through 56, and this is the account not of Jesus' death, but right after his death, it's the account of his burial. So would you please join me in standing as we read the Word of God together? This is the Word of the Lord, and it is eternally true. It says, A man named Joseph, who was a member of the council, a good and righteous man,

He had not consented to their plan and action. A man from Arimathea, a city of the Jews, who was waiting for the kingdom of God. This man went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. And he took it down and wrapped it in a linen cloth and laid him in a tomb cut into the rock where no one had ever lain. It was the preparation day and the Sabbath was about to begin. Now the women who had come with him, with Jesus, out of Galilee followed. And they saw the tomb and how his body was laid. Then they returned and prepared spices and perfumes, and on the Sabbath they rested according to the commandment. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated now. Now this service is a little different than our normal service, and one of the differences is I don't have 45 minutes to preach. I wish I did, but I don't. So I want to draw our attention to just a couple of things in our text. The first is, the question I want us to work toward answering is,

Why did Joseph want to bury Jesus' body? Why was that important to him? But before we get to answering that question, I want to talk a little bit about Joseph. Who was Joseph? Well, our text tells us, the whole first half of it tells us who Joseph was. The first thing it tells us is he was a member of the council. Well, what's that council? That council is the Sanhedrin, or the leadership of the Jews, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, those guys that led the Jews spiritually. That was the council that was being referred to. This is what Joseph was a member of. And so this is the group, consequently, that had paid Judas to betray Jesus. This is also the group that tried Jesus, who had hired men to lie and give false testimony about Jesus. And this is the group that drug Jesus off to Pilate to be crucified. These are the men who led the cries of crucify him when Pilate wanted to release Jesus. This is the council that Joseph is a part of.

And I want you to think for a minute about being a part of that council. Because we're told Joseph is a good and righteous man, but we look at the council he's on, and there's nothing good or righteous about this council. And just consider for a moment what it would have been like to be on that council. What else do we know about Joseph? Well, our text tells us he didn't agree with the council, right? In parentheses, it says he had not consented to their plan and to their action. I think we can reasonably say Joseph spoke up and said, this isn't right. We have testimony in the other Gospels of Nicodemus saying that, saying we're not even following our own laws here. This man has a right to trial. We can't be doing this. And they said, what, are you one of them too? Shut up. It's pretty much what they told Nicodemus. What else do we know about Joseph? Well, we know that he's a good and righteous man, admirable, and that he opposed their plan, admirable in that he buried Jesus. But we know something else about Joseph that's not in this text, but it's in John.

I want to read to you a verse from John 19, verse 38. It says, After these things, Joseph of Arimathea, being a disciple of Jesus, but a secret one for fear of the Jews, he asked Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus, and Pilate granted permission, so he came and took his body away. Now, what's significant about John's account? Well, he says that Joseph is a secret disciple. He hides his faith. He's not explicit about... His allegiance to Jesus. And if we had more time and we were to read around this and look at what Nicodemus said when they were trying Jesus, Nicodemus came to Jesus by night, you remember. Jesus spoke up and he didn't say, hey, I believe in this guy and he really is the Messiah. What he says is we're not following our own rules. And so these men had a healthy fear of this council and what might happen to them. And you would understand that if you were on that council.

You can understand being a good and righteous man and having fear of the Jews, having fear of them coming after you if you believed in Jesus. And so Joseph was a good and righteous man, and yet the fact that he was a disciple of Jesus was hidden. It was secret. He kept it away because he was afraid. And so good and righteous, but not perfect. Some of us might have in our own minds, well, Joseph shouldn't have hidden his faith. And I'd say, well, then he's a man like you and me, isn't he? Not perfect. And I bring all this up about Joseph because I want you to understand, you know, we can sort of walk down the path and we can go, Joseph was a good man. Joseph was a righteous man. Oh, Joseph was a fearful man. But then we have to bring it around to Joseph's actions. What did Joseph do? When the cards were down, what did he do? He went to Pilate and said, can I have his body? I want to bury him. So what was he doing when he went to Pilate publicly and said, can I have his body? What'd you say?

Oh, he's outing himself, yeah. All of a sudden, his hidden faith was becoming public. Here he is taking the dead corpse of Jesus down off of a cross and wrapping him in a cloth and burying him in a tomb nearby where he's crucified and doing it all quickly because the Sabbath is coming. And their Sabbath would have started when the sun went down. And so Jesus died mid-afternoon. And Joseph, after he dies, goes to Pilate. The women follow him. He gets permission to take the body. He comes and takes the body down and immediately buries him. He has to have it done before sundown. So there's no time to do it by night. There's no time to hide. There's no time to be secret. He wants to get Jesus buried. And so Joseph, in the past, he'd been quiet because of fear. But now we see that his faith and his love for his Lord come through. And he requests the body of Jesus. And so you have to ask, why did Joseph want to bury Jesus? What was his concern?

