When we think about, teach, or even share the gospel with the
lost, Christians tend to emphasize two things, the death
of Jesus Christ and the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
However, I want to bring to your attention a component of
Christ's redemption that I believe is often overlooked and
yet was present in Paul's explanation of the gospel.
And as we turn there, I believe you're going to see it right
away. So let's begin in First
Corinthians chapter 15, beginning in verse 3, and look
with me at what Paul considers to be a first importance he
writes to the Corinthian church. For I deliver to you as of first
importance what I also received. That Christ died for our sins in
accordance with the scriptures. That he was buried, That he was
raised on 1/3 day in accordance with the scriptures.
Did you see it? Sandwiched between the sin
atoning death of Jesus Christ and the grave conquering
resurrection of Jesus Christ is the burial of the Lord Jesus
Christ. He highlights it.
He underscores it, He mentions it as a distinct phase of
Christ, a compliment accomplishment for our
atonement. But why?
Why is it necessary to emphasize the burial of Jesus Christ?
Why? I believe there is 2 simple
answers to it #1 it stresses that Jesus really died.
So to go through the careful process and the protocol of
preparing that body and then placing that body in a tomb
would require the belief that such a person has in fact died.
Nobody would bury somebody who they believe to be alive.
Second, the burial of Jesus Christ legitimizes the
resurrection of Jesus Christ. It refutes any suggestion that
Jesus merely lost consciousness on the cross.
The burial makes this statement. Jesus didn't faint.
Jesus didn't slip into a coma only to be awakened shortly
after and then escaped the tomb only to convince his followers
that he was resurrected. His resurrection was a genuine
resurrection because his death was a real death.
And the burial of Jesus Christ serves as a pivotal point that
confirms both. And that is why this stage of
Jesus's mission to save our souls is found in every single
Gospel account. His burial.
But as you know, there is much more to learn from it than those
two brief thoughts, and that's what we're going to do today as
we come to mark chapter 15, beginning in verse 40, I want to
present to you three thoughts from the letter P that will
hopefully direct us as we now go from the cross to the cemetery.
The first point will be simply this, the persons at the burial.
Following that will be the Providence around the burial.
And lastly, you and I will consider the prophecy of the
burial. Let's read the first 3 verses
beginning in verse 40 to see the people that are mentioned at
this point of the story. There were also women looking on
from a distance, among whom were Mary Magdalene and Mary the
mother of James the Younger, and of Josephs and Salome.
When he was in Galilee they followed him and minister to
him. And there are also many other
woman who came up with him to Jerusalem.
And when evening had come, since it was the day of preparation,
that is, the day before the Sabbath, Joseph, Joseph of
Arimathea, a respected member of the council, who was also
himself looking for the Kingdom of God, took courage and went to
Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus, the persons at the burial
of Jesus Christ. I consider the names of the
people here, some of Jesus greatest followers.
They are the unsung heroes of Jesus disciples.
And I believe the mention of these women specifically is more
significant than seeing in these records that there were
eyewitness accounts of Jesus being transported from the cross
into a specific tomb. I am convinced that these women
are brought to our attention because God wanted to honor
them. Because we're not just told that
they were there, we're told that they were also followers of him
and minister to him from the early stages of Christ Preaching
tour. And I want to, at this point,
remind you that you have a group of women who remained staring at
the gory, brutal death of Jesus Christ when there was so much
hostility in the air of not just towards Christ, but anybody who
was associated with them. You had this group of women
right there while the apostles of Jesus Christ were in hiding.
Could you just give me like a few moments to address the
sisters here? I want to let you know as I
meditate on this that you should never believe the modern lie
that the Bible's designation of distinct gender roles within the
church and the home stifles your gifts or hinders your devotion
to Jesus Christ from excelling for the glory of God.
Just because men are called to be leaders in certain spheres in
no way means that they have greater opportunities to glorify
God than you do. If anything, these verses that
you and I just read demonstrate that the faith of these women
outshine the faith of the very leaders that Jesus had been
training for three years. So this is not a competition, by
the way. I'm just praying that what you
see here would serve as an encouragement to you.
