Burial: The Grave Becomes the Garden

God himself is descending into the grave. Why? Because his bride is there. His beloved is dead in her sin, dead in her curse, dead in her exile. The bride is laid in the grave of forsakenness.

And by going down into the grave, Yahweh is seeking her out and making her his own such that she's able to say, I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine.

The following message was recorded at King's Tree Church. May the spirit use it to help you see, savor, and sing the beauty of God in the crucified and risen Jesus Christ.

The rest of us are going to be returning to this slightly mini mini series that we're going through right now as we're looking at John's vision of Jesus's death, burial, and resurrection. We started this last week kind of drilling down into how does John understand these three moments. The death of Christ, the burial of Christ, the resurrection of Christ. And what we said last week was this is not just what God does to save us. It's not just like the three steps that God goes through in Christ to save us, though that is true, but that this is really a three part drama.

A three part drama in which God reveals the meaning of reality itself which is himself. Through the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, the drama of God's self revelation unfolds and he declares to all of humanity, to all of the cosmos who he is. So everything is to be found as we look at what happens here. As our Lord dies, is buried and is raised. And last week we were focusing on the idea of his death from John's perspective and we looked at that phrase that John uses, lifted up.

John speaks of the cross as the lifting up of Jesus and what we saw is that by using that phrase and by drawing on Isaiah and other passages, what John's doing is calling us to see, to understand Jesus is lifting up on the cross as at the same time his being lifted up in shame and his being exalted in glory. The same time these things are happening. Our Lord and God descends down into the depths of our sin, our shame, our death, our hell. As he descends into those depths on the cross, he is revealed, ascended, enthroned, shining as the glory of God. He reveals to us who God is precisely in this work by which he descends to the depths.

So the death of Christ, what is it? It's the lifting up of Jesus in shame but it's the lifting up of Jesus as the revelation of who God is, showing us who God is. That's what we looked at last week and it's everything is to be found there. I have to hold myself back from doing the sermon over again because there is no end to the depths of a God who declares himself in this way. That that ought to continually blow our minds every time we consider it.

But I move on. This week we're going to look at the how John understands the burial of Christ. Crucified, buried, raised up again. How does John call us to see and understand the burial of our Lord in the grave? And oftentimes the burial of Jesus can be kind of forgotten.

It's between his death and his resurrection. But in between these two is this moment of mystery that's really different than his death. The burial, the grave is not the same as death. Death is a moment. It's an event.

It's something that happens. It's it's the trauma that breaks in. But then the grave is is the state that results from that moment. So death is the moment. The grave or burial is the state that results from that, that comes from that.

It's it's this If you think of death as a spire or a spear stabbed into the ground, burial and the grave is the long shadow that draws out from that moment that takes place. And it's a mystery. Jesus' burial is mysterious. There's nothing said of it other than that he's laid in the ground. It's silent about the time he's in the tomb and for us too, burial, death, the grave is a mystery.

Specifically that idea of burial though, of the grave, because if you've ever experienced this, there's a jarring disjunction. How can one who is so alive, one who is so loved, one who is so filled with personality be laid in the ground, be covered over, be put away to where there's darkness and silence and I I can't see them anymore. There's a disjunction in this idea of burial and of the grave. It's a mystery. And if you've ever endured it, it's it feels foreign.

It feels like this shouldn't be. This loved one, this person shouldn't be in the ground. There's something wrong about that in our experience but even as foreign as it is to us, it's also immediately present to us because unless the Lord returns, every one of us here is going to be buried in some way, in some way. We're going to enter the grave. We're going to be entering into that mystery.

Entering into that silence. But the burial of Jesus, the fact that Jesus didn't just die and instantly rise, the fact that he went down into that darkness, he entered into that mystery, he went into that silence, the burial of Jesus says the shepherd has gone before you into the valley of the shadow. The shepherd doesn't say get in there sheep, go go go, I'll be behind you, don't worry. He goes first. He go he went first into this valley which means the mystery of our grave is now radiant with his presence and the silence of the tomb is resonant with his voice because he's gone there.

