Dead & Buried
Download MP3We're gonna be in John 19 tonight. John 19. We began our study in John's gospel, 1 year, 6 months, and 1 week ago. This is the 55th sermon in this sermon series. We've covered so much ground.
Jeffrey Heine:We have looked at many scenes in the life of Jesus. So many interactions between Jesus and people who believed in him. Jesus and people who rejected him and did not believe. We've heard Jesus' teaching. We've heard Jesus' prayers.
Jeffrey Heine:Last week, we heard his last words from the cross. And now, for the first time, for the first time in this sermon series and the first time in this gospel, Jesus is silent, and He's silent because He is dead. So let us turn our attention to John 19, beginning with verse 31, And let us listen carefully, for this is God's word. Since it was the day of preparation, and so that the bodies would not remain on the cross on the Sabbath, for that Sabbath was a high day. The Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken and that they might be taken away.
Jeffrey Heine:So the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first, and of the other who had been crucified with him. And when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, They did not break his legs. But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, And at once, there came out blood and water. He who saw it has borne witness. His testimony is true, and he knows that he's telling the truth that you also may believe.
Jeffrey Heine:For these things took place that the scripture might be fulfilled, not one of his bones will be broken. And again, another scripture says, they will look on him whom they have pierced. After these things, Joseph of Arimathea, who was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly for 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.
Jeffrey Heine:Nicodemus also, who earlier had come to Jesus by night, came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about £75 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 yet been laid. So, because of the Jewish day of preparation, since the tomb was close at hand, they laid Jesus there. The word of the Lord.
Jeffrey Heine:Thanks be to God. Let's pray. Our father, it was your will to crush the sun. And Jesus, it was for the joy that was set before you that you endured the cross, despising the shame. In spirit, without you, we would remain dead in our sins and trespasses.
Jeffrey Heine:So triune God, help us to behold our king and savior in this hour and all our days. Speak, Lord. Your servants are listening. Amen. I have visited, the graves of many great men and women.
Jeffrey Heine:I've been to the graves of George Washington, Helen Keller, Johnny Cash, and Colonel Sanders. The Jim Morrison of Kentucky. People have long made pilgrimages to pay their respects at the resting places of great men and great women. Every year, over half a 1000000 people walk by Elvis's grave, and I only go 4 or 5 times a year. Burial is this sacred activity.
Jeffrey Heine:Even to many who are not religious at all, there is still this honor and respect in a burial. There are rituals across the cultures regarding the body of a person who has died. Reverence and respect is accorded. Throughout the Old Testament, we read about the burial of Israel's leaders, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, all died, all buried, their graves honored. When Stephen, the disciple of Jesus, when he is preaching the gospel in Acts 7, he talks about Jacob and the patriarchs being buried with great reverence.
Jeffrey Heine:When Peter preaches his great sermon in Acts 13, he notes that King David was buried. He says this, when David had served God's purpose in his time, he died, and his body was buried with his father's. And furthermore, Peter says, David's body decayed in the grave. Now in our culture, we don't like to think about being buried because we don't like to believe that we're going to die. Of course, we know we're going to die, we just don't want to believe that we're going to die.
Jeffrey Heine:And so in our culture, where personal freedom, that that ability to go and do as I please, that personal freedom is principle to our concept of personhood. And so to take time and think about the fact that we will be placed in a box, that box will be lowered into the ground. Dirt will cover over the box. To take time and think about that, to think that we will clock more hours under the ground than on top of it, who wants to think about that? I mean, it's a it's a beautiful autumn Sunday, and it actually feels like autumn for the first time.
Jeffrey Heine:It's sweater weather. Why would we wanna take the time to think about being buried? But our text today, it won't permit fantasy or delusion or delay. 20th century Swiss theologian, Karl Barth, wrote an essay on the crucifixion, death, and burial of Jesus, And he says this, Someday, we shall all be buried. Someday, a company of men will proceed out to a churchyard and lower a coffin.
Jeffrey Heine:And everyone will go home, but one will not, and that will be me. The seal of death will be that they will bury me as a thing that is superfluous and disturbing in the land of the living. Buried gives to death the character of passing away and decay and to human existence, the character of transitoriness and corruptibility, what then is the meaning of a man's life? It means hurrying to the grave. Man is hurrying to meet his past.
Jeffrey Heine:This past, in which there is no more future, will be the final thing. All that we are will have been and will have been corrupted. Perhaps a memory will remain so long as there are men who like to remember us. But someday, they too will die, and then this memory too will pass away. There is no great name in human history which will not someday or other have become forgottenness.
