Law & Grace - Matthew 27:57-66 Buried - what does that mean?

In the passage that Brad read for us here, Matthew 27, 57-61 is the first part of it that we'll be taking a look at. Since he just read it, I won't repeat that here. But this introduces the part where Joseph of Arimathea comes and asks for Jesus' body.

Interestingly, he's a character that is mentioned in all four Gospels in this event. The Gospels are consistent, Matthew through John, referring to this man as the one who's responsible for Jesus' burial and asking for his body. Now, the soldiers, of course, had done their duty that day. They've done their duty to crucify Jesus and the two thieves. One of them, Jesus said, today you'll be with me in paradise.

And by the way, he didn't get baptized. And also to have them die before the end of the day. You see, the Roman soldiers, when they would crucify someone, also had in Israel this particular assignment that they must not be left up on the crosses. during the Sabbath. So they had to crucify them in the morning and make sure that they were dead, and usually crucifixion lasted for days, so make sure that they were dead long before that sundown time on the Sabbath.

So Joseph, who was in this place called Arimathea, it was a city to the north of Jerusalem, was of the ruling council, and that's also made clear in the Gospels. He went to Pontius Pilate, the governor, the one that Jesus had stood before just earlier that day, and asked for the body of Jesus.

And after calling for the centurion to come and confirm that yes, in fact, Jesus was dead, to consent to have Joseph of Arimathea take the body away. Now, Joseph took the body then to be buried, and with him, and only John reveals this. It's interesting, Nicodemus is only mentioned in the Gospel of John in several times, chapter 3, chapter 7, and here in chapter 19. Joseph of Arimathea, on the other hand, is mentioned in all four Gospels, but Nicodemus was also with him. And so the two of them took responsibility to have Jesus be buried. Together these two men and likely some servants, very likely some servants, they were both well off, prepared the body for burial. And so the Bible describes that, not in great detail because all Jews would have read this and said, well, of course, that's what you do.

They had about 100 pounds of cloth, aloes, myrrh, and perfume. Real interesting, I mean this is a lot of material. That's another reason to believe that servants were involved in this process. It's just not only carrying of Jesus' body, but a hundred pounds of different materials to take along with you. The cloth was, of course, for the wrapping.

The aloes would have had things stick together better. The myrrh was used as a kind of a gum, actually held the cloth to the body and the perfume because shortly this body wouldn't be smelling so good in the typical burial. Then they placed his body in the new tomb owned by Joseph of Arimathea. It was a new one, he had owned it, had it carved out for himself, but placed Jesus' body in it.

Now, we have this piece of artwork, which is nicely done. One of the things I was talking with about it, however, was the fact that these pieces of art, when you look at them, there are details that are not quite Genuine. Some of the things would be, for example, that Jesus was beaten far more badly than this reveals. He'd been through far more than this indicates. That would be one thing. Another thing is they wouldn't just wrap sheets around them. It would be more of a tightly wound bound kind of affair, not just taking some sheets and folding it over. So anyway, small details, but relevant.

Now, what's interesting is writing seven centuries before Christ, Isaiah 53, 8 and 9 has this, and as for his generation who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living and for the transgressions of my people to whom the stroke was due. His grave was assigned with wicked men yet he was with a rich man in his death. And so what do we see recorded here in the Gospel of Matthew, written about this event in about 33 AD, when it was evening there came a rich man from Arimathea named Joseph, who himself had also become a disciple of Jesus. This rich man, just as Isaiah had written about seven centuries before.

Here's a view of the temple area looking east as put together by Dr. Leon Rittmeier. Dr. Rittmeier is probably the world's foremost scholar about the history and archaeology of the temple area. He's been studying that and focusing on that archaeology since the 1970s. At any rate, he had this drawing put together, and so I think we can take it seriously.

He puts Golgotha as right here. What he says is this area kind of in the lower and foreground part of the picture was a quarry where a lot of the stones for the temple and the areas around Jerusalem were taken. And Golgotha, that little rise, was a piece of not so good stone, so they just left it. And so that made a good place to put crosses. And then he says, this is possible, not a certainty, but a possible tomb location over nearby. And so it would be right about there. And so some of the pictures depicting, OK, here's the tomb. And then off in the distance, the crosses may not be so far off after all.

