Defining Moments: The Burial of Jesus Christ: Luke 23:50-56

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Uh wanna also send greetings to the folks who joined us over the last week for worship and or for some of the other resources we have online, podcasts, Bible studies, that sort of thing.

We heard from folks uh this past week from Plano, Texas, uh from Singapore, from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and also from Cordoba, Cordoba Province in Argentina.

So multiple continents last week.

Amazing, and so grateful that those folks were able to join us uh online.

So our topic today, or our sermon title, if you will, will be called Defining Moments, the Burial of Jesus Christ.

My uh premise is that each of our lives are shaped by what we might call defining moments, those hinge points that uh often change the course of our life in some significant way.

We can see some of those moments uh coming, others are sort of they catch us by surprise.

Some of them are positive, some of them are negative.

But for believers, we look back on those defining moments and we see the gracious hand of God weaving through both our good and bad choices, our good and bad experiences, our challenges, our joys, our pain, all of that, we see the good hand of God forming us, changing us, preparing us for what comes next.

And one such moment came at the burial of Jesus, which is what we'll look at today.

Um, a time when what looked like the end was actually a beginning, a fresh start.

What seemed like defeat would become the seed of the resurrection itself.

And then this defining moment would not just be found in courage and strength that people muster up themselves, but by the fact that they've surrendered to Christ, to the Lord, and they begin to step out on what they see in Christ the Lord, to publicly identify with Jesus, to find life in his death.

And I know that some of our your greatest turning points and my greatest turning points come when we sometimes make some kind of turn or take some kind of step and move from darkness to light or from fear to faith.

And so I'm I'm hoping that you'll relate to this particular passage and this story as I read it.

And before I do, if you'll just join me in a prayer for illumination.

Lord, we are grateful for your word that it's living and active.

As we study it today, help us to see what we don't see right now.

Help us to learn what we don't know right now, to be stirred up, especially in those areas of our lives where we have become sort of stagnant.

Lord, give us a clearer vision of your truth, a greater faith in your power, and a more confident assurance of your love for us.

In Jesus' name we pray, amen and amen.

So Luke chapter 23, verses 50 to 56.

Luke 23:50–56

And for those of you that are pretty knowledgeable about your New Testament, you might also put a finger, you know, just kind of go to the right a little bit to John 19, because we're gonna pick up some additional details there.

But for now, um, let's everybody look at Luke 23, verses 50 to 56.

Luke 23:50–56

Behold, a man named Joseph, and remember, Jesus has been on the cross, Jesus has died, he's given his last uh breath, and a lot of things have happened.

A lot of things have happened in the ground, in nature.

There were earthquakes, the sun went dark for three hours, beginning at high noon.

And uh when Jesus gave his last gasp, we're told that the temple in the or the curtain in the temple, which was 80 feet high, six inches thick, was torn from top to bottom.

So some pretty amazing things have happened.

The centurion seems to turn to faith and looks at Jesus on the cross, and he's the chief executioner.

And he says, Surely this was the Son of God.

So a lot is happening.

Behold, though, after a little while, verse 50, a man named Joseph, who was a member of the council, a good and righteous man, he had not consented to their plan and action.

That is the plan and action of the council.

He had not consented to what the Sanhedrin was doing.

And the Sanhedrin was at 70-member council of religious leaders that really represented the most educated, the elite of the elite, the guys with the most religious authority on the ground at that time, and he had not consented.

He either abstained from the vote or he just wasn't even there for that vote, whatever.

But the point is, he had not voted for them to do what they wanted to do, which was make sure to arrange for the death of Jesus.

Joseph was a man from Arimathea, a city of the Jews.

This would be in the southern third of Israel.

You have Judah down, uh Judea is the southern third of Israel, Samaria is the middle, and Galilee was up on the north.

And so you have uh this man, local guy from Arimathea, city of the Jews, who was.

I love this little bit of his resume at the end of verse 51.

Waiting for the kingdom of God.

Um, and I read stuff like that, and I always ask myself, what am I waiting for?

I'm waiting for a lot of things in life.

Um, but what on a major scale like this?

This guy's waiting for the kingdom of God, longing for some change, looking for some hope, looking for that hope and that change to come from God.

That God would set up and finally fulfill his kingdom.

