Sunday, December 4, 2022 PM

How it is always true, how it is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, how it gets right to the heart of the matters in our lives. We thank you for making us in your image and nourishing and feeding and sanctifying and helping us through your Word.

We pray that you would do that tonight in Jesus name, Amen. Alright, beginning in verse 50. This is just after Jesus's death upon the cross. Now behold, there was a man named Joseph, a council member, a good and just man.

He had not consented to their decision indeed. He was from Arimathea, a city of the Jews, who himself was also waiting for the kingdom of God. This man went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Then he took it down, wrapped it in linen, and laid it in a tomb that was hewn out of the rock where no one had ever lain before.

That day was the preparation and the Sabbath drew near. And the women who had come with him from Galilee followed after and they observed the tomb and how his body was laid. Then they returned and prepared spices and fragrant oils and they rested on the Sabbath according to the commandment.

So let's talk about Joseph of Arimathea. When we read the Gospels, the story of Christ, especially pertaining to the opposition to Jesus by the religious rulers, we come across the name Joseph of Arimathea.

He, like Nicodemus, were members of the Sanhedrin, members of the council. The ruling council of the Jews was made up primarily of Sadducees who were in control of the temple. From the Sadducees were appointed the chief priests and the rulers of the temple.

The majority of the Sanhedrin were Sadducees, though they had a couple of Pharisees on their council, such as Nicodemus. And Joseph of Arimathea, we read, did not consent to their decision to arrest Jesus and condemn him to death and turn him over to Pilate.

He did not consent. Whether he simply abstained from the vote, if he wasn't present, or he actually had something to say about it later, he did not consent. It's important that we understand that. It's important we understand that because we've read earlier, and we've seen in other contexts, how the Sanhedrin had plotted against Christ.

Now we read about Joseph of Arimathea in other contexts, and it says that, as we see here, he was waiting for the kingdom of God, kind of like Simeon looking forward to the constellation of Israel. Certainly he had heard of Christ, and he was consenting to the things that Jesus had been teaching about the kingdom of God, all of the parables he had been teaching, the way in which Christ had been expounding upon that theme.

And he himself believed, but we read in other contexts, that he didn't say anything openly because he feared the council. He feared what the others would say and do once they found out. You may remember the man who was lame, who was healed by Christ, and began to proclaim far and wide about the healing and how impressed he was.

Or was it the man who was blind, who was healed? They didn't take kindly, the Jewish leaders did not take kindly to people speaking positively about Christ. It didn't fit with their narrative, and so Joseph essentially did not want to get canceled.

And so he did not speak up at first. But we read that he was well received by everyone. He was understood as a good and just man. They would have considered him very devout. And he was one who believed in Jesus, though he was somewhat of a secret disciple.

But now let's consider what Joseph did. What Joseph did, not only did he refuse to agree with the Sanhedrin, he did not consent with what they decided about Christ, but after Jesus died, something of a quandary must have impressed upon Joseph to a great degree.

What would happen to the body of Jesus? He was somebody who believed Christ. He indeed had a great respect and a love for Christ. He could not bear the thought of the body of Jesus being taken down from the cross with the other criminals and being cast into some common grave.

He knew that's what was going to happen next, unless he did something about it. And so he took courage and he went to Pilate. He went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Now two things happen here.

Remember he's a member of the Sanhedrin, part of the council. Whereas the other religious Jews, the religious leaders, had navigated the situation in such a way that they would remain ceremonially clean for the upcoming festivities.

What Joseph of Arimathea does here is going to make him unclean in two ways. One, the time frame is such that he's going to go be with a Gentile, way too close to the holy ceremonies, and he's asking to handle a dead body.

But apparently this is more important. Apparently this takes precedence. And so he asks for the body of Jesus. Now we read in other contexts that Pilate was glad to do this. Of course he had a troubled conscience about how the whole thing had occurred.

He knew this man was innocent and he was in some sense, I suspect, relieved that at least this man who was innocent would have a decent burial. And so Joseph of Arimathea takes courage. Everyone's going to find out now where Joseph's loyalties lie.