Once Jesus' body was prepared, as was the custom, and again, about 100 pounds of material was used, and laid in the tomb a large stone, and Matthew actually says a large stone, was rolled into place. Sometimes the stones were smaller, so this is an important distinction. In other words, the stone was there not to keep people out, the stone was typically put there to keep animals out. And if you had a small opening, one you'd just kind of crawl into, you could use a smaller stone, it would still do the job. But this specifically was a larger stone for a tomb where you could actually stand up or at least stoop in it and go into it. So that's specifically recorded for us in Matthew.

Mary Magdalene, and by the way, Magdalene is not her last name. Magdala was the city on the westernmost part of the Sea of Galilee. And by the way, that's been fairly recently excavated by archaeologists. It was a city on the westernmost part of the Sea of Galilee, and so she was from Magdala, so she was called Mary Magdalene, just like Jesus was from Nazareth, and he was called a Nazarene, right?

So that's what that's about. And then Mary, the mother of James, Joseph, and Salome, that's recorded for us in Mark. So the two of them both saw where the grave was, which is important because it, keep track of that, because later on we're going to see why that's a critical thing. They saw where the body was laid, they weren't guessing. And it wasn't just one person, it was at least the two of them. This same Mary may be the same as Mary of Clopas and the sister of Jesus' mother, that is, Jesus' aunt, if you will. So an interesting connection there. Essentially, it would be Mary's older sister, if that's the case.

Now, Matthew 27, 62 through 66 is the next part that is, this took place on a late Friday during the day, what we just looked at and had read for us. I'm going to read this part just so it's more fresh in our mind. Now on the next day, the day after the preparation, the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered together with Pilate and said, Sir, we remember that when he was still alive that the deceiver said, after three days I am to rise again. And that, by the way, indicates that these guys understood better than the disciples did, at this point anyway. 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, go, make it as secure as you know how. And they went and made the grave secure along with the guard, they set a seal on the stone.

To get the time frame for this, how all this would have happened, here would be Thursday night, would be the Passover celebration, the Last Supper is what we oftentimes call that, knowing that Jesus the next day was to be crucified. So that would be Thursday of the week.

Then you would have the Garden of Gethsemane events late in that night. and then Jesus' crucifixion and burial on what we call Good Friday. So that would have been that day. Then Saturday would be the day simply in the grave, nothing going on particularly with the body or with Jesus except the bodies in the grave. And then Sunday would be the resurrection. So the day we're talking about here in this passage is here in the grave. This is Saturday day, we would call it.

It would be, for the Jews, still their Sabbath. Now, the growing body of evidence, including some just brought forward in the last couple of months, says that this was April 4, 33 AD, that date. Anyway, Here we see on Saturday, and I would say likely in the morning, they would have initiated this probably in the morning and allow enough time to get everything in place.

So likely in the morning, and it would have meant, because of the Jewish law, it would have meant that going to where Pilate was, was not more than a Sabbath day's journey. That's about six tenths of a mile, about one kilometer. That was a Sabbath day's journey, so they had to be close enough so they didn't break that law because they were doing it on a Sabbath.

And they could not go in Pilate's house, so they must have gotten somebody to get his attention or something and talk to him from outside. It would have been breaking the law to go into where Pilate was because that was a Gentile's place where they served pig meat and things, vile things like that. Okay. So, they appealed for Pilate to set a guard over the tomb of Jesus.

They characterized Jesus as a deceiver. Now, what do they mean by that? That his claim, his constant claim to be the Son of God, to be the Son of Man, which by the way is not a diminutive term, but to be the Messiah. His constant claim to be the Messiah, when they believed he was not, characterized him as a deceiver.

He continued with that claim. They said that the risk is that someone would steal the body. Of course he's not going to rise from the dead, right? So if somebody is going to steal the body, that's the hazard. And that would be a grand and final deception. We want to prevent this huge deception from falling through, and it would happen because the disciples would steal the body.

Yeah, like, give me a break. OK, so what would this guard be like? So Pilate did grant them a guard, and the text implies that the Roman guard would be directed by the Jewish leaders. Now, this is a point I want to mention because there are some who would think otherwise, that this was a Jewish guard. And let me tell you why I think it is indeed a Roman guard. The seal of Rome, and in fact it doesn't say seal of Rome, but the Jewish seal would carry no threat. It would need to be a seal of Rome in order to have a threat attached to it.

And the other thing is, the word used for guard is only used here in this passage in Matthew, and it's a Latin term. So why use a Latin word for guard unless you meant specifically Roman guards? The word that's used for the Jewish temple guards is always another word. Never this one. So I believe it is in fact a Roman guard. That makes the most sense and it would make the seal of Rome far more threatening as the military power. It would make it far more threatening than putting a Jewish guard there.