How's that gonna happen?

He, a first century Jewish man, eager for that to happen.

This man went to Pilate, verse 52, and asked for the body of Jesus.

And he took it down and wrapped it in a linen cloth and laid him in a tomb, cut into the rock where no one had ever lain.

Now there's five things I would say on Joseph of Arimathea's resume right there in verses 50 and 51.

Let me you underline them if you want to in your Bible, or put a little one, two, three, four, five.

But he was a man named Joseph.

He was a member of the council, a good and righteous man.

Um he had not consented, so he he was a guy that didn't vote for Jesus to be taken like that.

Um, he was from Arimathea, city of the Jews.

He was waiting for the kingdom of God.

There's actually more than five things here.

We know a lot about this guy.

All right.

He went to Pilate, he asked for the body of Jesus, he took it down, what was that like?

And wrapped it in a linen cloth and laid it in a tomb, cut the rock where no one had ever lain.

And it was the preparation day.

The Sabbath was about to begin, and so it's, you know, the Sabbath would have begun it would have begun at at uh as the as Friday night approaches, and so Jesus is hanging on the cross from 9 a.m., dies at 3 p.m., and from 3 p.m.

to about 6 p.m., there there is this time period where a lot of things are going on, and we're just getting an abbreviated sort of description of it, and we'll look again into John 19 and see a little bit more detail.

But three hours is what he's got.

He's got to arrange for a meeting with Pilate.

Everybody doesn't get a meeting with Pilate.

I mean, I don't even know the mayor of Green Hills, or I I I have a councilman, but I'm not even sure if I could get a coffee with the councilman of Green Hills, you know?

And getting a meeting with Pilate would have been pretty hard.

Unless you're a prominent member of the ruling religious council.

And Joseph of Arimathea was.

So he got this meeting, he got permission to do this, and since it was the preparation day and the Sabbath was about to begin, they didn't want to leave Jesus' body on the cross.

So they had to do this before Sabbath, before sundown.

The women who had come with him out of Galilee followed after and saw the tomb and how his body was laid.

The idea here is that Luke is telling us there's more eyewitnesses than you might count or be aware of.

And they actually know exactly which tomb he was laid in.

Okay?

And so these are the women who had followed Jesus all along, and they followed him not only from, you know, as he went around Israel and that sort of thing, but they followed him to the cross, and they followed him from the cross to the tomb.

And some of these women will be the first ones at the tomb who will see that he is not there anymore, that he has risen.

So the women are presented as quite faithful in their following of Jesus, and they are eyewitnesses to which tomb he was buried in.

And they returned back to their homes and they prepared spices and perfumes, and this is very much the tradition of Jews that they would do that kind of thing.

That's how they buried a dead body.

They would wrap it in about 75 or 100 pounds of spices and grave cloths, almost mummifying the body.

Okay?

And so that's what they intended to do, which tells you they knew Jesus was what?

Dead.

Who else knew Jesus was dead?

Joseph of Arimathea.

And we'll see Nicodemus is involved when we go to the John passage as well.

So that on the Sabbath day, these women rested according to the commandment.

Jump to John chapter 19 with me, if you will.

John 19 · chapter mention

Look at verse 31 and following.

The Jews, therefore, because it was the day of preparation, meaning for the Sabbath, so that the bodies should not remain on the cross on the Sabbath, for that Sabbath was a high day.

They asked Pilate that their, that the three that were hanging on the cross, Jesus and the two criminals, that their legs might be broken and that they might be taken away.

For the Jews, again, they did not want to leave the bodies on the cross.

Not Jesus' body, not the body of these criminals either.

And that was just their tradition.

The soldiers therefore, so they're asking Pilate if we can break the legs and make sure that these three are really dead, that they've died by asphyxiation.

They can't push up anymore.

Let's break their legs, and they won't be able to live any longer.

The soldiers therefore came.

Verse 32 says, They broke the legs of the first man and of the other man who was crucified with Jesus.

And again, so that they would die quicker.

But coming to Jesus, these are the soldiers coming to Jesus when they saw that he was what?

Already dead.

Did these guys know how to execute people?

Yeah, that was their job.

Whatever you do every single day for your job that you can almost do without thinking, these guys could do without thinking.

