Buried Alive

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ. Based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the apostle Paul said, "'But we did not yield in subjection to them "'for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel "'would remain with you.'".

In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her king.

Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. My name's Mike Abendroth,.

And I'm looking outside in real time. It's snowing and raining. I want to say this is, I have the date in front of me here, real time, April 9th. Can you imagine April 9th? I think this weekend's supposed to get up to the 70s, but for now, a little bit of snow.

Last night, it was probably 11 p .m., and I heard something outside, and I looked outside, and there was the sand truck making sure the roads weren't slippery. Pretty amazing. So, there you go, just talking.

The Burial of Jesus as Proof of His Death

We are talking today about a very interesting subject, but a subject that we don't talk about very much. It's what my kids might think of as a duh segment. Duh, and that is the burial of Jesus Christ.

Now, so far, you haven't said duh regarding the burial of Jesus, but the premise of the entire show is that the Bible speaks about the burial of Jesus, so that looking backwards, you realize, in fact, he died.

You don't bury people alive. Maybe today will be called buried alive, question mark. And not only does it point backward, it points forward, and it shows you, as Matthew Henry would say, how illustrious, how wonderful the resurrection is.

So, this last Resurrection Sunday, I don't know if you say Easter. Maybe you wanna stone me since I have, you know, asteroth eggs or something. We don't do eggs at our house. Oh, I guess that's not true.

We bought some M &M's that were on sale and some malted egg balls. What are they called? And in the old days, I would just let those things melt in my mouth, but I have no self-control regarding that kind of thing now.

I just have to chew it. My wife's always like, this isn't such a candy. Some hard candy, you know, what are those? I don't know, some rock hard candy. You're supposed to chew those, aren't you? I thought you were, but my wife says you're not supposed to.

So, everything you have to chew, you gotta chew these things. Jolly ranchers, that's it. See where Steve when I need him. And so, I talked about the burial of Jesus Christ on Easter, our Resurrection Sunday, because it's such an essential part of the good news of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And you probably say, again, now burial, pointing back, it confirms that Jesus, in fact, died. It wasn't that he was unconscious. It wasn't that there was a swoon theory that was purported. He, in fact, died.

And, as 1 Corinthians 15 says, listen, for I deliver to you as of first importance what I also receive, that Christ died for our sins. So, you have the Messiah not dying for his own sins, but the Messiah Christ dying for our sins.

That's language of substitution. In accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures. 1 Corinthians 15, three and four. Death, burial, resurrection.

And so, you look at Matthew, burial discussed. The burial of Jesus discussed. You look at Mark, same thing. Luke, ditto, John, the burial of Jesus Christ. And so, when I was thinking, how do you preach another Resurrection Sunday service?

Sometimes it's a hallmark holiday or a liturgical calendar holiday for the church. I mean, broadly speaking, church. And I feel like I'm sucked into the vortex of having to preach on that particular topic.

I don't usually do anything for Mother's Day or Father's Day or All Saints Day. But usually for Resurrection Sunday and for Christmas Sunday, I will get out of the normal passages. I'm in Malachi now on Sunday mornings and it is, in fact, very difficult to preach through.

And it is an oracle or a burden because it is a very heavy message for the people. Well, how do you talk about the resurrection? And so, I thought, let's focus on the burial because that will help me to preach that Sunday, Resurrection Sunday, about the death of Jesus, how he really died.

He died as a substitutionary atoning sacrifice. The wages of sin is death. Someone had to die. And it was either Jesus on the cross paying for our sins or we'll have to pay for them ourselves. And then looking forward, it talks about how great the resurrection is.

I mean, if the person was passed out, fainted, unconscious, in a coma, coma, then it would be wonderful that the person would be revived and awakened and resuscitated and rejuvenated and revitalized. How many of those words can I figure out at once?

I don't know. But it would not be spectacular. It would not be super natural. And that's really what we are proclaiming. If I use Machen's words, as you heard from the very beginning of the show in the tagline, but we can also be controversial.

And I don't mean controversial in the tagline in any other way, but what Machen would talk about. And we are conversing about these issues of right and wrong, and we will take a stand. This is what the Bible says.

Someone on the YouTube channel for our No Compromise videos, I've got about a hundred of those now, that just shows me what you can do if you just plod along and just probably every two months for about two hours, I'll come in here with Mario and with Ben and with Sam, and we'll record, I don't know, five, 10, 12 episodes.

And we put them up and off they go. Well, someone said, well, this is what I'm talking about suicide. Could someone commit suicide and still go to heaven? Could a Christian commit suicide and go to heaven?