Everyone's going to find out what happened to the body of Jesus. Because Joseph not only asked for the body, but he puts it in his own tomb. We read that it was a tomb hewn out of the rock, a tomb where no one had been laid, and we hear in other contexts it was his own.

It was his own. He may have been from Arimathea, but he had obviously moved to Jerusalem. That was his new address. And he had had for himself and purchased for himself a tomb where no dead body had ever been laid before.

Now if that sounds weird, you have to understand something about Jewish burial practices. It was common to lay the body of your loved one in a tomb above ground in this limestone ridden area of the ancient Near East, where after a time the tomb would be opened again and the decayed bones and remains of the dead one would be transported from there to someplace else, and that tomb would be reused again for somebody else.

In fact, this was a very solemn procedure and it would be like a funeral all over again. And they would take the bones and the remains from the above ground tomb and go bury them somewhere appropriately out of the city and so on.

And it would be another funeral procession. They may even hire mourners all over again and have another funeral procession with it. So it is a note here of importance that this was a tomb where it had never been used before.

No one dead had ever been laid in this tomb before. This was Joseph's tomb. It was new. We see that Joseph was also very wealthy. And we read about that in Isaiah 53, that in his death Christ was laid with the wealthy.

Why? Because he was innocent. He was pure. He was righteous. And he is given this honorable burial. And so we see that Joseph is very generous through all of this. Well, what does this all mean? Joseph of Arimathea believed in the message of Christ.

His loyalty was indeed with Christ, though for a while he kept quiet about it. Didn't tell anybody. He was afraid of men. Remember what Jesus said though, whoever is ashamed of me and my words in this wicked and perverse generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in the glory with his angels.

So it was not a situation that could continue. Joseph couldn't keep quiet about his loyalty to Christ. Eventually he had to say something. And indeed, now he says something very profound. He confesses his allegiance to Christ by going to Pilate and asking for the body.

After Jesus has been rejected by the Jews and mocked and scorned and scourged and declared an outlaw and crucified upon a cross, which cursed is everyone who is hung from a tree, he's absolutely untouchable by every facet of society.

But Joseph of Arimathea confesses his allegiance even to his dead Lord by going and asking for the body of Christ. And we read that he took the body of Jesus down, verse 53. What does that mean? What does that look like?

It looks like Joseph of Arimathea himself doing the manual labor, the difficult labor, the messy, difficult labor of taking a dead body down from the cross. We see Joseph of Arimathea putting the body of Christ upon his own shoulder, removing the body of Christ from the cross, and bearing the body of Christ over his own.

In this, what do we see? We see that Joseph of Arimathea is completely identifying with the death of Christ. Everybody's going to know who went and got the dead body of Jesus down from that cross. It's gonna be clear.

And then, he takes the dead body of Jesus and lays it in his own tomb, buries the dead body of Jesus, goes with the body of Christ, lays the body of Christ. He's getting some help from the women who saw how the body was laid.

There was some preparation done for the body, but they were running out of time. Remember that Christ died at three o 'clock in the afternoon, and when the sun goes down, that's the start of the Sabbath.

So, they don't have a lot of time. Joseph has to go get permission from Pilate. He has to go back and get the body. They have to transport the body to the tomb. They have to lay it. They don't have time to do the full preparation of the dead body before the Sabbath commences, and they can do no more work.

Which is why the women have to satisfy themselves with simply planning to come back after the Sabbath has been concluded on Sunday morning to finish those preparation rites. But Joseph confesses allegiance to Christ.

He has the dead body of Christ over his own shoulder. He's the one who took the body down from the cross. He takes the body of Christ into the tomb. And here's a question that's not answered immediately, but it is relevant to our passage.

When Jesus is raised from the dead the third day, and the stone is rolled away from the entrance of the tomb, and it's empty for all to see, whose tomb is empty? Oh yes, it's the tomb of Christ, but it's also the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea.

It was his, and he put Christ's body therein. Joseph's tomb is empty. Why is Joseph of Arimathea's tomb empty? Because Christ raised from the dead. In this sense, and I know that many other baptisms have been done already, in this sense it's almost like it's the first baptism.

