Love Never Budged (Part B)

They're risking ritual and status and perhaps even more just to get their hands on the lifeless body of Christ.

That's love. There was nothing else to drive them. There was no other reason, nothing to push them forward. That should be ministry for us all. What motivates us to serve?

Well, we want to do well. We don't want to let down our fellow servants. That's part of it. But the greater part is the love of Christ.

And if it's not, it needs to be. Because of the status of the man like Joseph of Arimathea, most of the disciples probably never got to talk with him or be around him. Just a social gap between the two. And I'm sure when they wrote this, they were delighted that such a man could be around him. And I'm sure when they wrote this, they were delighted that such a man could love the Lord. If he could do it, what was the excuse of the other ones? If other people your age can love Christ, then what's your excuse if you don't? Because I just want to play. I'm angry at something.

I'm not getting my way in life. Whatever it may be, it's not a good enough reason to turn your back on Christ. Whatever reason these men had for turning their back on Jesus was not good enough for God. And where are they now? Well, we know where Joseph of Arimathea is and Nicodemus.

Where are the rest of them? A question mark that you don't want to go to your grave with on your life. Well, when Joseph went into the presence of Pilate, he contracted defilement. This was the place where the other Jews didn't want to go before the Passover feast. This made it impossible for him to take part in the feast as a righteous Jew would.

That defilement deepened with contact the dead body. Joseph had so now loved the Lord, ritual meant very little to him. However, now that he is defiled from celebrating the ceremony of the Passover, I don't think there could have been a greater celebration of the Passover that he and Nicodemus engaged in in taking care of the body of the Passover lamb, Jesus Christ.

This was a greater honor than sitting at a table eating a lamb to take care of the Lamb of God. And so they dared ceremonial defilement in order to take the Holy One of God and properly take care of what remained with tender hands, risking at the same time being alienated from their colleagues. Their social status could have been lost. They could have incurred a great many problems for doing what they were doing. And so again, what did these men feel, Joseph and Nicodemus, as they attended to the body of Christ?

It was a gruesome task. What was happening in their heads? They labored to lay Christ to rest in spite of the misery in their hearts, the hopelessness on their faces, the loss of excitement in the tone of their voices, and they too were severely injured.

Their money and their status did not protect them from how they were feeling at this moment. Of all possible disappointments, to be disappointed in Jesus Christ is the worst. And if you serve Christ enough, there will be those times where you are disappointed with what Christ has allowed or disallowed.

You will struggle with this whole concept of the sovereignty of God. If God is sovereign, why doesn't he do more? Why doesn't he eat?

Why doesn't it go on and on? Hope was dead in their hands for the time being, but they didn't know that. They didn't know that he was going to get up. Hope gone from their hearts, but love, love never budged because they're still so concerned about him. They're risking ritual and status and perhaps even more just to get their hands on the lifeless body of Christ.

That's love. There was nothing else to drive them. There was no other reason, nothing to push them forward. That should be ministry for us all. What motivates us to serve?

Well, we want to do well. We don't want to let down our fellow servants. That's part of it.

But the greater part is the love of Christ, and if it's not, it needs to be. Maybe you say, but I don't feel it like I used to feel it. And you're still doing it? Yes. Why? Because I love the Lord, but I don't feel it. That's war, and that's good war. That's how we beat back the devil.

We don't wait to feel good about it. We go, by faith, the just shall live by faith. It does not say the just shall live by feelings.

And what would get done then? Well, there are things in life that can bring profound misery and disappointment with God's way, and we accept that. And if we love Him, we won't budge.

We won't move. Those who become apostates have run out of love. There is this love that stands and takes what life throws our way because of Christ. Now, people who don't have Christ can take what life throws at them too, but it only carries them through one lifetime, and it dies when they die.

You see, the world, you know, they're accomplishing a great many things, building things and developing things and discovering things. And yet, what does it really matter? I mean, if you walked up to Abraham, he said, do you know they actually went to the moon and landed and walked on the moon? Well, Abraham, he had a conspiracy theory. No, he didn't. No. But what if it didn't matter?