So that's what I wanna look at today is this idea of the not just the death. The death is huge. The death is the death is massively significant but following that moment is this quiet, gray mystery of the burial and that's what I wanna look at this morning. How Jesus enters and fills and defines not just our death, praise God that's true, but also our grave. Our grave, the state of being dead, he enters and he fills and he defines and that means something for us.

It really, it means the fact that Jesus is buried means something for us. On the last day, yes. When we're lowered into the grave, yes, but also today. That's what I hope for us to see that this means something for us right now. But let me turn.

We're gonna do a lot of turning through scripture today but kind of the main passage is going to be at the end of John if you wanna turn there and kind of settle there. It's going to be John chapter 19 verses 38 through 42 where we actually have the burial of Jesus recounted for us. Let me read it and then I'll pray. So John chapter 19 verses 38 through 42 says this, 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 his body. Nicodemus also who earlier had come to Jesus by night came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, seventy five pounds in weight.

John 19:38–42 John 19:38–42

So they took the body of Jesus, bound it in linen cloths with the spices as is the burial custom of the Jews. Now in that place that he was crucified, there was a garden and in the 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. Let me pray for us. We'll look at these things together.

Lord even to speak of the burial of a venerable person or a dearly loved one is a weighty thing But here we come to speak about your burial Lord Jesus. We come to speak about the burial of our Lord and our God, of the creator of the universe buried in the earth that he sustains with his word. So father, I pray you give us grace today. Give me grace that your holy spirit would come and Lord just as a tree is is made to sing when the wind blows through its branches though it has no capacity to do that on its own, I pray that your spirit would now come and grant me to speak in such a way that Christ be lifted up. I pray for your people to receive these words in such a way that Jesus Christ be received.

Lord, we do not need good feelings. We do not need words well spun. We do not need a passing comfort for our emotions. We need Christ. I need Christ.

Your people need Christ. And it's an awesome thing that you Lord Jesus went to the grave in pursuit of your bride. Grant Lord that I would speak these things now with clarity your people would receive them and father your son be glorified by the working of your spirit to the praise of your name. Lord, we ask this in Jesus name, amen. So let's begin by getting a little bit clearer for ourselves what this idea of the grave means.

And let me say to begin with, I'm not going to be giving doctrine about what happens when we die. That's not what I'm talking about today. I'm not talking about the the specifics of where does your soul go, where did your soul go before Jesus, and where does it go now? Very important questions. But what I'm asking today is how does scripture represent the grave?

What's the symbolic meaning that the bible gives to the grave? That's what I'm asking. That's what I want us to think about this morning. And when we ask that question, I think we can break it down into at least three pillars of what the Bible means, especially the Old Testament is what I'm thinking here. What the Old Testament means when it uses the term the grave or the tomb or sheol or one of these phrases that means the place where we go.

Of course, of course the grave is the physical place your body goes. That's that's in mind. But what kind of symbolic meaning does it take on? And I think there's three we see in scripture. Curse, exile and forsakenness.

When scripture uses the term grave, one of those three is usually waiting in the wings somewhere. The curse, exile, or forsakenness. Let me give you a few texts to help us see that. First, the first time death, we see death really entering into the picture is in Genesis three after the fall, after Adam has eaten the fruit, has turned his back on God and carried Eve along with him. After this has happened and humanity has been cut off from the fellowship of the Lord, God comes and speaks to them, okay here's what happens now.

Here's what happens now. And part of that is this in verse 19, by the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground from which you were taken for you are dust and to dust you shall return. So death, but specifically here burial, going back to the dust, that is an effect of the fall. That is an effect of humanity's turning away from God. So that's the first thing to see.

The grave, the burial of the human being in the dirt, in the ground, that's not how it was at first. That's that's part of things being broken. That's part of rebellion. So the dislocation that we feel when the beloved is laid in the ground and the cords of love aren't cut yet, the cords of love are still here. So why is dirt coming between me and them?

Why is the earth coming between me and them? Because there's still love and there's dislocation. There's pain when that happens. And that pain is the sting of sin. But hear me, not your sin.

