Crucified, Dead and Buried

Let us turn to that word now in John chapter 19. We're at the end of the chapter. A very solemn space here. John chapter 19 beginning at verse 31. Since it was the day of preparation, and so the bodies would not remain on the cross on the Sabbath, for the Sabbath, this particular Sabbath was a high day.

We're talking about Passover. The Jews asked Pilate that their legs, the guys on the cross, might be broken and that they might be taken away. So the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first and of the other who had been crucified with him.

But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water.

For he who saw it has borne witness. His testimony is true, and he knows that he is telling the truth that you also may believe.

For these things took place that the scripture might be fulfilled. Not one of his bones will be broken. And again, another scripture says, they will look on him whom they have pierced.

After these things, Joseph of Arimathea, who was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly for fear of the Jews, asked Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus.

And Pilate gave him permission. So he came and took away his body. Nicodemus also, chapter 3, who earlier had come to Jesus by night, came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about 75 pounds in weight.

So they took the body of Jesus and bound it in linen cloths with the spices, as is the burial custom of the Jews. Now in the place where he was sacrificed, crucified, there was a garden.

And in that garden, a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid. So because of the Jewish day of preparation, since the tomb was close at hand, they laid Jesus there.

So ends the reading of the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Please be seated. There are some famous people, a few, who are dead, but many people still believe they are alive.

Rock legends, Elvis Presley, died in 77. Jim Morrison, died in 71. He was the lead singer of The Doors.

Rapper, Tupac Shakur. He died in 96. People still see him. Every year, someone claims they saw him, and true believers say these men faked their deaths to escape.

Maybe to escape the craziness of fame. Maybe to escape people who wanted them dead. But they faked their deaths. And to be honest with you, some of them are making more money now than they did when they were alive.

Which is really not fair. I just really not, that's not cool. But what about Jesus? Did he really die? Does it really make a difference?

If he did, what does it mean? If he didn't, what does that mean? Crucified, dead, and buried.

One of the creeds that we, most churches would adhere to is in your little bulletin with the words of the songs.

You'll see the Apostles' Creed. It's on the second page, right under the doxology. Here in the Apostles' Creed, one of the earliest, if not the earliest, extra-biblical creed that we know of.

It's anonymous, but throughout the history of the church, we've recognized the truths that are here in this creed. Because a creed is only as good as it reflects biblical truth.

Otherwise, we jettison it. It's no good. But I want you to notice here in this creed. Let's just read. I'm going to just read a little bit of it. You can read it with me. Come on. I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered of the Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried.

He descended to the dead. The third day he rose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven and is seated on the right hand of God the Father Almighty.

From there he shall come to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Ghost, Holy Spirit, the church universal, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.

Amen. Did you notice that most of the creed is about Jesus? I mean, really. It's huge. He takes up the majority of this creed.

And it says of him that he was crucified, dead, and buried, which was part of his suffering under Pontius Pilate.

Crucified, dead, and buried. I don't know about you, but that seems redundant to me. Yet, that's exactly the teaching of Scripture.

Right here in John, you notice the crucifixion, the death, and the burial of Jesus. It follows that line, which is where the Apostle Creed gets it.

Some find this teaching of the blood atonement of the cross to be horrible. One atheist called it cosmic child abuse.

That a father would do this to his son. That's what he was saying. Yes, crucifixion is horrible. And the crucifixion of Jesus was the worst of horrors.

Yet God took the worst that humanity was capable of in that day and turned it into the means of the greatest blessing to humanity.

Because Jesus' death is the greatest blessing the world has ever seen. Therefore, he had to die. Now listen, I will tell you, it's hard to speak of Christ's death without speaking of his resurrection.

They really go together. Two sides of the same coin. But I'm going to try to focus a little bit on the cross. But I'm going to, the resurrection will come in. It just has to happen. I can't help it. And we'll look at that more in depth in chapter 20.

But let me just note out some things right here. First of all, the king accomplished his mission by truly dying. Truly dying.

Now first, the Jewish leaders are trying to hold to some semblance of being spiritual. Some semblance of religious piety. They want the bodies, the three men that were crucified, they want their bodies taken down from the crosses because they're about to celebrate not only the Sabbath, but the Passover.

So they didn't want to leave. It was kind of like a curse in their minds upon the land to have these cursed men. Because you know, crucifixion meant you were cursed according to the Jewish thinking.

