This is a message by Pastor Mark Fox of Antioch Community Church in Elon, North Carolina. For other sermons from Antioch, you can visit the church website at antiochchurchnc.org. Now, let's turn our hearts to the word of God. Okay, our scripture today is Mark 15, verses 42 through 47. And when evening had come, since it was the day of preparation, that is, the day before the Sabbath, Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of the council, who was also himself looking for the kingdom of God, took courage and he went to Pilate and asked him for the body of Jesus. Pilate was surprised to hear that he should have already died. And summoning the centurion, he asked him whether he was dead already. And when he had learned from the centurion that he was dead, he granted the corpse to Joseph. And Joseph brought a linen shroud and taking him down, wrapped him in the linen shroud and laid him in the tomb that had been cut out of the rock. And he rolled a stone against the entrance of the tomb. Mary Magdalene and Mary, the mother of Joseph, saw where he was laid. Well, good morning and thank you, worship team. And I think everyone was, at least I was, just in awe of the words we were singing and didn't know what to say. How do you add to the angels' roar, right? I like that, I like that line. The angels roar their praise for Jesus when they saw him come. Welcome to you who are online with us this morning as well. It's good to see the house a little more full today. Lots of people were missing last week and we're thankful for all of you who are here today. Dallas Willard wrote, discipleship is the process of becoming who Jesus would be if he were you. I like that. So Mark records two reactions in this text we're gonna look at this morning to the news that Jesus had died, and these two reactions could not be any more different. The stark difference between the reaction of Pilate and the reaction of Joseph are completely opposites, aren't they? Sinclair Ferguson wrote, 24 hours rendered the names of these two men immortal in human history. One for good reasons and one not so much. Let's look at this passage today under these main points. Pilate's indifference, Joseph's discipleship, and Jesus' borrowed tomb. So in this late afternoon, it's what the Jews called the first evening. It was the hours between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. We know that Jesus died at 3 p.m. and we know that they needed to have his body off of the cross and buried before 6 p.m. because not only was it preparation day, the day before the Sabbath, but it was also what? What big holiday? It was Passover. And so it was very important that Jesus not remain on the tomb. You know, on the cross, the Jews had a law that it was not lawful for a man to be unburied before the Sabbath. In fact, even if that man had been cursed, a cursed man who was hanged on a tree, Deuteronomy 21, even he should be given proper burial. And so that's why we see this encounter between Pilate and Joseph of Arimathea. Joseph we know was a member of the council, he was a wealthy man, he was a powerful man, and we assume that he had access even to the Roman governor. You couldn't just walk in and talk to Pilate if you were nobody, but if you were somebody, as Joseph was, then you could. Now Pilate will be forever remembered as the man who condemned Jesus to death by crucifixion. And when he hears the news from Joseph of Arimathea that Jesus is dead, he's surprised. Why would he be surprised? Remember the other time Pilate was surprised about Jesus? Right? Two times Mark uses that same word. The first time he was surprised that Jesus didn't defend himself against the accusations of the nonsense people that brought accusations. He wouldn't even justify those with a response. And Pilate was surprised at that because Jesus remained silent. as a lamb led to the slaughter." Now he's surprised because he hears the news that it's three in the afternoon and Jesus was crucified at nine in the morning and he's already dead, six hours. because usually, as I've told you, as you know, crucifixion normally took much longer than that. Now, he was so surprised that he sent for the centurion, right? I love this. He calls the centurion, the man who had stood before Jesus when he died, and he brings the centurion in, and he comes before Pilate, and Pilate says, is it true? This Jesus of Nazareth, king of the Jews guy, is he really dead? And I just imagine the centurion saying, yes, governor, this man is surely dead. Now, would it be possible that maybe the centurion said, yes, governor, and also this man truly is what? The son of God, right? Now, he probably didn't, but would it have even mattered? Would it even matter to Pilate? I don't think so, right? Because I think his heart was already hardened to the point where it wouldn't have made a difference. I think Pilate's conscience was showing some signs of life, just a little heartbeat there in the early part of the trial. When he was trying to convince the crowd, Why do you want to kill this guy? What has he done? I find no fault in him. What's the problem here? And there was a little bit of conscience, but now the deed is done. He's hardened his heart. He's washed his hands. He's done his duty. He's pleased the crowd so that Caesar won't be mad at him. And that's really all that Pilate ultimately cares about. He's not concerned for Jesus. He's concerned for himself, his power. his political career and look he needs to make sure when Joseph of Arimathea comes and says I'd like to take the body of Jesus down please he's got to make sure that Jesus is really dead because if not he is culpable Pilate has not done his job the buck stops with him And so he calls the centurion to make sure. He needs to make sure that the king of the Jews is actually dead. And that really serves the purpose of Mark's gospel, doesn't it? And it serves the purpose of the truth, because it's important that we know that Jesus was dead. In fact, if you look at Mark 44 and 45, notice the verses. He summons the centurion. Joseph says he's dead. He summons the centurion. Is he dead? Yes, he's dead, right? So Pilate agrees to release the corpse, which is a dead body. Four times there's a quadruple testimony in those two verses to the fact