It's not like, oh, because you sinned, this happened. No. Not their sin, because they sinned, this happened. I'm saying generally because we are under sin, we're in a world of sin, that's what you're feeling with the pain of burial. So burial, the grave, the first thing is it's here because of the fall.

It's here because of the curse. It's here because of our sin. And I do just wanna underline, I'm not saying to the broken heart, if you weren't a sinner this if you hadn't sinned this wouldn't have happened. That's not what I'm saying. But I'm saying we live in a world marked by sin.

Therefore, we feel this pain. We feel this sting. We feel this brokenness. So the first thing, the grave points to the curse. The second thing, the grave points to exile.

Specifically the idea of being exiled from the presence of God. Cast out of his presence and this makes sense like we looked at a few weeks ago. If God is life, to turn from him and be separated from him is necessarily to be in death. There's no life outside of him who is life. So if we're separated from him, if we're exiled from him, where are we?

We're in death. We're in the grave. And so in the scriptures, the grave and exile often reflect one another. One of the clearest places to see that is in Ezekiel. There's this startling vision in Ezekiel where the prophet sees a valley full of dry bones, dead bones, and this represents God's people cut off from him, in exile from him.

And this is what the Lord says in the midst of that vision. Exile Ezekiel 37 verse 12, he says this, say to them, thus says the Lord God, behold, I will open your graves and raise you from your graves, o my people. And I will bring you into the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the Lord when I open your graves and raise you from your graves, oh my people. So he's saying, he's notice he's equating graves with being outside of the promised land, outside of the place where fellowship with God happens.

Ezekiel 37:12

I will raise you from your graves and bring you home, bring you to where I am. So grave here represents exile, being cut off from God. And that is where the entire human experience is. We're born into this grave. We're born into exile from God spiritually.

Every human being is born with their desires turned away from the Lord, with their heart and their eyes as it were turned from him. We're born into the grave of exile. And that's why the human experience is shot through with this undercurrent of longing. If you're at all sensitive to what's going on in your soul, you know there's a longing that says something's not right. I need to fill this up.

Something's missing. Something's not the way it's supposed to be and that's because we're in exile. We're we're cut off from our home. Who is God? We're all born with the wound of homesickness riven through our hearts because of sin.

We're all born exiled. We're all born in the spiritual grave needing to be raised up again. Sometimes I think the moon gives us an example of this where if you see the full the moon when it's waxing and growing, you look up and it looks like the opening of a tomb with the stone beginning to roll away. And that suggests symbolically we're in the tomb and yet I'm looking up and I'm seeing the stone roll away. And so in that sense the moon can kind of remind us where we are now spiritually in the tomb, that's where we are by nature.

But it's also opening. It's reminding us where we're going. The lights in the sky were given to us for signs and for me that's one of the things the moon reminds me that we're born into the spiritual grave and yet there's a resurrection to be found, to be had. But the third thing, so the grave points to the curse, points to exile and it points to forsakenness. It's marked by forsakenness.

Let me read you a passage from Psalm 88 where this is quite clear. Psalm 88. I'll read a few verses for you here starting in verse three. For my soul is full of troubles and my life draws near to Sheol. Sheol is another term for the grave or the tomb.

My life draws near to Sheol. I am counted among those who go down to the pit. There's another term for the grave. I am a man who has no strength like one set loose among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave, like those whom you remember no more for they are cut off from your hand. You've put me in the depths of the pit, in the regions of dark and deep.

Your wrath lies heavy upon me and you overwhelm me with your waves. And then he says down in verse 10, listen to these words, Do you work wonders for the dead? Do the departed rise up to praise you? Is your steadfast love declared in the grave or your faithfulness in Abaddon which is another word for the grave or destruction? Are your wonders known in the darkness or your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?

And the implied answer in all those is no. No, you're you're not working down there. No nobody sees you down there. Your love isn't known down there. That's what that's what the psalmist is saying here.

So in this passage we have this piling up of haunting images. The pit, powerlessness, forgetfulness, darkness, silence. But the heart of these, the heart of all of this weight is the idea of forsakenness. Forsakenness. The grave in Psalm 88 here, the grave is envisioned as a place where the soul forgets God and is forgotten by God.

