How God Buried His Son

These hypocrites meet on the Sabbath with an unclean Gentile and they want to stop this deceiver from a worse deception, a fake resurrection, so they seal up the tomb so no one can possibly have access to it, and it's under Roman guard, and therefore they set up the only possible explanation. He rose from the dead. Welcome to Grace To You with John MacArthur.

I'm your host, Phil Johnson. It's understandable that Jesus' unjust trial and torture would anger you, and that his paying the price of our guilt on the cross would humble you to the core. But what about his burial? Anything about that that should capture your attention? Well today on Grace To You, John MacArthur will show you the supernatural nature of Christ's burial. It's part of a study designed to deepen your understanding of the most important event in history. The title of this study, The Divine Drama of Redemption.

And now with the lesson, here is John MacArthur. Well let's open the Word of God then to the fifteenth chapter of the wonderful gospel of Mark. We all understand the importance of the cross, the priority of the cross, the wonder of the cross, the miraculous nature of the death of our Lord. And we also are very well aware of the resurrection, even though we haven't arrived yet at it in Mark's gospel, we understand its massive and eternal implications. Those are two very, very significant marks in the life and ministry of Christ. There is one, however, in the middle of them, between the cross and the resurrection that is equally monumental, although it is usually overlooked. It is the burial of Jesus.

Maybe you've never even thought about that. It had human elements but was no less supernatural than what was happening at the cross or the resurrection. There are two ways that God operates supernaturally in the world.

Number one is by miracles. A miracle is a means by which God accomplishes His purpose and does so by interrupting or suspending or overruling the natural order of things. That's a miracle. It is an invasion.

It is an interruption. It is an overturning of what is normal and what is natural. There is another way in which God accomplishes His will, non-miraculous but nonetheless supernatural. In fact, if you will, even more evidently supernatural, even more amazing than a miracle. This we call providence...providence. Providence is an old theological word that is used to explain the fact that God accomplishes exactly what He plans, purposes, promises, prophesies and He does it without interrupting, without suspending, without overturning the natural course of things. He does it by pulling together and orchestrating all the free behaviors of all people, all contingencies, all events, all actions and all reactions.

The constant astounding wisdom and power of God in providence operates every millisecond and is seen dramatically in the amazing outcomes that always fit perfectly God's purpose and God's promise. And that's what you're going to see in the burial of Christ. There are some people doing things around the burial of Christ. There are the neutral soldiers. There are the loving saints and the hateful religious leaders. They're all motivated by their own responsibilities, their own responses. They do what they choose to do because it's in their mind and by their will that they do it. But when it's all said and done, it accomplishes precisely the will of God. This is a great illustration of how providence works all the time.

Let's start then with the neutral soldiers, the indifferent soldiers and see how divine providence works with them. And before we get to the passage in Mark, I want you to go to the 19th chapter of John's gospel because we need to add a word from John and then a word from Matthew and throw in a few from Luke along the way. The story of the burial has to begin in the 19th chapter of John. In verse 30 we find this statement, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. At about three o'clock on Friday afternoon in April of A.D. 30, Jesus gave up his life.

He gave up his spirit. In John 10, 17 and 18, he said, "'No one takes my life from me, I lay it down of myself.'" When Jesus gave up his life, the two thieves, one on each side, were still alive. Verse 32 of John 19, the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first man and the other who was crucified with him. Why did they break their legs? Because they were still alive and they wanted to hasten their death. But when it came to Jesus, they didn't break his legs because he was already dead. It could have been expected that all three of them may have survived into the second day and the third day.

But there was a problem. The Jews wanted Jesus dead. Look at verse 31, it is Friday, the day of preparation for the Sabbath, so that the bodies would not remain on the cross on the Sabbath and particularly on that Sabbath which was a high day. They asked Pilate that their legs might be broken and that they might be taken away. They don't want those bodies to defile their Sabbath.

They're very selective about their defilements, aren't they? They're killing the Son of God. And they've also managed to enter Pilate's praetorium. They've gone to Pilate and asked him to do this. And you remember, earlier they wouldn't go in, they stayed outside so they wouldn't defile themselves at the trial of Jesus. Now they've gone in, they want those bodies down.

They are pernicious hypocrites, murdering the Son of God but then removing the bodies so as to scrupulously avoid any traditional ceremonial defilement. Now if somebody didn't die, how would you hasten their death? They had a means. That means was called crucifragium.

