WWUTT 2238 Jesus Death and Burial (Mark 15:35-47)

All of the blood of all those bulls and goats and animals that were sacrificed in the Old Testament, all of that blood was not enough to forgive you of your sins. It took the life of Jesus Christ. When We Understand the Text.

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Reading Mark 15:35-47 and Jesus’ Death on the Cross

Thank you, Becky. In our study of the Gospel of Mark, we're looking to finish up chapter 15 today. We're in the middle of Jesus' crucifixion. And we'll read also of His death and His burial. Let me pick up where we left off yesterday.

I'll begin reading in verse 34 and go through verse 47 out of the Legacy Standard Bible. Hear the word of the Lord. And at the ninth hour, Jesus cried out with a loud voice, Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani, which is translated, My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?

And when some of the bystanders heard it, they began saying, Look, He is calling for Elijah. And someone ran and filled a sponge with sour wine and put it on a reed and gave him a drink, saying, Let us see whether Elijah will come to take him down.

And Jesus, uttering a loud cry, breathed His last. And the veil of the sanctuary was torn in two from top to bottom. And when the centurion, who was standing right in front of Him, saw the way He breathed His last, he said, Truly this man was God's Son.

And there were also some women looking on from a distance, among whom were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the less and Joses, and Salome, who when He was in Galilee, were following Him and serving Him.

And there were many other women who came up with Him to Jerusalem. And when evening had already come, because it was preparation day, that is, the day before the Sabbath, Joseph of Arimathea came, a prominent council member, who himself was waiting for the kingdom of God.

And he gathered up courage and went in before Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. And Pilate wondered if he had died by this time. And summoning the centurion, he questioned him as to whether he already died.

And ascertaining this from the centurion, he granted the body to Joseph. And when Joseph had bought a linen cloth and took him down, he wrapped him in the linen cloth and laid him in a tomb, which had been hewn out in the rock.

And he rolled a stone against the entrance of the tomb. And Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses were looking on to see where he had been laid. Now, I wanted to come back to verse 34 here, even though we read it yesterday, because I encountered an interesting problem, so to speak, a question that was presented on social media by a Muslim.

He thought that he had discovered the perfect trap for a Trinitarian. And we'll get this Trinitarian in his trap, and we'll expose how the Trinitarian theology is just a complete fraud. At least, this is what he thought.

He didn't put it in exactly those words, but that was the point. Anyway, he said, you ask a Trinitarian, did Jesus have a God? And the Trinitarian is going to tell you, well, he is God. And he says, no, no, that's not what I asked.

Did Jesus have a God? And he presses on this three times. And every time that you say this, the Trinitarian is going to respond, Jesus is God. He doesn't have a God, he is God. You're like, very well.

Well, the scripture says that Jesus said, I am ascending to my father and your father, to my God and your God. That's John 20, 17. That was what Jesus said to Mary Magdalene after he had risen from the dead.

So if Jesus is going back to his God, how can God have a God? So, of course, a Muslim doesn't believe that Jesus actually is God. They do believe he was a great prophet, but they don't believe that he is God incarnate.

So by this question, this Muslim thinks that he's found the perfect, you know, debunking question for the Trinitarian that will just make their worldview shatter. Because how can God have a God? Jesus himself says, I am going back to my God and your God.

Well, in response to this, Shane Morris, who is an apologist with the Colson Center, he said the following. Yes, Jesus has a God. Because he, the eternal son, worshiped according to his human nature. The way he did all other things proper to human beings.

That is what it means to be God incarnate. So the very fact that Jesus is God incarnate means, yes, Jesus had a God. And we see that also here in Mark chapter 15. In the very place where he is dying on the cross, he says, quoting from the Psalms, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Jesus is God. And he also has a God. He has two natures. As God incarnate, he has his human nature and his divine nature. And his human nature is submissive to everything that God the Father has called for all human beings to do.

Only Jesus fulfills it, does it, worships perfectly. So yes, he has a God. And he's still God. And the reason why you can't wrap your mind around that, and that just utterly blows your mind, or you think it's a contradiction or otherwise, is because you're not God.

