Buried Like Christ!

Hi, this is Joanne Vigner with the podcast It's Storytime Meemaw, an answered prayer for stories that point children to God. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just a few seconds. Enjoy it, share it, but most of all thank you for listening to the Truth Podcast Network.

This is the Truth Network. Why do Christians traditionally bury their dead? What about cremation?

What about other rites of entombing or putting people to rest upon their death? Well, this week on Experience Truth, I'm Stu Everson and I'm so glad you're with me. We tackle the Word every week at a cool restaurant, group of restaurants across North Carolina called Dario. Wednesday mornings it's called Wednesday and the Word is a bunch of messed up men like me going through the Bible. This is from our study in Luke and I am honored to have one of my mentor's friends and one of our syndication directors of all the Truth Network, the Christian car guy himself, Robbie Dilmore with me. Robbie, welcome.

Very fun. Yeah, I like this episode. This episode, well, we're going to get back into the burial of Christ and why is that so significant? This event in history that's tucked right in between his death, which is so critical, and his resurrection.

But it's repeated over and over in Scripture how the Christ died for our sins. That he was buried is talked about in Romans chapter 6 and Colossians chapter 2. We are buried with him in baptism.

We're identified with him. So the burial of Christ is significant. It's in all four of the Gospels and really, Robbie, it is part and parcel of why we Christians traditionally have buried their dead. And 1 Corinthians 15 talks about how your body is planted in the earth. Mortality is planted in the earth to become immortal, to prepare for the resurrection body. I don't want to go hard in condemning people that believe in cremation, but I think it's important to understand what are the origins of that. Of course, God can raise a body from the dead that's been cremated. I mean, Christian men and women have been blown up in bombs and house fires.

Men have gone to war and been completely obliterated and pulverized by bombs. So God, of course, can raise that up, but this Christian burial is symbolic of what Christ was buried in, of the planting of the body and the ground to await for the resurrection. So there's some cool symbolism that you don't want to miss, but you don't want to play hardline with it. And a lot of the Christian scholars I've read have a very good spirit in addressing this. But let's get back and read the passage, and then we'll get to the final questions, and we'll get through this here on Experience Truth. Some stuff you may not have known today about the burial of Jesus Christ that led up to his resurrection. Luke 23, 50 through 56. Now behold, there was a man named Joseph, a council member, a good and a just man.

He had not consented to their decision. Indeed, he was from Arimathea, a city of Jews who himself also waiting for the kingdom of God. This man went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus.

Then he took it down, wrapped it in linen, and laid it in a tomb that was hewn out of the rock, where no one had ever lain before. That day was the preparation, and the Sabbath drew near. And the women who had come with him from Galilee followed after, and they observed the tomb and how his body was laid. Then they returned and prepared spices of fragrant oils, and they rested on the Sabbath according to the commandment. So the Lord of the Sabbath was the ultimate one who brought us our rest, who said, come to me all you who labored heavy laden, and I will give you rest. He is himself laid to rest in tomb.

Ask this question, Robbie, before we get to the final three to bring people back into what we talked about last week. So who attended the funeral of Jesus? I'm just fascinated. That could be a good book, the funeral of Jesus. A whole book on burial, and on the significance of burial, and what it represents, and how when you are baptized, friend, you are identifying with Christ in his death and in his burial.

You are buried. That demonstrates that death was truly legit, that you truly were dead, and then you are raised in newness of life to demonstrate, to symbolize, to powerfully communicate that your life has been transformed. So baptism is a public display of an inner reality. It is a public proclamation of the transformation of Jesus Christ, how his life, his death, his burial, and his resurrection has transformed you. And when you're baptized, you are publicly showing everyone, hey guys, I'm with him.

I'm following after Jesus. Joseph of Arimathea publicly laid his neck on the line. He finally came out of the closet. He was one of those secret disciples, like Nicodemus and like some others, who came out and said, I want the body of Jesus. And in that moment, that was a defining moment of his faith. After all those years of following Christ, knowing about him, and standing up for him, and not falling in with the Sanhedrin and their hateful attacks on Jesus, and not participating in the crucifixion and all of that, he stood up. He says, this is it.