This is how it worked. A person hanging on a cross, one foot across the other, one nail through, would survive as long as that person could push up with his legs so that he could receive oxygen into his lungs, or pull up with the wounds on his hands so that he could breathe. When the person could no longer do that, the person would be asphyxiated. So the means of very rapid death was to take a massive iron mallet and crush the femurs of both legs. The body would then hang limp and be unable to breathe and the victim would die, a combination of partly shock and partly blood loss, but mostly asphyxiation, a gruesome, horrible death.

The Jewish leaders say we want that done and we want that done to all three of them. Verse 32 then says, the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first man and of the other who was crucified with him, two thieves. But coming to Jesus when they saw that he was already dead, they didn't break his legs. Why was he dead? He was dead because he gave up his own life. He willed himself dead. How did it actually happen? What was the pathology of his death? Just before might give us a hint, one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, this is just to be absolutely certain, and immediately blood and water came out. Under certain stressful circumstances, the heart can actually burst, causing blood to spill into the pericardium mixed with lymphatic fluid.

That's what happened. Jesus literally willed his own heart to burst. Psalm 69, 20 says, reproach has broken my heart, ruptured my heart. So what's the importance of this? The importance of it is given to us by John in verses 35 to 37, and he who has seen has testified. This is John referring to himself and his testimony is true.

He was there, right? I am telling you the truth. I saw with my own eyes he was dead, they did not break his legs, and they did pierce his side. That is eyewitness testimony, and that is important, verse 36 and 37, for these things came to pass to fulfill the Scripture. The first Scripture was Psalm 34, 20, which said, not a bone of him shall be broken.

Wow! Why? Because Exodus 12, 46, and Numbers 9, 12 say the Passover lamb cannot have a broken limb. You couldn't offer to God a lamb with a broken limb, and nor would Jesus, the true Passover lamb, have a broken bone.

This happened to fulfill that prophecy. And, verse 37, again another Scripture says, and this is Zechariah 12, 10, they looked on him whom they pierced, which is to say that the Messiah would also be pierced. The actions of the soldiers, the witless, indifferent, neutral soldiers on the body of Christ were actions that they did by virtue of their own will and their own motives and the impulses of their own minds, and yet were under divine control to authenticate Scripture related to the Messiah to the very letter and establish the veracity of Scripture, the deity of Christ, and the reality of His messiahship.

Now let's go back to Mark and we go from the indifferent soldiers to the loving saints. This is a magnificent portion of Scripture for its pathos and compassion. Verse 42, when evening had already come, Jesus had just died, about three in the afternoon, back in verse 39, He breathed His last. Verse 42 says, the evening has come, it's late in the afternoon, it's the preparation day, it's still Friday, the day before the Sabbath. Sabbath doesn't start till the sun goes down around six or so.

The three are dead. Thieves have had their femurs smashed and Jesus was already dead and blood and water seeping perhaps from His side. Verse 43 says, a man came named Joseph of Arimathea. Here's the interesting thing about him, he's a prominent member of the council.

Whoa! He is a prominent member of the council. He's a member of the Sanhedrin. It's so notable that Matthew mentions him and Luke mentions him and John mentions him as well as Mark. And this is his only appearance anywhere in Scripture.

The story is brief, but the story is full and it's wonderful. It's a story of salvation, an unexpected testimony of faith in Christ by a member of the Sanhedrin, set against the rejection of that Supreme Court of Israel and the whole nation. He was a good and righteous man, same word used in referring to Jesus as a righteous man. Jesus was righteous by His own righteousness. Joseph was righteous because the righteousness of God had been credited to him.

One was righteous by nature, the other was righteous by grace. He was a true believer. He had come to believe that Jesus was the one promised. In fact, I love this in verse 43, it says, He was waiting for the kingdom of God. He was waiting for the kingdom of God.

That's a true Jew who understood the Old Testament promise of salvation and a kingdom in the correct way and was waiting for the kingdom to come and had come to the conviction that the kingdom had come because the King had arrived and the King was no other than Jesus. But he understands the price if he acknowledges this publicly, so at first he's keeping it quiet. However, in Luke 23, 51, it says he had not consented to their plan of action. He has to be heartbroken because he thought Jesus would be the one to usher in all the Old Testament promises. But he loves Jesus and out of the love of his heart, sympathy and compassion, he's willing to acknowledge that he has been a disciple of Jesus.