Would a Christian commit suicide? And so I did a video on that. And I think you should probably watch that sometime. My point is this, that certainly a Christian should not commit suicide. It would be a sin.

But I think we all pretty much lose our minds when we sin. We're thinking irrationally. We're thinking unbiblically. We're thinking without faith, right? We're thinking from a fleshly perspective. And I think there are saints that have died anxious.

I think there are saints that have died with envy. I think there are saints that have died with covetousness. I think saints have died thinking prideful thoughts. I think saints have died thinking and pondering self-righteous thoughts.

But the question is not, if you die sinning and don't have enough time to confess, will you go to heaven or not? That's not the point. The point is when God forgives you, because Christ's sacrifice is so great, there isn't savior that will save you.

And so Christ can't lose a Christian. And this particular person did not understand the difference between judicial forgiveness, the gavel goes down and not guilty, right? Justification by faith alone, the opposite of condemnation.

We are declared righteous based on the work of another, the alien forensic righteousness of another, Jesus. And then there's parental forgiveness. When we sin against our parents, we ask for forgiveness, even though we'd never get kicked out of the family or lose our last name.

So we sin against God as Christians. We should confess and we should say, Lord, thank you for giving me. I'm sorry, please forgive me. And so if a Christian commits suicide, was the forum. Now see how these rabbit trails work.

We're talking about burial anyway, so it seems to be the right kind of topic. In the right, a little digression and rabbit trails. They're always more fun. They're funner, aren't they? And this particular person, you can read it now.

Yeah, I didn't delete it. Said, this is what I feel, this is what I believe. And I wrote back something to the effect, it doesn't matter what you think or feel or believe, it's what the Bible teaches.

And I put myself in there. I clumped myself in so I didn't come across as some kind of radical, no compromise, kind of crazy person. And I don't wanna do that. I think, like I said, try to be nice. Some people don't think if you call out unbelief or you call out works righteousness or you call out crazy mysticism as not true, they think you're mad.

They think you're mean. And so I don't wanna be mad or mean. I want to teach the truth. And so it's interesting, in the last probably two weeks, I have received more positive, I've received more positive, I've received more letters of encouragement, more letters, emails of commendation.

Than I normally get. And so I'm thankful for those. I don't deserve any of them. Never thought NOCO would be what it is. We just thought we would give it a shot and see what happens. And five years later, it's amazing to see the fruit of the station.

And some of it, I don't know, of course. But I've also, not in addition to receiving tons of encouraging emails, I mean tons from around the world, from different galaxies. I've received more negative comments in the last couple weeks than I normally get.

So what are you gonna do? It's good for my pride. It's good for my humbleness. It's good for my, it's like, why am I doing this? Don't I have something better to do? I probably do have something better to do.

But for three hours a week, I record the shows. And for two hours once a month, once every two months, I do some videos. So there you go. And when I take a break from doing something, I might tweet something.

But anyway, just think how good this show would be if we tried. So Mike Ebendroth, No Compromise Radio. You can write me. I will read. If you send something into info at nocompromiseradio .com, I will read it.

Now Spencer probably will first get it. And he'll filter it through. And then he'll send it on over to me. I don't know what his filter process is. I should probably ask him. But he's a dear servant and helps here at No Compromise Radio.

The Good News Is Death, Burial, and Resurrection

Death, burial, and resurrection. The good news is gooder when the bad news is badder. Of course, I know that I'm speaking poorly, but I'm from Nebraska. So you increase your view of the resurrection. You're more impressed with the view of the resurrection by thinking about the burial of Jesus.

And this is interesting to me because people not only attack the substitutionary death of Jesus, I talk about that a lot, they not only attack the literal resurrection, you know, Karl Barth kind of person, but they also attack the burial of Jesus.

It's fascinating. Death, burial, and resurrection. And again, it's almost a dumb moment. But Christian, I do not want you to exclude thinking about the burial of Jesus. Now I just was in Israel and we go on No Compromise trips every couple of years.

It's tentatively next 2017 for the Reformation trip in Europe. I don't know if I can pull that off or not, but that's a tentative plan. So we'll see. It'd be nice if a No Compromise listener went once.

I think we, oh, for Greece, I think we had somebody from the radio world. They went. I think I'm just kind of the blue collar guy. And you know, I know some radio hosts, they have lots of like huge donors, you know, super rich donors, and they live the five star lifestyle.