Like those whom you remember no more for they are cut off from your hand. And then he says, is your righteousness known in the land of forgetfulness? So the psalmist is envisioning here the grave as the place where I forget you Lord. I I I'm drowned in this darkness cut off from you and you remember me no more. I'm cut off from you.

So the grave is presented as this place where someone is beyond the care of the Lord. Not because he can't but because they've been cut off. Now let me go back and remind you, I'm not here saying that's what happens when you die. I'm saying what is the symbolism given to the grave in scripture? What does the grave become a symbol for in scripture?

And here we see the grave becomes a symbol for forsakenness. It's a picture, a powerful picture when the beloved is laid under the dirt of where are they going? I don't see them, they're gone. And what about when I go down there? I'm gone, I'm cut off.

So the grave becomes a symbol of forsakenness. So when we ask the scriptures, what does the grave mean in the old testament, pre Christ? What does the grave mean? It means at least the curse, the curse that we've incurred because of our sin, the exile from God's life giving presence and forsakenness being left in the outer darkness. That's what the image of the grave means when we find it in scripture.

And that, here's the turn, that is the grave into which our Lord and our God descends when he's buried. That's where he goes. That curse, that exile, that forsakenness, that's what the grave means and wonder of wonders, who is in the grave? God made flesh goes into the grave. So I wanna turn now to look at John's presentation of the burial because he knows this.

John John knows the scriptures, the old testament, like the back of his hand, and he knows all of this is in play when he's writing about the burial of the Lord. So let me read for you again a passage specific in John's gospel because what I want you to see here, we're we're at we've looked now what does scripture say the grave is and now we're moving to say, okay, and how does John present the grave? How does John call us to see the grave? Specifically, John 19 verses forty and forty two. So the ending part of what I read earlier.

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 crucified there was a garden and in the garden a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid. So because it was the Jewish day of preparation, it was almost the Sabbath when no one could do work and since the tomb was close at hand they laid him there. Now there's one thing I wanna point out to you here I want you to see and it'd be easy to miss. There's the mention of the garden.

The mention of the garden when Jesus is buried. John mentions it twice here And you might say, well, it's just a he was buried in a garden. It's kind of a throwaway statement. It might be except that the beginning of Jesus' passion, his death, the beginning of John's account of Jesus' death says they went to the garden, Gethsemane. The phrase garden appears at the very beginning of Jesus' sufferings and again at the very end and nowhere else.

Nowhere else. The beginning, garden. The end garden. The term for that is book ending. John is placing signposts on either side of Jesus' passion and saying this is in the context of a garden and that's startling.

So and and that causes us to underline this phrase here. When garden pops up again here at the burial, we are supposed to say, oh, garden. Okay. So he is buried in a garden. John is saying by repeating this phrase at these two crucial points, pay attention to this.

There's I have something here. Pay attention to this. Jesus is buried in a garden. Okay? Okay.

Let's think about that. Now first let me be very clear. The garden here is not a not a vegetable garden. It's not like a garden where you're growing corn and beans and plant. The garden envisioned here is a royal garden.

This would have been like a park, like a place with flowing streams and cultivated trees and greenery. Think more of a botanical park or better because this is what would be in John's mind, think of Eden. Think of Eden. That's the kind of garden that's being evoked here. And there's three at least gardens that are in view here because in Old Testament, obviously the whole story starts with a garden.

The Garden of Eden, we know that. The idea of the garden, the paradisal place, the place of fruits and water and freshness, that and the place most importantly, what's most important about Eden? It's the place where humanity has fellowship with God. This garden image appears at least three main places in the Old Testament. There's three big gardens in the Old Testament and they are first, Eden.

Okay? No surprises there. Eden, the original garden. The second one is the temple. That might be surprising, but the temple and the tabernacle lesser so is built after the garden.

It's built to be like a new Eden with trees, with cherubim, with a place to meet with God. So the temple is a garden. And the third garden in scripture, the third big garden in scripture is the garden of the song of Solomon or the older name, the song of songs because there's a garden in the middle of that book. Now you might not read it. We don't talk about it a whole lot, but the song of songs, you could miss it.