They were expert at putting people to death.

And they knew what a dead body looked like, right?

And so they didn't break his legs, but one of the soldiers pierced his side, Jesus' side, with a spear, and immediately there came out blood and water.

And the way that's stated, it indicates that they're actually they've separated.

So hypovolemic shock has set in.

This man, this is an indication that he's actually dead, that the blood is separated from the water.

And he who has seen this, John writes, has borne witness, and his witness is true.

John was standing at the cross.

Only disciple that we know of, the male disciple, that was standing at the cross.

He saw this happen.

So he speaks with great authority and credibility.

And his witness is true, verse 35.

He knows that he is telling the truth so that you also may believe.

John makes it really clear why he wrote his gospel, John's gospel, that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ and that believing in him, you might find life in his name, it says in the very next chapter, chapter 20.

He's very clear about what he's trying to do as he writes the gospel account.

He wants you to find life in the name of Jesus.

And so even in the middle of his account of the burial of Jesus, John makes that clear again.

Verse 36.

For these things came to pass that the scripture might be fulfilled.

And one of them is quoted right here in verse 36, and it is taken from, if you look in margin notes in your Bible, you'll see that it's clearly from Exodus Numbers and from Psalm 34 there.

It says, So he quotes, not a bone of him shall be broken.

And again, another scripture, they shall look on him whom they pierced.

After these things, Joseph of Arimathea, okay, now he joins the passage we've let that we just read it from Luke, being a disciple of Jesus, but a secret one.

Ah, a little more information there.

So Joseph of Arimathea not only did not vote for them to take Jesus and to murder Jesus, but add to that, Joseph of Arimathea was actually a secret disciple of Jesus.

So it's more than what we thought or what we learned from Luke.

He's a secret this a secret saint, if you will, a secret follower of Jesus.

And for fear of the Jews, he went and asked Pilate that he might.

So he was secret because he was afraid of the Jews.

Now he's going to move from fear to faith in this little moment.

It's going to be a defining moment for him.

He goes to Pilate and asks that he could take away the body of Jesus.

Pilate granted permission, and he came therefore and took away his body.

Nicodemus came also, who had first come to him to Jesus by night.

That goes back to John chapter 3, if you want to read that account.

John 3 · chapter mention

Nicodemus, another member of the Sanhedrin, another Pharisee, another religious leader, and yet another person whose life had been forever changed in a defining moment that we read about in John chapter 3, where he wants to know how he can be saved or born again, as Jesus puts it in John chapter 3.

John 3 · chapter mention John 3 · chapter mention

And he came there along with uh also with him who had first come to the cross.

This is Joseph of Arimathea.

So the two of them together are there, right?

And Nicodemus verse 39 tells us he came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloees about a hundred pounds weight.

So what are they expecting?

They're expecting a dead body, and they're going to wrap it in a hundred pounds of spices and grave clothes.

And they're going, these two, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, to a public place where a person was publicly executed, so that all of the passers by might see and be afraid of the Roman Empire.

Afraid, even, perhaps, of the religious establishment and leadership of the day.

And above Jesus' head on the cross was that sign that we read about last week.

Here is Jesus, King of the Jews.

And it was written in Hebrew, it was written in Greek, and it was written in Latin.

So that all the, no matter what language you spoke in that region of the world, you'd know that Rome was saying, try to assert some kind of authority, try to try to raise up some kind of insurrection, some kind of sedition, you are going to be put to death.

So public humiliation, public death, died with criminals, as was predicted in the Old Testament.

And there's Jesus, and he's dead.

And Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus come.

And they, by night, they take the body down.

And Jesus bound in linen wrappings, verse 40, with spices, as in the as is the burial custom of the Jews.

And now in the place where he was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had yet been laid.

And we saw that already, didn't we, in Luke chapter 23.

Luke 23 · chapter mention

Therefore, on account of the Jewish day of preparation, because the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.

All right, let's go back to Luke and let's just see what we learn here.

I wonder if you can do identify two or three, just for a second.

Little exercise together here.

Can you identify what might be one or two, three maybe, defining moments in your life?

Just think for a second.

That change the trajectory of your life in some way.

I think I see this precious little baby up here that Matt dedicated here just a minute ago, and I'm thinking, walking.