I mean, did they get up there? Okay, so you go to the front of the line and going into heaven. What does it profit a man if he gains the world?

It's not about that. I mean, there have to be things on earth to keep us busy else we get into trouble, but when it comes down to it, it comes down to, do you love the Lord? It says here in verse 43, coming and taking courage. How much thought went into his taking courage, knowing the consequences? There would be, evidently, a need to be courageous at this point. Otherwise, we would not have read these words.

They would not have been necessary to write. Mark and the other writers of the Gospels, when they put this in there, they were saying, this man was in danger. It took courage to do what he did. John's Gospel, chapter 19, verse 38, Joseph of Arimathea being a disciple of Jesus, but secretly for fear of the Jews. Again, using that, quoting that scripture, he's talking about the Jewish leaders.

It's not an ethnic slur at all. Knowingly putting himself in harm's way for the body of Christ, for a dead body. John, in his letter, maybe he was thinking of Joseph when he said, there is no fear in love.

Perfect love casts out fear. You see the connection between what this man is doing in love? It was not his duty as a council member of the Sanhedrin. There was no sense of, well, this is a decent thing to do. Otherwise, he would have asked for the bodies of the two other outlaws, too. Well, the two outlaws, not other outlaws. Christ was no outlaw. His sole purpose, his sole focus was Christ and his love for Jesus. And though he may have been a secret disciple prior to the crucifixion, watching how Jesus handled it all and how he was, how Christ was handled by his enemies, just made this man love him more. The Roman mind had a different view.

A king should not be treated this way because that's a carnal view. Joseph knew, he knew better by what he heard preached because he knew enough of the scripture to make at least sound conclusions concerning the righteousness of Jesus. It's just the whole Messiah thing escaped them. Who else amongst the disciples would be granted an audience with Pilate? I mean, John may have wanted to meet with Pilate to ask for the body, but Pilate would never meet with a man like John. He did not have the social clout to merit an audience. But here is Joseph.

He has it. He can get a meeting with the governor and he does get it. He went into Pilate and asked for the body of Christ. Whatever shame they had in mind to handle the body of Christ with before Joseph showed up was blocked by the father.

God would not allow it. So God provides this servant, Joseph. It is a divine appointment. And we read this and we're supposed to say, there comes a time when God needs a specific individual. Will there come a time when he needs me? Will there come a time when he wants me to do something and I am handpicked for the task? Will I notice it?

Will I act on it? Or maybe I'll live my life in such a way God can't ever ask me. Maybe my Christianity is too shallow. Maybe I don't have enough desire for Jesus Christ. These are questions that we're supposed to face.

What are we supposed to do, run from them? And then blame God for not using us? We who love the Lord, we want God to use us. And when God uses us, many times there's a lot of waiting involved. And those who can't wait for the Lord often wither instead of continuing to wait and stay awake on their watch.

So God provides this servant, Joseph. This incidentally would allow for the body of evidence at the resurrection. All the Christ haters had to do to refute the resurrection was produce the body of Christ. If someone had said one of the outlaws that was crucified next to Christ had risen from the dead, they would have just exhumed his body and said, no, here he is. But they couldn't do that with Christ.

They wouldn't need to do it with the others because there was no such claim attached to them. This is a stroke of God's hand. Saying, I'm going to preserve the body. I'm going to do it my way.

I'm going to put it where I want it. And God totally in control. To this day, the Christ haters, and they're not our enemies. They are those that we should have a passion for in saving their souls.

But they're Christ haters, many of them nonetheless. They have been able to rid the world of the body of Christ in the church. The church is the body of Christ. Colossians, Paul wrote in the first chapter, he said, for the sake of his body, which is the church.

Paul says, I'm suffering these things for the sake of his body, which is the church. He certainly knew of Luke's gospel. He would have known about Joseph of Arimathea.

He would have known that Joseph put himself in harm's way because of love. Even if he didn't know it, he had enough other things to arrive to this understanding for the sake of his body, which is the church. The church is very problematic.

