Luke 23:50-56 - The Burial Plan

Today, we're going to deal with a passage of scripture that we tend to jump over when we talk about the crucifixion and resurrection. Now, we're going to deal with the burial. We're going to talk about burial plans. The older you get, the more you start thinking about burial plans. So, I drive down the freeway, and I'm always paying attention to the Baker Funeral Home. I think, "Oh man, a casket funeral's gone up. I probably ought to lock that in before too long." But what I want us to realize today is that God had a burial plan for Jesus. The burial plan that I have in place is in a three-ring binder in my home office. The kids know where it's at, so they can follow the instructions because I don't want them playing music that I don't like at my burial. But God also has a set of instructions, and we're going to see the plan unfold today.

So, I'm going to tell you, we're going to go through a lot of scripture. If you're a note-taker, be ready to write. I got lost in my notes in the first service, so I had to go back and draw arrows and pointers so I wouldn't skip things. And then, I realized I didn't have one of my verses marked, so I had to put a sticky note in. We're going to go fast, but it's going to be very rich today, so I hope you'll be ready for that.

Just to kind of give you an idea of where we're going today, my favorite TV show is called "Cold Justice." Has anybody ever watched that one? Alright, yeah, way to go! Norma, and, okay, Terry too—we're homicide investigation junkies, right? So, the idea behind "Cold Justice" is they take cold cases, they have a prosecutor and homicide investigators go back and look at these cold cases, they look at the evidence, they interview anybody who is alive then, and they put together a case. And what's kind of cool is they end up actually prosecuting about 25-30 percent of those. So, kind of a cool show, like my favorite one they solved off of, uh, fly saliva—kind of a really weird deal. So for people like me, you can geek out on that.

But here's why I bring that up: the Gospels parallel each other. And so, if you want a complete picture of what's happening, you really want to look at each of the gospels and compare notes. What is Matthew telling you? What is Mark telling you? What is Luke telling you? What is John telling you? And that's what we're going to be doing today. We're going to be looking at parallels, and then we're going to go back into the Old Testament because the significance of the burial plan comes to life when we begin to study the Old Testament in light of these scriptures.

So, I hope that makes sense to you, and with that, let's get started. Luke chapter 23, verse 50: "There was a man named Joseph from the Jewish town of Arimathea. He was a member of the council, a good and righteous man." So, we'll stop there. A couple of things we need to understand about Joseph because it's going to be important to the story: he is a member of the Sanhedrin. The Sanhedrin is a tribunal of 71 individuals. They are the ones that were demanding, "Crucify him!" But what we're going to find out is they were not all supporting that decision. Joseph being one of those, but because he's a member of the Sanhedrin, he is very prominent. He is very well respected, and that's going to open some doors for him as we go through this passage.

So, understanding his position in society is important, and here's the reason that I want us to lock into this: sometimes, we don't know who God is going to use. We don't know who God has already set apart to play a specific role in what he's doing. I'm sure most of you, if you will look at your life, can see people that God has brought in for times and places that were very specific and significant to who you are today and the trajectory of your life going forward. And this is going to be kind of a similar thought that I want you to carry away here.

But of course, we need to parallel this, and so the parallel in Matthew is Matthew chapter 27, and right now, we're just going to look at verse 57. We'll be back to Matthew throughout this message, but verse 57 says this: "When it was evening, there came a rich man from Arimathea named Joseph, who also was a disciple of Jesus." And so, we learn a little more about Joseph—not only is he prominent, he's extremely wealthy, and that's going to be critical. We're going to get to a verse here in a little while from the Old Testament that tells us why his financial status is critical, why his role in society is critical. But what we want to know about him right now is that he's a rich man, and we also want to know he's a disciple of Jesus.