The Burial of Christ - Matthew 27:57-66

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The Burial of Christ Matthew 27:57-66 Sermon by Reed Kerr Hill City Reformed Baptist Church Lynchburg, Virginia

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Good morning, beloved. We are continuing again in the book of Matthew.
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We've been looking these last couple weeks at Matthew's account of the sufferings and death of our
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Lord Jesus Christ. This is, as we have seen, the most significant event in all of history.
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This is the point that all of Scripture focuses on.
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All of Scripture before the Gospels are anticipating this climactic moment.
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All of Scriptures after the Gospels are looking back to and explaining and fleshing out the meaning and significance of this climactic moment.
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All four Gospel writers, the purpose of their writing was focused on the suffering and death and burial and resurrection of our
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Lord. Without the cross, there is nothing but damnation for all of humanity.
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And so we must understand, we must consider carefully and rightly respond to these truths here that we see before us.
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Two Lord's Days ago, we saw the sufferings of our Lord at the hand of sinful men.
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The brutality and ugliness of sinful rebellion against the
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Lord of Glory. Last Lord's Day, we saw the outpouring of the wrath of the
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Father upon the Son. As He experienced the curse of God for us, that we might be justified, that we might be redeemed by His sacrifice.
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This is the atonement of God, the sacrifice of the Lamb of God for us.
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Today, we stand graveside.
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The Lord of Glory is dead. I assume the majority of you at some point in your life have stood graveside for someone you loved.
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It is a heavy and sobering experience. There's nothing like it in life.
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We stand there graveside and it's as if we're gazing. We're standing on the shores of human experience in this life and we're gazing into darkness.
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We're gazing into that which we cannot see. The shadowy abyss that lies beyond.
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Knowing that there is more than this life. We feel the brokenness of the curse of sin that it has brought by our own deeds.
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We feel and we know that there is more. That something is broken and will be one day restored.
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This state of death, though common to all, is profoundly unnatural.
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For when God made Adam and Eve in the garden in the beginning, before there was sin, there was no death.
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God breathed life into Adam and he lived. At face value, the scene of the graveside is dark and somber.
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But beneath the surface, there is much more than what our natural eyes see.
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We must consider that because that is especially true of the death of our
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Lord, the King of Glory. This was no ordinary death.
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For he who was sent by the Father is the Redeemer, the only
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Redeemer of God's elect. He is the prophet, the priest, and the king who by his life and death and rule and he brings redemption to his people.
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But here, the man of God, the prophet, priest, and king, enters into his lowest state of humiliation.
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His humiliation consisted in his being born, and that in a low condition, being made under the law, undergoing the miseries of this life, the cursed death of the cross, the wrath of God, being buried and continuing under the power of death for a time.
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All of this was necessary, absolutely necessary for redemption.
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All of this serves to show, as we have seen throughout the Gospel of Matthew, in this study that we've been on for many months now, that Jesus Christ is
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King. He is the King of heaven, he is the King of earth, and he is the King of hell.
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All of this happened that he, bearing the keys of death and hell, might break the bonds of Hades in victory.
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This is the fulfillment of the prophet Hosea, who said, I shall ransom them from the power of Sheol, I shall redeem them from death.
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O death, where are your plagues? O Sheol, where is your sting? At the lowest point of Christ's humiliation, ultimate victory is proclaimed, for Christ is
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King over all of creation, over the whole cosmos. We're going to read now
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Matthew chapter 27, starting in verse 57, and we'll read down through the end of the chapter.
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Now when evening had come, there came a rich man from Arimathea named
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Joseph, who himself had also become a disciple of Jesus. This man went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus.
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Then Pilate commanded the body to be given to him. When Joseph had taken the body, he wrapped it in a clean linen cloth and laid it in his new tomb, which he had hewn out of the rock.
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And he rolled a large stone against the door of the tomb and departed. And Mary Magdalene was there, and the other
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Mary sitting opposite the tomb. On the next day, which followed the day of preparation, the chief priests and Pharisees gathered together to Pilate, saying,
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Sir, we remember, while he was still alive, how that deceiver said,
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After three days I will rise. Therefore command that the tomb be made secure until the third day, lest his disciples come by night and steal him away, and say to the people,
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He has risen from the dead. So the last deception will be worse than the first.