They knew and he knew they would know. He gathered up courage, courage to be exposed to the Sanhedrin and also courage to be exposed to Pilate who was going to execute this man and he went in before Pilate. That verb, gather up courage, means exactly that, to dare and he asked for the body of Jesus. Verse 44, Pilate wondered if he was dead by this time.

I mean, he assumes that he's not going to be dead and he summoned the centurion and questioned him as to whether he was already dead. And ascertaining this from the centurion, he granted the body to Joseph. What is Joseph going to do?

What did he do? Did he go to the crucifixion site? Surely he did. And did they lay the cross on the ground and was it Joseph who pulled his feet through the nail and pulled his wrists through the nails?

Was it Joseph who pulled the crown of thorns off his head? Why is he doing this? Why is he exposing himself for a dead person who can't fulfill everything he hoped? What motivated him? Well you might say, humanly speaking, that he was motivated by his love for Jesus. Certainly he was motivated to give honor to Jesus. So from a human perspective, there were things working on him that made him do this.

But that's not really what's going on here. He is in his own freedom and his own independent motive and action, doing what he wants to do, but in the end he's fulfilling God's will. Isaiah 53, 9 says that the one who was bruised for our iniquities, the one who was led as a sheep to the slaughter, the Lord Jesus Christ, that great fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, it says his grave was planned to be with the wicked. That's what Isaiah prophesied. His grave was planned to be with the wicked.

He would be thrown like the rest of the refuse, like the rest of the criminals on the fires in the dump. But Isaiah 53, 9 says his grave turned out to be with the rich. How could Isaiah know that? That it would be planned to be with the wicked and he would die rather than be buried with the rich. What's he doing? He's being moved along by divine power.

He's moving at divine speed. It's not just about an honorable burial for Christ, it's about getting him off the cross in the grave on Friday so that he's there Friday, Saturday and Sunday because he promised that he would be three days in the heart of the earth. Matthew 12 verse 40, Son of Man will be three days, three nights and a day and a night is simply a Jewish way to refer to any part of a 24-hour period.

He will be there for three days. That meant that Jesus had to be buried before the Sabbath began at sundown. And after taking him down, cleaning off the blood and the sweat and the dirt, he would have wrapped him in the linen cloth and laid him in a tomb which had been hewn out in the rock.

It must have been an absolutely wrenching experience for him. We keep reading about him by himself here, but there's another unlikely lover of Jesus who shows up. Go back to John 19, verse 38, after these things, Joseph of Arimathea being a disciple of Jesus, a secret one for fear of the Jews, asked Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus. Pilate granted permission so he came and took away his body.

That's true, he took it down, he took it away. But, verse 39, Nicodemus...Nicodemus, you remember him? Yeah, the one who came to Jesus by night and had the discussion about being born again. Nicodemus who had first come to Him by night also came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pounds weight.

That volume would be fit for a king. Well we've had a thief saved, we've had some Roman soldiers saved, and we've had a Sanhedrin member, and now we've got, according to John 3, the teacher in Israel. Nicodemus, another follower of Christ who somewhere between John 3 and John 19 was born again. And they laid him in a tomb which had been hewn out in the rock and Matthew 27, 60 says it was Joseph's own tomb. And Matthew says in that same passage, verse 57, that he was a rich man. He was a rich man.

I can't even comprehend what they were thinking, the sadness of those moments. And the price they would pay for public disclosure of their love for Christ. After they had placed him there, the end of verse 46, he rolled a stone against the entrance of the tomb. Verse 47 ends this passage with a comment that's so important. Mary Magdalene and Mary, the mother of Joseph, who were mentioned, by the way, back in verse 40 as being there at the cross. Remember, they started out near the cross and eventually they moved far away, looking on from a distance. Verse 40 says, well they're still there when Joseph shows up to take the body.

They're still there mourning in sadness, paralyzed by the disappointment, they're still there. And when they see Joseph, this man they don't know, take the body, they don't know what's going on, they followed. Verse 47, they were looking on to see where he was laid.

They followed Joseph as he took the body to the nearby grave very near Golgotha. Luke, by the way, adds that Joanna was there and others were there and we have the name of Salome back in verse 40. This is the group of women, you remember, I told you, who followed him from Galilee and had been loving disciples of Jesus.

There's one other group and it's just a brief comment will suffice. Matthew 27, the hated leaders, they made a serious miscalculation...serious miscalculation. They were worried that the disciples were going to come and steal his body to make it look like he rose from the dead.