When Jesus in the Gospel of Luke said many chapters ago, I have a baptism yet to undergo and how I am eager to go through with it. He's not referring to going back down to the Jordan and having his cousin dunk him again.

He's talking about his coming death, burial, and resurrection, which are the the meaning, the symbols, the reality behind the symbols of baptism. Now Joseph of Arimathea is covered by the dead body and the the bloody body of Christ.

Joseph of Arimathea takes the dead body of Christ and buries him in the tomb, and it's Joseph of Arimathea's tomb that is empty on Resurrection Day. And in this sense, Joseph of Arimathea goes through a kind of baptism, doesn't he?

He's connected to the death and burial and resurrection of Jesus in a an incredibly public way as he professes his allegiance to Christ. In a sense, it's kind of the first baptism. And also there is a, just as we've already stated, just an incredible scene of hope.

Jesus, of course, is called the firstfruits of the resurrection, the firstborn of the resurrection. The fact that he rose from the dead is the guarantee that all who are in Christ will be raised from the dead.

One day your grave and my grave will be empty. Why? Because Jesus rose from the dead. Joseph's tomb is empty because Jesus rose from the dead. Our graves are going to be empty one day because, why? Jesus rose from the dead.

We also will have an empty grave. We also have an empty tomb to our name. So, first baptism we see in this text. We also see the last Sabbath, the last Sabbath, also in a sense. We read that, verse 54, that day was the preparation and the Sabbath drew near.

People had to get ready for the Sabbath. There are so many rules about what you couldn't do on the Sabbath. And you had to get everything ready. I was actually reading a little bit about blue laws in the history of the United States and that varied from state to state and city to city.

And the Dominion of Canada had a very strong Sabbath laws. But there are all kinds of suggestions from pastors and actually laws in the books about what you were not supposed to do on a Sunday. And it involved all kinds of things that you weren't supposed to do.

You know, and some of them are still traditional today. But one of the things on those lists, as comprehensive as they were for our own culture, among those lists, do you know what was not listed? Picking up sticks.

Picking up sticks. Never made it to one of the blue laws here in the U .S. or in Canada or in any kind of tradition, religious tradition. But do you know what the first violation of the Sabbath was that brought the death penalty?

It was picking up sticks. So anyway, how we understand the Sabbath is important. Here, in this passage, the women know the Sabbath is drawing near and so they follow. They know where the tomb is. They're gonna come back.

They see how he was laid. They see the needs, though. They have an eye to the needs. They see how he was laid in the tomb and they see all manner of things lacking. Oh, we can't leave it like that. We can't leave it like that.

We need to come back and do it right. And they make plans to do that, but they can't do that right away because the Sabbath is upon them. The sun is setting and in the Jewish day, the day begins at nightfall.

When the sun goes down, it's a new day. Evening and morning, evening and morning, evening and morning. And so they are going to come back. So verse 56, they say, we see that they returned and prepared spices and fragrant oils and they rested on the Sabbath according to the commandment.

And that, of course, is the commandment in the Ten Commandments. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. And so they follow the law and they do not work on the Sabbath. Because it was Sabbath, they couldn't go back on that Saturday, on that seventh day, and then move, they couldn't go move a stone.

They would not have been able to convince anybody to get, to go get pry bars and what else ever they needed to move a heavy stone. That would be definitely breaking the Sabbath. They were not allowed by clear rabbinical legislation.

They were not allowed to take care of dead bodies on the Sabbath. That was disallowed. That would be considered work and you're not allowed to do that. So they just couldn't do anything that day. They just had to wait.

And they had to wait and they came back on Sunday morning and they found the tomb empty. Stone rolled away, Jesus risen from the dead. Hallelujah. The righteous obedience of Christ upon our behalf, his suffering in our place and for our sake, his active and passive obedience before the Father so that the Father would smile upon the Son and all who are in him by faith.

That great work which Christ accomplished, he accomplished and indeed he rested on the Sabbath. His body laid in the tomb and there was a day of rest. And we are to contemplate that Christ, his rest in the tomb on that Sabbath, is a rest that was accomplished for us, for those he came to save.

