God’s Son: “Buried”

 “I believe in Jesus Christ -- who suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.” The Apostles’ Creed

This is a sermon based on a word that doesn’t seem necessary. We know Jesus died. We know he rose from the dead. If we know what happened on Friday and we know what happened on Sunday, why bother adding the word “buried?” And besides I’m tired of this Apostles Creed preaching series – so what pastor?

Yes of course Jesus was buried—that makes sense. That’s what you do with dead bodies. You bury them. But nobody else has ever died like Jesus did!

Jesus died for our sins. He rose on the third day. Surely that’s the part that matters to us. But we assume that he was only buried for approximately 40 hours.

In a Creed where words are used sparingly, where whole areas of doctrine are either assumed or passed over in silence, where the whole of Christ’s teaching ministry and all of his miracles are not even mentioned, why does the Creed say he was buried? Why state the obvious when so much else is left out?

If the writers thought it important to include the word “buried” in the Creed, then it must be important, and there must be something here we need to think about. As I think about it, it occurs to me that I’ve never actually heard a sermon on the burial of Jesus.

Most of us, when we read the story of Jesus’ life, tend to go straight from his death to his resurrection. Almost without thinking, we go from “He gave up his spirit” to “Early on the first day of the week ¼” as if nothing important happened in between.

But it is precisely at this point that the Creed forces us to stop and take another look at the biblical text. The simple word “buried” tells us more than what happened to the body of Jesus. It alerts us to an area of biblical truth that we might otherwise overlook.

I Corinthians 15: 1-6 contains a concise summary of the gospel. Paul even says in verse 1, “I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you.” Then he goes on to spell out the gospel in verses 4-5, “For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve.” Notice how clearly he lays out the gospel message:

He was crucified. He was buried. He was raised on the third day. He appeared.

1. He was crucified. Proof: He was buried.

2. He was raised. Proof: He was seen.

Either way the result is the same. Paul regarded the burial of Jesus as an essential part of the gospel message. When he preached the gospel, he included the burial of Jesus in his message.

So his burial is more than the fact that he was placed in the tomb. It is a part of prophecy and part of the gospel message. And that’s why it appears in the Apostles’ Creed.

The details of Jesus’ burial appear in all four gospels: Matthew 27: 57-61; Mark 15: 42-47; Luke 23: 50-56; John 19: 38-42.

>Jesus is dead by 3:00 p.m. Sundown (marking the beginning of the Jewish Sabbath) begins at 6:00 p.m. when Jesus’ would have to be buried due to Sabboth.

>Eventually a man called Joseph of Arimathea steps forward to help bury the body. (Mark tells us that Joseph bravely went to Pilate to ask for Jesus’ body.)

>Joseph and Nicodemus take down the body of Jesus from the cross. These two who take care of Jesus’ body are Jewish leaders who are also secret believers.

After cleaning the body, Joseph and Nicodemus began to wrap it tightly with a linen cloth. John tells us that they had 75 pounds of aloes and myrrh that they interspersed with the linen as it wrapped around his body. All of that would have taken the better part of two hours.

Remarkably, two ancient pieces of cloth, the Shroud of Turin and the Sudarium of Oviedo, exist today. Both are revered as relics, and each bears the name of the city where it currently resides.

First and foremost is the Shroud of Turin. Secured in a vault in the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Turin, Italy, the Shroud is believed by millions to be the burial cloth of Jesus.

It is a fine linen cloth, measuring 14.5 feet by 3.5 feet, and mysteriously displays a finely detailed negative photographic image — front and back, head to toe, of an anatomically correct man who appears to have been tortured, beaten, and crucified. Note that, in their accounts of Christ’s suffering and death on the cross, the Gospels mention a “fine linen cloth.” And the Bible references Jesus as a “Man of Linen.”

Perhaps it is a coincidence, but clearly seen on the body of the crucified man in the Shroud are gruesome markings consistent with the Gospel accounts of Christ’s Passion.

You can count over 100 whip marks, possibly from scourging by Roman flagra, and identify on his wrists and feet obvious wounds that could have been from large spikes.

Other markings are compatible with what could have been a crown of thorns. On closer examination, you can spot bruises (from beatings?) on his face, knees (from falling?), and the back of his shoulders (from carrying a heavy cross?), and a large bloody mark (from a spear?) in his side. Like the crucified Jesus in Gospel accounts, the man in the Shroud had no broken bones.

Then there is the Sudarium of Oviedo. It resides in the Cathedral of Oviedo, in Spain. The Sudarium is a piece of linen cloth, 34 by 21 inches, thought to have been used to cover the head of Jesus immediately after the crucifixion (John 20: 7).