It's right there at the end of the poetic books in the old testament. It's an extended poem and what it does at least is to show a husband and a wife rejoicing in one another's love. Rejoicing in the marital union. And of course wherever you have a husband and wife you have God and his people pictured as well. But the the Song of Songs pictures the man and the woman, the husband and the wife rejoicing in one another's marital bliss.

And this whole poem largely takes place in a garden. In a garden. So you've got a man and a woman rejoicing in one another in a garden. The Song of Songs is representing to us the Garden of Eden. That's what's going on here.

That's what's understood to be going on in that book. And what's being declared is that the husband and wife enter into a kind of new Eden through the covenant union of their marriage. The coming together of man and woman in covenant union of marriage is creating as it were a new Eden, a new garden, a new place where man and God are meeting together. So in the Song of Songs, the garden represents the place of fellowship with God restored through nuptial covenant union. That's what's going on in in the Song of Songs at least.

Now you say, okay, okay, great, but why why are we talking about the Song of Songs here in the middle of Jesus' burial? It's very disjunctive, isn't it? The the the union and the marital joy in the in the New Eden and the burial of a crucified body. Why are you bringing these together? And I'm bringing these together because John brings these together.

John is bringing these two together because surprisingly enough, the garden, though though Eden and the temple are definitely in view, the garden that John seems most to want to stir up in our minds here is the garden of the song, the garden of the marital union, the garden of restored relationship with Yahweh. And the reason we see that, look at verse forty and forty one. Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden, in the garden a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid. No, I'm sorry. Start at verse 40.

So they took the body of Jesus and bound it in linen cloths with the spices. Okay? Hold that in mind. With the spices as is the burial custom of the Jews. Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden and in the garden a new tomb.

Okay. You might think, what's going on? When someone is so sensitive to the old testament as John was, you don't just link words together without thinking. And the only other place in all of scripture where this word for spices and garden come together is in the song of songs in one place, and I'll read that for you. It's in chapter six verse three.

Let me read it for you here. Chapter six verse one through three says this, and just think about this, remember John sent us here because of the burial of Jesus. Think about this in that light. Where has your beloved gone? Oh most beautiful among women.

Where has your beloved turned that we may seek him with you? My beloved has gone down to his garden to the beds of spices to graze in the gardens and to gather lilies. I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine. He grazes among the lilies. Now that's staggering to consider that John who knows the Old Testament, he knows what he's doing.

He takes this word spices and garden. You see that in verse two? My where has your beloved gone? You you hear this being asked to the church, right, at the burial of Jesus, where is your beloved? And the church's answer, my beloved has gone down to the garden, to his garden, to the beds of spices.

So by taking those two words used only here and by John, garden and spices, John is saying when you read about the dead body of Jesus buried in the tomb, hear Song of Songs six one through three. When you see that crucified and broken body laid in the earth, what I see and what I'm calling you to see is the beloved going down to the garden, entering into this place such that the one whom he loves says, I am my beloved and my beloved is mine. Now the truly surprising, almost scandalous point here is that in the song, this part is talking about the union of man and woman in marriage. This is talking about the covenant of marriage being brought together. So so the marital union of man and woman, nothing in the human experience more intimate than this, which pictures Yahweh and his people together in fellowship.

This moment is what's being pictured here when the bride says, my beloved has come down into the garden. And John, scandalously, shockingly, John says, when Jesus goes to the grave, that's the moment. That's the moment. God himself is descending into the grave. Why?

Because his bride is there. His beloved is dead in her sin, dead in her curse, dead in her exile. The bride is laid in the grave of forsakenness. And by going down into the grave, Yahweh is seeking her out and making her his own such that she's able to say, I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine. That's what's happening when the body of our God goes down into the grave.

Why is he doing this? Because that's where his beloved is. That's where his bride is. That's where his church is. That's where his people are.

In the grave, dead in the grave of their sin. And he says, I'm coming for you. I'm coming for you there, which means I'm going to be buried. So and look what happens. John tells us, read read Song of Songs six one through three when Jesus goes down into the grave.

