#65 Buried, He Carried My Sins Far Away Series

#65 Buried, He Carried My Sins Far Away

Series: Mark

Chuck Sligh

April 10, 2022

TEXT: Please turn in your Bibles to Mark 15:42

INTRODUCTION

Illus. – When I was a kid, the only kind of recordings we had were vinyl records. With modern inventions, like cassette tapes and 8-track tapes came an AMAZING convenience: the rewind and fast forward features. These are commonplace in today’s information and entertainment technology. I love to listen to podcasts, but I don’t like the commercials, so I just fast-forward through them. Same thing with TV. With the few TV shows we watch, many of them we tape beforehand, and then we just fast-forward through the commercials, cutting an hour show to just 40 minutes.

I think we kind of do that with the burial of Jesus. We really zone in on the details of the cross, and then we just fast forward through the burial and go straight to the resurrection. It’s like we think the cross and the resurrection are the important parts of the Gospel story, but we skip right over the burial part.

Today I want to break the mold and zero in on the burial of Christ. It’s not an unimportant part of the story: it’s an integral part of the Gospel message itself. In 1 Corinthians 15:1-4, Paul defined the Gospel message for us. – He says, “Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also you have received, and in which you stand; 2 By which also you are saved, if you keep in memory what I preached to you, unless you have believed in vain. For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; 4 And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures.”

Paul teaches that Christ died; Christ was buried; and Christ rose from the grave. When we skip the burial of Christ, we’re overlooking 1/3 of the Gospel message. So, let’s not do that and let’s look at 3 things in our text today about the burial of Jesus:

I. NOTE WITH ME FIRST OF ALL TWO UNEXPECTED UNDERTAKERS.

You might have thought that one of the Twelve would come to bury the body of Jesus. Well, the twelve disciples were still quivering in their hiding places. It was indeed disciples who claimed the body of Jesus, but not anyone you might have expected.

Who were these unlikeliest of disciples who undertook this gruesome task?

1. Mark mentions one in Mark 15:42-43 – “And now when the evening had come, because it was the preparation, that is, the day before the Sabbath, 43 Joseph of Arimathea, a prominent council member, who was himself waiting for the kingdom of God, came, and went in boldly to Pilate, and asked for the body of Jesus.”

Mark tells us that Joseph of Arimathea was a prominent member of the Sanhedrin who was waiting for the kingdom of God. Matthew 27:57 adds some details about him: “When the evening had come, there came a rich man of Arimathea, named Joseph, who also was Jesus' disciple.” – From this passage we see that Joseph was a rich man and that he was a disciple of Jesus. John 19:38 tells us one more thing about Joseph: John describes Joseph as a SECRET disciple because of fear of the Jews.

2. There was another person who helped bury Jesus. Mark doesn’t mention his name, but John does in John 19:39-40 – “And there came also Nicodemus, who at the first came to Jesus by night, and brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pound weight. 40 Then they took the body of Jesus, and wound it in linen clothes with the spices, as the manner of the Jews is to bury.”

Remember Nicodemus? He was the man who came to Jesus by night in John 3 because he didn’t want anyone to see him with Jesus. He was a religious man who was, like Joseph, a member of the Sanhedrin. In his nighttime rendezvous with Jesus, Nicodemus began complimenting Him, but Jesus got straight to the point. He stated that despite all of his religion, Nicodemas had to be born again to enter into the kingdom of God. He had to not only have a physical birth, but a spiritual birth into God’s kingdom.

It was during this conversation with Nicodemus that Jesus said that most famous verse in the Bible: John 3:16 – “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son (which means the unique, one and only Son) that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” Nicodemus came to faith in Jesus at some point, but apparently kept his belief to himself. As far as we know, he had never been open about his faith until now.