A guard such as this would have consisted up to 16 well-trained soldiers and more than likely 16 exactly would be the typical thing. They would be likely in shifts of about three hours. Every three hours you'd have another group of them switching off with the others so that you would have a group of soldiers that was fresh. of the group would be assigned to six square feet. That's your six square feet. You defend it to the death, right? So that's how they would do it. And it would be up to and most likely a death penalty by burning if you failed.

So these guys didn't fall asleep. That mythology. They didn't fall asleep. These guys are scary. They're the scariest things in the Roman Empire. And you got about 16 of them, but more than likely 16 exactly in fresh three-hour ships. Oh, here's one other thing. One of them falls asleep, that guy and the others in the group get killed. So are you going to get sleepy? Not in your life. Or death.

Okay. So now, So you get the idea. This guard is one scary group of guys. They have the best training. Oh, one other thing. These guys, in order to be qualified for this watch, the term that Pilot used, they have to have had a decade of hard battle experience. So these guys are not neophytes and trainees. They're not young punks. These guys really know what they're doing. In any kind of a human level sense, they are scary.

All right, that's the guard that we're talking about watching the tomb. Now, here's one other thing. Can you imagine a guard guarding a tomb that's the wrong one? Uh-oh. Can you imagine a guard guarding a tomb that doesn't have a body in it? Not very likely. Are you going to put your life on the line if it might be the wrong tomb or it might be empty? No. So, you can imagine that what they would do is call for the owner of the tomb, verify this is the tomb, you own this tomb, that's where you put the body, let's open this thing, yep, there's a body there, close it up.

You can imagine that procedure taking place. If I was a soldier under a threat of death and you better do this and this is your job, I would do that. So that's likely what took place. It would also make sense to open the tomb, confirm that the body of Jesus was still present before placing the seal of Rome and setting the guard in place. So then you would have the guard stationed there and rotating shifts there in front of the tomb.

So as we look at this, what's the take-home from this? We saw historically what took place. Now let's walk through, all right, what do we do with that? Aside from being impressive or historically interesting, what happens spiritually because of this? What are we who are believers in Christ to do with this? Well, first there is an apologetic, and that's not saying, I'm sorry, I'm a Christian, right?

It is the defense of the Christian faith. There is a value from that standpoint in the details that have been presented here. The guard was not some sleepy, sloppy guard there at the tomb. They did not fall asleep. I guarantee it. The guard was good. The two women verified the location. that all four Gospels record the owner of the tomb, and that it was a new tomb, and that this guy was wealthy.

Between all four Gospels they mention Joseph of Arimathea and put those facts together between them. Those kinds of things are important to note from an apologetic standpoint, that is from defending the faith. And we'll go over briefly what some of those points are. But I think just to first recognize that's a part of the value in going over these details and studying the background behind this. Secondly, every one of us who believes was identified with Christ in his death there on the cross, his crucifixion and his death. It is a death that most certainly took place, and that's the point of putting him in the tomb.

This wasn't a Jesus died and just kind of fainted a little bit and then came back and said, I'm back. Right? That wasn't the event. What happened is no, this guy really died to the point where one of the soldiers put the spear up in his side, blood and water came out separate, indicating the blood had already separated. And it was certain to the point that the centurion who was in charge could go to pilot and say, yes, he really is dead. The burial assures that in fact, yes, he was dead, and we'll see why in a minute here.

Now, let's talk about the apologetic value here. Those who have opposed the basic belief of Christian faith as recorded in the Word of God have proposed that a mistake or some deception explains away the facts. Some, you know, wrong tomb, wrong guy, all those kinds of things. Or some kind of deception. Wally did this instead of that, you know, and we just, hey, let's tell everybody this happened. So that's the way it comes. Each of these proposals is cut off when we examine what is recorded in the Bible and when we know from other historical texts in scientific studies. And we'll go through those briefly here.

The Word of God will be shown to be true. Muslims today are told, and I've talked to one of them, and yep, that's what he said. They're told that another man was crucified and buried by mistake. It wasn't really Jesus. That's what they're told. And that's the Muslim that I talked to. That's what he said. that the other man, not Jesus, was buried by mistake. And one must ask, how could that happen?

Okay, first of all, the Roman soldiers appeared to have had continuous contact with Jesus. The Roman soldiers, it was their job on penalty of death to hold on to the guy. You know, you don't mix them up and you don't switch, you don't let somebody else swap them out. No. It's their job, and the record has it, they stayed with Jesus all along the way. There wasn't any, ah, you'll do, right?

