We have been following the Lord
Jesus in Mark's Gospel through his life on this earth. And we've
been especially following him closely in this last week of
his life. And it's extraordinary, isn't
it, that all the events in that last few days, and especially
in that last day, prior to the death of the Lord Jesus, were
organized to increase the suffering of both his soul and his body,
to make his humiliation as complete as possible, to make that suffering,
the suffering that caused great drops of blood, to burst forth
from within, in a sense, a broken heart under the weight of the
anticipation of Him becoming sin. And on the cross, and in
that time before the cross, everything was done to cause Him the maximum
pain and the maximum shame and the greatest humiliation. But
He came as God and He is God and He came with a purpose. And it's extraordinary, isn't
it, that that same providential organizing of events prior to
His crucifixion and His death led to His humiliation. The same
extraordinary power, as it were, after His death And all of it
is done to magnify the glory of His person and the glory of
the work that He has done. That torn veil showed that there
is now access to God and God's access to man. And we no longer
come to God via the ceremonies of the Old Testament, nor by
the law. We saw the centurion's confession,
a confession extracted from a man whose heart had been hardened
by all those years of military service. We saw those women,
and we see them again today, faithful to the end. their love maintained by grace,
their devotion to Him remarkable. And now we see Joseph of Arimathea
protecting that precious body from any further degradation
and securing for the Lord Jesus an honourable burial. that he
was a man who was a secret disciple, and now he comes into open confession. See how things have changed as
a result of the death of the Lord Jesus. This is the center
point of all of human history. It is the most important event
in all of history, in everyone's history. And everything has changed. the insults of the soldiers,
the mocking of the religious leaders, and now followed by
the tenderness of mourning women. And then these men come, Nicodemus
and Joseph, and reveal their friendship. That scourge which
had ripped his flesh from his bones, the nails and the spitting
of men, is now followed by delicate perfumes and spices. That robe they put on him to
mock him, that crown of thorns, and that nakedness to expose
his shame is now followed by pure white linen and a rich man's
tomb. A pure new tomb, undefiled by
anyone else's death. Let's read in Mark chapter 15
verse 40. One of the elements I want us
to see today, if the Lord allows, is that the worship of God, the
most important thing you can do in this world, the most important
grace gift you can receive from God is to worship Him, is to
honour Him. And I trust these verses will
show us that it's a very, very different thing to how it's perceived
in this religious world, which is the same as the religious
world of Jesus' day. Verse 40 of chapter 15. There were also women looking
on from afar, Among whom were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother
of Jane Celeste and of Joseph and of Salome, who followed him
and ministered to him when he was in Galilee, and many other
women who came up with him to Jerusalem. Now when the evening
had come, because it was preparation day, that is the day before the
Sabbath, Joseph of Arimathea, a prominent council member, who
was himself waiting for the kingdom of God, coming and taking courage,
or being bold, went in to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Pilate marveled that he was already
dead and summoning the centurion, he asked him if he had been dead
for some time. So when he found out from the
centurion, he granted the body to Joseph. Then he brought fine
linen, took him down, wrapped him in the linen, and he laid
him in a tomb which had been hewn out of the rock. and rolled
a stone against the door of the tomb, and Mary Magdalene, and
Mary the mother of Joseph, observed where he was laid." Firstly,
let's just look at these faithful women. It is remarkable how women
are honoured in the Scriptures. And it is Christianity of all
religions that honours women. These women were faithful to
the end. There was no legal requirement
for them to go up to the Feasts of Jerusalem. But they left all
behind and they came and when all others forsook Him, they
stayed with Him. Mary was promised when she met
Simeon in the temple, that a sword will pierce through your own
soul also. What pain these women must have
experienced. What a remarkable contrast between
the mocking and the humiliation of those crowds that walk by,
treating the Lord Jesus in his death with contempt. Their silence and their presence
speaks volumes. And it's said in these verses
that they did two things. The two things that faith does,
the two things that grace brings. They followed the Lord. They
followed him all the way from Galilee to Jerusalem. And it's interesting that Mary