I'm taking a stand. And he risked everything to stand with Jesus in his death and to say, I want the body of Christ. He goes right to Pilate, which shows he had wealth and influence, you know, as being a member of the Sanhedrin, to do that. And this goes deep into our faith, Robbie, the barrel of Christ.

Let's go into these final questions. We got to get back to who attended the funeral. Who was at the funeral? Well, you know, we know that the disciples... We had Joseph. It's interesting, by the way, Joseph, to his tribute, everyone's like, well, he was a secret disciple.

Well, he finally showed up. Well, where were the other disciples? Yeah, that is one of those questions you can't help but wonder, but that's one of the things I think is beautiful, is that both here and at the resurrection, you see the presence of women and how God had called women out through Christ throughout this time. And you see the difference between the way that God made men and women, that they're so relational that they can somehow or another take on this pain that, you know, a lot of men I know, you know, that you can't get them to come to a funeral. It's something to go into a nursing home and all those kind of things, that women play a super role of reflecting where God would want to be there in this tragedy. And Jesus gave beautiful, in the Bible, the Word of God, Apostle Paul, the Word of God gives beautiful dignity to women.

I mean, it really does. You know, there are religions today that oppress, enslave, beat women. Religions that are very popular, even popular in America. I don't understand how these folks reconcile that, but Christianity gives dignity to women like no other faith as daughters of the king. And this was, these women were there. Joseph of Arimathea was there.

The disciples, they were hot dogging it out of town because they knew there was a cross set up for them, right, and probably scared to death. But Joseph stood with the body of Jesus and he asked for it in its burial. Right. So the next is, how does the burial of Jesus impact the lives of all believers? Yeah. You know, have you been born again? That's the big question. Is this situation of Jesus going into this new tomb something that you've ever embraced and considered, you know, what really happened here?

Because that decision of what you really believe, I mean, this is where the rubber really meets the road of, you know, have I come to grips with this? And, you know, it's fascinating. I want to jump to that practical point, but it's interesting that the common type of tombs, these tombs are still found in Israel today, you know, hewn out of a rock, right? A lot of them, almost like ossuaries, contain multiple shelves for many bodies.

We know from the other gospels as well that this was Joseph's personal tomb. Now think about that. You go out, you buy a plot, it's for your family. Me and my sweetheart, we're going to be laid to rest right there in that tomb. We've paid a lot of money for it. We have pre-planned, right? There's all kinds of, buy your plot now, right? Save big, you know, and that's a huge industry. Well, he said, I'm going to give my plot to Jesus.

I'm going to say, you know, my 401k, my whole, you know, that's not a cheap affair, right? To bury someone and to have a tomb and everyone's jockeying for the good ones. Especially hewn out a rock.

That's exactly right. It took something to be done. So it's interesting, you know, just, and so it was his personal tomb, he says, I'm giving that to Christ. And it's interesting that, have I committed my death to Jesus? If I planned my funeral so that Jesus Christ is exalted, I just saw a funeral of an awesome godly pastor, Truth Network pastor, Dr. Ken Harris, who went to be with Christ, and the funeral was so exalting of Jesus. I mean, the gospel was given in a couple hours time, Robbie, probably, you know, a hundred times.

I loved it. This was what Pastor Harris did. And even in his own voice at the end, they played, he said, I hope you know Jesus. I hope you'll be saved. You call upon the Lord. Come to Christ. I love that. And even in his death, Dr. Harris, honored and lifted up Jesus, and Joseph of Arathea said, you know, I'm gonna give my death to Christ.

You know what, basically, that's out there. I'm my whole future. It's his, you know, and so often we put, well, I'm gonna live for him now, but later on, my inheritance, my will, that's not gonna reflect him. Well, Joseph was all in. It was a tomb in which no one had ever been laid, how fascinating Christ rode into Jerusalem on an unbroken, right, a cult that had never been ridden.

And these beautiful women were there. So there's this whole thing, and then it comes down to this. What in the world am I gonna do with Jesus? I love that question, because to be born again, Nicodemus was even, the other secret disciples said, well, how can a woman, you know, someone enter into a woman's womb, right, a second time, and he didn't understand the concept of new life. You can't be buried until you've died.