His rest for us in the tomb means our rest with him forever as he brings about true Sabbath in himself both now and forever. As the writer of Hebrews says that a Sabbath rest remains for all who are in Christ.

There is truth to those old hymns about crossing over the Jordan to a promised land of rest in Christ forever. Now this rest we recognize comes after Jesus wraps everything up. It is finished and then he rests.

This rest caps off the old creation and ushers in the new. When Christ is raised from the dead, he's raised from the dead on what day of the week? The first day of the week. First day of the week. The old creation.

God made the world in six days. I love that someone, I forget who it was, who was getting after, it wasn't Ken Ham, it was the other guy who built the ark. Not Noah but you know. No, the one up, anyway, anyway the ark.

Somebody, you know, gets after them and they like, you know, you're one of those people that believes that God created the world in seven days. He's like, I do not. He made it in six. He made it in six and he rested on the seventh.

And so that caps off the old creation that God made and he rested and rejoiced in all that he had made. But we read that Jesus is the firstfruits of the resurrection. He is the firstborn of the new creation, which of course begins, when else, on the first day of the week.

The old creation begins on the first day of the week. The new creation begins in the first day of the week. And the Lord rested and was raised from the dead on the first day. The women come to, I want you to notice, the women come to do work and what day of the week do they come to do work?

To honor Jesus on the first day of the week. And the kind of work they come to do in honoring Jesus is a good thing. Christ does not rebuke them for doing so. What they do is honorable and a good thing.

Because rest is in Christ. When Jesus began to talk about the Sabbath, he said, come unto me all you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest. I will give you rest. And he redefines the Sabbath as abiding with him and saying that he is Lord of the Sabbath.

So, in a sense, this is the last Sabbath that we read about. This is the last time on this Sabbath, this Saturday, when Jesus' body laid in the tomb and the women rested and waited before they came back.

In a sense, this is the very last Old Covenant seventh-day Sabbath that was ever rightly observed by any Jew. The very last one. Because the very next day, Jesus rose from the dead. And from that point on, if anyone wants to keep the Sabbath, they have to abide with Jesus.

And that's the way it goes now, because we're in the New Covenant. So, in this passage, we see a first and a last. We see the first baptism. Joseph of Arimathea, no longer a private believer, but a public believer.

Identifying with Christ's death and burial and resurrection. Allegiance to Jesus. And we see the last Sabbath as Christ rests in the tomb, fulfills God's law in our place and for our sake, so we may rest with him forever.

Any questions or thoughts as we close our time here in Luke 23? Yeah, I don't know. It'd be interesting to kind of look into some, it would be church traditions, but kind of look and see what people have to say about them.

Might be interesting. Does anybody know anything about Joseph of Arimathea from tradition? So, we're not quite sure, but sometimes different characters in the New Testament connected with the story of Christ.

Church traditions have like some, sometimes kind of have the feel of fan fiction about them. And, you know, they would make very good comic books sometimes. So, we're not quite sure. It's a real difference when you read the scriptures and then go read church tradition.

That's a different quality. So, yes, yes. Yeah, they, the reason why they would move the remains of a loved one was of a financial reason. And so, in order to save money on burial costs, they would use a space to bury the body which needed a lot of space.

And then later on, they could gather up the bones and bury them in a smaller space later on. There is a point where Jesus is calling people to follow him, and there is a man who says, well, I need to bury my father first.

And it might be that what he's saying is, I have responsibilities to bury the bones of my father before I can come follow you, because he has family responsibilities for that, moving the remains from one place to another.

It could be that he's referring to that. And then Jesus said, what he said about birds having nests and foxes having holes, son of man having no place to lay, and let the dead bury their own dead. So, yeah, so they knew that the graves of the Kings, Jesus, or when Peter was preaching in Acts 2 about the tomb of David, that David is dead and his tomb is with us, you know, and he didn't raise from the dead, so the prophecies in the Old Testament weren't about him.

He's making that point, and it was a good point to make since the tomb of David had been raided not so long ago, looking for treasures. So everybody knew that David was still dead, because they had gone inside and saw that he was still dead.

So his bones didn't get moved. Alright, well, let's close by singing the doxology together. Praise God from whom all blessings flow.