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Pilate said to them, You have a guard. Go your way. Make it as secure as you know how.
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So they went and made the tomb secure, sealing the stone and setting the guard.
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Father, as we submit ourselves now to your word, we ask that your
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Holy Spirit would give us understanding. We know that our hearts, weighed down with sin, are stony and cold.
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And on our own, we cannot receive your word. We cannot understand these truths and delight in them.
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So would your spirit help us this morning? Would your spirit help us to see and behold the glory of Christ, the
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King, who is victor over all, that he might receive the glory and praise and honor and adoration that he is worthy of, and that we, your people, your sheep, might be fed by the hand of the
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Good Shepherd. In his name we pray. Amen. As we've already seen in the last two weeks,
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Matthew here, in this chapter in particular, is primarily concerned with relaying the facts, the actual details of our
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Lord's suffering and death. And that continues in our text this morning.
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He's not providing much commentary or explanation of what is happening.
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He's just merely relaying facts for us. And as I said, the rest of Scripture provides for us the context, the commentary, the explanation on this moment.
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For us to deal with the facts as Matthew lays them out, we must wrestle with the unseen realities and the cosmic significance of what is happening here that the rest of Scripture lays out for us.
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We will have to consider the whole counsel of God. There may be some things that we will touch on this morning that will be new to some of you.
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Frankly, this message is one that I've been wrestling over and studying for and praying over for a while.
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There are some differences of opinion here regarding the theological implications of what is happening during this time.
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But my intention is to push as far as God's Word gives us light and no further in order that we might see the true glory of what
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Christ has done in his work of redemption. There are some dangers here, some errors that have been taught that we will address in due time.
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So don't fear. We'll start with the factual recording of the events that Matthew gives to us.
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And basically there's two sections here that we have to deal with. First, the kindness of our
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Lord's friends in his burial, their love for him. And then second, the malice of his enemies in plotting their hatred of him.
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And then third, finally, we will have to broaden our scope this morning to consider his triumph over hell.
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So first we see the introduction here in our text of this new individual that has not been spoken of elsewhere in the
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Gospel, Joseph of Arimathea. He's actually mentioned at this point in all four
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Gospel accounts for his role here. Matthew tells us that he was a rich man from Arimathea who himself was a disciple of Jesus.
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Mark tells us that Joseph of Arimathea was an honorable counselor, a member of the
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Sanhedrin. And he was also himself waiting for the kingdom of God.
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Luke gives us a little bit more detail. A man named Joseph, a counselor, a good and righteous man, who had not consented to their decision, speaking of the
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Sanhedrin, and to their deed. A native of Arimathea, a city of the
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Jews, who also himself waited for the kingdom of God. And this man,
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Joseph of Arimathea, a member of the council, he goes to Pilate and asks for the body of Jesus.
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Now this is really significant here that he is asking for the body of a man who was crucified for high treason.
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I'm going to read D .A. Carson's comment here. This was helpful. Because of Deuteronomy 21,
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Jesus' body, according to Jewish custom, could not remain on the cross overnight. The Roman custom was to let the bodies of crucified criminals hang in full view until they rotted away or eaten by animals.
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If they were buried at all, it was only by express permission of the imperial magistrate.
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Such permission was usually granted to friends and relatives of the deceased who made the application, but never in the case of high treason.
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Generally, these bodies, the bones at least, were just discarded in a common grave. And so, in asking this,
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Joseph is putting himself in a precarious position. He's putting himself at odds with the
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Roman government. But that's not the only risk here for Joseph, because as we saw, he was a
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Jewish leader. He was a member of the Sanhedrin, the very council that had given
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Jesus over to execution. Joseph then would have excused himself from the vote there, because elsewhere it tells us that it was a unanimous vote.
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So he must have excused himself because he did not support this action. And John tells us that he goes to Pilate secretly for fear of the
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Jews. And that's why Mark adds this phrase that he says he goes to Pilate, coming and taking courage, he went into Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus.
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Truly, this was a courageous and risky decision. What would have motivated this but a true love for Christ?
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We have to assume that the other disciples of Jesus would not have been given a hearing before Pilate, the governor.
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This was no trivial request. Mind you, the 11 remaining disciples were in hiding for fear.