Magdalene's name is mentioned again and again. She will become
famous as the woman who was the first to see the risen Lord Jesus. But she was a woman out of whom
seven demons had been cast. So these women were an expression
at the cross of the fact that those who have been forgiven
much, love much. And they ministered to Him. They
ministered to Him all through His ministry on this earth. And
some of these women were prominent women. In Luke 8.3 there's one
called Joanna the wife of Chusa, Herod's steward. What it must
have cost her to follow the Lord Jesus, to follow Him to the cross
of Jerusalem. So much of our understanding
of Christian service is tied up with our worldly thinking
about ourselves and not associated with grace thinking. How much peace do we miss out
on and how much thankfulness ceases to flow because we don't
realise that it's a gift of God, a grace gift of God to be called
to minister to the Lord. These women ministered to the
Lord. They ministered to Him and they
ministered to His body. His body is the Church. Christian
service is not a burden and it's not a legal requirement. It's a gracious privilege from
the Lord himself. He owns the cattle on a thousand
hills. He is God Almighty and therefore
when God allows us to serve Him and His people. It is all a grace
gift. See, we serve in extraordinary
ways unseen by men. Why does God honour these women? They just stood there all day. You see, we serve each other
as we serve the body of the Lord Jesus. We minister to each other
by our presence and by the faithfulness that God works in us as much
and more by grand deeds that this world thinks are wonderful. We can minister to the Lord by
silent presence with Him, to be witnesses like these women
to His sufferings, to be witnesses to His words, the words that
He spoke that day. So these women are honoured and
the church of God honors women and their ministry and their
service. God forbids them preaching. But that's not a restriction,
but a grace gift from God. God honors the women who minister
to him and his people. Christian service and Christian
love is defined and now redefined. Down the hill, just around the
corner, was a huge religious celebration going on. These people were the true worshippers
of God. They revealed their devotion
to Him, their love to Him. the desire for His honour, the
desire that His person be respected, for Him to receive the glory. This man, Joseph of Arimathea,
we know so little about him. We know that he was a rich man.
We know that he was from a town of Arimathea. We know that he
was a prominent council member. He was a member of the Sanhedrin,
that court that had condemned the Lord Jesus to death. But Luke 23.50 says that Joseph
was a good and just man who had not consented to their decision. And as we saw in verse 43, he
was himself waiting for the kingdom of God. And to the outside world
and to many of us, we would say, what on earth was Joseph doing? What had Joseph done in those
three years? The bigger question is, What
has God done in Jesus' life? You see, God's timing is always
right. You see, all of us maybe wonder
about our place in God's Kingdom, about our time of service. Any
of us that know anything of our own hearts, look at anything
that we've ever done and see it as pathetic. and see more
the sin that's mixed up with it, like Paul says in Romans
7, rather than good and glorious sins. But all of God's children
all over this world are there at a time and a place and amongst
people all ordained by our God. See, he was the Lord's man. And he was the Lord's man at
God's hour of choosing. He was in exactly the position
that he needed to be in to do what the Lord had for him to
do. He was in the right place He was there perfectly ordained
of God. He was there at that time so
that God's eternal purposes, His good purposes, His fulfilling
of Scripture, His giving and sustaining faith God always uses
both somebodies and nobodies, but always ultimately in a way
so it's seen to be that the Lord has done the work. This is God's
gift to Joseph of Arimathea. It's a great gift for him to
have been in that place. Without his position and possibly
without his previous silence, he may not have been able to
go to Pilate as he did at that time and fulfill the scripture
of Isaiah 53.9. All of it's done, ultimately,
too, so that God's children have reason for faith, to look to
God and His words, and to trust. Just put yourself in Joseph's
shoes in that previous 24 hours. He would have known about the
scheming and the plotting and the sly plans to have the Lord
Jesus murdered. It had been going on for three
years and it was no secret. How many times would Joseph have
said, like we say so often, if only, if only I had done this,
if only I had done that, things would have been different. God
is bigger. God is more sovereign. God is
more gracious. God's purposes are more extraordinarily
fulfilled than we can imagine. how weak Joseph must have felt
that day. But God's promises were that