And what's the what's the result of his burial? Verse three, I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine. Jesus' burial purchases those words for the lips of his church. That's why his people can say that because he came down to her and he found her and he made her his own in the midst of her death. I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine.

So in in a transformation that is absolutely unimaginable, John says, the grave, our grave, your grave, our death, our exile, that place of curse, the place where we lie dead because of our sins, that becomes the wedding chamber where God descends to meet his people and to gather them in love to himself and make them his own. That is an unbelievable transformation of perspective. Do you remember what Psalm 88 said? Is your steadfast love declared in the grave? Is your faithfulness declared in Abaddon?

And the burial of the Lord says yes. Yet by God's name, yes, his faithfulness is declared in the grave. His love breaks in to the tomb. Yes. Look.

Look at our Lord and our God. Look. See in your mind his body laid in the tomb. Why? Because that's where we are.

Buried with us, buried for us. There's there's no escaping this love. There's places in the scripture where it says, let the mountains fall on me and hide me from his face. And he says, I'm breaking through the mountain to bring you to myself. I'm coming down.

I'm boring through the bones of the earth to claim my bride for myself. That is why our Lord and our God is buried in the tomb, to make his people his own, to break in and to save. So John looks at the body laid in the tomb and he says, there is our beloved one. Come down to find us in our curse, to find us in our exile, to embrace us in our forsakenness and to make us his own. And so we ought to say, what what do we say in the silence as Jesus is laid in the tomb?

We are to lay our hands over our mouth and say, there's no God like Yahweh. There's no God like him. There's no God like him. Now John can only say this because of the because the one in the tomb is raised. That's the only way this happens.

The resurrection is not just the happy ending. It changes. It transforms the sorrows into joy. We'll look at that next week, but we're tasting it already because the only reason John can say this, the only reason John can look at the tomb and say the wedding chamber of God is because Christ is risen, and that changes everything. Now very briefly for the sake of time, let me touch upon how this changes the grave.

The grave is the place of the curse, but when Christ enters it as the bridegroom, the place of the curse becomes the place of blessing. The very place of the curse becomes the place of blessing. The grave is the place of exile, but when Jesus enters it, the very place of exile becomes the context of his presence. The very place that was defined by him not being there is now the place where he is to be found in fellowship. It's as if the desert becomes an ocean and the wilderness becomes a fruitful field.

The grave is a place of forsakenness. When Jesus enters it, the very heart of God forsakenness becomes the sanctuary of intimate meeting with God himself. I mean, it blows our expectations out of the water. Here's the one place God could never be, says the psalmist. Is your faithfulness declared in the grave?

This is where the forget the forgotten go. And that's the very place where he says, I'm going to meet you in the absolute consummation of my love to bring you to myself. Forsakenness is obliterated when God enters it and fills it with himself. So the resurrection of Christ transforms his burial so that we now see his burial as him entering into the curse and turning it to blessing, entering into the exile and turning it to fellowship, entering into forsakenness and turning it to presence. And this matters for us and that's where I wanna close.

This matters for us today. This change is not just an interesting theological change to think about, This change breaks in for me and for you every single day as we live in this world, which remember is is like a grave in many senses. Three ways and then we're done. This, the burial of the risen Christ transforms our grave in these ways. First, it transforms our spiritual grave.

So remember we're born in spiritual death. Humans are. We're born in the grave. We're born in exile. But Jesus' descent into his literal grave is also his descent into our spiritual graves.

He meets us. How did he meet us in our addiction, in our perversion, in our hardheartedness, in our lovelessness, in our rebellion? How did God show up there? Because he descended there in his death. He meets us in our spiritual grave because he's descended into his own grave before us.

So because he was buried, he meets us in our spiritual grave and raises us and raises us. Second, he meets us in our literal grave. So I said earlier, everyone, unless the Lord returns, everyone here is going to be buried. We're going to die. We're going to die.

But if we're trusting Christ, his death is that death. His death is your death. Not just in a metaphorical way, but when we come to die, we will find he's breathing my last breath with me. I'm breathing my last breath with him. When Jesus hangs on the cross and breathes out his final breath, it's my final breath too.