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And yet Joseph takes courage and he makes this appeal at great personal risk.
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And then Pilate, according to Mark, confirming with the centurion that Jesus had been dead for some time, grants
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Joseph's request, commanding that the body be given to him. We can assume here that this again shows that Pilate himself does not view
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Jesus guilty, at least to the extent that the Jews are accusing. But of course, this was all in fulfillment of prophecy.
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This was all according to God's good purpose and plan. Isaiah 53 says,
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So Joseph then takes down the body of our Lord and prepares for his burial.
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The text tells us that this happened on the day of preparation, that is, the day before the
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Jewish Sabbath, Friday. If the darkness was on Friday from noon to three as Jesus suffered and then died, then there's some urgency here on Joseph's part to complete this process, to get him in the tomb before sunset, before the
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Sabbath starts. Only a matter of hours to make this petition to Pilate and to take down the body and prepare him for burial.
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Again, this shows why Joseph in particular was probably the only one capable of doing this.
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He was prominent enough as a respected member of the Sanhedrin to make his request to Pilate.
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And he said, as the text already said to us, he had a new tomb ready.
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This tomb is significant here for a couple of reasons. First of all, you have to understand that a tomb like this would have been extraordinarily expensive.
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This was not a single person burial plot. These tombs, they were carved out of rock, hewn from the rock itself.
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And you'd walk down into the tomb and there would be this common area in the tomb.
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Oftentimes it was ornately decorated. And then out from that common area in the tomb were the places where the various bodies would be laid.
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Often multiple rooms adjoining to that central chamber. And this tomb, explicitly in our text, was a new tomb.
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Presumably one that Joseph had for him and his family. It had not been used. There had not been a dead body there.
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And so, therefore, it had not yet been made unclean. Joseph then wraps the body of our
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Lord in a clean linen cloth. Again, presumably the point in noting this is that this, again, was costly.
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John's Gospel account notes that Nicodemus, another member of the Sanhedrin, who was also a secret disciple of Christ, assists here in preparing
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Jesus' body for burial. Says he brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about 100 pounds.
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Again, extravagant cost, but demonstrating a love and honor showed to our
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Lord. There's beauty here in the dignity of a loving burial.
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We saw the same earlier in the Gospels with the disciples of John the Baptist. After he was beheaded, they retrieved his body and gave him a dignified burial.
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We, as Christians, should never be accused of indignity or disregard for the body, alive or dead.
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For our bodies are made in the image of God. A person is body and soul, made in the image of God.
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And so, we are not Gnostics. The material world is not meaningless or pointless or evil, naturally.
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The body is not a meaningless shell, but the material part of a person, created in the image of God.
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God cares about the body, and we should too, both in life and death. And so they bury him.
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The text tells us that Joseph lays him in the new tomb, hewn from the rock, and rolls a large stone against the door of the tomb.
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We know that this would have been a very large, round stone cut specifically for this purpose. They tell us that these large stones were set in a sloped groove in the ground, so that one man or two men could roll the stone down into the sloped groove to seal the tomb shut, to keep grave robbers or animals out.
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But it would take multiple strong men to roll the stone away, because it had to roll up the incline.
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And then Joseph departs. The tomb is sealed. And the text tells us, and notes for us here, that Mary, Magdalene, and the other
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Mary were both there watching all this happen. This is important for the details that will happen in the next chapter.
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Matthew then tells us what happens on the next day, the Sabbath, with the primary focus here on Jesus' enemies.
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I'm going to read again, verse 62 to 64. On the next day, which followed the day of preparation, the chief priests and Pharisees gathered together to Pilate, saying,
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Sir, we remember, while he was still alive, how that deceiver said, After three days
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I will rise. Therefore, command that the tomb be made secure until the third day, lest his disciples come by night and steal him away, and say to the people,
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He is risen from the dead, so the last deception will be worse than the first. As I read this,
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I'm just struck, first of all, by their hatred and disdain for Christ. Of course, we know that.
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But also their fear. They think they have won, and yet they still have this lingering fear.
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They want to control the narrative, I think because they don't know what's going to happen. Honestly, I wonder if there's even a part of them that thinks he will rise from the dead.
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They have seen his miracles performed. They can't deny it.