When that little kid starts walking, it's like, wow, and the whole world changes, right?

All your parents know that, right?

Where is he?

Where is she?

You know, whatever.

And uh that's a that's a pretty big, that's a pretty big defining moment.

Some of you might be young enough to think back to when you first got your driver's license.

Me, I'm old enough to want an Uber driver.

Just want somebody else to drive for a while.

I'm kind of ready for that, you know.

Um, but you might you might think of graduating high school or college.

You might think of your first job as a defining moment.

Some of you might even be thinking, though, of the day that you were seized by the great affection of God, and it became a defining moment for you.

You stepped out of darkness and into light.

And God called your name and called you to turn away from your sin, to turn toward him in faith believing, to trust Jesus.

Now, there's a lot of categories of defining moments.

That's fine.

I just happen to be one that is old enough now to where I'm thinking that's one of the biggest categories, right there.

Now, every single day I wake up, and so do you, and I look out like on today, I look out today and I go, I love a brisk fall morning.

This is awesome.

This is my favorite time of year.

I mean, I like to turn up the music, march around the house, and just have a great time.

It just puts me in a good mood.

But there are days when I don't wake up in a good mood.

And there are even sunny days when I don't wake up in a great mood.

And we have in our household of two, Kim and I have this little tradition that was a have you asked yourself the question yet?

Have you turned to him, your attention to him?

What kind of day are you gonna have in light of what Christ has done in your life?

Those are the kinds of questions that help us, I think, start our day.

We can have honest lament, yes, about the way things are not the way they should be.

But we also want to have confidence in Christ.

And you can have both as a Christian.

You can express honest lament, and you can at the same time say, Lord, you are in charge of all the outcomes.

No matter what is just around the corner for me that I can't even imagine, that is gonna come on me, assault me in some way I don't even can't even predict, or no matter what giant I'm standing in the roadway in front of me right now.

God is in charge of all the outcomes, and we want to trust him, don't we?

So we need to turn our attention to him and make that a defining moment.

So, what are your defining moments?

I think for these guys, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, for years after this, they would look back on this experience that they just had.

I mean, think uh a lot of people talk about the physicality of the cross, and that's fair, but think of the physicality of taking the body down from the cross.

What do you do?

Do you have a pair of channel locks?

Do you have a hammer?

How do you get the nails out?

And when the one arm on a dead body falls, and then the next falls.

And Joseph of Arimathea may have begun this task all by himself.

I don't know.

But we are told in John's gospel that Nicodemus came.

And maybe Joseph of Arimathea got one arm off, and the next arm and Jesus' body slumped onto Joseph of Arimathea.

And all of a sudden, as Joseph Arimathea thought he's gonna fall himself, what will happen to the feet of Jesus, to the body of Jesus that he came to honor?

And all of a sudden, there's another set of hands behind him.

He turns and looks, and it's Nicodemus, his friend.

The only other one that we know of that was on the council that had turned in some way toward Jesus.

And the two of them lift this body down and wrap it gently in these linen cloths.

And Nicodemus has a bag or a basket full of a hundred pounds of spices.

And they lug that and this human body that's battered and bloody.

They lug all of that.

Even a few steps would be hard for most of us.

But they do it to the nearby garden and to the tomb that is there.

Some of us have been to Israel, and we've seen the little spot that we think might be that place.

And you can see how close it is.

But man, if you're carrying 100 pounds of spices and you're carrying another human being, especially dead weight of a human being, that's a pretty far walk.

And yet they do this.

And they do this now in the public, even though it's night, granted, but they're still doing it.

They could be seen.

And now they're secret saints are no longer secret.

They've moved out of the shadows of that to now stand publicly and say, enough is enough.

We need to honor Jesus.

We didn't stand up publicly in front of him while he was walking the planet alive.

We will at least now honor him in his death.

And we see this, I see this anyway, maybe you do too, as a real defining moment.

Well, a lot of you might have questions about Joseph of Arimathea.

And um, and I can understand that there are a lot of things to know about someone like that.

And we pick up different things in the parallel passages, don't we?

Um the early church fathers Arenius, uh, Tertullian, Hippolytus, and Eusebius refer to Joseph in the context of gospel tradition and may foreshadow later legendary expansions on Joseph of Arimathea.