Jeffrey Heine:That is God's answer to sin. There is nothing else to be done with sinful man except to bury him and forget him, end quote. See, we have to think about the reality that we too will be buried. And further, we need to realize that those of us who are in Christ Jesus have already been buried. And with our time tonight, I'd like to unpack what that means, how that happened, and what difference it makes for our lives on this autumn Sunday afternoon.
Jeffrey Heine:You've likely heard the phrase before, the passion of the Christ. The passion. Passion coming from the Latin passio, which means to suffer. The passion is the suffering of Jesus, and this suffering of Jesus has come to an end. He cried out, it is finished.
Jeffrey Heine:He gave up his last breath and with it, his spirit. And we looked at those final moments last week. And now now the corpse of Jesus Christ hangs on a cross. The crowd is beginning to disperse. They have plans, plans for dinner.
Jeffrey Heine:It's Friday afternoon, and the time of preparation for that special Sabbath remember, all of these people are in Jerusalem because of the Passover celebration. They had all traveled in. These families from all over traveled in for this celebration. They have to get back to their families. They have to get back to their holiday commitments.
Jeffrey Heine:All the craziness of the last 24 hours has come to an end, and they must return to their previously planned activities. Grandmothers have prepared favorite dishes. They're cousins that people haven't seen for years. They have plans. But before everyone could leave and move on from this scene, there's some matters of the Jewish law that need to be followed.
Jeffrey Heine:The rulers and the leaders were concerned because the Roman protocol for the crucifixion would be problematic for them. The common Roman practice, was to let the bodies of the executed hang on the cross however long it took them to die and then remain there until they were consumed by birds or wild dogs. But leaving the corpse on the cross would go against the Jewish law, in particular, a law regarding defilement. Deuteronomy 21/23 says this, a body shall not remain all night on the tree. You shall bury him the same day, for a hanged man is cursed by God.
Jeffrey Heine:You shall not defile your land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance. So consider this, Jesus' crucified body would make them dirty. It would prevent them from participating and celebrating in the Passover. A celebration. Remember, it's a celebration where they come together to look back and celebrate what God had done in rescuing them by his grace from death.
Jeffrey Heine:And now, Jesus's body would defile them and keep them from this celebration. The body needed to be removed from the cross. It needed to be washed. It needed to be buried, not to show regard or respect for him, but to keep their land, to keep themselves clean and pure. The broken body of the one who makes us clean was a threat to their cleanliness.
Jeffrey Heine:At every turn, the person Jesus was a problem for these leaders. He was a problem when he would be teaching in the synagogues, a problem when he would decree and speak forgiveness of sins, as though he had the authority to do that. He was a problem when he commanded creation, when he quieted the storm. He was a problem when he gave sight and healed the sick. He was a problem when he said that he was one with the father.
Jeffrey Heine:He was a problem, a problem to be arrested and tried and killed, and now his body is a problem. For the Jews to maintain this ritual ceremonial purity, they needed to expedite getting these bodies off of the crosses before sundown and the beginning of the Sabbath. Before they could take them off the crosses though, they had to make sure that they were dead. Typically to expedite the death the the legs of the criminals would be broken. This was somewhat common practice.
Jeffrey Heine:And after the guard went up and broke the legs of 1, so he could not push himself up any further and would die, and they went to the other and broke his legs. Then they came to Jesus. And it's such a subtle way that John says this, but it's the first time that it's stated in his gospel. They didn't break his legs because he was dead. But to make sure, they stabbed him in the side with a spear, a knife just at the end of a long pole.
Jeffrey Heine:And John the evangelist offers a detail here, one that he recalls personally. He notes something that the other gospel writers don't mention, and he mentions it, I don't believe because it's such a critical detail, I think he mentions it because he remembers it so vividly. You see, he's standing there. John is standing there with a woman that he will now care for like his mother and tell her last day. He stands there as he hears her weep.
Jeffrey Heine:As the prophecy is fulfilled that was spoken over the little baby Jesus, that her heart too would be pierced in the pain of watching him suffer. I remember reading this article a number of years ago about this ministry that was set up, to minister to the families of someone who is going to be executed by the state, because not a lot of provisions are made for those people. And the director of this ministry was saying, there is nothing like the sound of a mother after her child has been executed. They they went through the courts, they went through the process, they went through all those things, and and maybe later we can have a discussion about those kinds of things, but what I wanna focus on is the sound of the mothers' cry. And as John stands there, next to this woman he will care for as his own mother, and he hears her crying.