God is one God, three persons, Father, Son, Holy Spirit. And they are equal and yet distinct. And it is because we are finite and singular beings that we cannot wrap our minds around this. But a day will come in which we will understand.

As said in 1 John 3, 2, we will see him as he is because we will be made to be like him. Glorified bodies, just as Jesus has. And when we enter into that eternal place and glorify God, the Trinity will make full sense to us, even though we have a really difficult time with it now.

It's a paradox. A paradox is something that may appear to be contradictory, but it's really not. So aspects of the Trinity can be paradoxical to us. It doesn't mean that they contradict one another. So here Jesus is praying from the cross.

Again, quoting Psalm 22. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? We've delved into this before when we were in Matthew's gospel. And I may come back to it again in Luke. So for now, we won't delve into the theological aspects of Jesus saying, why have you forsaken me?

But you can go read Psalm 22, and I think your questions will be answered. Verse 35. And when some of the bystanders heard it, they began saying, look, he is calling for Elijah. This kind of demonstrates how clueless they were to their own doctrine, their own theology, right?

How did they not get that Jesus is quoting Psalm 22? And he may have prayed more than Psalm 22, verse one. That's what's being quoted there. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? He may have quoted more of the Psalm than just that.

This is what he was praying as he's dying on the cross. And the people see him. They hear him saying this. They think he's calling for Elijah. He's saying, my God, my God. And they think he's calling for Elijah.

Clueless even to their own doctrine, to their own scriptures, which Jesus said they would be blind, cannot see, deaf, cannot hear. Verse 36, still in verse 36. So someone ran and filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a reed and gave him a drink saying, let us see whether Elijah will come to take him down.

So they all stand around to see what will happen there toward the end of his life. You kind of wonder, was that asked in a mocking way? Did they ask that question in mockery? Let's all stand here and see if Elijah is going to take him down.

Or was part of them actually quite curious? Could something happen here? Let's stand here and find out. And may have turned out to be disappointed when nothing happened. Verse 37 says, Jesus, uttering a loud cry, breathed his last.

We really don't get last words from Jesus in Mark's gospel. We have into your hands I commit my spirit in Luke, and it is finished in John. But here it just says that he uttered a loud cry and he breathed his last.

So whatever the last words could have been. Now, some will say that because Luke says one thing and John says another, well, that's a contradiction. No, that's not. They both were last words of Jesus.

Which one did he say first? We don't really know. But he can say both and they can both be last words. Luke captures one sentence. John captures another. So in verse 38, and the veil of the sanctuary was torn in two from top to bottom.

Now, when Matthew records this, he includes an earthquake. Mark doesn't mention the earthquake. So there was an earthquake that tore the veil in two. And remember, this is the veil that separates the holy of holies from the rest of the temple.

And this is God the Father who has done this to show that he is not dwelling with man in temples made by human hands. But when the Holy Spirit comes, which will be not far from this time, then God will dwell in the heart of every single believer.

He tabernacles with us in our hearts. In those who follow Jesus Christ, our Savior, God dwells with us. And so no longer was it necessary to go into the holy of holies once a year and have the high priest make a sacrifice for us.

For Christ fulfilled that with his death. He accomplished everything that the sacrificial system was set in place to foreshadow. It was all pointing toward one who was going to come who would be greater than all of the whatever it would have been.

Millions of rams and bulls and goats and doves and every other animal that had been sacrificed on the altar of God. Every drop of their blood could not equal the power of the life of Christ that he gave for us, for our sins.

As said in the book of Hebrews, the blood of bulls and goats didn't have the power to wash away sins anyway. It is only Jesus who forgives sins. All those other sacrifices were pointing to the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ, who would be sacrificed for our sins and now giving his life.

The sacrificial system is over. That curtain was a heavy curtain, by the way, huge heavy curtain. I've got musical theater experience and I've performed in some pretty nice theaters. Also was in a band.

Some of you are probably aware of that. Traveled around with a band and we also performed in some really nice auditoriums. These are big, heavy curtains that will be on these stages. And we'll even be told sometimes if a curtain goes up or down, usually the curtains parting like it opens to the left and to the right.