It's your final breath too. It's every Christian's final breath too. When we come to die, when we come to that place where it's just everybody's stripped away and it's only you, glory to God, it's not only you because you'll find Jesus Christ there in the midst of it with you. Dying your death with you because he went to your grave before you and therefore will raise you up beyond it. That moment will be filled with his presence.

Death hands you the bitter leaden chalice of death and you take it into your hands and it's filled with the wine of Christ's presence because he went before us. But then finally, and I I want you to hear this because this this is crucial. There's a third kind of grave. There's a third kind of grave that his death transforms, his burial transforms. We said earlier that the grave is the silent muted gray season that follows the trauma of death.

Okay? That's what the grave is. But that's also true in our lives, in our experience. Here's what I mean. The moment of bitter loss, the moment of the unimaginable accident, the moment that the feared diagnosis is given, the moment that tragedy breaks in from nowhere, that's the death.

That's the death. It's painful. It's traumatic. It's violent. It's shocking.

That's the death. But after that death comes a burial. In our own experience, after the cross of the horror happens, there's a grave that we go into. After the trauma of our Good Friday passes, there's the baffling silence of Saturday that we enter into when we're saying, what do I do now? What am I supposed to do now?

How do I live now? How do I go on? How this death having happened, whatever it was, this loss, this brokenness, this shattering, how do I continue to eat and drink and plan and live as if I'm still alive when when my soul is buried under six feet of grief. That's that's the grave that I'm thinking of. The grave I'm thinking of is the years laid before you that seem gray and lifeless under the shadow of your loss.

And you think, how am I going to live this now? The grief I'm thinking of is the or the grave I'm thinking of is the flood of grief that still hits you and overwhelms you every time you go to that place, every time that memory comes in, every time that season of year comes around again. That's the grave I'm talking about. The grave I'm talking about here is the hollowness carved out by the loss that's still there after the prayers, after the caregivers, after the meal train. Praise God for all of that.

But after that, there's still hollowness. There's still loss, and I have to live with this. That's the grave I'm talking about. That that's the grave. I'm thinking of the holy Saturday moment when the weeping of Friday is over and the light of Sunday that will turn that weeping to joy has not yet dawned, and here I am baffled in the middle, silent, sitting, waiting, wondering.

And some of you, I'm sure, are in that grave right now. Some of you have been in that grave probably for a long time. And part of what the burial of Jesus means is that he is in that grave with you. He's in that moment with you. He's in the numbness.

He's in the aching. He's in the long gray season. He's in the waiting and the wondering. He is in the grave with you now. And he's in it not as an indifferent presence, not as just another corpse.

He's in it as the bridegroom come to find his bride. He's filling hear this. He's filling these moments with his steadfast love and faithfulness. Can it be shown here? Yes.

He's flooding these moments with his life giving purpose. He's embracing these moments by his own burial, which means these very moments entombed believer will be raised up with his resurrection. And just as when we look at the grave of Christ, we think resurrection, joy, victory, so too you will look at your every grave in this life. The day is coming when you will look back at every grave in this life and see nothing but his love. See nothing but his love.

Is your steadfast love declared in the grave? Is your faithfulness declared in Abaddon? Are your wonders worked in the darkness or your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness? Yes. Because Jesus is buried, yes, it's true.

Let me pray for us. Father, it is it is beyond our conception that our Lord and our God should go before us into the grave and and we've touched on only the slightest outskirts of this glory this morning. But I pray father that that he would meet your people. Lord Jesus, you who were buried, you who became one of the dead, meet your people, I pray, in their graves, whether it's spiritual, whether it's the literal grave to which we're going, or whether it's the grave of sorrow under which they're laboring. Meet, oh Lord, your people in their graves by your own burial, by your own loving pursuit of them so that in the midst of the darkest night still we might be able to say, I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine.

We thank you, father, for this great savior in his name. Amen.

Thank you for listening to this message from King's Tree Church in Sabina, Ohio. To see more of the beauty of God in the crucified and risen Jesus Christ, come worship with us on Sundays at 10AM or visit our website at kingstreechurch.org.