#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.
Coming out so boldly like this exposed these two disciples to great danger. They probably were expelled from the Sanhedrin. Old friends and colleagues likely refused to associate with them any longer. They would have been “cancelled,” as we say today. Their decision may have affected them financially as well.
This reminds us that there is always a cost in following Jesus. We have seen several times through the Gospel of Mark that Jesus says that following Him would involve carrying His cross and even suffering for Him. This was not only true of the Twelve who followed Jesus, but now with Joseph and Nicodemus as well…and it is true today of any follower of Jesus.
II. IN VERSES 44-46 WE SEE A DEFINITIVE DETERMINATION OF JESUS’ DEATH. – “And Pilate was surprised that he was already dead. Summoning the centurion, he asked him whether he was already dead. 45 And when he found out from the centurion, he gave the body to Joseph. 46 And he bought fine linen, and took him down, and wrapped him in the linen, and laid him in a tomb which was hewn out of rock, and rolled a stone against the entrance of the tomb.”
There is a famous argument by detractors of the Bible that Jesus never completely died. Rather, He simply swooned on the cross and came back to consciousness in the coolness of the tomb and hence it is referred to as the “Swoon Theory.”
Three arguments destroy this hypothesis:
1. One is the testimony of competent witnesses to Jesus’ death.
First, a ROMAN AUTHORITY OF DEATH BY CRUCIFIXION confirmed Jesus was dead. Pilate was surprised that He was already dead since people who were crucified by nailing to a cross often took many hours or even several days to die. So, he called for the centurion and asked him if Jesus was indeed dead. These executioners were experts on death. There would be no doubt about His death if the centurion confirmed it, which he did in verse 45.
Second, JOSEPH knew Jesus was dead, or else he wouldn’t have asked for the body for burial to begin with, or he would have detected life during the retrieval of the body and during the burial process. Death was much more a part of everyday life in that day. Bodies weren’t sent to the funeral home back then; relatives or friends did the burial preparations themselves. They KNEW when someone was dead.
During the preparation for burial, Joseph and Nicodemus would have handled the body of Jesus. The mangled body of Jesus would have precluded any possibility that He was still alive. They would have had to climb up the cross to remove the nails from his hands and feet and lower his body to the ground. His body would have been a gruesome mess. Jesus’ back had been ripped to shreds during with a whip with shards of sharp stones and glass at the ends of them. Water and blood had flowed from the wound in His side, causing Him to bleed out. They had to remove the razor-sharp crown of thorns.
I shudder to think of how awful it must have been. They knew without any shadow of a doubt that there was no way Jesus had survived the agonies of His sufferings and the cross.
2. The second argument against the Swoon Theory is the way Jews buried their dead.
Mark simply says they wrapped him in a linen cloth, presumably to cover his nakedness. But at some point in the burial process they would have wrapped the body up in several layers of cloth with spices poured on it that hardened into a hard shell. John 19:40 tells us they did this very thing. Now suppose Jesus WAS alive when He was laid in the tomb. How would He have been able to break out of that hard, mummified shell so tightly wound around him, especially in the condition He would have been in?
3. The last argument against the Swoon Theory is the absurdity of the hypothesis in light of the post- crucifixion appearances.
The Swoon Theory expects us to believe that after the mangled, emaciated, blood-depleted body of Jesus revived in the tomb, He would have somehow broken open the hard shell He was in, walked across the Kidron Valley and all around Jerusalem for several days on infected feet that had been nailed to the cross, shown Himself to His disciples and they would believe that this half corpse of a man was fully alive and vibrant and His old self, and was able to invite Thomas to touch the wounds in His hands and side without flinching. If you can believe THAT, I have some real estate in the Everglades to sell you.
III. FINALLY, NOTICE IN VERSE 47 OF OUR TEXT THAT THE WOMEN NOTED THE LOCATION OF THE TOMB. – “And Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses saw where he was laid.”
This seems like a passing statement, but it’s an important detail. Mark is telling us there was no way the women could have gone to the wrong tomb on Easter morning.
Some have speculated that the women on Easter morning got lost and went to the wrong tomb. There are several problems with this theory too:
1. Why did the ANGELS meet them at the wrong tomb?—Are we to believe that they got lost too and happened to stumble into the same tomb as the 2 women stumbled into?
2. Second, why would Mary and Mary Magdalene BOTH go to the wrong tomb? They had grown up in and around Jerusalem, a small town by today’s standards and would most likely have been familiar with the area. If one of the two women were going the wrong way, the other would have corrected her and pointed out the right way.