But if they ever bring the curtain up and it has to come back down, we'll be told don't stand underneath it because the weight could either crush you or injure you. And so this is that kind of curtain in the temple.

It was big. It was thick. Mr. Universe couldn't tear this curtain. It was something like 60 feet high, 30 feet wide, and the breadth of a man's hand like as thick as if you were to set your hand right next to it.

So it's probably like, what would that be? Four or five, maybe even six inches thick. That's how that's how big this curtain was. Huge, thick, heavy curtain. It could not be torn by a man. It could only have been something divine that caused that curtain to tear.

And so you get the next line, verse 39, where it says the centurion who was standing right in front of him, when he saw the way that he breathed his last, he said, truly, this man was God's son. The centurion felt the earthquake.

In addition to seeing Jesus breathe his last, he's not in the temple. He doesn't see the temple curtain tear. But there's all kinds of things that happen at the moment that Jesus breathes his last. Something has taken place.

We had darkness over the land that continued until he died. There's the earthquake. There's the veil that tears. Whatever else, what other chaos would have been going on at that time, all of this prompting that centurion to say, this was not just an ordinary criminal that we killed here, that we put to death.

Surely this was God's son. And for a polytheist Roman centurion, as he likely was, believed in multiple gods, for him to say that was quite a revelation. And something that would have been revealed to him by the father, not something that he just came to naturally.

The Women Who Followed Jesus and Joseph of Arimathea’s Burial of Christ

Verse 40 and 41. Verses 40 and 41. Mention some of the women that were there. And you have the two Marys and Salome, at least as Mark records. And there were three Marys. There was Mary, the mother of Jesus.

There was Mary, who was the wife of Clopas. And there was Mary Magdalene. And now here we don't have Mary, the mother of Jesus mentioned, maybe unless Mary, the mother of James, the less than Joseph is Mary, the mother of Jesus.

I don't know.

We'll talk about that later. Here's what I was going to mention about that. So we have some women that are mentioned here. We get more details about them in Luke. And so I was going to wait till we got to Luke's gospel.

And we'll talk about some of the women that ministered in Jesus company. So let me read verse 40 again. There were also some women looking on from a distance, among whom were Mary Magdalene and Mary, the mother of James, the less than Joseph, and Salome.

And Salome is also one of those who ends up going to the tomb. Who, when he was in Galilee, were following him and serving him. And there were many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem. So like I said, more of those women are mentioned in Luke.

So we'll talk about the ministry of those women and how they were included amongst the disciples. And even traveled with Jesus from town to town. Mark kind of suggested here, more so than what we saw in Matthew.

And we'll get even more details when we get to Luke. So hold on to that thought. Because we'll expound upon that a little bit later on. Now here is Jesus' burial, beginning in verse 42. And when evening had already come, because it was preparation day, that is the day before the Sabbath.

Joseph of Arimathea came, a prominent council member, who himself was waiting for the kingdom of God. And he gathered up courage and went in before Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Now first of all, where it says it was preparation day, the day before the Sabbath.

There is a theory that the Sabbath that is talked about here was actually a high Sabbath. Because that's what's said in John 19 .31. John seems to suggest that this particular Sabbath was not the normal Sabbath, as in the last day of the week.

This was a special Sabbath that had to do with Passover and with the Feast of Unleavened Bread. So this is a high Sabbath for that day. So if that's the case, and that high Sabbath was on Friday, then this crucifixion is taking place on Thursday.

And because of the high Sabbath, they need to get Jesus off the cross. They can't leave him hanging there, for the law said that it's a shameful thing to leave a person hanging from a tree anyway. So they want to bring him down.

They don't want these things to be left undone and for bodies to still be out when they have a holy day coming up. So let's take care of all this now. They're getting him off the cross. We know from John's gospel that the other two thieves, their legs were broken so that they would die quicker.

Jesus has already died. He gave up his life. He breathed his last and gave his spirit into the hand of the Father. And so he died kind of early. He died earlier than expected. And you can see that in the reaction that Pilate makes here.

Verse 44. And Pilate wondered if he had died by this time. And summoning the centurion, he questioned him as to whether he already died. How could it be that he's died by now? I mean, yeah, we beat him and whatever.