To have them on the cross in Jerusalem at that, doing this high holy day. So they come around and they start breaking the men's leg, what the soldiers do.

Remember, there's a four-man execution squad that did the crucifixions. And those soldiers now are going to break legs. Why are they breaking these men's legs?

So they can't breathe. Well, hold it. They breathe with their lungs. What the legs got to do with that? Remember I told you before, last week, I showed you again. They push up to breathe. Crucifixion, you die by suffocation.

They can't breathe. You slump like this, you can't breathe. You push up, you can breathe. Well, if you break your legs, you can't push up anymore. Because crucifixion was so horrible, sometimes men would languish on the cross for several days before they died.

So these guys are speeding up the process. The first two experienced the breaking of their legs. So they're dying. They're dying. But when they got to Jesus, he was already dead.

Because he had given up his spirit. He cried, it is finished. And Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit. And he gave up his spirit.

So he's already dead. So what do they do? They see he looks pretty dead. So one of the guys says, let's make sure.

So they get a spear. And they go and they jab him in the side so that it goes in and pierces his heart.

The text says they saw water and blood flow from the wound. We know today it is called hypovolemic shock.

What happens is water has built up around his heart. Fluid has built up around his heart. And so when they pierced him with the spear.

And listen, they weren't just trying to jab him to poke to see if he was alive. No. They were intentionally pushing in to make sure they hid his heart. They knew how to kill you.

These men were expert murderers. They knew how to do it. So they're making sure by puncturing his heart. And when they see, first the water comes.

And then blood gushes out of the wound. And then the guy looks down at his boys and says, forgive me. He's dead, Jim. For you Star Trek people.

They know he's dead. Okay, it's clear now. So they have done it. John says he was an eyewitness to this. He's letting us know that he didn't hear about the crucifixion of Jesus.

But he was there. He's saying it so you can bear, so you can count on an eyewitness testimony to the death of Jesus.

And he tells us, so that you might believe. Believe. Faith in Jesus. In verses 30 to 42, they record now the burial of Jesus.

A secret disciple of Jesus, a man of great wealth named Joseph of Arimathea, boldly now goes to Pilate, the Roman governor, and asks if he can have the body of Jesus to give him a proper burial.

Understand something. Crucified men didn't always get buried. Many times they were not buried. Their bodies were thrown out like garbage, and wild dogs and whatever animals would eat them.

Some believe that's what happened to Jesus' body. Historically, some people believe that. Now, Nicodemus also comes along.

Now, keep in mind, Joseph is a secret disciple for fear of the Jews. We got another secret disciple shows up. Nicodemus. We met Nicodemus way back in chapter 3.

He's the Pharisee who came to Jesus by night. Now, Nicodemus and Joseph, who have been secret disciples of Jesus, are stepping up.

By going to Pilate, asking for his body, they are saying, they're making a statement about their faith publicly. If you want, just for the sake of argument, we can call this their baptism.

Public statement. They're saying, this Jesus, whom you murdered, who you, Pilate, killed, and you Jewish leaders murdered, Nicodemus being one of the Jewish leaders, by the way, they're saying to them, we with him.

We respect him. We want to honor him. No matter what you say, we want to honor him and give him the proper burial.

Now, it's possible that this burial might have been a little bit, even more, a statement because they had this 75 pounds of spices.

some have suggested that they were giving Jesus kind of a royal burial, which would make sense, since he is king of kings and lord of lords.

Whether that's true or not, they're making a dangerous statement about their faith in Jesus. Are you with me? I mean, are we willing to make dangerous statements about our faith in Jesus?

That hit me. So, no, no charge for that. That just hit me. All right. there must have been the garden tomb nearby. Other gospels tell it was Joseph's tomb that he had never used.

And they put Jesus in it because it was convenient. All this took place on Good Friday, the preparation day for the Sabbath and Passover.

Hmm. Hmm. The human nature of Jesus died that day. I say human nature because he's also God and man.

Deity can't die, but human nature certainly does. He took on human nature so that he could taste death for us. So part of him, yes, Jesus did taste death, but it's human by in his human nature.

He knows what it's like then. To pass, not merely through the shadow of death, but through death itself. He knows what it's like to have your spirit leave your body.

Hmm. He's therefore able to comfort you and I. When we walk through the shadow of death, but also death itself, we have one who understands it.

You have one who understands pain. The worst kind of pain. You're going through pain, you have a savior who understands pain. You, you, you, you've been given the bad news from the doctor.