During medieval times, in what can only be classified as legend, additional stories grew out of that tradition.

These are more removed from the earliest sources, and they include lore that's tied to some local beliefs.

For instance, it has been said that sometime around 61 A.D., Joseph of Arimathea took a missionary journey all the way to the British Isles and was the one who introduced Christianity to Great Britain.

If you go to Glastonbury, southwestern England, today, you can actually see the ruins of an ancient abbey there.

Some claim that Joseph of Arimathea was the one who established that abbey.

Glastonbury is also the legendary burial site of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere.

As the legend continued about Joseph of Arimathea to unfold, it included the claim that he is said to have brought with him to Britain a cup, said to have been used at the Last Supper, and also to catch some of the blood that dripped from Jesus' body while he hung on the cross.

The item was popularly known as the Holy Grail.

The legend has it, that it was the object of the quests of the Knights of King Arthur's round table.

One legend goes on to suggest that Joseph hid the grail in Chalice Well at Glastonbury for safekeeping.

In the Middle Ages, Joseph was gradually inflated into a major saint and a cult hero, and was the supposed ancestor of many British monarchs.

Whether any of this is true or not is quite uncertain.

But what is important for us to know from our Bible passages today is that towards the end of the day of Christ's crucifixion, Joseph was personally involved in the burial of Jesus.

His actions establish the credibility of two really important facts and events in redemption history.

The historical reality of the physical death of Jesus.

He did not swoon as so many people who are sort of anti-supernaturalists that really want to try and explain away the resurrection.

They'll say, Oh, he didn't really die.

He just swooned, he fainted, and then he woke up evidently three days later after being wrapped in 100 pounds of spices and mummified.

And evidently he kicked a stone out of the way and overcame an entire elite Roman guard himself, and somehow or another came back, you know, uh out from that having fainted in all of that way.

So Joseph establishes the fact that Jesus was really dead.

And then secondly, I think Joseph would have known so much more firsthand about the bodily resurrection of Jesus.

Why?

Because it was his tomb that Jesus wasn't in anymore.

He was the one that laid Jesus there.

So he and Nikki, a few days later, they're gonna travel to that tomb and go, man, I've been hearing Jesus is walking around again, talking to people.

Let's go check the tomb.

That's my tomb.

I'm gonna go look, you know, and they look, and sure enough, he's not there at all.

So we've learned some things about Joseph of Arimathea from the biblical account.

In Matthew, we learn he was rich, that he'd become a disciple of Jesus, just like we've already learned, that he laid Jesus not just in a tomb that hadn't been used, but in his own tomb that hadn't been used.

And that's really amazing.

Here's Jesus nailed to a borrowed cross that belonged to Barabbas first.

But Jesus took his place.

Here's Jesus on a borrowed cross, smothered in borrowed sins.

Yours, mine.

All of those people standing around the cross.

He's smothered in those.

Yeah.

And now he's laid in a borrowed tomb.

Belongs to a guy named Joseph of Arimathea.

And one day, I'm so excited.

One day he intends to do to your tomb and to my tomb what he's going to do in just three days to this tomb, he will burst forth out of it and defeat death itself.

The women are actually named in Matthew's gospel, Matthew chapter 27.

Matthew 27 · chapter mention

From Mark 15, we learn that he was a prominent member of the Sanhedrin, not just a regular member, but a prominent one.

And that's probably how he got that audience with Pilate, to be honest with you, when you think about it.

We're also told in Mark that Pilate said, Is he really dead?

And Pilate sent a centurion, a separate one, to go and verify the fact before he gave permission to Joseph of Arimathea for the body.

So in other words, Pilate didn't want just a swooning Jesus to come off the cross.

He wanted a dead Jesus before he would give permission for Joseph of Arimathea to have the body.

We also learn from Mark that it was hewn out of the rock again, and that a large stone was rolled against the entrance.

What else does the New Testament teach us?

Well, we read from John, didn't we, how complicated that burial process is with all of those spices, with all of those grave clothes and all those wrappings.

And here's what a tomb would have looked like.

This is just somewhat of an example.

There are some other examples over there in Israel.

And some of us have actually been to, as I say, that garden area, to a tomb that is there that looks much like this as well.