Jeffrey Heine:He looks up as they stick the knife into the side of Jesus, and he says, water and blood poured out. Here, John is emphatically telling us Jesus was dead. The wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting Father, Prince of Peace, Emmanuel, God with us, the Messiah, the Son of David, the Lamb of God, the light of the world, the Son of Man, the Son of God was dead. The one through whom all things were made, the one who holds all things together, the one for whom all things were made was dead. He was crushed, bled out, disfigured beyond recognition, slaughtered, cut off from the land of the living, and all that remained was a corpse that was threatening the defilement of the people.
Jeffrey Heine:After confirming that he was dead, his body was taken down from the cross. His muscles and ligaments ripped and torn, the body beginning to stiffen. And who is there to bury him? Do his disciples step up? Maybe his brothers to take him to the tomb where their father Joseph or Mary's father was buried.
Jeffrey Heine:No. 2 members of the Sanhedrin, the very group that sentenced Jesus to die, step up to claim the body and to bury it. Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus come forward. These men, the gospel writers tell us, are secret followers of Jesus, and it can be understood that this act of stepping up to take the body of Jesus is their audacious, perhaps even foolish proclamation that they follow the way of Jesus. It's also possible that they stepped up instead of the known followers because they would be more trusted by the other Jewish leaders and and by Pilate, and they were being viewed as just helpful in getting rid of the problem of the body of Jesus.
Jeffrey Heine:Nevertheless, these secret followers of Jesus acted quickly to procure the body. Joseph, who was wealthy, he had a new tomb in a nearby garden. It was likely prepared for his own family. It would have been it would have been a dishonor to to bury an executed man with other people. So typically, they would just go to a general burial location, unless they could afford being buried alone, which most of these families could not do that.
Jeffrey Heine:But Joseph offers up this unused tomb, this this new carved out space that no one had been laid in before. Nicodemus goes to work on the other task at hand, and that is, getting the necessary elements to provide Jesus a proper Jewish burial. And these men, and likely their servants, worked diligently in the few hours that they had from getting the body until sundown. They went to work. At this point in the gospel, we are standing in a unique place.
Jeffrey Heine:We are standing between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. We don't get one without the other, And really, at no point should we focus so much on one that we forget that the other happens. We try to hold them both in view. And so as Nicodemus looks at Joseph of Arimathea and they indicate that their task is over, their work is done. They turn to go home.
Jeffrey Heine:They are thankful for the efforts of the other, and they wonder what might happen now, now that they have aligned themselves in this manner with Jesus and his disciples. And as they leave the garden, the body of Jesus lays alone in the silence of the tomb. 24 hours earlier, Jesus was breaking bread and pouring wine for his friends. And now his body is broken, and his blood has been poured out for his friends. And no one knows what will happen next.
Jeffrey Heine:Mary, John, Peter, Thomas, no one knows. All they know is that Jesus is dead. This doesn't seem like a plan, does it? This doesn't seem like what the father would have wanted, but we must remember that Christ cannot be the risen savior unless he is first the crucified dead and buried savior, and that's what John wants you to know. That's what John wants you to believe.
Jeffrey Heine:Jesus is dead and Jesus is buried. No breath in his lungs, no light in his eyes. John calls to us and says, I looked at him. I saw the water and the blood pour out from his side. Early in the life of the church, a focused confession began to form, a confession of faith.
Jeffrey Heine:Paul put it this way in one of the earliest writings that we have within the Christian community, earlier than the 4 gospels in this letter to the Corinthian church, Paul says this, for I deliver to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the 3rd day in accordance with the scriptures. The Apostle's Creed from the first, 2nd century states that Jesus was crucified dead and buried. It's part of what we confess about who Jesus is and what he has done. Buried, that he was buried, this brief word on burial. Barth, again, puts it this way, it stands there so unobtrusively and simply superfluously, but it is not there for nothing, end quote.
Jeffrey Heine:That the word buried, that he was buried, isn't there for nothing. So why is it so important for John to describe what happened to the body of Jesus after he yielded up his spirit, after he said, it is finished? In that climactic moment, why did he need to write more? Why did he need to go on into these details about the spear and the burial? I think that there are two main reasons, 2 main reasons why it's so important.