That while the world out there is amplifying deception toward
the sisters in the church, the woman of faith, female followers
of Jesus Christ, trying to tell you that God's will, if you
honor it according to how it is spelled out, hinders you,
hinders your potential, hinders your opportunity, you'd realize
that that is not the case. I'm not robbed of any true
purpose. As long as I trust in what God
calls me to do, I will bring him the greatest honor and I will
tap into the greatest delight. And that's what we see with
these women here. They ministered to him.
Have you wondered how they ministered to Him?
You know the Bible tells us in a different gospel account.
You have to turn there to see it.
In Luke chapter 8, beginning in verse one, we know exactly how
these faithful sisters serve their master.
Luke 8 verse one. This is when Jesus was in
Galilee, and we read soon after he went on through the cities
and villages proclaiming and bringing good news of the
Kingdom of God, and the 12 were with him, and also some woman
who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities.
Mary called Magdalene, from whom 7 demons had gone out, and
Joanna, the wife of Kuza, Harrah's household manager, and
Susanna and many others who provided for them out of their
means. Here it is.
Luke is underscoring by the spirit that the way that these
woman minister to the Lord and his ministry team was by
providing out of their resources.
Now, that might not impress you, but notice that it was a need
that was met and that the Holy Spirit took note of it.
And what moves me about the dedication of these women is
that it continued until the very end.
The provision didn't end in Galilee.
It resumed with diligence, even up to the burial of Jesus
Christ. You're saying?
What do you mean? Well, let me quote this to you.
We're going to look at this next week, but let me quote this to
you, Mark 16/1. Pay attention to this.
When the Sabbath has passed, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother
of James and Salome, bought spices so that they might go and
anoint him. So their contribution to the
Lord Jesus Christ didn't end when his preaching ministry
ended. Even when he was wrapped in
linen cloth and was brought into the tomb, they still had a heart
that said, oh, how can we contribute to him now?
What can we do with this opportunity now to show him
honor and our love? Now looking at this, we can
interpret this in a positive way and in a negative way.
You heard the positive way. The negative is that they
shouldn't have brought any spices to the tomb.
Why? Because Jesus said over and
over, and he particularly said in Mark 831 that he was going to
be betrayed, that he was going to die, that he was going to be
buried. But on the third day he was
going to rise. So why do you have to go buy
spices? You could have saved some money.
So what this shows is by bringing the spices to anoint
him, they didn't really believe that he was going to resurrect.
So that's the negative. But the positive is that they
still wanted to honor him and that meant something to God.
And not only will he reward them in the life to come, He rewarded
them with one of the greatest honors in all of human history,
these very woman, because they stuck with Jesus, not just in
Galilee, but at the cross. Not just at the cross, but at
the tomb. They would be the first ones to
witness the resurrected Christ, and they would become the first
ones to testify about him. Remember that truth if you ever
encounter somebody who tries to claim that the God of our faith,
the God of this book, demeans woman or belittles woman.
He entrusted the first resurrection appearance and
testimony to a band of sisters. So ladies, understand this.
Yes, the Bible does give us clear, distinct roles as men and
women. But that doesn't mean that God
doesn't want to use you, and it doesn't mean that God doesn't
want to reveal things to you. You have to look closely at your
Bible to see it. I was even thinking about
Samaria. There was, there was great
tension between the Samaritans and the Jews.
And yet so many Samaritans came to Christ.
And if you ask somebody when was the first time that these
Samaritans were exposed to the message of Jesus, most people
would say Philip the evangelist, He was the one that brought
revival. Oh, he did bring revival, but he
wasn't the first one. Who was the first one?
The woman at the well, Jesus revealed to her that he was the
Messiah. She couldn't keep it.
And she went back to town and she says, let me tell you about
somebody who told me everything about me.
And so she prepared Samaria and Philip came to finish the job.
And although the encouragement of these women is obviously
clear here, they're standing out for their loyalty.
That didn't mean that there were no men present at the burial of
Christ. Let's come back to our text here
and realize that there was a man who took it upon himself to give
the Lord Jesus an honorable burial.
We know his name in verse 43, Joseph.
And all we know about Joseph here is that he was from
Arimathea, a Jewish town, and that he was what?
A respected member of the council.
What council? The same council that gathered
together to have Jesus crucified, the religious Jewish
council. Listen to this, the Sanhedrin,
the spiritual Supreme Court of Israel.
And so you had a man who was a part of that group who now wants
to come and ask for Jesus's body.