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They do deny it, but it's undeniable. This is one of the great ironies of unbelief.
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It's really not that the unbeliever doesn't believe that God exists any more than they can escape reality around them, or deny the fact of the supernatural.
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It's that they see it and deny it. They see it and they hate it.
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The atheist is merely the fool who sees the proof of the existence of God all around him and refuses to acknowledge him.
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In general, the unbeliever is choosing to believe an irrational lie that on some level he knows to be false.
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Rather than the manifest reality that he lives in. That's my understanding of what they're doing here, what motivates this action.
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They are acting in fear because they hate Christ. Then Pilate responds, he says to them, you have a guard.
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The most likely understanding of this here is that Pilate is denying their request for a
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Roman guard to be assigned to the tomb, but says, use your own temple guard, the temple police, to guard the tomb.
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This would have been likely seen as a military action by the Romans, and so the Jews had to be very careful in doing this.
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They had to have some measure of permission from the governor to do this, which apparently here they have.
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But the guards are their own, and so they secure the tomb. They seal it, presumably with a cord and an official wax seal, affirming that they have permission to guard this tomb and that it is not to be opened.
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Even after the death of the Lord, they are maintaining this position of fear. But the scene is set, the witnesses are all in place, and on this final
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Jewish Sabbath day, the body of our Lord rests in a borrowed tomb.
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There is, of course, a palpable anticipation of what comes next, which we will leave for next week.
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But is that all that we can know about this event from Scripture?
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Is that all that we can know about what is going on, or is there more? Does even the light of reason push us to ask further questions?
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Our Lord is truly dead. It has been witnessed to by many. The women observed it, the centurion confirmed it, the burial testifies to it.
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There is no possible or reasonable way to doubt that our Lord is truly dead.
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But what is death? Death, biblically speaking, is the separation of the spirit from the body.
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A person is composed of two parts, the material and the immaterial, the body and the spirit.
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James tells us that the body apart from the spirit is dead. Ecclesiastes tells us that no man has power to retain the spirit or power over the day of death.
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As I said already, when God made Adam, he formed a body for him from the dust of the earth and then breathed life into his nostrils, giving him a spirit.
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This union between the two is what makes a living human person.
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But because of the fall, death entered into the world, and now the soul and the body can be separated.
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And that separation is called death. Now the soul of a person, while immaterial, is not omnipresent.
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While we are alive, it is contained within the body. And when we die, it doesn't just cease to exist.
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Ecclesiastes tells us that the spirit returns to God who gave it. In other words, there's still a localized sense to the soul or the spirit of a person.
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It is somewhere, even if that place is an immaterial place, it's just not in the body at death.
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I know this might be a bit of a stretch for us to comprehend because we're not accustomed to thinking on these unseen realities.
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But as people of faith, we must be able to do this. We must have eyes of faith to see what is unseen.
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We must cultivate that ability to believe in what we cannot see. Again, it's the folly of materialism to think that only that which is seen is real, for the scriptures tell us otherwise.
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So the question before us, as it pertains to our text this morning, should be pretty clear. He breathed his last, his soul left his body.
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He died. Where did his soul go? His body is in the tomb.
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We know that Jesus, while on the cross, said to the repentant, believing man beside him, today you will be with me in paradise.
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This isn't necessarily specifying a place, but rather a state, a condition. Though you are suffering now, your suffering will end.
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And because of your faith, you will be comforted. Your soul will be in the hands of God.
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Do not fear death. Those are words that should comfort us as well. For at death, we are set free from the bondage of sin.
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We are released from the suffering of this life. But where does the soul of a person go at death?
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I think we tend to make some assumptions, and I want to challenge those assumptions with scripture, as I believe scripture gives us insight here that is often overlooked or misunderstood.
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First of all, we have a deficient view of the cosmos. And that leads to much of our confusion.
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Scripture regularly speaks of all of creation, all of the cosmos, in this stacked, three -tiered way.
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There's the earth, the visible realm, where we can see with our eyes.
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And then there is that which is above the earth, and that which is below the earth. God mercifully describes these unseen realities to us using analogous terms taken from the physical realm to help us understand.
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The unseen realm above is most commonly referred to as heaven, taking its name from that which we see when we look up, the heavens being where the sun, the moon, and the stars are above us.