That's right. Until you've been crucified, until you have died, until you've realized that, you know what, my life right now that I'm living isn't mine, and my life is a wreck, and I'm a sinner, and I've violated a holy God, and all have sinned and fall short, and the wages of those sinned is death, but the gift of God is eternal life. And what did this God do? For God so loved the world, he gave his only son. He gave his son to death.

He gave his son to burial. He gave his son to be raised from the dead that whosoever believeth in him will not perish but have everlasting life. So life with Christ is so critical.

Life with Christ means you are intimately connected with him in his life, in his death, in his burial, in his resurrection. And Robbie, isn't that picture of burial, there he was literally dead, doesn't that even more show us the beautiful hope of the resurrection? Yeah, I mean, I'm more than blessed to remember coming up out of the waters of baptism and feeling like I was stepping onto, you know, a fresh slate, a fresh life, a way to live a kingdom life, you know, not concerned like Joseph with what my burial is going to be like.

Well, let's consider, you know, how can we bring Jesus's kingdom in and the pure joy of living in a larger story. Yeah, and I would encourage you to consider a Christian burial, a tradition Christian burial. Again, I'm not knocking those that are cremated. There have been some wonderful worshipful people saved at people's funerals that have been cremated, but understand there's a tradition. Cremation comes from Eastern thought, Eastern mysticism, which is a pantheistic view that we kind of, we disintegrate, we're all one, we all kind of go back in the universe, and karma and all that comes out.

That is a fact. Cremation comes out of Eastern mysticism. Christian burial, by the way, a lot of folks, there's believers who are cremated, they're going to be fine, go straight to heaven. There's a lot of unbelievers who are buried. That doesn't make them Christians, because they have a Christian burial, right? But burial is an intrinsically, historically, epistemologically Christian act that, you know, that comes from Christianity, that's influenced by Christianity, and the burial of Jesus is one of the biggest factors in that.

So it's kind of a neat thing. Regardless, make sure the gospel is proclaimed. Don't make the cremation or the burial a hill to die on, no pun intended, but make sure the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Lord Jesus Christ, the saving Jesus, the one who came and died and was buried and rose from the dead, make sure he is lifted up and people are invited to come to him. And that's the beauty of the burial of Christ in a phenomenal, fascinating event. I encourage you to study it some more and read it, you know, this passage. It's not only, by the way, in Luke chapter, which we have spent time on today in the passage of Luke, because we're journeying through Luke. It's not just in Luke 23, 50 through 56, it's in Matthew 27, Mark 15, and John 19. It's important that it's in all the gospels, and it's prophesied, and it's in all the creeds. The burial of Jesus is in all the creeds, and it's in the New Testament, and it really is intimately connected with his baptism.

When you're baptized, you're baptized in Christ, and you're also representing what he did, not just in his death and his new life, but in his burial. Robbie, a lot to think about. Thanks for being with me today, man.

This has been fun. Yeah, thank you. Dig through the Scriptures. Send me an email. Reach out to me on Twitter, at Stu Epperson, on my Facebook, at Stu Epperson, on Instagram, and I'm on LinkedIn. Would love to connect you there, and would love to hear your thoughts. God bless you.

This is the Truth Network. Say, what would you do if you were a new Christian and you didn't have a Bible? It's Michael Woolworth, by the way, from Bible League International, and you'd probably say, well, I'd hop in my car, I'd go to a Christian bookstore, or I'd have one shipped to me.

What if those weren't options? You'd say, well, I'm new to the faith. I mean, I need to know what it means to grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus. You know, you would pray that someone, anyone would bring you a Bible, and that's exactly the way it is for literally millions of Christians around the world. They're part of our spiritual family. They're new to the faith. They want to know what it means to grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus, but God has them planted where it's very difficult to access a Bible, and that's why the Truth Network and Bible League have teamed up to send God's Word to 3500 Bible-less believers around the globe. Our campaign is called, The World Needs the Word. $5 sins a Bible, $100 sins 20, every gift matched. Make your most generous gift by calling 800-Yes-Word, 800-Y-E-S-W-O-R-D, 800-Yes-Word, or give at truthnetwork.com.