But hanging on a cross for six hours, that won't kill a person. He should still be alive. He would live longer than that. Why isn't he living until tomorrow or the day after that? The Romans devised crucifixion to be a slow death.

So they didn't expect him to be dead yet. But remember that Jesus said, I have the authority to lay my life down and take it back up again. So the Romans didn't take it from him. He willingly gave his life.

Verse 45. And ascertaining this from the centurion, he granted the body to Joseph. And when Joseph had bought a linen cloth and took him down, he wrapped him in the linen cloth and laid him in a tomb, which had been hewn out in the rock, and he rolled a stone against the entrance of the tomb.

Now, it's this passage when Joseph had bought a linen cloth and took him down and wrapped him in the linen cloth. This passage is what people will use to say that the shroud of Turin is genuine, that this was actually the shroud that Jesus was buried in.

But that's not the way that the Jews buried their dead. He was buried in multiple cloths, not just one. And the one cloth, the one long cloth, would have been the one that was wrapped around him over and over again.

The way the shroud of Turin is laid out is that he was laid flat, he was laid on the shroud, and then it was folded over the top of him. And then it was tucked around him. But that is not the way that the Jews buried their dead.

And we see even from John's burial, not John's burial, sorry, Lazarus's burial in the Gospel of John, that he had multiple cloths around him. And we also have from John's Gospel that Jesus was buried in multiple cloths as well, and he had a linen cloth placed over his face.

There was a face cloth that was placed over his face. The shroud of Turin is a full-body cloth. It covered all of him from head to toe. That could not have been the case. So, the shroud of Turin's a fraud.

But they try to use this verse to say that, see, he buried him in one cloth. The shroud of Turin is one cloth. Not the way that that would have been done. That was not the way the Jews buried their dead.

It was much more like the mummification process that the Egyptians did. Not the process itself, but the burial, the preparation for burial. Plus, Jesus would have been covered with all kinds of, like, myrrh and frankincense and spices.

So, that's a very sticky resin. And they'll put that on the body so that it doesn't stink as bad. And those who were wealthier had more of it. Remember that Jesus was gifted with gold, frankincense, and myrrh by the Magi.

So, he had myrrh. There were many other spices that he would have been buried with as well. So, having that sticky resin on him, it's not easy to get a burial cloth off of a person that way. And the shroud of Turin just doesn't have any evidence of that.

So, anyway, we go on from there. He rolled a stone against the entrance of the tomb. And verse 47, and Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses were looking on to see where he had been laid. And hold on to those names because they come back up again at the start of Mark 16.

We've got one more chapter to get through. And actually, the shortest chapter in the Gospel of Mark. It's the shortest chapter in the New Testament. Now, how could that be? When it's got 20 verses, hang on, what's the exact count?

20, yeah, 20 verses in it. So, Mark 16 has 20 verses. 3 John has only 15 verses. So, how could the Gospel of Mark, the 16th chapter of the Gospel of Mark, how could that be the shortest chapter in the New Testament?

We'll consider that next week when we come back and finish our study of the Gospel of Mark. Let's finish here with prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you for what we have read. And I pray that it continues to stir in our hearts an appreciation and an understanding of what Christ has done for us.

By giving his life on the cross for our sins, by his death, our sins are forgiven for all who believe in him. It was not even possible anyway through all of those sacrifices for our sins to be forgiven.

All of the sacrifices we read about being given in the Old Testament, all of them, if they had been given for us, would not have been enough to forgive my sins. If all those animals had been sacrificed for me, it would not have been enough to forgive me of my sin.

There needed to be something, someone greater. And Jesus, the Son of God, gave himself, lived a perfect life, died the death of the spotless lamb, rose again from the dead, so that all who believe in him, our sins are forgiven and we are likewise promised the resurrection of the dead.

Forgive us our sins and lead us in your righteousness. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

Closing Prayer and Program Sign-Off

You've been listening to When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, Gabe will be going through a New Testament study. Then on Thursday, we look at an Old Testament book.

On Friday, we take questions from the listeners and viewers. Tomorrow, we'll pick up on an Old Testament study, When We Understand the Text.