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Calling this heaven is at least in a sense an analogous term, but it's the dwelling place of God.
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That holy place that is above all that is fallen and corrupted by sin.
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The dwelling place of the full glory of God and his holy angels. Scripture tells us that the temple on earth was a picture, a shadow, of this reality.
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It was meant to be a holy place, a sanctified place. A place where only one who had been sanctified by atonement could enter.
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But scripture also describes for us another unseen realm. Sometimes referred to as the pit, or the abyss, or the waters under the earth.
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In the Old Testament, in the Hebrew, it's referred to as Sheol. Or in the New Testament, the Greek counterpart,
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Hades. We could think of this as the underworld, the dwelling place of the dead.
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In many places in scripture, this is spoken of as the common abode of the dead. Solomon speaks of it again in Ecclesiastes.
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Jacob, when his sons lie to him that he is dead, and tell him that Joseph has been eaten by an animal, he says that Joseph is in Sheol, and there he will go too.
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Hannah, the mother of Samuel, speaks of the dead going down to Sheol. Job speaks of it as being where the dead go.
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King Hezekiah speaks of it. The psalmist speaks of it many, many times.
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Isaiah speaks of it. It's all throughout the Old Testament, over and over again. This cannot merely be a euphemism for the grave.
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The scriptures speak clearly of the dead being there together, being conscious in Sheol.
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There's even the assumption that the righteous in the Old Testament go to Sheol as well.
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They go to Sheol to be comforted in death. And the wicked go to Sheol in torment.
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Even in the New Testament, Jesus' teaching of the rich man and Lazarus lay this out for us very clearly.
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The rich man being wicked and having his comfort in this life, in Sheol, in death, is in anguish and torment in the afterlife, the underworld.
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While Lazarus, who loved Christ, still is in Sheol or Hades, but he is there comforted in Abraham's bosom.
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They can see one another. They can even communicate in this common place of the dead, but they are separated, and their experience in that place is completely different.
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Just like heaven is divided, as the temple is, into the outer courts, and then the holy place, and then the most holy place, where the throne of heaven is, scripture presents to us a divided
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Sheol as well, with there being the place where Lazarus was, upper
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Sheol, the place where the rich man was, lower Sheol, and then a further place, 2
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Peter refers to as Tartarus, where the fallen angels are bound, awaiting their final judgment.
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This is the deepest compartment of Hades or Sheol. I submit to you that when
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Jesus gave up his spirit, being fully
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God and fully man, his soul, leaving his body, descended into Sheol or Hades.
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That is what Matthew and all of his Jewish readers would have understood and frankly assumed without even being stated.
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This did not need to be stated by Matthew because the Jews knew this, and honestly, even the pagans had some understanding of this.
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There's a phrase that we say often, that we see in scripture, and I wonder if we really understand the full extent of the meaning of the saying when we say that Jesus rose from the dead, rose from the dead.
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In the Greek, that word, the dead, is a plural noun. We could translate this more literally.
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He rose from the place where the dead ones are. He rose from among those who are dead.
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Jesus rose from the dead. These are Paul's words in Romans 6.
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Even the Pharisees say here in their accusation against Jesus' teaching, he has risen from the dead.
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That's his claim. Now I know that this is likely new to many of you and may sound surprising and even like the errors that the
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Roman church teaches. So I want to be very careful here to clarify what I mean. This is a truth that has been twisted and distorted in many ways that oppose the true gospel and teachings of scripture, and so I want to address that to make sure
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I'm not being misunderstood. First of all, Jesus did not go to Sheol or Hades to suffer further.
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When he cried out on the cross, it is finished, full atonement had been made.
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The wrath of God had been completely satisfied. No wrath remains for him to bear under in hell.
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The wrath of God was utterly satisfied for his people. Nothing further was needed to deal with sin.
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Some have taught that he had to go to hell to continue to suffer, and this is not true.
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It cannot be true because our salvation was finished on the cross. Second, some have taught that his descent was to preach the gospel again to those who had died in order to offer a second chance of salvation, and this, again, cannot be.