But it could have been that the body would be left hanging there. This was the preparation day. The Sabbath was coming up. But the body could have just been left there. And what would have happened to the body if it had been left out for days? Birds would have come. Animals, right? Maybe it would have been taken down and thrown in the ditch, which wouldn't have been uncommon for those who had been crucified under Roman law. Perhaps he would have been cremated, which also wasn't uncommon for the Romans at that time. He had concern for what might actually happen to Jesus' body. And what he wants to do is bury him. And one of the things some of you may know, some of you may not, is that burial is a distinctly Christian thing. Other people have done it. Other people do it. But it's a distinctly Judeo-Christian thing. It's really important to Christians that their bodies be buried. Do you remember when Jacob died?

And he was in Egypt. And what was his final request of his sons? When the Lord delivers us from this place, take my bones with you. Don't leave my bones in this place. Take them to the promised land. And so to the Jews, even all the way back to Jacob, burial and what was done with their bodies was something that they really did care about. They were not indifferent to cremation. They were not indifferent to leaving bodies out to be exposed. This would have been the worst kind of dishonor they could have done to a body, to desecrate it by not burying it. They were to bury even the wicked. They would bury. And so Joseph wants to bury Jesus. And we think, well, okay, that makes sense. He was just doing what the Jews, what he should have done.

right? He was supposed to bury people, so Joseph's just doing what he should have done. But I don't think that's all there is to it. I don't think Joseph was simply doing his duty, if you will, because his duty came with a severe cost, a severe danger, if you'll remember. These crowds that were whipped up about Jesus and who were crying out, crucify him, crucify him. Do you think they were gone now that Jesus was dead? Do you think that their animosity toward his disciples was gone? Well, we know that it's not. If we read the book of Acts, we can see that it's not. Anytime his disciples start speaking and preaching and talking, they're after them. And so you can understand the cost of him going and doing this thing, taking Jesus' body down. He's putting his head right in the crosshairs of this angry mob, having heard that he had done this as a member of the council, defying their judgment.

So I'm convinced that it wasn't simply duty that got him to go take Jesus' body down and to bury it. It wasn't simply, well, this is what we're supposed to do. I'm convinced that Joseph saw Jesus' burial as a matter of honor and also as an anticipation or a preparation for the resurrection. And I don't think he understood it the way we understand it, but I think that's what undergirded it. I think that was the foundation of his insistence on this work. Now, if I were to ask you, what was the necessity of Jesus' death? Why did he have to die? It's one of the questions we might ask in a membership interview. Why did Jesus have to die? We would all understand it. It's an essential thing. You can't say, well, it doesn't matter if Jesus died. Because if he didn't die, we're still in our sins. Our debt's not been paid. God still has a score to settle with us.

And it won't end well for us. And so we understand if Jesus had to die, it was very important. It was essential to our salvation. Our sins couldn't be forgiven in any other way. But I would contend that his burial was just as necessary. Consider for a minute what a burial is in our time. What is it marked? Well, what a burial is or a funeral, what that does is that brings closure. And it's the final act. It's the confirmation of the death. If you've ever had someone close to you die, the wound is still an open, an entirely open wound until the funeral. Until there's that closure brought where their body's laid to rest. And then the grieving can start. And if you were to read historically about the Jews and how they did this stuff, it's interesting. They had a very, very formulaic way of grieving. And they didn't wait long to do the burial, but the real grieving didn't start until after the burial.

The family basically was left alone, and their neighbors were to bring them food, but they were under no obligation to even acknowledge that you came in and brought them food. You weren't even allowed to talk to them or express your condolences until after the burial, unless they spoke to you. And so the goal was to give them room, and then after the burial, then they would enter into these periods or this process of grieving. And so burial really is the period at the end of the sentence of life. It's what ends everything. It's when you say your final goodbye to their body until you see it again at the resurrection. And so burial is a confirmation, if you will, of death. You hear these stories of people not being dead, but they're getting buried sometimes. Sometimes they're jokes. Sometimes there's these really weird stories. You wonder if they're true. You hear of dead bodies in caskets twitching, and then people have to explain to you why that is, but no, they're actually dead, and we can...

We can put them in the ground. Burial really is the confirmation of the death. And if you've been to a funeral, you understand that, that when you stand by the graveside and you watch the casket go down, you understand that something's, some finality is being reached. They're being put in their place, and that's where they're going to stay, right? And it's a finality that you don't realize when they die. And so this is what burial is. It's a confirmation of death. It's the final step of death. It's the period at the end of it. I'd contend further that burial is not only the period of death, the end of it, the punctuation, but it's preparatory. It actually is a preparation for something. And that it's actually preparation for resurrection. This is how Scripture speaks even of people who've died as having gone to sleep. And to us, it might just seem, well, that's a weird way to put it.