But see, we are in Worcester, Massachusetts. This is a very blue collar oriented city and we work hard and we aren't the uber rich here. So the burial of Jesus is attacked. Sounds crazy, I know. John Dominic Crossan in his book, Jesus, A Revolutionary Biography.

By the way, anytime you have a book written like that, you want to probably just be aware. Jesus's corpse, they didn't really entomb it rightly. Gospels don't really describe it properly. And he's thrown into a shallow grave and yeah, maybe some dogs came and ate him up.

Eaten by dogs. How do we know the truth? What about the burial of Jesus? Oh, I know what I'm saying. Back to the Israel trip. So they have a little, you know, Gordon's tomb. This is a place where a gardener would have had this place, have the tomb, because there's a garden around and it's, you know, outside the city.

And I don't know where it is. I don't know whether it's in the church of the Holy Sepulcher, the Gordon's tomb, or someplace else. I do know Jesus was crucified outside the gates, outside the city there.

And I know he was really crucified. And so I think to myself, all right, I know he was buried because I walk by faith. Here's what the Bible says. The Bible says. Now, you get hymns that talk about the burial of Jesus.

How about this one? The hymn, One Day. Buried, he carried my sins far away. Buried, he carried my sins far away. Na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na. Oh, glorious day. See, I can't sing.

There's an Easter song. You ask me how I know he lives. He lives within my heart. And I know it's scary to consider and it's weird to think of, but if I were to write a hymn for the sermon on the burial of Jesus, it would go something like this.

Now, I need my crack staff here to come up with the real lyrics and some nice music. You ask me how I know he died. He was buried in the tomb. Oh, I know it's horrible. Ask me how I know he died. Okay.

Creeds, Catechisms, and Mark’s Predictions of Jesus’ Death

Heidelberg Catechism. Why was he buried? Answer, question and answer 41. His burial testified that he had really died. Now, again, if you're not careful, it's like a duh. Of course he died. Of course he was buried.

But 1 Corinthians 15 talks about the burial. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John talks about the burial. How about the Apostles' Creed? It's specifically mentioned. Now, of course, we could talk about the creed.

There's nothing really bad about the Apostles' Creed. It fit its time, but there are many things that it doesn't say that I wish it would have said. Jesus was crucified, dead, and what? Buried. Well, it talks about Jesus more, but it's got the burial of Jesus, the finality of the death of Christ.

Jesus died and was buried. Jesus actually died, and he was actually raised from the dead. Now, when you look at the Gospel of Mark, the Gospel of Jesus according to Mark, Jesus predicted his death several times, and so I just want you to be directed to chapter 8, 9, and 10 of Mark, where Jesus says essentially the same thing using his favorite term for himself, the Son of Man.

Mark 8, 31, and he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again. Mark 9, 31, for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, the Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him, and when he is killed after three days, he will rise.

Mark 8, 31, Mark 9, 31. That reminds me of a story back in Los Angeles. We had our home Bible study, and there was someone that I was trying to help, and this person was really into, you know, John 3, 16 is a wonderful passage.

First John 3, 16 is a wonderful passage. Let's find out what Mark 3, 16 says, Matthew 3, 16, and he was into all this kind of stuff, and he believed weird deals, and I told him nicely, well, this is the right way to think.

Don't think that way, think this way, and it wasn't just, I wasn't just giving him a scud. I was involved in his life, and anyway, he didn't like what I said eventually, and then it was weird phone calls, and I don't know if it was a real death threat or not, but I took it as such.

I mean, if you get death threats, and you don't really know if they're real or not, if they're a veiled death threat or kind of a death threat, do they mean to threaten me by this? You should probably consider them as, you know, the real deal, that's kind of what I did, and so anyway, I think we just had, I think Haley was less than a year old at the time.

So weird, so when I just read Mark 8, 31, Mark 9, 31, then you go, well, what about Mark 10, 31? And I thought about this person who was, as we would say in the industry, spooky. So praise the Lord that he protected my wife, my child, and my children, and myself, and see how that makes you, like, doesn't that endear you to me?

You're like, oh, you know, he gets whacked all the time, even though he's kind of, you know, he's kind of grumpy sometimes. He's a real person, he has real feelings. Mark 10, 33, oh, too bad, I wish it was 10, 31.

8, 31, 9, 31, 10, 33. See, we are going up to Jerusalem, this is Jesus speaking, and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priest and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death and deliver him over to the Gentiles.

And they will mock him and spit on him and flog him and kill him, and after three days, he will rise. Jesus predicts his death. Jesus is not caught up in a messianic moment. He is not caught off guard.