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They draw this from 1 Peter 3. 1
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Peter 3 that says, being put to death in the flesh but being made alive in the spirit, by whom also he went and preached, or a better translation as the
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ESV has it is, proclaimed to the spirits in prison. He did descend to hell not to preach and offer repentance to those who were there, but I submit to you
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Christ did descend in order to proclaim his victory, to proclaim his victory.
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In his descent he broke the gates of hell. He burst its bonds.
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He liberated the righteous who were there awaiting his atonement, and he pronounced his victory over sin, death, hell, and every power, principality, and ruler in dark places.
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Yes, even the serpent himself, the ancient dragon, Satan. Christ is the victorious king.
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He is ruling and reigning over all of creation, heaven, earth, and hell.
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I will quote from Sam Rinehan in his excellent book on the descent of Christ. These sentences are helpful to us.
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Christ Jesus was crucified and died. His body was buried and his soul descended to Sheol, not to languish but to liberate his resting saints, not to suffer but to subdue
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Satan, not to preach but to proclaim just victory over the spirits in prison.
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In his resurrection and ascension Christ Jesus carried his bride home to heaven, presenting himself as a sacrifice in the holy of holies, not made with hands.
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Henceforth, Hades is a ruin of darkness and misery, and heaven is a city of light and beatitude.
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Beloved, he is the victor, he is the king of kings, and he is the hope of salvation for all who have faith in Christ.
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Isaiah chapter 25 praises our God for what he has done. O Lord, you are my
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God. I will exalt you. I will praise your name, for you have done wonderful things.
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Your counsels of old are faithfulness and truth. For you have made a city a ruin, a fortified city a ruin, a palace of foreigners to be a city no more.
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It will never be rebuilt. As we read this morning, David said in Psalm 16,
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You will not abandon my soul to Sheol, or let your holy ones see corruption. In Psalm 30,
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David said, I extol you, O Lord, for you have drawn me up and have not let my foes rejoice over me.
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O Lord, my God, I cried to you for help, and you have healed me. O Lord, you have brought up my soul from Sheol.
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You restored me to life from among those who go down to the pit.
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Beloved, the Lord Jesus Christ humbled himself to the uttermost. He plunged himself as low as can be gone.
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He humbled himself so that, beloved, there is no depth of sorrow or grief or suffering that you need fear, because our
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Lord has gone lower, and he is victorious. He went bearing the keys of death and hell to loose those who were there, awaiting his redemption.
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Now this still is not the final state. He loosed them from Hades, the righteous who were waiting there, who were being comforted, and he brought them into heaven.
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So now when the believer dies, he need not fear Hades. He does not go there, for the bonds of Hades have been loosed for those who are his.
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He is the shepherd of death. So when we who hope in Christ die, we are welcomed into heaven, into that sanctuary, that holy place, the very presence of the living
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God. And there we await the resurrection of our bodies, the resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked.
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For there is a greater glory yet, a greater glory in the resurrection of the righteous, to dwell forever in the new creation, body and soul once again reunited, never to be separated again, in full blessedness forevermore in his presence.
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But the wicked, who still are in Sheol in suffering and torment, their bodies too will be raised, for their suffering is not complete in Sheol.
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Their bodies will be raised for the express purpose of the full measure of the wrath of a holy and just God to be poured out on them forever in the lake of fire, body and soul, eternal torment.
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Beloved, the weight of this reality before us cannot be overstated.
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Our Lord is victorious, and he is the only redeemer. Run to him, repent of your sins, dear one, while you still have life, that you might be reconciled to our
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God. I'm going to read the words of the Apostles' Creed. It's an ancient statement of our
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Christian faith. Just a section of it. It says, I believe in Jesus Christ, his only begotten son, our
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Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried.
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He descended into hell. The third day he rose again from the dead.
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He ascended into heaven, and he sits at the right hand of God, the
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Father Almighty. From there he shall come to judge the living and the dead.
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Dear one, this is the call of the gospel. Be reconciled to God.
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On the cross he accomplished all that is necessary. Let us pray.
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Our great God and Father in heaven, we praise you this morning that Christ is king, and he has declared his victory over all.
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He has plunged the depths of the cosmos as victor.
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This morning would we tremble before his authority and his power and his righteousness and holiness that makes us clean, that we might boldly approach that throne of grace as sons and daughters, beloved of the
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Father, carried by the good shepherd. Let us now rejoice that Christ is king.