And it is a weird way to put it, but what that language does is give testimony to the fact that they believe in a resurrection. They believe that while that body and that person's soul have been parted for a time, there is going to come a day when they will be reunited. And what we are doing by burying their body is preparing them. It's as if you're taking a runner right up to the start line and you're saying, the race is going to start and we're putting you in your place. This is where you will come from. And so burial is a preparatory act. And if you've been to a funeral or you've seen burial, if you have hope at that time, intermingled with your grief, it's that you understand this is an end, but it is not the end. That this is not the final word.

concerning this person, concerning their life, concerning their soul. This is not it. They've been laid to rest. They've gone to sleep. Their soul has departed. But in time, they'll wake up. And if they're in Christ, they'll wake up to joy, and they'll wake up to peace, and they'll wake up to glory. And so Joseph takes Jesus' body, and he puts it in the ground. He wraps it in linen cloths. Nicodemus has said in the Gospel of John to be with him, having brought About 100 pounds of anointing spices and ointments and stuff. And so they bury his body, these two men, Joseph and with the help of Nicodemus. And the women follow along. They follow Joseph off the pilot and then they follow him back. These are the same women who come rushing to the tomb as soon as day breaks to see the Lord.

And so I want us to see this as we come in for a landing. This time together is preparatory for us. We are in preparation to remember our Lord's resurrection on Sunday. That's sort of the purpose of tonight. And yet I don't want us to go away from this time without anything to consider. I don't want us to go, oh, I'm just supposed to think about it. And not do anything or not consider changing anything. And so one thing I would impress upon you is the importance of burial. That when someone is buried in the ground, what they are doing is testifying that they and their families believe that there is to be a resurrection. Which is not to say that those who have been cremated or those who have been lost at sea or those whose bodies have never been found because they were missing in war or anything like that are beyond.

resurrection. We serve a God who's made this world and everything it contains out of nothing simply by speaking it into existence. And so I'm not saying that they're beyond the pale of resurrection, but we as Christians ought to testify in every area of our lives to our Christian faith. And burial is the final way that we're able to testify that there is a resurrection to come. And so as you prepare and you think of your own death, as you think of your parents, Your parents' deaths. I want you to know that burial is a particularly Christian thing. And if you consider our culture and you think, well, as it drifts away from Christianity, what's on the rise? Cremation's on the rise. The testimony to the resurrection from the dead is on the rise. And that's an ungodly practice. And so I'd encourage you not to do it. Now, one of the questions I've been asked with this, is, well, how hard should I push my parents if they're set on being cremated? And I'd say, we'll have to have wisdom and talk about that. I don't think that I'd sever ties with people over it. I'd start with you and consider yourself and consider your family and consider the relationships and how much sway you have with people and give them counsel in light of those relationships. But for yourself,

I want you to see the importance of burial to Joseph and to Nicodemus and to these women. And I want you to say, that's for me. I want people to grieve when I die. And I want people to have hope when I die. I want there to be a service that tells them that it's not over yet. That I've gone to rest and I've been placed at my starting line for when Jesus comes back. And that's where I'm going to come from. And I want them to stand there and to miss me and to give glory to God. That's what I want. It'll be good for their souls. It'll be good for them. It'll be as a testimony to them. And so that's the thing I want you to consider as we prepare our hearts and minds to remember Jesus' victory over the grave this coming Sunday. That there actually are things in our own lives that we can do to testify to this truth. We ought not to shy away from it in our own lives. We ought also not to shy away from it in other people's lives when there are funerals in your family.

None of us want to go to funerals. None of us like to look at death. This is some of what we talked about last Sunday. Who wants to be a student of the pain and agony of death? Well, none of us do, but you don't have to be a student of death to engage in it, to see it, to glorify God in the midst of it. And so as you have opportunity to give glory to God in the midst of that sort of pain, I encourage you to go ahead and do it, to be a part of it, to not shy away from it, because it'll be a good reminder to you. It may be hard.

but it'd be a good reminder to us, and it'd be good food for our souls to remember that we're going to be in a box someday, and we need to be ready for that. Would you please pray with me? Father, as we remember the death of our Lord Jesus, and we see the humanity of Joseph, being afraid of the Jews, and yet having faith to bury your Son and our Lord, we're encouraged, even as we grieve, grieve our own sin, grieve the pain Jesus endured. Father, we ask that you would give us faith to grow as men and women in Christ. That while death is an enemy to be opposed, to be resisted, it is not victorious. And so I pray that even as we struggle and as we fight and grieve and grow, that you would keep us from losing hope. That you would strengthen us by the power of your Holy Spirit and by the fellowship we have with one another and the communion.

that we have around Jesus. I pray that you would preserve us to the end and that all of our lives and all that we do in them would be a testimony to who you are and what you've done for this world, sending your son into it to save sinners. We love you, Father, and we praise you. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.