So that would be part one. There was a group of women who had frequent and specific observations of Jesus along with John the Apostle. We showed this picture, only I've taken just a portion of it, that shows the women and shows John the Apostle there at the foot of the cross. And so, here's John.

He would have said something if it was wrong. He would have said something like, Hey, that ain't Jesus! Or something like that. Anyway, he would have noticed that, right? He would have noticed that isn't Jesus, and Jesus' mother is there. Is she going to miss out on who is this guy? I doubt it. That doesn't pass the smell test.

Okay. Now, so here's the Muslim teaching that, you know, it was a mistake. You know when Muhammad wrote, six centuries later, how's he going to know a detail like that? Give me a break. Okay, anyway. Another claim, wrong tomb, stolen body. Let's take a look at each one of those.

The wrong tomb theory that they laid Jesus' body in one tomb but that the woman went to another would be cut off by the woman observing where the body was laid. And the Roman soldiers who would be guarding this would have to be guarding the right place. And the Roman soldiers were noted even in the morning. What that tells you is that this wrong tomb theory is wrong.

Right? Okay. So that's part one. The other part of this thing is, oh, the body was stolen. Well, guess what? That was already proposed, and that's what the Jews were trying to prevent. So you're proposing something that they'd already put in place, and that's why they put the guard in place. Come on! Okay, now.

So, here after the women looking at the situation and noticing what the place is, now, that the body had been stolen by the disciples would go against the record. Were the disciples recorded as even thinking that the body is going to come out of there? No, they didn't get it. They didn't get it. It would go against the record. The disciples' long-standing lack of belief in Christ's resurrection, so why fake something you don't even understand?

And by the Roman guard at the tomb. Plus, 11 apostles died for their testimony, so would they die for a lie? As a matter of fact, let me ask you this question. Do we have any volunteers? How many of you would like to die for a lie? That's what I thought. Okay. So you think of it, the apostles, hey, let's tell this story. Okay, that's good until it's time to, okay, are you going to keep up with this lie and die for it?

Eh, not so much, right? Not likely. Then there's the others, the swoon theory. He didn't really die, he just swooned. Swooned. Anyway, so some have put forth the idea that Jesus didn't really die, but he actually just swooned, but was really a lie and then came to consciousness, which was mistaken. I have here taken, but that doesn't fit. I don't have room for that. Was taken for a resurrection.

Now, first of all, some of the criminals died from just the severe scourging by itself, and they never went any further. They just beat them, and matter of fact, because the Roman whips would tear at flesh, if they got it around your neck at all, just cut your jugular vein, you're going to bleed to death. You bleed out quick. So, the Roman soldiers confirmed and the centurion testified to Jesus' death. Now, he's really dead. He's not just swooned, he is really dead. And, we made sure by poking the spear in the side and seeing that the blood didn't come out as whole, but blood and water separated. He had, in fact, been really dead for a little while when they poked his side.

Third thing is the linen wrapping soaked with aloe. Remember they had a hundred pounds of cloth and aloe, so a lot of aloe. that would suffocate because there's no breathing through a heavily wetted cloth. Here's an aloe plant and they would break it open and you see there's a kind of a gel inside and they would take that gel by large quantities from the aloe plant and smear that all over the inside of the cloth wrapping and you can't breathe through that. It's not just water, it's a heavy gel. Jesus, especially given all the other things that preceded, there's no way he could have survived that and stayed in the tomb for something on the order of about 36 hours.

Now here's the other part, and one that we of course pay particular attention to here at Holly Hills, and that is our identification. with Christ. The second of the five events in which we've been united with Christ, in other words His death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and seeding, the second of those is this burial. It is a burial with Christ. You personally, spiritually, if you're a believer here this morning, were identified with Christ's burial as well. The second of those five events in which you are identified with Christ. If you're a believer, you are buried with Christ in the tomb.

You went in dead and came out alive. Identification is called variously in scripture. It's called in. You are in Christ. Some three dozen times in the book of Ephesians it says you're in Christ, in Him, in whom, in the Beloved, etc. So in is one of the ways of stating that you're identified with Christ. With, buried with Christ as we sing, right?

Together with, together with Christ seated in the heavenlies. United with, that's from Romans 6. Baptized into is from Romans, it's from Colossians, and it's from Galatians. Joined is another one, Romans 7. The first six verses contain the message that we've been joined to Christ. Now, let's talk about this baptized. When we think of baptism, we often think of our baptism into water. During New Testament times, that wasn't necessarily the case, because they used the word in other ways, and I'll explain a couple of them. One is they would take a vat of dye to color it purple or red, and they would take the white cloth and dip it into the red dye. and then that cloth would come out permanently changed as a result of the immersion. That's what people would think of.