Jesus has set his face, or will set his face, later in Mark to Jerusalem, and he has a date with destiny because he's the sovereign God, and he will get crucified not one minute earlier or later than he is supposed to.

He is sent by the Father on a rescue mission, and often and regularly, we see Jesus knowing that this is gonna happen and he has to go be crucified, and Mark 15, he stands before Pilate, and what shall I do with the man you call king of the Jews?

And they cried out, crucify him. And Pilate said, well, what evil has he done? They shouted out all the more, shouted out all the more, crucify him. And so he wants to satisfy the crowds, does Barabbas, and so he scourges Jesus and sends him out to be crucified.

And remember what they did then. All leading up to the death of Christ, they just made a mockery of Jesus. And so I think six times, let's see, I think I have it in my notes here. Six times, Jesus is called king in Mark 15.

Verse two, nine, 12, eight, 26, and 32. So you've got the king, and so they don't really think he's a king, these Roman soldiers. Pilate doesn't even think so either, but you can just see all the dripping sarcasm.

Of course, the Jews don't want to think of Jesus as the king and we'll see that later in Mark 15. But they start playing the king game. Oh, you're the king? So we'll treat you like a king. So in verse 17 of Mark 15, they clothed him with a purple cloak, because that's the color of royalty.

Kings and queens wore purple. It took a lot of those little mollusk deals from the ocean to smash to get the purple color, the purple dye. I don't think they have Rit dye back in those days. Remember that?

Is that what it was called? I remember my mother. I remember things like dying eggs, of course, with I think a vinegar kind of substance. I think if you put an egg in just pure vinegar overnight, it just turns rubbery, doesn't it?

I think so. That's a life hack just for you guys. And then I also remember the Rit dye. And I don't know, I think we tie-dyed some shirts in Nebraska. So you'd buy a Hanes or Fruit of the Loom white t-shirt and then tie it up in some knots.

Or maybe this was at the camp. There was camp. Let's see, the Hummel Park camp. It was a day camp. And the best part was going down these dirt slides called Suicide Slide and Devil's Slide and stuff like that.

Devil's Slide was basically a cliff, you'd die. So we tried to avoid that. And identifying parts of the flora and fauna and Jerusalem artichoke and stuff like that. So off we would go. Now what's that have to do with anything?

Oh, Rit dye, yes. So I just remember that. That's just like for you older folks there, Rit dye. I think they still have it. And twisting a crown of thorns, they put it on him. So you got the right color for a king, purple.

You got the right crown for a king. It's a crown of thorns though. And they pretty much jammed the thorny crown on Jesus's head so it functions like a dunce cap. I mean, what are they treating Jesus like?

I mean, this is the God who created them. This is Jesus, the God man. And they're treating him like a circus oddity, some three bearded woman or three dyed man or something. Here's the Messiah. I don't know if I read this someplace or this was my old notes.

So I'll just say it's attributed to someone else because I don't think I'm smart enough to think of this. What do you get when you cross a phony with a king? You get Jesus. Now I'm not saying that. I'm saying that's what these Roman soldiers were thinking.

And then what do you do? Well, you got to salute the king, right? So he's got the right color on. He's got the right crown on. He's got now people saluting him saying, instead of hail Emperor Caesar, Ave Caesar, it is hail King of the Jews.

And the text says, a over, a over. They over and over and over began to say this. It's quite the parody, quite the shame. And they were striking his head with the reed and spitting on him and kneeling down in homage to him over and over, all imperfect tenses.

In the Greek, that just means it just kept going over and over, repeated behavior, over and over and over, being cruel, being insensitive, being shamefully rude and mocking them, mocking Jesus rather.

And when they had mocked him, they stripped him of the purple cloak and put on his clothes and they led him out to be crucified. You know, this game gets old and boring. We've had enough of this game.

This game of fake kings, circus odysseys, odysseys, oddities is not going to work. So out to be crucified, they do it out in public. So everybody knows if you don't obey Rome, this is what you get. Well, we're going to have to look at the next part of this passage next time that actually talks about the burial of Jesus.

But 1 Corinthians 15, three and four, death, burial, resurrection. So from now on, when you think about the, A, think about the burial of Jesus, and B, when you think about the burial of Jesus, just go back in time and think this confirms that he died a literal death.

And then go forward in time and say, and this makes his resurrection wonderful because it's a dead body. Jesus' heart really stopped. He had no pulse. I mean, he was dead and he lives and you must believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.

He's the one that you must trust in to have your sins forgiven.

Mike Abendroth, No Compromise Radio. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life transforming power of God's word through verse by verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at six. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE its staff or management.