There are some beautiful things about the church and there are some problems always with the church because of the people who attend. And so we're supposed to be ready for this. And our response to whatever comes our way is supposed to be love and prayer and endurance and perseverance. Not only are we supposed to take the pain, we're supposed to look to keep advancing, moving forward. The difference between endurance and perseverance. You endure, you take the hit. It hurts. It's not a lot of fun when it's your feelings. Perseverance means you're still moving forward.

You're still taking territory. Verse 44, Mark writes, Pilate marveled that he was already dead. And summoning the centurion, he asked him if he had been dead for some time. Crucifixion was intended to be long and painful. Of course, there were to be no survivors. It was not, well, we'll just torch you with this and then if you last enough days, we'll bring you down. No, it was a long and painful death.

That's what it was designed to do. You can look up in history. Of course, the internet makes this easy.

Years ago, you had to buy Encyclopedia Britannica or something to get these answers. Now it's right there at your fingertips, as Daniel promised. In the end times, knowledge will increase and that was an understatement in many ways it seems. But you can look up how the Persians just worked on ways to torture people when they didn't like them. Some pretty mean, so this compared to some of the Persian methods, this was relatively, what's the word I want, whatever it is, it's not so bad.

There you go. Anyway, of course the hands and feet would be nailed to the tree, to the wood. And this would allow for the individual with his arms stretched out, his rib cage, of course, stretched out like that. It was difficult to breathe. Well, he could push up on his legs still and catch a breath every now and then.

And the reason why I'm pointing this out is because Pilate is inquiring about him. The Jews had asked for the bodies to be taken off. And to do this, they're going to break the legs. Well, when they break the legs, you can't hoist yourself up anymore to take those breaths and that hastens death. John's Gospel chapter 19, then the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first and of the other who was crucified with him. But 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 immediately blood and water came out. And he who has seen has testified and his testimony is true. And he knows that he is telling the truth so that you may believe. Now, I left that last part in there that seems to be separate from the account of how they handled the body of Christ, the Romans, after he died to verify that he was dead.

Well, there we read that they went to break the legs of the other outlaws which would speed up their death so they could take them off the cross. But John, in telling this, he says, and he who has seen has testified and his testimony is true. And he knows that he is telling the truth so that you may believe. He says, I was there, I'm telling you the truth and I'm telling you this because I want you to believe. I'm not making this stuff up. There's no benefit to making this stuff up. I'm not going to stand before God making up things about God.

I'm telling you the truth. And so when Pilate says, is he dead already? The centurion verifies, goes to verify what they don't take Joseph's word, they go to see. And they could not break his legs because it was against the scripture. He, being the Passover lamb, the lamb of God, not a bone was to be broken. Exodus 12, verse 46, when God said you take the Passover lamb and you sacrifice it and you put the blood on the threshold of the house, but you don't break any of the bones.

And he is fulfilling that type. It is important to understand you cannot receive moral lessons from the Bible and at the same time charge its writers with dishonesty. How can you say, you know, we need to listen to these men when they talk about not stealing and not killing and not lying, but they're making up the gospel story. That's a contradiction that defies reason and we should point that out any chance we get to the naysayers. These were godly men. What they wrote was godly and righteous and it would be foolish to weigh your eternity on such a petty complaint as, yeah, but they were making it up when you have no proof. Verse 45, so when he found out from the centurion, he granted the body to Joseph. So he called for the investigation. He received the verification. At this point, the world is beginning to, the pilot representing the world, is beginning to think that they're done with Christ.

You can have the dead body of Christ, they would scoff. And there stands Joseph, our hero, heart bursting with love. Love lost, but love found at the same time. He lost in his head. He lost Christ to death.

But he has this newfound love for him now. Otherwise, again, he would not be there doing what he's doing. I think maybe you're serving in the kids' ministry. Maybe you're serving somewhere in the ushers' ministry. And you just don't, again, I'm coming back to this because it plagues us.

And you just don't have the feeling anymore, but you're serving anyway. How important it is because we're seeing this take place here in this man. It is a typhoon of heartache that he is enduring because of love. Why didn't he say, you know, I thought he was the Messiah. He got himself killed. He's not the Messiah. He said he was. He lied to me.