He understands that. Yeah. He understands what it means. To comfort those who fear death.

I mentioned it last week. I know I mentioned it, so, but forgive me. I just can't help it. I'm going to mention it again. Hebrews 2, 14 and 15. Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things.

Why Jesus? That through death, he might destroy the one who has the power of death. That is the devil. So it's a spiritual war on the cross taking place. He's defeating the spiritual forces of darkness and deliver all those who through fear of death was subject to lifelong slavery.

He's delivering you. He's delivering us from the very fear of death because that's the worst thing that we think can happen to us. All of humanity, I don't care where you are, fears death.

And Jesus has come to deliver us from the worst of our fears. Thank you, Lord. How is this slavery played out in our lives?

This slavery that of the fear of death? I try to think about that a little bit. Let me just offer a few things, how we display this slavery, this fear.

We try to avoid anything that causes us pain or hardship, even if it's best for us. That was amazing to me that we don't want to go to the doctor.

And people will tell you, I ain't going to the doctor. But you're sick. You've been sick for a while. NyQuil ain't working no more. That's my wife.

I tease her all the time. I said, she's going to take NyQuil into the day. She don't care what she gets. She's taking NyQuil. I'll buy it for you, honey.

But some people, I've talked to them. They don't want to go to the doctor because they are afraid of what the doctor is going to say. So to those of you who are physicians and nurses and work in medicine, so sorry, we don't want to see you.

You know, we don't want to see because we're afraid. Let's hold it now. How is avoiding going to the doctor going to heal you if you are truly sick?

It won't. But see, we're afraid. We don't want to hear that news. My dad was like that. We fear to speak of people, speak of Jesus to people because we are afraid of how they will respond.

It's the same old fear of death. And we don't even think, in this country, we don't even think they all kill us. But we're so afraid because we fear death, we fear anything that causes us pain or discomfort.

We fear it all just because we fear death. That's the basic fear. And so I'm afraid to talk to people because they may, they may, they may look at me funny. They may say something nasty to me.

And I'm afraid. The fear of death is the fear of loss of what we believe is important. But Jesus died in our place and rose again so that we no longer need live in fear.

Amen. Amen. You no longer need to live in fear. You can live faithful lives in the face of the devil's worst hostility.

Ah, one of my favorite verses, you've heard me mention it many times, Revelation 12, 11. The saints, and they conquered him, that is the dragon, the devil, by the blood of the lamb, the cross, by the word of their testimony, their faith in him.

For they loved not their lives even unto death. Why? How is it possible that you find people who loved not their lives even unto death?

That does not mean they were suicidal. That does not mean they were casual with their lives and didn't care. That does not mean that. It means that they recognize that in Jesus they have victory over death.

That in Jesus, at the cross, he died, that he might live so that we might live even though we die. Come on, somebody. I can't say that again.

They value Jesus and testifying to him more than preserving their lives. This is true because they believe he died for them and rose again.

You don't have to fear. You don't have to fear any man or anything. Jesus died for you. But here's the thing.

I'm like Colombo. Let me just, I've got one more question I want to ask you. Just one minute. Why is there so much detail about the death of Jesus in this passage? Crucified, dead, and buried.

Redundancy. Just saying he was crucified was more than enough because to be crucified means to be killed. No one got crucified and walked away going, oh, that was great.

Oh, I didn't like that too much. Let's not do that again. No one did that. You were crucified. You were done. It was over. You did not come back. You did not survive. That was the point to put you to death with the most suffering possible.

But with Jesus, we are shown proof of his death including his burial. You don't put living people in a burial shroud and lock them in a tomb.

Other gospels tell us that a large stone was rolled in front of the entrance to keep animals, grave robbers, and especially the disciples out from stealing his body and then claiming he rose again.

Why so much detail? Let me tell you why. God knew that rumors and lies would seek to deny his death. I know this sounds crazy to you because it does sound crazy to me too.

But some people believe that Jesus never died. They think he's Tupac. That his death was faked. It was true back then and it's still true today.

Back then, the Gnostics, who were more popular in the second century, had what they called the substitution theory. Gnostics believed that matter was evil.

So a physical body was evil. Only the spirit was good. Only the spirit. And so therefore, Jesus, the son of God, could not have a real body. He only seemed to have a body so that, because he'd be evil if he had a body.

So they said that no, he didn't die. Somebody else had to die in his place. They said maybe it was Judas. They didn't know.

But they said he couldn't have died. Okay. There's another theory that goes along with that called the, called by, well, used by people you know today.