And with that kind of background, you might be a
little nervous. What is somebody from that group
want to do with Jesus's body? And we are quickly put at ease
when we consider what other gospel writers say about Joseph.
And so one thing that we learn about him from Luke 23, you
don't have to turn there, is that he was a good and righteous
man in verse 51. He was a good and righteous man,
and not just that, who had not consented to their decision in
action. So not only was he an honorable
man, a man of dignity, a man of honesty, when it came to the
voting of what to do with Jesus, he did not cast his vote to have
him crucified. We're not told how he did that,
that he disses himself, that he did not show up to that meeting,
that he voice it sheepishly. We're not told, but we know that
he did not agree for what happened to Jesus.
But John completes a picture of who Joseph is.
He's not just a good and righteous man.
John tells us, and this is where I will tell you to turn in John
19, that he was a disciple of Jesus.
John 19 verse 38, it says here after these things, Joseph,
Joseph of Arimathea who was a disciple of Jesus.
Pause there. Isn't that fascinating?
You had a respected member of the Sanhedrin who was a follower
of Jesus. So now it makes sense.
We know what he's ready to do. He's loyal to Christ, and so
surely he's going to do something good with that
lifeless body. But before we get too excited,
we learned he was a disciple of Jesus, but a certain kind of
disciple, but secretly for fear of the Jews.
So he was not just a disciple, He was an undercover disciple.
He was discreet, He concealed, He tried to classify his
Christianity, so to speak. And we should never strive or
settle to be secret disciples of Christ for many reasons.
Can I tell you one of them? It will indeed deprive you of
being used by the Lord among many things.
To try to hide your faith because you are fearful of man
is a great disservice to your sanctification among other
things. And so for most of Jesus public
ministry, Joseph was hiding from him, but now he's about to go
public, which I find interesting because the disciples who for
all of Jesus public ministry were open, but when it came to
his death, they became private. And so Joseph now is going to
change. He has a shift in his heart and
he's about to make his allegiance to Christ known.
How? By going up to pilot and saying,
I'm asking for that body because I want to honor it.
That can't be discreet. That can't be something that's
done behind the scenes. This very act would expose
Joseph and he knew it very well. How do you know that?
Because when you come back to our main text, we read here in
Mark 15, verse 43, that he took courage and went to pilot.
He had to find the boldness. He had to, whatever he had to do
to muster the strength to go up before pilot and say, I want
that body. This is more than just sympathy.
This is more than just a guilt trip trying to do something
knowing that he should have been more public about his faith.
This is him counting the cost and willing to pay the price.
I'm going to show that I do in fact love this Jesus.
And the price is beyond what we just even see here.
Do you realize that according to Jewish law that if you came into
contact with a corpse, you had to be isolated for seven days,
You were deemed unclean. So this man was willing to even
risk his dismissal from the feast at the time, the Sabbath,
and for the religious leaders to be like Joseph.
Why? Why are you not participating?
I'm unclean. Why are you unclean?
Because I, I asked for Jesus body.
And what did you do with Jesus body?
I bestowed it with glory and honor.
There's a change of heart here with this man.
And notice what happens. And he's not the only one from
the Sanhedrin who's going to do it.
He called up his friend Nicodemus.
You remember Nicodemus, He joins him to help with this as well.
But here's what I want to bring to your attention.
The moment that Joseph goes public with his faith, what
happens? God uses him.
How does he use him? Joseph unknowingly fulfills
prophecy, as we're going to discover.
So let this be a reminder to you that if you make the choice to
never be ashamed of Christ, no matter what or who it costs you,
you will make yourself a candidate to be mightily used by
the Lord always. And I'm stirred by the grace of
God even in this thought. Why?
Because again, for most of Jesus ministry, Joseph was more afraid
of men than he was of God. But the moment that he turned
around and went public, God chose Joseph to be used to
fulfill prophecy. God granted him an honorable
thing so quickly after he changed.
I want you to always remember not just the grace of God, but
the speed of the grace of God that when we change, when we
repent, when we change our minds, when we when we look back
and say I've been wrong even for all these years.
The moment you acknowledge that are willing to make the
necessary steps, God will look at you and He will prepare and
unfold before you wonderful things for your life.
So I'm moved by God's grace in this.
Who was worthy to be able to bury Jesus Christ?
Somebody that hid their faith for three years?