There's a giant rock that rolls in front of the opening so that the animals are kept out, and any grave robbers, which that was a problem back then, people would break into graves, take any kind of valuables, jewelry, anything that somebody was buried with, and they would take those things for their own gain.

Not too many people broke in to take dead bodies, though, which is what would be suggested by the uh in Matthew's gospel by the religious leaders.

They told the soldiers, go and take it away his his uh go and uh say to everyone, to Pilate especially, that the the disciples had come and stolen the body of Jesus.

Again, how hilarious to think that these unarmed, uneducated fishermen could overcome an elite Roman guard that had been positioned outside of the tomb of Jesus.

So for us as we look at this story, we see that the physical burial of Jesus, it's a defining moment.

It's not merely a religious fiction, but a historically attested cornerstone of the Christian faith.

He really died.

It confirms his death, fulfills prophetic scripture, and sets the stage for another defining moment: the historic event of the resurrection of Jesus.

And there was this waiting period of these three days, pieces of three different days.

And you can just imagine what everybody's going through.

What are people thinking?

We kind of know a little bit about the disciples having run, they were scared, they were afraid, they didn't understand what was going on, even though Jesus had predicted all of this multiple times.

But think about when he actually died, how that must have hit them all.

And how the women came with spices also, because they expected what?

A dead Jesus.

Joseph and Nicodemus expected a dead Jesus.

And that's actually what Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea saw.

The women come the next morning, or the morning that Jesus rises from the dead, they come with spices to do additional sort of honoring of his body.

And they don't know how they're going to roll away the stone, and they also think he's still dead.

And so it's pretty amazing when you start thinking about how all of this went down.

There's a couple things we learn.

One, we realize the world is broken, we're sinful, and we need redemption.

And that's the defining moment that I think happened to Joseph and to Nicodemus.

For them, the world was so broken, by the time they get to the cross, though, it's sort of the last straw for them.

They've been secretly believing in Jesus.

And when the religious leadership, the rest of the Sanhedrin, the other 68 members, decide they're gonna somehow or another trump up these false charges against Jesus, arrange for his death, they, these two guys have, they're they're pushed to the edge.

And when they get to the cross, they go over the edge from fear to faith.

Because they've just had enough of the brokenness and the wickedness of their colleagues and the darkness in their hearts, and they've had enough, and now they step out of that darkness, out of the shadows, and into the light, even though it was headed for night at that particular moment.

The world is broken.

We are sinful.

We need redemption.

And I think Joseph and Nicodemus had some understanding of that as we look at the text.

Um, some of you will know who Brendan Manning is.

This is an older book called Ruthless Trust that I happen to have and have really enjoyed over the years.

He's so, so honest.

He says to knife through our pretense, our cowardice, our evasions, to see the truth about ourselves, the true state of our souls before God.

This requires enormous courage and ruthless trust in what?

In the merciful love of the redeeming God.

Put simply, sin must be acknowledged and confessed before there can be forgiveness and real transformation.

So, Joseph, Nicodemus, you, me, maybe today, right now, recognize that the world is broken and I'm broken too.

I'm a sinner too.

And there is no, I mean, that's a brilliant defining moment to come to that conclusion.

To have the Holy Spirit actually open your eyes to your need for redemption.

Redemption is one of those words I think that a lot of people would, even if they aren't believers, even if they aren't Christians, if you said to them, I think we all need redemption, there's probably a lot of people who would say, Yeah, that's right.

But the minute there's something specific to be redeemed from, the minute there's some sin that we actually have to confess before God, we have to turn away from, to trust in God, things begin to change.

It's a little more costly.

And we have to understand there's a cost to discipleship.

It's not just Jesus kind of turning on heart lights, but there's the call to repent and believe.

To repent means it's a twofold turn, as John Stott points out.

It's to turn away from my, here's myself, I'm facing myself, I'm going my own selfish way.

Repentance means I turn away from myself and I turn to the Lord in faith, believing.

And that's exactly what is happening, I think, as these guys are turning on that particular day.

Secondly, um, it's a defining moment, not only when we realize the world is broken, we're sinful, and need redemption, but also we come to recognize who Jesus really is.

And these two guys definitely had gotten there by now.