I'm done. It's not what he does. Thomas comes close to that, but he doesn't either. Thomas doesn't know what to do. He doesn't say, I just, I don't, he just completely will, he just fell apart. And I'm not going to believe because I'm not going through that again. I believed Christ was the Messiah, said Thomas. And it turns out he wasn't.

Now I don't know what to do. And I'm not going to believe he's risen because, again, I'm not going through that. And of course, the Lord fixed that, did he not?

It was a defective faith, but who has perfect faith amongst us? Well, still remaining before them is, again, the gruesome task to remove the body from the cross. A gruesome task, but a beautiful deed. And we don't need to go into how difficult that must have been.

It wasn't just a matter of untying some ropes. Only hands of love now touch the body of Christ. Shouldn't that be the way it is with the church?

If the church is the body of Christ, shouldn't it be cared for by loving hands? I think we all believe that. Because if I have not love, what do I have? What am I left with? If this love is to cast out fear, this perfect love, then it must be something I want.

If this love covers a multitude of sins which I have, that's what I want. Speaking about this multitude of sins, a lesson for all you parents raising your children. Teach them that it is easier to take a plank out of somebody's eye than it is to take a moat out of your own eye. A plank's just there.

You just grab it. But a moat is a little more tricky. And a plank may leave some moats. Anyway, teach your children that obedience involves more judgment of myself, examination of myself, than putting somebody else under a microscope and examining them. That's Pharisaism.

We don't want that. We don't want our children or our adults going around, sticking people under a microscope, evaluating their service to the Lord. Now, that does not mean that blatant sin is to be ignored or trivialized.

That's different. I mean, if you come to a church, the pastor doesn't come up to you and say, Hey, how are you doing? What sins are you wrestling with? I mean, we're not looking for trouble. But if you come to church and, you know, you still got the bag of money that says, you know, First National Bank on it, of course, then, you know, that's rather blatant, is it not?

If you tell us, Listen, Pastor, this is what I'm doing, and what you're telling us is a sin, we're not going to say, Oh, don't worry about it. Then we got to deal with it. But we're not looking as a difference. There's a big difference between the plank in someone's eye and the moat as I am saying it to you. And I think this is a lesson we all need to remember. I have enough things about me that I'm trying to fix and to waste time trying to point it out to others what they're doing wrong.

Not that it works very much anyway. You point it out, you usually make an enemy. Anyway, just a side note, but everything in Scripture has everything to do with other parts of Scripture. So, verse 46, Then he bought fine linen, took him down, wrapped him in the linen, and he laid him in a tomb which had been hewn out of rock and rolled a stone against the door of the tomb. It's so hard to preach on this subject. Again, to preach to Christians who know the story as well as I do and to keep you into it. When I first started pastor and I tried to teach the arcane sections of Scriptures, you know, the minor prophets, you know, to tell people about Zephaniah and Haggai because it was fresh ground. And I didn't know that and you'd keep their attention. But the whole story, the Gospel story, the Christians, you know, they're very familiar with. And just think, April's coming and I'll be up here again trying to teach you something from, but God has been good to me and I've got some surprises for you.

I'll just start making up stuff. So, I didn't know that was in the Bible. You go home and find it. I can't find it. Pastor, where is it?

Please, I'm too busy. Anyway, back to verse 46 where he brings the fine linen. They take him down and they wrap him in the linen. Here are these two rich men, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus. They are two rich men who made it through the eye of the needle.

Again, if these two rich men can make it, what's everybody else's excuse who is rich? You don't have one. Thanks for tuning in to Cross Reference Radio for this study in the book of Mark. Cross Reference Radio is the teaching ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Virginia. To learn more information about this ministry, visit our website, crossreferenceradio.com. Once you're there, you'll find additional teachings from Pastor Rick. We encourage you to subscribe to our podcast. When you subscribe, you'll be notified of each new edition of Cross Reference Radio. You can search for Cross Reference Radio on your favorite podcast app. That's all we have time for today, but we hope you'll join us next time as Pastor Rick continues to teach through the book of Mark, right here on Cross Reference Radio.