Surely not, and yet it happened. Look at God's heart here,
please, and consider with me the persons at the burial.
But it's not just the persons. We have to consider the
Providence, the Providence of God around the burial.
Let's read from verse 44 down to verse 45.
Pilate was surprised to hear that he should have already
died. And summoning the centurion, he
asked them whether he was already dead.
And when he learned from the centurion that he was dead, he
granted the corpse to Joseph. So now you have another witness
about the death of Christ. And this dispels the swoon
theory, right? He didn't faint.
He didn't lose consciousness only to regain it again.
You had a professional centurion who can recognize from a mile
away when somebody really died. And he goes, he's dead.
Pilate confirms that. And you have an unbeliever who
had nothing to gain about Jesus. That's saying he's in fact dead.
But here's my question. Why was Pilate surprised that
Jesus died? He was crucified.
Did he expect him to live? He expected him to live a little
longer because it was common that a person who was a victim
according to the crucifixion, that they would survive for at
least two or three days. Jesus dies within six hours.
This is why he was shocked. How did it happen so quickly?
But you have to also understand that the shock of Pilot is meant
to be a statement of the sovereignty of Christ.
Why? Because Jesus already told us
that no man takes his life. He lays it down and according to
the foreknowledge of God, He had to have laid it down at the six
hour mark and nobody can change that.
Now you're wondering why didn't He have to die at the six hour
mark? And John will tell us, and it
requires us to just flip there to see it.
So go back again to John 19 and you'll see why Jesus had to die
right there and then. John 19.
Look at verse 31. Isn't the Bible glorious?
John 1931 Since it was the day of preparation, and so that the
bodies would not remain on the cross on the Sabbath, for that
Sabbath was a high day, The Jews asked Pilot that their legs
might be broken and that they might be taken away.
Hypocrisy is so hideous, man. It's so ugly.
So again, there is a law in Deuteronomy 21, verse 23 that if
anybody committed a crime that was worthy of a death by
hanging, part of that instruction was that they could
not keep such a body exposed overnight lest the land be
defiled. And so the Jews of the time
understanding that and understanding that this was in
preparation for the Sabbath that was coming in a few hours, they
asked Pilate, look, this is a part of our law.
We have to remove these bodies. They can't stay here overnight,
OK? So kill an innocent man, no
problem. A break this law.
God forbid. That's what religious hypocrisy
looks like. And so they asked for their legs
to be broken. Why their legs to be broken?
Because, again, it was common knowledge that those who were
hanging on a cross would use whatever strength they had left
to push their bodies up so that they can expand their upper
frame and get more breath in. You break their legs, they lose
their support, and you expedite the execution.
So we need their legs to be broken.
We need to hurry this thing up so that we can honor God, Pilot
says. OK, and so let's read what
happens next. John 1932 So the soldiers came
and broke the legs of the 1st and of the other who had been
crucified with him. But when they came to Jesus and
saw that he was already dead, they did not break His legs.
Why did they not break His legs? Because He consciously and with
authority already surrendered His spirit.
Why did He surrender His spirit? So that He can avoid his legs,
specifically his bones, from being touched.
Why? So that he can dodge some pain?
No, so that he can fulfill prophecy.
What do you mean? Look at verse 36 of John 19.
For these things took place that the scripture might be
fulfilled. Not one of his bones will be
broken. Psalm 34, verse 20.
That's where that prophecy is found.
And more than just His bones not being broken, verse 37 tells us
that He had to have been pierced, which fulfills
Zechariah 12/10 that they would look on him whom they have
pierced. So here's the lesson.
No matter what the Jews demanded or what Pilate permitted, God's
providential plan would be perfectly intact.
Not one minutiae, not one detail would be thwarted and the
encouragement that we draw from this is not just how God was in
control. Every second of Christ's
suffering, He even is sovereign over the duration of each of our
lives in this place. Do you remember how Jesus
responded when the thief on the crossed in humility and in faith
asked. Please remember me when you come
in your Kingdom. We focused a few weeks ago on 2
words. Today you will be with me in
paradise. But I want to focus now on one
word. Today again, on average, it took
about two or three days for someone who was crucified to
finally give their final breath. But here's Jesus who looks over
to this thief and he tells them when he's going to enter with
him into paradise. I'm bringing you home today.