And maybe hearing that centurion or whichever soldier pierced the side of Jesus, and hearing that centurion say out loud, surely this man is the son of God.

Maybe Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea are standing right there in the crowd.

And maybe they hadn't really planned to do what they are getting ready to do in burying Jesus.

But maybe hearing that for them was another little bit of a turning point for them.

Some momentum is added to the turning of them from darkness to light.

Jesus is mysterious, a little the way John Ortberg says it.

Not just because of what we don't know about him, but because of what we do know about him.

It's so true.

Somebody give me a Methodist amen on that.

He is.

Yeah.

He's quite how is this the paradox of the cross.

In his death, look at the people who are coming to life.

Right then, even on the ground there, are people coming to life.

Joseph of Arimathea Nicodemus, a centurion.

And we find in that centurion faith, we wouldn't expect to find it there, the executioner, the chief executioner of Jesus turning and saying, He's the Son of God.

It's really amazing when you start to see Jesus for who he really is.

Spurgeon, when Christ came and redeemed us, there was on his part no display of physical or mere brute power.

There was a display of power, but it was the power of goodness, the power to suffer, the power to be patient, and the power to love.

As if God said to man, Sinners and rebels as you are, I love you more than you hate me.

Oh that's so that is so good.

Oh, who wouldn't want that kind of God?

I love you more than you hate me, and great as your badness is, my goodness shall overwhelm your badness.

My pardoning mercy shall overpower your power to transgress.

Oh, yeah.

It's so important.

We're in a defining moment.

When we realize the world is broken, that we are sinful, we need a redeemer.

And we start to see who Jesus really is.

Thirdly, when we step out of the shadows and into courageous faith, the way of discipleship is indeed a process.

I'm a disciple of Jesus, but I'm in process.

Some of you may have had a more if you if you're here today and you're converted, that is, you've received Christ as your Savior.

You're a Christian, you're following Jesus.

Your conversion experience, your coming to Christ, may have been quite instantaneous, at least you think it may have been.

I would suggest to you the Lord was working on you in small and subtle ways that you didn't even recognize for a long time.

Others of us know that the curve of our coming to faith in Christ was quite broad and quite long and pretty slow in some of our cases, right?

Well, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, they're in process.

And so, even as I've spelled out what they may have seen that night, we don't know how long it took for them to come to faith.

But we know this.

They at one point move out of the shadows and into courageous faith.

Ferguson says of this: the fear of the Lord tends to take away all other fears.

This is the secret of Christian courage and boldness.

I think that's so true.

And Bonhoeffer, some of you are familiar with, being a Christian is less about cautiously avoiding sin than about courageously, actively doing God's will.

Isn't that good?

I mean, how many of us were sort of raised, thinking, as we hear it in church all the time, that sin is all about the brake pedal.

Never about the gas pedal.

It's all about what we quit and stop doing.

As opposed to the gas pedal, and I'm gonna go further, rolling down the window, sticking my head out the window and going, hallelujah! Yeah, and so that's what, in a way, that's what Joseph and Nicodemus are doing that night.

It's not just about the brake pedal.

You do need a brake pedal, we all do.

That's part of what repentance is turning away from my sin.

But it isn't all about that, it's about turning to him in faith believing and trusting him and being willing to be used by him as he sees fit, not just about fitting him into my particular agenda.

We have to remember, I think, that as Stott says, before the cross is something that has been done for us, we have to know it's something that was done by us as well.

It's my sin that put him there.

And all I can do when I do realize that and recognize the world's broken and that I'm sinful, is fall to my knees and lift up the empty hands of faith and receive as a free gift what Christ came to offer as a free gift.

Salvation in his name.

And a courageous faith then becomes a contagious faith as well.

Again, Joseph of Arimathea.

And then all of a sudden, Nicodemus is along.

And now these two guys become, I would suppose, quite powerful in their testimony of the Lord, especially three days later when they see the risen Christ.

I mean, what was it like when they first saw Jesus after he came out of the grave?

Didn't I put you in there?

Didn't I lay your dead body?

Didn't we dress you with all of that 100 pounds of spices?

And didn't we roll a two-ton stone in front of you?

How is it you're standing here in front?

And you see, that's why the Christian faith became a force that all of Rome, all of the mighty Roman Empire, couldn't reckon with, couldn't stop.

