Friday, September 20, 2024

PT-7 "Joseph of Arimathea" (Matt. 27:57-60)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 9/120/2024 8:55 AM

 

My Worship Time                                                                  Focus:  PT-7 “Joseph of Arimathea”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                              Reference:  Matthew 27:57-60

 

            Message of the verses:  “And when it was evening, there came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who himself had also become a disciple of Jesus.  This man went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus.  Then Pilate ordered it to be given over to him.  And Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn out of the rock; and he rolled a large stone against the entrance of the tomb and went away.”

 

            One of the things that I love about the study of God’s Word is the prophetic aspect that is in it, and this shows to me that the Bible, the Word of God is absolutely true.  We can see this aspect as we continue looking at Joseph of Arimathea and what he was doing with the body and burial of the Lord Jesus Christ.  Now before I look at that I want to talk about death and in particular the death of Jesus Christ.  What happened to Jesus after He died, for it was just His body that died.  I think that He death was a different kind of death than the death of a believer in that He had paid for the sins of the world, and when a believer dies it is like falling asleep and waking up right away in the arms of Jesus. 

 

            I think that it is best to just quote a paragraph from MacArthur’s commentary for best understanding what Joseph had to do in order to get, prepare, and bury the Lord Jesus’s Christ’s body.  “Joseph did not hurry because he was afraid of violating the Sabbath.  He had already defiled himself for Sabbath observance by going into the Praetorium to see Pilate and was about to defile himself further by handling the dead body of Jesus.  He operated with haste because, like every other participant in this great drama, he was being moved under God’s divinely ordained and scripturally predicted power and according to His timetable.”  Now as we think about this, the truth is that once the Lord’s Supper was completed with Jesus and His disciples that this ended the Jewish celebration of the Passover, for Jesus and His disciples celebrated the very last Passover, and then celebrated the very first Lord’s Supper, and so en effect Joseph was not doing anything wrong for it had dawned a new day after the Lord’s Supper, ending the Passover celebration. 

 

            Now after removing the Lord’s body from the cross we see that Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn out of the rock.  John tells us the following in John 19:42 “Therefore because of the Jewish day of preparation, since the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.”  In order to understand a few more things that were happening I am going to now quote from John’s gospel once again:  “38 After these things Joseph of Arimathea, being a disciple of Jesus, but a secret one for fear of the Jews, asked Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus; and Pilate granted permission. So he came and took away His body. 39 Nicodemus, who had first come to Him by night, also came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pounds weight. 40 So they took the body of Jesus and bound it in linen wrappings with the spices, as is the burial custom of the Jews. 41 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. 42 Therefore because of the Jewish day of preparation, since the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there” (John 19:38-42).  Now we see that it was Nicodemus who was assisting Joseph of Arimathea in the preparation and burial of the Lord Jesus.  Notice that John gives more details on how the body of Jesus was prepared as there was about a hundred pounds weight in what Jesus was wrapped in.  I have to say that there are people who say that Jesus never really died as when He was put into the cool of the tomb that He revived.  To that I say it is nonsense as we see in John’s gospel that there was about a hundred pounds of what every was used to wrap His body.  Another thing is that is true and that is when the Roman’s crucified a person the end result was they were all dead.

 

            MacArthur adds that spices were used in the wrapping of the dead bodies by the Jewish people, unlike the Egyptians who took a very long time to embalm bodies after death.

 

            The following quote comes from A Harmony of the Gospels (Robert L. Thomas and Stanley N. Gundry, eds. [Chicago: Moody, 1978], p. 250).  “The disciples who had openly followed Jesus during His lifetime ran away at the end but the two who had kept their faith secret while He was alive…came forward publicly to give Him an appropriate burial.”

 

            MacArthur writes “Although the gospels mention only that Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Joses were watching the burial (Matt. 27:61; Mark 15:47), it is possible that they assisted Joseph and Nicodemus.  Later, they prepared their own spices and came to the tomb early Sunday morning, planning to further anoint Jesus’ body (Luke 23:56-24:1).”

 

            Now after all of the preparation of the body was taken care or Joseph “rolled a large stone against the entrance of the tomb and went away.”  I think that in most places of the world today that when a person buried they are buried in the ground, six feet down in order to be below the frost line, but back then we see that the burial places had large stones in front of the cave or place where the burial took place in order not to allow animals in and desecrate the bodies.  Sometimes there were valuables involved in the burial site and so this was also why there were stones to cover the entrance.

 

            Well it has been a whole week to get to know Joseph of Arimathea and I have to say that I truly have a great deal of respect for the courage that he had in order to take care of the body of Jesus.  Tomorrow, Lord willing, we have a short look at “Two Marys.”

 

9/20/2024 9:36 AM

 

 

 

 

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