Jeffrey Heine:And the first is this, that it happened, That it happened to Jesus. You see, this is something that I think we should, take with us into all of our Bible reading, that maybe before we try and just pull out a principle or some verse to just stick in our pocket or try to read ourselves into the scene and imagine which character is supposed to be us, before we do that kind of work, that we would read it to see what happened and to stand back small in comparison to the greatness of the truth that this happened. This happened to him. You know, at the time of John's writing, there there were already lies, false teaching going on, that the Christians were having to, to face this kind of, lying in the church. And the docetists, that's one of these groups, they were saying that it only appeared that Jesus died.
Jeffrey Heine:It only appeared that he suffered. It only looked like it. And John says, and this is why that line is in there where he says, the one who is telling you these things, who witnessed these things, is is telling the truth. What he is standing there and saying is, I saw it. I saw the spear go into his side.
Jeffrey Heine:I saw water and blood pour out. I saw it. So the first thing, that it happened to him. The second thing is this, This is a little bit more complicated. It happened to you.
Jeffrey Heine:Karl Barth again in this essay says, we shouldn't be surprised really that Jesus was raised from the dead. He's God. We saw him command creation. We we saw him call people out of the tomb. We saw him do these things.
Jeffrey Heine:The remarkable thing is not that Jesus was raised from the dead. The remarkable thing about Easter morning is that he raised you with him. He raised you up out of the grave with himself. When the father raised the son, he raised you. That is unbelievable.
Jeffrey Heine:At this point in John's gospel, like I said, we stand between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, and we have to look at both. Paul wrote a letter to the Colossian church, a group of people who trusted in Jesus, and they wanted to know how to live that out day to day. What does it mean to really follow and obey and trust Jesus in the day to day life? And Paul wrote these words to them in Colossians 212. He says, having been buried with him in baptism, you were raised with him through your faith in the power of God who raised him from the dead.
Jeffrey Heine:When you were dead in your trespasses and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive in Christ. You were dead. When? You were dead in your sins and your trespasses. Paul says the same things to the Ephesian church.
Jeffrey Heine:You were dead in your sins and your trespasses. You were by nature children of wrath. This is who you were. These aren't just some mistakes that we make. This is this is born into our very flesh and blood.
Jeffrey Heine:This is who we were. By nature, children of wrath. Before we trusted in the power of God, we were dead. And Paul says, you were buried with him. You were buried with him in baptism.
Jeffrey Heine:He says that baptism is this image for us of this being united so much with Jesus Christ that when when we are in him, when we are united with Christ, knowing and believing that Jesus was crucified dead and buried, then we also confess that we were crucified with him, buried with him, raised with him. Jesus did not distantly atone for your sins and bring you life. See he has these treasures in himself, and they are of no good to us if we are not united to him. And how are we united? Through the work of the Holy Spirit.
Jeffrey Heine:The spirit unites us with him that that we die that death, we are buried in that burial, and we are raised in his resurrection. John the evangelist, years after writing his gospel, writes a letter to instruct Christians in the faith, and he says this, 1st John 5, God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the son has life. Whoever does not have the son of God does not have life. You can have some good choices.
Jeffrey Heine:You can have some good opportunities. You can have some good things happen to you, but you do not have life if you do not have the son. As sure as Jesus was in the grave, if you are not in him, you do not have life. And this is the call that keeps coming after each one of us. Right?
Jeffrey Heine:To trust in this work of Jesus, his cross, his burial, his resurrection. Jesus had to be the buried savior to be our risen savior. The son of man had to be delivered into the hands of sinners and be crucified. The light of the world had to be slain by darkness and laid in the earth that he created. In all of history, there has never been a darkness as dark as that found in the tomb where the corpse of God lay in repose.
Jeffrey Heine:And at no place in all of history has darkness been riven with so great a light as when the father raised the son. We are washed by the water that flowed from Jesus' side. We are forgiven by the blood that he shed, and we are buried in the grave with him. And if Christ is raised, we too are raised now and forever. Let's pray.
Jeffrey Heine:God, we look to you to rescue us because we cannot save ourselves. And so in our sin and our trespasses when we were enemies with you, God, Christ died for us at the right time. When our lives were a wreck and a mess, when we were in outright rebellion to you, Christ died for us. Now, God, help us because we cannot help ourselves. And many of us are so very tired of trying to save ourselves, to prove our worth, and just to find our way in this world.
Jeffrey Heine:Oh, Jesus, rescue us. Rescue us from ourselves. Rescue us from our fears, our self loathing. Rescue us from our sin and our trespasses that we might hope in the power of God and believe that by the work of the Holy Spirit, we are united to you, Jesus, in your death, in your burial, and in your resurrection. Help us God, we pray.
Jeffrey Heine:In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.