And doesn't matter what statistics say, doesn't matter
what the common experience or the average lifespan of somebody
who's crucified is when I say today, you're coming with me
today. And what was the means for him
to enter into paradise with Christ, His legs being broken
sometimes. And this is what we talked about
last Friday, 2 days ago. When God works in our favor,
providentially, it involves pain.
We talked about this if you were here a couple days ago, that in
Second Kings 5, there was a little girl who was part of a
household of faith who was abducted and taken from her
family and brought into a foreign land to serve her
captor. And we wrestle with that.
You have a little girl who was a part of the remnant of Israel
when there was so much rampant idolatry, and God allowed for
her to be kidnapped. And we concluded that she was
positioned there not accidentally, providentially.
Why? Because it would be her little
witness that would lead her captor and the commander of the
Syrian Army to be introduced to the God that she loved and
believed in. And what I said then I'll tell
you tonight, this promises us that there is not one ounce of
pain that is void of God's good purpose, whether that pain is a
broken heart like in Second Kings 5 with this girl and her
family, or broken bones like we see here.
In like manner, we have the Lord Jesus now wanting to take this
thief on the cross and place him in a cult, a place called
Paradise. And what would be required for
him to get there? A moment of pain.
What could the Lord have done in a different way?
Could he have offered a a less severe method?
Sure, he could have. But you have to remember
something too. And this is where the Bible is
realistic and where we have to be realistic too.
This man who gave his heart to Jesus Christ on his deathbed
would win eternal life, right? But for his whole life, he was a
professional criminal. And here's what I want to bring
to your attention. Even though he put his faith in
Jesus Christ, he still had his legs broken.
Say, what do you mean by that? Here's what I'm telling you.
There are certain ways in which people live that even though
they experience and drink of the grace of God, the consequences
of their sin will still carry over.
Can I be realistic with you that there are certain things that
you've invested in, things that you've done to your body, things
that you've done against the law of the land?
That though your eyes have been open to the grace in Jesus and
have one eternal life, may still have to endure consequences,
sometimes lingering, sometimes permanent?
So this crucified thief puts his faith in Christ.
He wins eternal life. But guess what?
The law of the land still had to be brought to him, and his legs
were crushed. Let's be realistic with our
faith. And that shouldn't cause any of
us to fear, because what's most important is that no matter what
we have to endure here, we do have eternal life.
And no matter what consequences we do again have to endure, we
have a personal, intimate walk with the risen Savior.
Providence. Providence is everywhere.
Providence is always in motion, even here at the cross, and not
just with the Son of God, but with those who would be made
sons of God. And so we look at this and we
are marveling, I hope. But now we come to the last
time. What?
Which is the prophecy of the burial.
We looked at the persons at the burial.
We looked at the Providence around the burial.
But now we come to the prophecy of the burial.
Let's read verse 46 and 47. We'll conclude together.
And Joseph bought a linen shroud, and taking him down,
wrapped him in the linen shroud and laid him in a tomb that had
been cut out of the rock. And he rolled a stone against
the entrance of the tomb. Mary Magdalene and Mary the
mother of Joseph saw where he was laid.
I think it's appropriate sometimes to use your sanctified
imagination as you read the Bible, looking at this again.
And we read that Joseph received permission and then he went to
the body of Jesus and it says that he took him down.
What kind of experience was that?
You know, in a couple months we're going to reflect on Mary
who held baby Jesus in her hands, the Son of God becoming a
child, so dependent, so vulnerable, so helpless.
And our hearts get warm. And now at the end of Jesus
life, he was also carried, not by a family member, not by one
of his closest disciples, somebody who just realized I
didn't serve him the way I should have, but I'm going to do
it now. How did he take him off the
cross? Maybe the Romans helped him?
How did he carry him? Did he scoop him in his arms?
Did he throw him over his shoulder?
And where did he go? And wherever he went, what was
it like to remove the dirt off his face and to clean the dry
spit on his beard and to wash the blood?
I wonder if he stared at his wounds for a while.
I wonder what overcame him as at some point Nicodemus brought the
spices. There's Jesus.
He preached like no one could preach.
Yeah, here he is silent. There's Jesus with his hands
that healed and his feet that walked on water, and now they
are punctured. There's Jesus whose heart was so
filled with love that it melted the hardest of sinners, and now
there is a pierced side. I wonder how holy that moment
was. I wonder how sacred it was.
