As you know, for a long time now we’ve been in the gospel of Matthew and we find ourselves in the last section of chapter 27. It’s our commitment at Grace Church to just go through one book of the Bible after another. And we have had glorious years together in this gospel of Matthew.
We come this morning to a text of Matthew that usually is passed by rather rapidly. It isn’t one of those with which we’re familiar, it doesn’t contain any verses or lines which we might remember. It probably never was the subject of a sermon you heard in the past or a Sunday school lesson or a Bible study. Nobody ever took their life verse out of this portion. In fact, for the most part it seems to be a rather routine portion which discusses the burial of Jesus Christ.
But the fact is it is an amazing passage of Scripture. And in looking at the burial of Jesus Christ, we are face to face with some astounding truth. I mean, generally all of us who are a part of the Christian faith are aware of the significance of the cross of Christ. And we have and should have made much about the cross. For weeks we’ve been studying the elements of the cross described by Matthew and the other gospel writers. And we sort of are ready for the resurrection. We’re anxious to get to chapter 28 and see Jesus risen from the dead. And admittedly, the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the single greatest miracle the world will ever know because it is that miracle of resurrection which demonstrated His accomplished work on the cross which redeems us and His power over death which brings us to glory. And so rightly so do we extol and celebrate and exalt the miracle of the resurrection…and rightly so do we glory in the crucifixion where our sins were borne by the Lord Jesus Christ to free us from their guilt and penalty.
But between the crucifixion and the resurrection there is the burial of Jesus. And at first thought it would seem to be anything but miraculous, a rather mundane and necessary act with little or no consequence except for what happens on both ends of it. But that’s not the case at all. The burial of Jesus Christ is as supernatural and as miraculous in many ways as was His death and as will be His resurrection. It is a marvelous and thrilling account of supernatural intervention in every detail in the life of Christ…from His birth to His burial to His resurrection, everything is controlled by God the Father for the fulfillment of divine purpose and prophecy. And we shall see that as we look at this text.
Even His burial then becomes a testimony to His kingliness, a testimony to His deity. Even His burial is proof in fact that He is none other than the Son of God who He claimed to be. It is a marvelous and thrilling thing to see God giving evidence as to the deity of Christ even in His being buried.
Now it comes to us in three particular features in verses 57 through 66. The first testimony really comes through Joseph of Arimathea, the second through Mary Magdalene and the other Mary in verse 61, and the third strangely enough through the chief priests and Pharisees from verse 62 to 66.
Joseph and the two Marys and then the group of scribes and…or the groups rather…group rather of chief priests and Pharisees each play a very important role in the burial of Jesus which role ultimately speaks to the truthfulness of Christ’s claim to be the Son of God. And so, God is giving testimony to His Son even in this.
Now we need to begin with looking at Joseph of Arimathea. Joseph of Arimathea is the first focal point of the burial of Christ…from verse 57 through 60 we’ll look at this. And we don’t know much about the man but enough to really see some marvelous things. Let me give you just a little bit of background. There are two key prophecies that must be fulfilled in the burial of Jesus…two very explicit ones. One is an Old Testament one given by Isaiah. The other is a New Testament one given by Jesus Himself.
In Isaiah chapter 53 and verse 9, this whole chapter, as you know, is devoted to the death of Christ. It talks about the fact that He was despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows, He bore our griefs, carried our sorrows. He was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities. It talks about Him being taken from prison unto judgment, and so forth. It describes the meaning of His death. Then in verse 9 it says, “His grave was assigned to be with wicked men, yet He was with a rich man in His death.”
Now the Holy Spirit through the prophet of Isaiah says it was an assignment for Him to be placed with criminals in a criminal grave, yet that didn’t happen but rather He was with a rich man in His death. Now that rather strange and obscure prophecy would be very difficult to understand until one arrives at the burial scene of Jesus Christ. Keep it in mind, He was to have been buried or He was to have been put in a grave for criminals, but instead He is buried with a rich man in His death.
The second prophecy is one in the New Testament given by Jesus Christ Himself. And we find that one in the twelfth chapter of Matthew and verse 40…a very explicit one. Jesus says, “For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” Jesus here predicts then that there will be three days between His death and resurrection. Not only that, that He will be in the earth three days. He will be buried for three days. Now He there calls them three days and three nights, or three day and nights, as the Jewish colloquial expression was.
So there are two major prophecies very explicit, very easily recognized that must relate to the burial of Christ. He must be buried with the rich and He must buried for a period of three days. Now God uses Joseph of Arimathea to fulfill these prophecies as the human instrument. So Joseph then gives testimony to the deity of Christ through being used in fulfilled prophecy…fulfilled prophecy.
Now let’s go back to Matthew chapter 27 and notice verse 57. “When the evening was come,” and we need to stop at this point and point out to you that this evening is the early evening of the Jewish day which is 3 P.M. to 6 P.M., the closing out of the day, the Sabbath day will begin around 6 P.M. and run from evening to evening. And so it is three in the afternoon on Friday. It is the early evening. A very important note. By 3 P.M. Jesus was dead. That in itself is amazing because usually those who were crucified lingered longer than that. Some lingered for many days. In this particular case Jesus was nailed to the cross at nine in the morning and dead by three in the afternoon. And you will remember in our study last time, we pointed out that He was dead not because someone took His life but because He gave His life. No one took His life from Him, He yielded up of Himself and that is what astounded Pilate, how He could be dead so soon. But it was imperative that Christ be dead by 3 o’clock so that He could be in the grave on some part of Friday so that that day could be included in the three days He had to be in the earth. He had to be buried on Friday so that Friday, Saturday and Sunday, at least a portion of each of those days, He would spend in the earth as He had prophesied that He would.
Now go to John chapter 19 and let me show you how this scene begins to unfold. By three o’clock in the afternoon, Jesus is dead. He has yielded up His own life. He said it is finished, Father, into Thy hands I commend My Spirit, giving Himself up. He who controlled life also controlled death. He who could raise Himself from the dead could also cause Himself to be dead by the expression of His own divine will. He willed Himself then into the Father’s presence in death at three in the afternoon. And so, Jesus is dead on the cross.
Now we pick the story up in John 19 verse 31, “The Jews…and whenever John uses the term Jews he has reference not to the multiplicity of people but to the leaders who are hostile to Christ…the Jews therefore because it was the preparation.” Paraskeue is a word that basically means the day before the Sabbath. This leaves no doubt in the mind of any Bible student that it indeed is Friday. This was the technical term for Friday. It was called the preparation because as far back as the sixteenth chapter of Exodus the Jewish people were instructed that they were to keep the Sabbath holy and that meant that any food preparation for the Sabbath had to be done on the day before. Do you remember that even when the manna was delivered by God for them, they had to collect enough on Friday to carry them over Saturday because they were not permitted to do that on Saturday? So Friday became known then as the day of preparation for the Sabbath because all that the Sabbath would encompass had to be done on the day before so that the Sabbath was not in any sense unholy or unsanctified or unset apart unto devotion to God.
“This article originally appeared here at Bible Bulletin Board.”