these wicked men had planned, as Isaiah 53 and Isaiah says, They had made his grave with
the wicked. They had planned for what they
saw as the carcass of the Lord Jesus to be thrown out on the
scrap heap, to be eaten by birds and maggots. But, says Isaiah,
but with the rich at his death. The rich at his death. This was
a new turn. Joseph was a wise man. He was preparing for his own
death. And he wanted to die and be buried
near Jerusalem. So he had gone to considerable
trouble and expense to find a piece of rock big enough to build a
tomb. And to have those stonemasons
dig it out and make a round stone that could roll against it. You
see, the purpose of God is never in any danger of failing. And
the will of God is never hindered And the work of God and the scriptures
will always be fulfilled. God's cause is never ever for
one tiny second in jeopardy. God will glorify His Son. The other thing that Joseph shows
us, and Nicodemus as well, is that the Lord, our God, always
has many more disciples than we realize. So many of us spend
time like Elijah, wondering where they all are. I'm the only one
left, said Elijah, and they're about to kill me. Very soon,
thought Elijah, in Israel there would be no witness to God at
all. and the Lord said to Elijah,
I have reserved, I have kept, I have preserved 7,000. Elijah
knew of none and yet there were 7,000 in Israel who have all
not bowed the knee to Baal and every mouth that has not kissed
him. Why hadn't they bowed to me to
bow? Why hadn't they kissed Baal? Not because they were bigger,
or stronger, or wiser. God says, I have reserved them. The Lord, even now, has many
hidden ones in the earth. maybe many hidden ones in this
town, maybe hidden ones in this room. They're out of our sight,
but they're never out of His sight, never away from His love
and His mercy. So it should cause us, as the
Lord allows, firstly, to be charitable. Our brothers and sisters will
stumble and fall, and our brothers and sisters will act in ways
like cowards. Where were they when they should
have stood up? They might be Joseph's. We need to be gracious. And we
also look around this world We are hopeful. We have reason to
hope. The Lord says, many shall come
from the East and West. Many will come. When the Lord
Jesus' great victory is revealed to all creation on that last
great day, the multitude is beyond numbering, beyond our numbering,
not beyond His. And Joseph was caused at this
hour by God to be a man of faith. And he was made by God to be
bold when many others were weak. And he was made by God to be
strong and courageous when others were hiding and terrified. And
we also need to remember that what is the object of Joseph's
faith? It's easy to seemingly follow
a great teacher and a great miracle worker, but Joseph now openly
believed, and he openly confessed, and he honoured the Lord Jesus,
and he publicly identified himself with Him. But he was identifying
himself with a dead corpse, bruised and bloody. There was nothing
in his appearance that would cause a man to admire him. but our verse says that he went
to Pilate. He went to Pilate putting himself
in a place of danger with the Romans who could be fickle, but
certainly in a place of danger with the Jews. who would not have looked in
any favour upon him, identifying himself with his Saviour. And he was a man, as we have
seen again and again, he was a man who went outside the can. Hebrews 13.13 is a verse that
is good to lay to heart. I think over the last 10 years
since it was first brought to my attention, it's grown bigger
and bigger. It says, therefore, verse 12,
Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood,
suffered outside the gate. Therefore, let us go to him outside
the camp. the camp very clearly and very
evidently, from deep reason what we've been looking at, the camp
that we are to go outside of is the camp of organized Christian
religion in this world. That's the camp that he's talking
about. The camp that has multitudes
in it. The camp that has forms and ceremonies. The camp that has the law and
exalts the law. The camp that exalts human moral
activity. The camp that creates great zeal,
missionary zeal. tithing, getting your spice jars
out Beth Day, working out 10% and putting it aside. How zealous
for moral good works were these people. We mustn't think of them
as evil moral people. Until the Lord Jesus turned up
on the scene, these men looked as shiny and as polished in every
form possible. There are a couple of things
that Joseph did which are remarkable that day. Firstly, he went, says
our verse, he went into Pilate. He went into Pilate's palace. But the Jews, earlier that same
day, while plotting the murder of God, refused, according to
John 18 verse 28, they themselves did not go into the Praetorian,
lest they should be defiled, but they may eat the Passover. The Holy Spirit tells us that
Joseph went into that place. Cut off. from celebrating Passover. Something else is more significant. According to the Jewish law,
if you came into contact with a dead body, you had to go through