How did Joseph of Arimathea pull this off?
You know what they did with bodies that were crucified?
They threw them around like garbage.
Especially if the Romans got a hold of them.
They would just throw them as a pile of trash.
Well, we learned that he was a respected council member of the
council, and I think there was something else that could have
helped. It's from Matthew's detail.
We even touched Matthew less. So why don't we do it now?
Look at Matthew 2757. When it was evening, there came
a not a respected man. What's that word?
A rich man from Arimathea named Joseph, who was also a disciple
of Jesus. Now here's what's so interesting
about Joseph. You already heard this over and
over again. He doesn't appear until this
point. We don't know of him.
People even struggle to identify where Arimathea is, what town
that was. This is all we have of Joseph of
Arimathea. But I want to tell you
something. He's actually found somewhere
else in the Bible. He's found in arguably the most
detailed descriptive prophecy of the death, burial, and
resurrection of He's not even found in the New Testament.
He's found in the Old Testament. Yes, Joseph of Arimathea is
found in the Hebrew Scriptures. You're saying where you know it?
Isaiah 53. Wait, you're telling me that
Joseph of Arimathea is found in the prophecy of the Suffering
Servant? Yes, look at verse 9 of Isaiah
53. And they made his grave with the
wicked and with a rich man in his death, although he had done
no violence and there was no deceit in his mouth.
Called surgically precise prophecy is in the Bible.
I believe that's one of the greatest defenses of how this
book is supernatural prophecy. That's why we need to study
prophecy. God calls names from hundreds of
years before that person even exists.
And God provides details like this, that when Messiah would
die, he would not just be buried, he'd be buried by a rich
man. I meditate on this and I
thought, why is that even important?
I believe one, because the dignified and noble burial
reflects his moral majesty. He was not a criminal.
He was treated like a criminal, but he was not a law breaker.
But I believe it's even more practical than that because this
rich man would be able to afford something about this burial that
was important to the sanctity of IT, security for the burial.
In Mark's account, we're told that after he went into this
tomb that was hewn into a wall, there was a stone that was
rolled before it. But Matthew says it was a great
stone. And what was the purpose of that
one? To provide a barrier so that no
animals would come in. And not just animals, but grave
robbers. Those would have the audacity to
even meddle with the perfect holy body of the Lord Jesus
Christ. And if Christ claimed that he
was going to raise from the grave and that his body, the
same body that was crucified, was going to be glorified, then
there could be nothing that would interfere with that
promise. And so God in eternity past
hires a rich man to use his resources to provide an extra
secure burial so that in that period of silence that body
would be untouched and that he would have the resurrection that
he claimed that he would have. Are you amazed at the wisdom of
God in every intricate detail of his son's finished work?
You know, Jesus can identify with each of us because he has
lived our experience, though without sin.
And that's what takes our hearts to a place of fear and worry and
loneliness, even to comfort and joy and companionship.
We can come to the Lord with everything, and we can talk to
Him about anything and trust that He will understand and
supply the grace that we are asking for.
And that includes temptation. That includes betrayal,
anything, even this. The grave job says that death is
the king of terrors. There's something very wrong.
If somebody wants to die, there's something very, very
seriously wrong. It's part of human nature to
want to live and to preserve your life.
Your body even has natural defense mechanisms to protect
you. So even the thought of death, if
I were to just leave you there for the next 5 minutes and think
about your mortality becomes heavy, becomes daunting.
And here's Jesus who entered the grave and he would come out of
it. And because we are in him and
part of him, we can look at this story and realize that I have
the same faith as him, that all, yes, I am destined to die, but I
will come out like He came out. And even if I do face the fear
of death, I have a shepherd who experienced it, who went through
the whole process of it, including the burial.
And let me remind you that you have a burial coming, as do I.
And in those moments where you think about your family and you
think about your loved ones, and you think about your desires to
do this and that and the timing of your death, you can come
before the one who tasted it. And he is willing to comfort
you. And you can be reminded that I'm
fellowshipping with one who who can sympathize with me, even as
I realize that I have to face death one day.
And if the very thought of it might cripple you, oh, don't let
it overwhelm you. Take it to him, to the One who
endured it. Do you know Jesus Christ today?