And the Christian faith, the the good news of the gospel, spread like wildfire across the entire Roman Empire without anybody shooting an arrow or drawing a sword in its defense.

Fourth, we see here as well that if we're in a defining moment when we begin to honor God with reckless abandonment.

And that's what these guys did.

It's so powerful to look at it, to see them step out of the shadows, to see them move from being secret saints to being visible and audible saints in what they did.

What happened to them after this, we're not told.

We don't know if they got booted off with the Sanhedrin.

We're not sure about any of that stuff.

I just know there's a massive pivot point between what what happens between the time when Jesus bursts forth from the tomb and the early church that begins, and we see some of those in the in-between time, those those days between before Jesus ascends back into heaven, we're gonna, which we're gonna study in the book of Acts next year.

It's it's a powerful, very pregnant and powerful month of time that happens, where amazing things happen there.

And all kinds of eyes are open, and people are seeing Christ in a completely different light and their need for him as well.

John Piper, this will be my my um uh point I would really like all of us to lean into is that when we see who Christ really is and we see our need, that we begin to prize Jesus.

And he uh Piper says in Dangerous Duty of Delight, really small book and highly recommend it to you.

Christ is praised by being prized.

He's magnified as a glorious treasure when he becomes our unrivaled pleasure, when he is the object of our delight and our desires.

The cross is not just a piece of decorative jewelry, it makes a wonderful uh piece of that.

And it tells a story, it has significance and meaning.

And it's not just the emblem of a human relief agency, and it's definitely not just the symbol of some crusading warriors.

The cross of Christ.

Is both the most brutal and the most beautiful symbol the world has ever known.

Because it's the symbol of the place where God's justice, God's love, God's mercy, and God's power converge and come together.

Jesus substituting himself in my place with my sins on him has made it possible for me to come to know him and live in right relationship with God and you as well.

But he had, before we get there, and we'll get there next week, I'm so excited that we're gonna study the resurrection next week.

By the way, bring friends.

They need to hear about the resurrection, okay?

Um, but before, I don't want to jump ahead.

But before that, he had to go to the cross.

He had to be buried like this.

It's setting the stage for what we're gonna read next.

But it's a it's that period of waiting, and raise your hand if you like waiting.

Nobody raise your hand.

Don't.

I know you'd be lying if you did.

Nobody likes waiting.

But we don't waste our waiting.

We turn to him, we look to him, we worship through the waiting, and he begins to change us, doesn't he?

And that process I was talking about early starts to happen.

Whatever it is you're waiting for, and a lot of us have heard that it's Friday, but Sunday's coming kind of a thing, and that's true.

There was this period of time, and we're in that.

But whatever it is you're waiting for, I just want to suggest to you that it might be defining moment time for you.

Look to him, turn to him.

Worship through the waiting.

Because it's really true, and this is my last quote of the day from Ray C.

Steadman, great Bible teacher.

Resurrection power works best in graveyards.

Think about that.

Resurrection power works best in graveyards.

Jesus didn't just stub his toe for me.

Jesus didn't just have a bad week for me.

Jesus died for me.

And you see what that does to my sin?

That means the price for my sin is completely paid once and for all in the death of Jesus.

That's such good news.

Have you turned to him?

Have you believed in him?

Have you trusted in him?

Maybe today is your defining moment to do so.

I don't know.

Or perhaps for some of you, it's a defining moment today to turn back to him, to turn back around and face him again.

Let's pray.

Lord, you know our hearts, you know each and every person that's here today, each person that might be watching online.

You know what's going on in our lives, you know the struggles we have, you know the suffering that's going on in some of our folks' lives, some of our dear ones.

You also know the part of our hearts, Lord, that we've we've locked you out of.

Uh we've compartmentalized you in some way.

And we, in this moment, after reading about how much you loved us to the point of dying for us, Lord, help us love you to the point of wanting to live for you.

Turn us around, Lord, by the Holy Spirit.

Draw us, call us, draw us to yourself.

Holy Spirit, move in powerful ways in my life.

And in the lives of my friends, my brothers and sisters here and abroad as well.

Lord, make a defining moment out of our being here to worship you in this moment.

We pray in Jesus' name.

Amen and amen.