the most extraordinary and elaborate process that took one whole week. You were defiled. You were considered to be a sinner
if you touched a dead body. You're unclean. Unclean for seven
days. Read it about in Numbers 19. The elaborate ceremony of the
red heifer, Nicodemus and Joseph, by touching the body of the Lord
Jesus, were defiled and unable to enter that camp. And the next
day, that next day, that holy Sabbath, was a remarkable day. that one day of the Jewish year
when the high priest went into the Holy of Holies and bore blood
for his own sin, and bore blood and put it on the mercy seat
for the sins of the people, that you may be clean from all your
sins before the Lord, Leviticus says. Before the Lord, sorry. Here was that great feast day,
that great day when you ceremonially had your sins taken away by that
high priest. Joseph and Nicodemus both were
saying by their actions that day, we cannot have our sins
taken away by that priest and in that temple. They were confessing
the fact that to come to God, to be clean before God, is through
the Lord Jesus and through Him alone. No longer is the temple
a dwelling place of God. No longer is the law a way to
go to God. It is a huge statement. Nicodemus
was the teacher of Israel. He was Israel's leading theologian. And Joseph was a prominent member
of the Sanhedrin. Both of them are saying, we will
worship God outside the camp and we will not and we cannot
for another week, enter that religion and we will never go
back to it ever again. That's why the scriptures say
that Joseph was bold, for he was taking courage. It's a courageous thing that
God brings into the lives of his people. to stand outside
of that camp with all of its ceremonies and all of its significance
and all of its histories, and to say, no, we can never worship
God like that again, was a huge thing for people whose history
went back thousands of years. Just think. of what God is saying
to people today. The other thing, of course, that's
so significant in these verses is that we have the burial of
the Lord Jesus. There can be no real burial without
a real death. And it's extraordinary, isn't
it, the lengths to which God goes to establish that Jesus
really did die. All the enemies of God, in all
of their activities, made sure that we knew that there was a
dead Jesus on that cross. He gave up the ghost, the centurion
saw him die, they drove a spear into his heart. When that centurion
was asked by Pilate, who was amazed that he had died, marveled
that Jesus had died, that centurion gave that confession. And we
read in Matthew's Gospel, if you care to look at it in Matthew
27, we'll find that those Pharisees and those religious leaders were
so troubled about the thought that he might rise from the dead,
they that same next Sabbath day were prepared to defile themselves
and go to Pilate to seek their own ends. They wanted a guard
put on the tomb. Pilate said, you go and do as
you like. Seal it as well as you possibly
can. Imagine how diligent Caiaphas
and those guys were to make sure that that body didn't ever get
out of that tomb. by all attestment to the fact
that our Lord Jesus was truly dead. And throughout history
we've had these nonsensical ideas keep coming up again and again
about Jesus being in a swoon and in a cold tomb. So much nonsense is said or that
the story was that the disciples came and stole his body. God
wants us to hold that sort of nonsense in contempt. Matthew's
gospel was written within the lifespan of these people and
Matthew tells us plainly that the soldiers, when they found
that the tomb had been opened, they went back to the Jewish
religious leaders, nervous for their own lives, for to lose
a prisoner was to suffer death. And the Sanhedrin plot again,
and they are to say that you have to tell people that when
you're asleep, the disciples came and stole his body. What
great witnesses they are, these soldiers. While we're asleep,
these things happen. What court of law would you be
able to establish any evidence on the basis of what happened
while you were asleep? We are meant to hold those things
in derision. They come around regularly in
books and things at Easter time. But our Lord really was buried. He was taken down from that cross
by these friends of His. and he was taken to the place
of the lowest humility. He was buried in the earth. And Joseph, we are told, took
this fine linen and he wrapped the body of the Lord Jesus in
fine linen. Fine linen symbolises throughout
the scriptures holy thing the high priest wore linen clothes
it's called by God holy guns in Revelation 19 Let us be glad and rejoice and
give Him glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come and His
wife has made herself ready, and to her it was granted to
be arrayed in fine linen, clean and bright, for the fine linen
is the righteous axe of the saints. And they laid him in a tomb. Nicodemus brought myrrh and aloes,
a hundred pounds of myrrh and aloes, a king's burial, as best
they could do in their haste. And they laid him in a tomb.