I hope you do. I want to let you know that this
is just not us reflecting on some historical story.
This Is Us reflecting on the Jesus that we believe is alive
and well. Because as we're going to
discover, Can you believe it? We're finished with Mark chapter
15. We're coming to the final
chapter of our gospel study. But in Mark 16, we're going to
learn that he raised and we're going to know and reaffirm that
he's alive today. Have you put your faith and
trust in him? Are you absolutely certain that
every record of wrong that you possess has been dealt with by
His forgiveness? Are you absolutely convinced
that you stand right before God because of your faith in Jesus
Christ? I want to give you an invitation
today to ensure that your sins have been covered by His blood.
And it doesn't matter what kind of sins you've committed, He's
willing to forgive it. And I also want to speak to
potential secret disciples in here today.
Even the fact that you come to church, you would rather die
than people that you care about so much to figure out that you
follow Jesus and actually believe the entirety of this
Bible that I preach. Repent of your secrecy.
Repent of it today. He is worthy for you.
To trumpet your allegiance to Him, yes.
To be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.
But for you to be unashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Are you embarrassed about Jesus Christ?
Are you embarrassed about Him at work?
Do you put on a different cloak when you enter in and punch in
your hours and then put on a different cloak on the weekend?
You're no different than Joseph of Arimathea, and I'm telling
you that you're robbing yourself of great testimonies and you're
robbing him of the glory that is due.
Are you different with certain groups of people, certain
friends, certain colleagues, and then suddenly become spiritual
and suddenly become passionate about Jesus Christ?
You're no different than Joseph of Arimathea.
That's not God's will for you. And the disciples aren't the
best example either. They were passionate and open
about him for a few years, but when it became costly, they
concealed. What's the lesson out of all
this? Just never be a secret disciple.
Live out in the open for Him. He hung publicly for you.
Should you not live publicly for Him?
We should. So I'm coming strong because I
want you to realize that there is a greater purpose for your
life than you being an undercover Christian.
I want you to know that the moment you take courage
responding to this message and say, Lord, if I've been a coward
my whole Christian life, if I've cared more about my promotion or
my standing in this or in that, forgive me.
And here's what we learned from Joseph.
The moment you do, His perfect plan will unfold before your
life. And though He has every right to
be ashamed of us, He chooses to link with us, even though we
might have been ashamed of Him. Who is this God?
Jesus Christ of Nazareth? And I want you to live for Him
wholeheartedly. And I want you to daily ask for
the Holy Spirit to empower you that no matter who stands before
you, you would never shrink from shame.
You'd be confident and strong. You would proclaim Jesus's name
without stuttering, and though we all prone to fear, including
the preacher, he's given us the Holy Spirit to overcome it all.
So the reason why I say this is because not everybody has to
respond to this message. For those who don't believe, I
charge you to repent and believe.
For those who are secret disciples, repent of your
secrecy today and let the Spirit over shadow you so that you
would shine bright. And for those who are living
wholeheartedly for Christ, that the Lord would keep us faithful
and that we wouldn't slip into the fault of the disciples who
lived for him for many years, but when the circumstances were
right, they hid their devotion. Lord, we ask you this place
today as we have beheld, and best in the glory of the burial
of your Son. Yes, we are grateful that this
is a historical document that confirms the legitimacy of what
we believe in, but we see the practical charges and the
applications. We ask Lord today that no matter
how this message resonated with us that You would give us the
grace to be in Your perfect will.
Lord, your word went out for the unbeliever, let them believe.
For the one who believes but is embarrassed about their belief.
Lord, burn it up, consume it. Lord.
Lord, help us not fear man ever to fear You alone and for those,
Lord, who are loving you, who are serving you.
Lord, keep us faithful until the end, until the end.
Lord. Lastly, we pray for the sisters
of this church and we ask that Lord, they would be encouraged
to know the great honor that you've bestowed upon the woman
of this story and how you use them to even testify witness of
the gospel. Lord, we pray for both men and
women that we would be where you want us to be, that we would be
who you called us to be, and that whatever we might see as a
parameter that we would trust in your wisdom, we would trust in
your wisdom. But we give you glory and thanks
that even the burial of Jesus Christ is clothed with such
beauty and splendor. In Jesus mighty name we pray,
Amen and Amen. Let's worship Him, let's adore
him, let's crown him with our praise.