They would take the dyes and it took about 10,000 of these shells to make one ounce. For that reason, the dye was more expensive per ounce than gold. They would also, in addition to these shells, it was a crimson worm. and you'd see they're small, and you'd have to collect a whole bunch of those to make the dye. So they'd make it out of one of those two things, and either way it was expensive.

But the idea was you would dip the cloth into that dye and then draw it back out after the immersion, permanently changed. In the technology of the time, there was no way to reverse that dipping into the dye back to the white that it once was. It was permanently given the technology of the day, permanently changed as a result of the immersion.

And so the baptism would make sense to people, and they would picture that. The other way is that the sword would be, when they would form it and get it into the shape that they wanted, they wanted to heat treat it. Otherwise, when you would fight with it, you'd just get a bunch of dings and the whole thing would just be all bendy. So in order to have it be a very hard sword and maintain its rigidity and shape and not get a nicked up edge, they would take the sword and heat it up white hot and then they would dump it into a vat of water which would cool it very quickly and make for a different kind of crystalline form on the outside of the metal and that would heat treat it and you'd end up with the Roman sword, spears, etc. So that would be another way that people would think of the word baptism. Again, immersed so as to be permanently changed as it came out. That's the picture that people had in their mind.

So when Paul wrote baptized, that's what they would envision. Now, so those who believe in Christ and therefore have been saved and spiritually immersed into Christ. And like the sword and the cloth, we are permanently and most substantially changed by that one single immersion. Spiritually speaking, that is what takes place. Our identification with Christ's burial, that's why it's interesting in both the Romans and Colossians passage that we have reference to there in your handout and on the screen, baptized is the word that is used for burial. Baptize into is used with burial and it means to be permanently changed by that immersion.

The other thing about burial, it is not only certainty. This body is most certainly dead. And that is why we're putting this body into the tomb. And we most certainly want to put that dead body in the tomb. As a matter of fact, our means of wrapping it will make sure that it is dead because they would smear the inside with aloe, which would mean you couldn't breathe through it. So it would suffocate anyone who wasn't dead. So most assuredly, anybody that goes in the tomb that way is dead.

So we have certainty and absolute assurance that he actually died. There was no swooning or trickery. It is a certain spiritual outcome for us. We died most certainly with Christ. Christ's burial is also the pivot point about which Christ went from death to life. He went into that tomb absolutely bodily dead and came out alive with a resurrection that was unmatched and will be unmatched in history except for our own. He went from death to life. This is what Jesus claims to John in the book of Revelation. I was dead, and now I'm alive.

The burial is the pivot point, going into the tomb dead, coming out alive. Since you were buried with him, it's also your pivot point, because you entered dead, having died with Christ, and you come out alive, having been raised with him. It is a critical and necessary spiritual pivot point. So the burial, even though it looks static, it just sat there for 36 hours in the tomb, your being buried with him during that time is a critical, essential, and wonderful thing. In Christ, you have a new spiritual history, the second step of which is your burial with him. This is critical and I would say most of Christianity misses this point. In Christ you have a new spiritual history. You, each one of you.

You know, it's interesting. I was talking to a fellow who was visiting just a few weeks ago. He was visiting here at Holly Hills and he's going through, you know, introductory stages in seminary. And I talked to him about the spiritual history and they didn't seem to get it. But this is key, and it's key in counseling, because counseling with Christians, your new history is what it's all about. Without that, you don't have anything to counsel with.

It's because I have this new history, it is already a 100% complete fact that I've been identified with Christ in His death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and seeding. That's already a done deal. I'm going to spend the rest of my life growing into that already complete and absolute fact. And so as we counsel people, the real hope that they have is that they can grow into what is already true of them from the point they believe.

They have this new history in Christ and this burial that we've talked about here. is the second and critical part of that new history that we have in Christ. It is a wonderful thing. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you as we look at these facts, as we look at our identification with you. We thank you that as we look at that, this burial, we see it is very important. Very important. It is a burial into which we go into dead since we've died with Christ. It is a burial that is completely reversed as we come out alive in Christ and with Christ. And this is a wonderful thing. It's an eternal truth, an essential truth, a valuable and precious truth. We thank you for what you've done by your marvelous and amazing grace. We pray in Jesus name. Amen.