Islamics, Muslims. Muslims believe, it's in Surah, chapter four, well, Surah four, around verses 157 or so.

In that section there, if you read the Quran, it will tell you that Jesus did not die. That the Jews who say he died, they're lying. No, they did not happen because Jesus was a great prophet.

Muslims acknowledge Jesus as a great prophet, but not as a son of God. So no, he could not have died. When he prayed, father, let this cup pass for me.

Well, God heard him and he never died. They even say at the resurrection, people will give an account to him. They recognize the sum of Jesus, the sum of the real Jesus. But they say, no, he could not have died.

Then there's the swoon theory. The swoon theory is my favorite. It says, he passed out. On the cross, from blood loss and shock, Jesus goes into a coma-like state.

I'm talking, some scholars believe this, y'all. They took him down from the cross, put him into the tomb, and in the coolness of the tomb, he revived. somehow, he moved the stone.

Comes out and says, I'm alive. And people were impressed that this walking corpse, woo, he triumphed for death. Wouldn't have been very impressive even if he could have done it, but not numb.

Why do you think we have so much detail? Blood and water. They, God knew that people would claim that Jesus never died, so he gave us all these facts, all this information, so that when Muslims come to you and say, no, he didn't, you can go right back here and read the text to him.

They're not going to like it, but that's okay. You have the truth in front of you. Jesus died. died. Now, and it was no accident.

The king's mission was accomplished according to God's plan. Several Old Testament references are used here to tell us that Jesus' death was according to the plan of God.

He truly died and that death was according to the plan of God. the plan of God. Well, you see it. John doesn't mention one thing when Isaiah 53, 9, Jesus was numbered with the rich in his death.

Matthew 27, 57 records this. So even that part is recorded that Jesus, when Joseph takes him and puts him in his tomb, that's fulfilling scripture.

Before that, of course, the death of Jesus was no accident. It was the plan of God from all eternity. He thirsted. Psalm 69, 21. No bones were broken as was true of any Passover lamb.

You could not break the bones. Exodus 12, 46. Look at him whom they pierced. Zechariah 12, 10, 11. All of these things happen according to God's plan.

From all eternity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit planned the coming life, death, resurrection, and ascension of the Son. His death was choreographed in the mind of God.

Evil men did what evil men do. He didn't put evil in their hearts. They functioned according to their own evil in putting Jesus to death. Peter gets up on the day of Pentecost and preaches the sermon of his life.

It's a clear statement of God's sovereign work at the cross in the death of Jesus. Acts 2, 22 to 23. He says, Men of Israel, hear these words. Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst as you yourselves know.

You saw all of this. This Jesus delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God. You crucified. You did it though. You crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.

The death of Jesus was under the definite plan and foreknowledge of God the Father. You can't get clearer than that.

Now here's where I'm making this clear. Here's where I'm laboring this point. When tragedy happens non-religious people will often ask us, believers, where was God?

Now, to be honest, they don't care about God when life is good but suddenly when life is bad the question is where was God?

Because many people believe it's God's job to keep bad things from happening to them but other than that stay out of my way. Here's the problem and let's be honest, we say the same thing sometimes.

We who know Jesus will sometimes do the same thing. When a loved one dies suddenly or we lose a costly investment or we lose a job or we lose something very important to us we sometimes ask where was God?

Because we know God could have prevented it but he didn't. That question is human. It's human. It's real.

It's painful. And we can't avoid it. Where was God? In 9-11 when it hit we were living in the D.C. area so we felt it acutely when there was that question.

The churches were full. Where was God? Where was God? When the planes hit, where was God? It was heartbreaking. And we're not making fun.

We're just acknowledging the truth. We ask these questions because we're in pain and suffering. Where was God? And it's hard to answer that question in some ways because we're all at different places of our spiritual growth.

I don't know what God's trying to do in your life specifically. why did God allow that tragedy? I can't say specifically.

I can tell you some things though. So let me just toss some things out because it's important. Deuteronomy 29-29 tattoo that on your mind. Deuteronomy 29-29 The secret things belong to the Lord our God but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever that we may do all the words of this law.

There are secret things that God is not going to tell us. We're finite beings. He's not going to tell us.

but he has revealed things to us that he wants us to know. We are to seek those things first and foremost. Seek what God has revealed.

Get versed. Get down deep in the law of God. The word of God so that you will understand as much as God needs you to understand about him and his plan and life.