3. Finally, when the women told the disciples about the angels and that the angels had said Jesus had risen from the dead, the Bible says John and Peter raced to the tomb, but Peter got ahead of John. How did Peter happen to go to the same wrong tomb the women had gone to? And a few minutes later, how did John manage to arrive at the same wrong tomb Peter went to? And if they ALL had gone to the wrong tomb, why didn’t Joseph of Arimathea correct them and direct them to the right tomb? And why didn’t the Roman or Jewish authorities point out the right tomb and produce the body of Jesus?
These two women saw where Jesus had been laid, and that is an important detail.
CONCLUSION
What should be our takeaways from the story of the burial of Jesus? A couple of things come to my mind, one doctrinal and one practical:
1. First, we need to get a better grasp of the importance of the burial of Jesus.
As I mentioned before, the burial of Jesus is not an afterthought to simply skip over to get to the exciting news of the resurrection of Jesus. Let me share with you three reasons the burial of Jesus is important:
a. First, because it proves that the resurrection of Jesus Christ was real. Jesus was truly DEAD, and Joseph and Nicodemus actually did lay Jesus in a tomb. These men could testify that there was no life in the body they buried. He had not “swooned,” merely lost consciousness, or fainted. He had truly died. Therefore, if in three days He were alive, His burial proved that Jesus had truly risen from death to new life.
b. Second, Christ’s burial was an important aspect of His humiliation. Jesus did not die and then immediately come back to life. His suffering and humiliation descended to the point of remaining under the power of death from Friday through Sunday. The burial after His death was as much a part of His humiliation as his physical and spiritual suffering before and on the cross. It’s a great comfort to me to know that Jesus experienced the full measure of human suffering, even tasting the grave for a season. He fully bore the wages of sin.
Illus. – I love that old hymn One Day written by evangelist Wilbur Chapman over a hundred years ago. It was revised with a different tune in Casting Crowns’ song Glorious Day, but the lyrics are the same. The first verse and chorus go like this:
One day when heaven was filled with His praises,
One day when sin was as black as could be,
Jesus came forth to be born of a virgin—
Dwelt among men, my example is He!
Living, He loved me; dying, He saved me;
Buried, He carried my sins far away;
Rising, He justified freely forever:
One day He’s coming—O glorious day! O glorious day!
I like that: “Buried He carried my sins far away.” The final payment of sin was carried out on the cross and our sin was buried with Him when He was buried.
Illus. – In John Bunyan’s famous allegory, Pilgrim’s Progress, the main character is a man named Christian. In one scene Christian is running up a hill, and he’s burdened by a terrible load on his back (representing sin). Bunyan wrote, “He ran thus until he came to a path ascending and upon that place stood a cross and a little below it, a [tomb]. So I saw in my dream that just as Christian came up to the cross, his burden loosed off his shoulders and fell from his back and began to tumble and so continued to do until it came to the mouth of the [tomb] where it fell in it and I saw it no more.”
That’s what Jesus did with our sins! Living He loved me; Dying He saved me. Buried He carried my sins far away!”
How far away? – Psalm 103:12 says, “As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.” We saw several weeks ago that the distance of east from west is the distance of eternity. Go north long enough and you hit the North Pole, and if you keep going…well, then you’re going south until you hit the South Pole. And if you keep going again, you’re heading north again But if you start at the equator and go east, you’ll never stop going east. That’s how far away our sins are from us in God’s sight—far, far away! In the Shrek movie, there’s a city called Far Far Away. But in the Bible, Far Far Away is where Jesus took our sins!
c. Last, the burial of Jesus fulfilled Old Testament Scripture and verified the words of Jesus Himself.
Isaiah 53:9 prophesied, “And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death…” – The rich referred to was fulfilled in the person of Joseph of Arimathea.
Jesus also prophesied that His death, burial and resurrection was foreshadowed by the experience of Jonah in the belly of the great fish. In Mathew 12:40, He said, “For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the great fish’s belly; so will the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”
Had Jesus not been buried, His own prophecy of His resurrection would have been proved wrong. But Jesus was indeed in the heart of the earth for 3 days as He prophesied.
Old Testament Scripture and the words of Jesus were fulfilled when Jesus was buried.
2. My second application is this: don’t be a secret disciple of Jesus as Joseph and Nicodemus had been.
Maybe you’ve been afraid of what others might think if you openly confess that you are a follower of Jesus. Don’t be a secret disciple.
David Dykes said, “There really isn’t any such thing as a secret believer. Either the secret will destroy the belief, or the belief will destroy the secret. And fortunately, in Joseph’s case, his love for Jesus destroyed the secret and he spoke up for Christ.”
My challenge to you is that you would be willing to stand up and speak up for Jesus no matter what others think. Don’t try to please your peers; try to please the Lord. Come out of the closet and identify with Jesus.