They laid him in a grave. You see, now for Christians,
the grave becomes an honoured place for believers. Because the grave is a place
where our Lord once laid. It is a place, unless the Lord
comes back very soon, where most of us will lay. We will spend
some time in a grave. We will meet God. We will, for
a time, be in a grave. For God's children, it's no longer
a place of fear. It's called sleep, because God's
children are really alive. As Paul says, in one of my favourite
verses, I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer
I who live, but Christ lives in me, and the life which I now
live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God,
who loved me and gave himself for me. Job said, O that you would hide
me in the grave, that you would conceal me till your wrath is
past, that you would appoint me a set time and remember me. Isaiah says, your dead shall
live, and listen to these next words, together with my body
they shall arise. Awake and sing, you who dwell
in the dust, for your due is like the dew of herbs, and the
earth shall cast out the dead. You see, when the Lord Jesus
was circumcised, we were circumcised in Him. When He walked this earth
in holiness and righteousness, we walked this earth in Him,
before God, perfectly holy and just. When the Lord Jesus was
crucified, we were crucified with Him. When the Lord Jesus
was buried, we were buried with Him. When the Lord Jesus was
wrapped in linen, wrapped in that fine linen. Who else was
wrapped up with him? If we were crucified with him,
if we were buried with him, we are one with him. How does Paul put it? How does
God put it? For do you not know that as many
of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his
death. Therefore we were buried with
him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised
from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we should
walk in newness of life. For if we had been united together
in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in
the likeness of His resurrection. Knowing this, that our old man
was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done
away with, that we should no longer be slaves for sin. For he who has died has been
freed from sin. Now, if we died with Christ,
we believe that we shall also live with Him. Knowing that Christ,
having been raised from the dead, dies no more, death no longer
has dominion over Him. We are one with our Savior. Blessed are the dead who die
in the Lord. So the Lord Jesus had to die
to conquer death. He had to go into the grave to
overcome the power of the grave. And the grave is no longer a
terror for God's children. It's a place of resting for their
bodies just for a little while. And we know that He must arise
from the dead. And this is proof that our Lord
Jesus has triumphed over death and degrade, and He's shown us,
shown this way to all His followers, how because of who He is, because
of who He is as a successful, accomplished and accomplishing
Saviour, all that He secured, all that
He earned that day, belongs to us, his children. It's essential to our life, it's
essential to our eternity that the Lord Jesus be crucified and
be buried. It's also essential to what happens
in our lives here now, as God leads us to honour His body,
as those women honoured His body, as those men honoured that body,
that body that is his church seems broken and messy and seems
weak and insignificant. But God's children minister to
the Lord Jesus as we minister to that body by the grace that
he gives us. We're going to join in the Lord's
Supper now. It's a time for us to remember That broken body is our life. That shed blood are our sins
taken away. We are united with it.