Go deep. Asking God to tell you the secret things is something that will just destroy you. Insisting that God comes by your house and tells you the details will destroy you.

It will just wreck you. Focus on what he has revealed. Now, here's something else you reveal. The big picture. Let's look at the big picture.

Romans come on, Romans 8, 28 and 29. We know that for those who love God, all things work together for good. For those who are called according to his purpose.

Watch this. For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son. Here it is. In order that he might be the first born among many brothers.

Here's the thing. Because of his covenant love for us in Christ, he reveals to us that the big picture of why stuff happens in your life, even the tragic ones, the reason stuff happens, the big picture is that he is working to make you look more like his Jesus.

That's the big picture. The little picture, I don't know. He might not, he probably won't tell you. Here's the big picture, it's been revealed. Here's what's been revealed.

It will work for your good in some way that he will work it. I don't know how, but he will do it. And the most and the best good for you is that you look more like the family. The biggest good is that you become more and more a childlike faith in him like his son.

That you begin to walk in trusting him and integrity and honor and glory like his son Jesus. He's working to conform you. Listen, because Jesus, the Bible says, learned obedience, obedience, through what he suffered.

Hebrews 5a, he learned obedience through suffering. If that's true, then it's going to be true of you and me. And listen, where was God when Jesus died?

He was sovereignly overseeing the entire thing for the glory of his son. son? Where is he when you suffer? When tragedy strikes?

When something you didn't know comes upon you? Where is he? Right there. Working in you that which is good in his sight, that you may trust him like his son and be conformed to his image.

You learn obedience through what you suffer. And I'm not here to tell you. Hey, listen, he didn't say the stuff was good that was happening to you.

He said he's going to bring good out of it. Don't ask me how. But he will if you trust him. If you trust him. If you run, you miss it.

He won't leave you. But now you stay where you don't grow. And now something else has got to you. You've got to keep going through life. Don't worry. He won't give up on you.

He loves you. He won't let you go. But you're going to have to go through other things. He's going to keep molding and shaping you. I don't know who put this clock here.

I'm done. The last thing I just want to say is just write this down. If Jesus did not die, we would not die.

You said amen. What do you mean? Jesus died in our place, so we would have to die. I'm telling you if he did not die, you would not die either.

But I'm talking about different death. Paul said it. I've been crucified with Christ. He's dead. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. The life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.

In the death of Jesus, you do die. you die to sin, you die to selfishness, you die to your rebellion against God. In Christ, if Jesus does not die, you cannot die to self, you cannot die to sin, you cannot die to addictions, you cannot die to all the stuff that ruins humanity.

It is only in the death of Jesus, as you grasp that death, and that death takes hold of you, that you begin to die. that sin no longer has that grip on you. There's nothing you are going through in sin or rebellion or addiction, there's nothing that you cannot be triumphant over because you have died.

In Christ, you are dead. Sin no longer has dominion, mastery over you. However, yes, we still screw up, but then we get up.

Because we've died, and he lives, that we may live with him. Paul said, I'm crucified with him. The world is dead to me. I don't live for myself anymore.

I don't live for my own glory anymore. I live for him. And when we learn to understand what it means to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ, we begin to break the chains, that thing that continues to, see, you know, listen, the action that you're committing is a symptom of something deeper in your heart.

And when you get down underneath the sin, beneath the sin, when you get down underneath there, you'll find out that God has broken the chains there. And now you can come to him for whatever you think you're getting by your actions, and you're not getting it, but you think you're getting it, you'll be able to come to him now for that very thing you think you need so much, and he will supply.

If Jesus didn't die, we have no hope. We have no hope. So to my Muslim friends, you are so wrong.

You're so wrong. And by the way, Muhammad never got a true version of Christianity, by the way. The Christians he met were the they were the ones who were saying Jesus didn't really have a body.

He never understood true Christianity. He took their version and put it in the Quran. Jesus didn't really die. Never got it.

But we can tell people boldly, he died. He suffered, bled, and died. Crucified, dead, and buried. He descended into hell.

On the third day, he rose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven and sinned from the right hand of God the Father Almighty. From this he shall come to judge the quick, the living, and the dead.

Hallelujah. Let's pray. Father, thank you. Oh, thank you that he was crucified, dead, and buried for us.

You didn't leave him there, but you caused him to rise. Thank you that in his death we find our death. Help us to live in that death, Father.

Help us to give ourselves to him who was crucified that we may be.