So they wanted to make sure they couldn't do that. Verse 62, on the next day, the day after the preparation, that's on the Sabbath, the chief priest, the Passover Sabbath and the Pharisees gathered together with Pilate. Wow, they're defiled again. And they said, sir, we remember that when he was still alive, that deceiver said after three days I am to rise again. Therefore give orders for the grave to be made secure until the third day, otherwise his disciples may come and steal him away and say to the people he has risen from the dead and the last deception will be worse than the first. Pilate said to them, you have a guard.

Gave them soldiers, go make it as secure as you know how. They went out, made the grave secure and along with the guard set a seal on the stone. Frankly, they had been better off to leave the thing open than there could have been all kinds of explanations. Oh, they stole his body. They could have discredited the resurrection. But what they did was they made it impossible for the body to be stolen. And consequently when the resurrection occurred, the only explanation was a resurrection. These hypocrites who don't want a dead body to defile their Sabbath meet on the Sabbath with an unclean Gentile and they want to stop this deceiver from a worse deception, a fake resurrection, so they seal up the tomb so no one can possibly have access to it and it's under Roman guard.

And therefore they set up the only possible explanation. When he isn't there, he rose from the dead. All these features of his burial show the providential power of God. That's Grace to You with John MacArthur.

He is chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary, and you'll hear more from him in a moment. But his current study is titled The Divine Drama of Redemption. Now, John, one fact that I'm reminded of when we hear a lesson like today is a lesson based on a story that involves Jewish customs and traditions that we might not be familiar with. It's the fact that we are so far removed from the ancient culture in which Scripture was written that it's easy to miss important details that really bring this story to life.

So it's all about context, isn't it? Well, absolutely, because we're trying to close a 2,000-year gap at the least and more if we're in the Old Testament. So in order to understand what those words meant when they were written, we have to go back and reconstruct the historical realities of the time. That really, for me, is the joy of Bible study. It's going back to the original text, the original time, the original language, and identifying all those elements that led to a proper understanding of that passage at that time. Because whatever it meant then, it means now. So in order not to just rip it out of history and pull it into modern era and make it mean something God didn't intend, you've got to restructure all that history.

That is the wonderful adventure. That's the biblical explorer role that I love so much. We've always wanted to give everyone tools to be able to do that, and the most useful tool, because it's all wrapped up in one volume, would be a copy of the MacArthur Study Bible. The MacArthur Study Bible has 25,000 notes or so that give you these kinds of historical explanations and background. The notes will tap into culture, geography, language, social structure, social customs that you would miss in a very casual reading. So you read the text and you go to the bottom of the page, and there's a whole lot of information to help you reconstruct the setting, and that's what leads to an accurate understanding of the meaning of the Word of God.

Filling in those gaps is really very, very important, certainly for hard-to-understand passages, but really for any passage in the Bible. If you don't have a copy of the MacArthur Study Bible, you need to get one. It comes in New American Standard, New King James, ESV. It comes in Spanish, Italian, French, Arabic, German, Chinese, Russian, and Portuguese.

I want to say something about Portuguese. One of the astronauts that we know has a ministry passing Portuguese MacArthur Study Bibles out from a boat on the Amazon River in Brazil. What an incredible ministry. So this Bible has been a tool all over the world. You need to get a copy of the MacArthur Study Bible. You can do it from grace to you today.

Wow. And yes, the Study Bible's signature feature, those 25,000 footnotes, explain virtually every verse. It comes with maps and introductions for every biblical book.

And this one resource quickly shows you the context of what you're reading and so much more. To order the MacArthur Study Bible, contact us today. You can call us toll-free at 800-55-GRACE, or you can order the MacArthur Study Bible at the website, gty.org. The Study Bible also comes in hardcover, softcover, leather, premium goatskin. And again, to order your MacArthur Study Bible, call 800-55-GRACE, or you can view all the choices at our website, gty.org.

And at the website, take advantage of all the other resources that are there for you. Do you have a question about how best to serve God, or to honor your spouse in your marriage, or maybe a question about sovereign election, or how to deal with the trials you face, or how to minister to a loved one who is suffering, all kinds of issues like that and countless others? You will find biblical answers in the Grace To You Sermon Archive. We have 3,500 full-length sermons, all available for free download right now, either in audio or transcript format, and our website one more time, gty.org. Now for John MacArthur and the entire Grace To You staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Thanks for tuning in today, and be here tomorrow for the Good Friday message that looks ahead to the amazement at the empty tomb. Don't miss the next 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace To You.