Luke 23:50-56 The Burial of Jesus
Good morning! Turn with me once again to Luke 23, this morning we will examine verses 50-56, and that is on page 884 in the pew Bibles.
We are amazingly nearing the end of Luke’s Gospel, his first work, and I am so looking forward to studying Luke’s second work, the Book of Acts. We began working our way through the Gospel of Luke in January of 2022, and it looks like we may be wrapping it up in January or February of 2025. Not to worry, the book of Acts is even longer that Luke!
Over the last three weeks we have been considering Jesus’ last words from the cross, and now, in our text for this morning, after three hours of darkness, and earthquake, and the tearing of the curtain of the Temple, Jesus has breathed His last and has now died.
It is at this point that an unlikely little group rises up in service of Jesus in His death, in fulfillment of prophecy, and in honor of our King.
50 Now there was a man named Joseph, from the Jewish town of Arimathea. He was a member of the council, a good and righteous man, 51 who had not consented to their decision and action; and he was looking for the kingdom of God. 52 This man went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. 53 Then he took it down and wrapped it in a linen shroud and laid him in a tomb cut in stone, where no one had ever yet been laid. 54 It was the day of Preparation, and the Sabbath was beginning. 55 The women who had come with him from Galilee followed and saw the tomb and how his body was laid. 56 Then they returned and prepared spices and ointments. On the Sabbath they rested according to the commandment.
Let’s pray.
All four Gospels record this event unsurprisingly, and they all have their own details to share to fill out this account. You can read them in Matthew 27, Mark 15, and John 19.
First, let’s consider this man Joseph of Arimathea, what do we know about Him? This is the first and last time Joseph is mentioned in Scripture but his role is an important one.
Matthew tells us that he was a rich man, Mark tells us that he was an honorable counselor who boldly went to Pilate to ask for the body of Jesus, and John tells us that he was a disciple of Jesus but secretly for fear of the Jews.
Here in our text from Luke we can see that Joseph was a good and righteous man, who had not consented to the council’s decision and action; and he was looking for the kingdom of God.
Joseph of Arimathea was by all accounts an Old Covenant believer. He believed in the prophets, he followed the Law, he looked forward to Messiah coming in His kingdom, and he believed that Jesus was that Messiah.
Joseph had the honor of not only seeing some of those prophecies fulfilled, but actually helped fulfill some of them.
Isaiah 53:9, 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.
Joseph was that rich man, lending his own new tomb, where no one had yet been laid, to the Messiah Jesus.
It was not customary for crucified criminals to be honored with a proper burial. Typically, those crucified stayed up on the crosses to be eaten by scavengers, and when the crosses were needed again what remained of their bodies would be thrown into the city garbage dump, a place known as Gehenna, translated into Greek as, “Hell.”
By asking for Jesus’ body Joseph spared our Lord from that dishonor and so fulfilled another prophecy from Psalm 16:10, which says, For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol, or let your holy one see corruption.
Joseph was also not alone. John 19 tells us that he was accompanied by another, a Pharisee by the name of Nicodemus. Nicodemus was the one who came to Jesus by night in John chapter three. It was to this man that Jesus explained that a person must be born again in order to enter the kingdom of God and that God so loved the world that he gave His only Son that whoever believed in Him will not perish but have everlasting life.
Joseph and Nicodemus exposed themselves to the hatred of the council and the nation by honoring Jesus in His death even if they had not publically followed Him in life. This courage could only come from the Holy Spirit to use the resources they had to honor the Lord.
My question is, where are the disciples? Where are the Eleven, where is Peter? He claimed that he would follow Jesus to prison and to death, and now where is he?
The Eleven were nowhere to be found. The sheep were so scattered that even the care for the corpse of the Shepherd couldn’t bring them together out of hiding.
But do you know who was there to the end? The women.
Their great love for the Savior turned them into heroines for His glory. Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joses, Salome, the mother of James and John, and Mary the mother of Jesus and her sister.
These women were there when Jesus was crucified, they were there when Joseph and Nicodemus took Jesus down from the cross and took His body to the tomb. They were there as the men wrapped His body in linen and laid Him in the tomb and rolled that great stone to seal Him in.
The women returned home to prepare the spices and the ointments for the body of Jesus as was customary but were interrupted by the Sabbath. Jesus died around three o’clock in the afternoon and the Sabbath officially began at six, so all of this took place within that three hours.
But as RC Sproul put it, “Before the final act of anointing of His shrouded body could be completed, death surrendered to His power.”
But we’ll talk more about that next time.
What’s most important is that we understand the purpose of Jesus’ death and how we identify with it.
One of the most important observations that we can make about this little account is that the Good News is for both the rich and the poor, for both male and female, there is no distinction.
Galatians 3:27-28 says,
27 For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
All have equal access to Jesus by faith and this is good news.
We can also observe here in this text as well that God’s providence is always at work, He is always working even in the smallest things. Here, two secret disciples finally work up the courage to step forward and Give Jesus a proper burial and God used that to fulfill prophecy. Every little pebble thrown into the pond has ripple effects that we will never see or understand but we can trust that the Father is at work through them.
But as for the death of Christ itself, it is the single most important event in the history of the world. And through His death, not only did Jesus purchase forgiveness and salvation for all who would believe in Him, but He gave us a great example of how to live by faith in Him.
Romans 6:2-14 says,
How can we who died to sin still live in it? 3 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.
5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. 6 We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. 7 For one who has died has been set free from sin. 8 Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9 We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. 10 For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. 11 So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
12 Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. 13 Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. 14 For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.
Through faith in Jesus Christ, our old self, our old way of thinking and living, was crucified with Him and we were set free from sin.
So instead of using this account to compare bold and loud discipleship to secret and quiet discipleship, let’s instead focus on real discipleship, living lives dedicated to following Jesus according to His Word, dead to sin and alive to God in Christ.
Amen.