Unlike the Shroud, the Sudarium does not display an image. The Sudarium contains male blood of type AB, however, which matches the blood on the Shroud. Moreover, the patterns of blood flow on the Sudarium are consistent with those of a crucified man.

Indeed, the Sudarium and the Shroud covered the same person, as Juan Manuel Miñarro, the author of a study sponsored by the Spanish Center of Sindonology, recently concluded. “We have come to a point where it seems absurd to suggest that ‘by happenstance’ all of the wounds, lesions and swelling coincides on both cloths,” said the center’s president, Jorge-Manuel Rodríguez. “Logic requires that we conclude that we are speaking of the same person.”

>So now it is past 5:00 p.m. They have less than 60 minutes to finish their work.

Joseph uses a tomb he had reserved for his own use just down over the hill.

>The two men—secret disciples—carry the dead body of Jesus to the tomb. Close behind are Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, weeping. They laid the body of Jesus on a ledge and turned to go. When they got outside, Joseph and Nicodemus rolled a great stone over the entrance. The women sat by the side watching.

Then Joseph and Nicodemus leave. Then the two Marys’ leave. Darkness fell on the garden cemetery. Everyone had left, Jesus’ body was alone.

Why are we given so much detail about Jesus’ burial?

I can think of five answers to that question.

To prove that he really died. This was a huge issue in the early church—and remains so to this very day. The details of his burial reinforce the central truth—that Jesus really and truly died on the cross.

To show the true cost our salvation. We are accustomed to saying, “Our sins put Jesus on the cross.” That’s true, but we can say it stronger than that. “Our sins sent him to the grave.” He was buried because he died carrying the heavy burden of our guilt and shame.

To teach us that God does not forsake us when we die. We know that “precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.” Our Lord was cut off by the Father’s decree. It pleased the Lord to crush his only Son (Isaiah 53:10). Yet in that crushing, God did not abandon his Son forever.

The ministrations of Joseph and Nicodemus and the kind care of the sorrowing women were God’s way of saying, “I have not forsaken my Son in his death.” We learn from this that burying the dead is a Christian duty and a Christian service to our loved ones. We do well to care for the dying and to provide for a decent burial for the dead. If God cared enough for his Son to see that he was properly buried, even so we should do the same for those we love.

To sanctify death so that we will not be afraid to die. Here we come even closer to the heart of the gospel. Is there any fear more fundamental than the fear of death? But Jesus has transformed death for those who follow him. What happens to us, happened first to him. What happened to him will one day happen to us.

He entered death’s dark realm and not only subdued it. He conquered it once and for all. By his victory over death he has sanctified it so that we no longer need to fear it. He went into the tomb and then he came out. Thus we will not fear to go in, knowing that one day by God’s grace, we too will come out.

To picture the complete removal of our sins. We know that Jesus died so that our sins might be forgiven. But there is an aspect of this truth that we often overlook. John the Baptist said of Jesus, “Behold, the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world” (John 1: 29). One of the primary Hebrew words for forgiveness means to “lift and take away.” That’s forgiveness. God removes the burden of our sin, and then he takes it far, far away.

When Christ went into the tomb, he carried our sins with him. When he came out of the tomb, our sins were gone forever.

When our sins are forgiven and removed, we see them no more. The burden is not only “lifted at Calvary,” it is rolled away so that we will never have to carry that burden again. The Bible uses a number of images to describe how God deals with our sins:

God blots out our sins as a thick cloud (Isaiah 44:22).

God forgets our sins and remembers them no more (Jeremiah 31:34).

God puts our sins behind His back (Isaiah 38:17).

God buries our sins in the depths of the sea (Micah 7:19).

God removes our sins as far as the east is from the west (Psalm 103:12).

There is an almost forgotten Hymn that directly connects the removal of our sins with the burial of Christ. In 1910 an evangelist named J. Wilbur Chapman (he was one of Billy Sunday’s teachers) wrote a gospel song that traces the story of Christ’s life from his birth through his life, death, resurrection, and his second coming. The song is called “One Day” and the chorus goes like this:

Living, He loved me; dying, He saved me;

Buried He carried my sins far away;

Rising, He justified freely forever;

One day He’s coming—O glorious day!

That second line connects the burial of Jesus with the complete removal of our sins.

Charles Spurgeon called Jesus Christ the “great Scapegoat” who stands in our place, bearing our sins, taking them far away. Have you laid your sins on Jesus?

Have you trusted in him who died to forgive your sins and take them far away? Rejoice in your deliverance from sin, and adore the Redeemer who paid the price and took the heavy load, who went to the cross and then to the grave, that you might be set free. Amen.