that Jesus was, in fact, dead. Why is that important? Why is it important that we know Jesus died? Because resurrection cannot happen without death. I mean, right? It stands to reason that we can't have a resurrection unless we have a dead Savior. And a dead Savior has to be brought back to life on Sunday in order for Friday to matter. And so the gospel is very clear here that the testimony is Jesus was dead. And it was important for this reason. Many over the centuries, even that century and the centuries that followed, and even today, there are people out there that use what they call the swoon theory. You've heard this, that Jesus didn't really die on the cross. I mean, come on, six hours, he wasn't dead. He simply, the heat exhaustion and all that, he just passed out, he swooned. And they took his body down prematurely and they put him in the coolness of the tomb that was inside the grave, a little cave there. They put him in the cool tomb and he revived. Right. You have to have a lot more faith to believe something as ludicrous as that. But look, there were incidences of people in first century Palestine, in fact, not just first century, you can find this in every century, right? I told you the story about the guy in Louisiana was in the morgue and they were getting ready to embalm him and he woke up. But anyway, the first century it was possible for someone to be buried prematurely. So the Jewish law was, I didn't know this till this week, the Jewish law was you had to check on your dear Aunt Mabel every couple of days to make sure that in fact she was dead. So the law was, go to the grave, go to the place, and make sure that this is not someone who just looked mostly dead, right? There you go. But look, here it is. In the hundreds of years during which the Romans literally crucified hundreds of thousands, there was not one report ever in those hundreds of years of someone who was not dead after a crucifixion. No, what will happen on Sunday will not be a resuscitation. It will be a resurrection. That's what Paul wrote about in 1 Corinthians 15. Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures. He was buried. Paul says, this is the gospel. Christ died. He was buried. And on the third day, he rose again. So it's very important that we see Pilate had indeed done his task as he was preordained to do, foreordained to do. Now let's look at Joseph's discipleship. This is verses 43 and 46. Here's what we learn about Joseph of Arimathea. If you did some of your homework this week and not just read Mark, but looked at the other Gospels, you'll notice that he's in all four. Joseph made it into all four Gospels. Right? We know that he's a respected member of the council. Mark tells us that. Mark means the Sanhedrin. He was a member of the Sanhedrin. The powerful cabal that put Jesus on the cross to begin with. He's a man who was looking for the kingdom of God. Luke says Joseph was a good and righteous man who did not agree to the decision and the action taken by the Sanhedrin. He was in opposition to that decision to crucify Jesus. Matthew goes further. He said Joseph was also a disciple of Jesus. John agrees with that, but he said Joseph was a disciple, but secretly for fear of the Jews. So we have a man seeking the kingdom. No doubt he's been searching the scriptures, and now he's come to the place where he is a follower of Jesus. Joseph of Arimathea was a disciple, a follower of Jesus. But he lacked one thing. There's just one thing he's lacking. And Mark says he found it. Mark says Joseph took courage. There it is. He took courage and went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Interesting that the death of Jesus did not dampen Joseph's enthusiasm to follow Jesus. It pushed him forward in his enthusiasm to follow Jesus. We don't know that Joseph knew that Jesus was going to be raised from the dead. We can't say that for sure. But we know that he cared, he loved Jesus, and he wanted to serve him in some way. I think the thought process was, this man who has served so many, including myself, whom I believe in, he's now dead. What can I do to serve him? What can I do to minister to the body of Jesus, this man I've grown to love? You see, the point here is saying, Joseph can no longer be a secret follower. He couldn't do it. He couldn't do it. He could no longer stand with those who opposed Jesus. He knew for certain that this action, going to Pilate, asking for the body of Jesus, publicly burying Jesus, this action would out him to the Sanhedrin to the point where he would no longer be welcomed in that place. Right? I cannot imagine that he would ever be welcomed back, and I cannot imagine that he would ever want to go back, especially after Sunday. It's still Friday, but after Sunday, why would Joseph of Arimathea ever go back to the council that put Jesus on the cross? You know, it reminds me of what Jesus said when he's talking in Luke. He says there are men, you know, that came and asked if they could follow him. And one of them said, oh, but first Lord, I want to follow you, but look, I got to go bury my father, okay? And another one said, I would really like to follow you, but can I at least go say goodbye to my family? Now those seem like Those seem like normal, you know, logical requests, right? I mean, sure, go bury your father, that's important. Or, sure, say goodbye to your family. Jesus didn't see it that way. He said, no one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God. That's how Jesus responded about those two men. And so what he's saying here, I think what Mark is telling us here about Joseph is that he's not willing to follow Jesus half-heartedly. This is Joseph putting his hand to the plow and not looking back. He's gonna follow Jesus no matter what, even though it means losing his position as a respected member of the powerful council of the Sanhedrin, the ruling spiritual group in all of Israel. It reminded me of this quote from John Stonestreet, president of the Colson Center. If you don't listen to any of John Stonestreet's stuff, I recommend him. He has a great podcast. You can also hear Stonestreet on Fridays on World's Podcast. I think he's got a lot of wisdom. But he said one time, and I went back and found this quote, he said, we need the theology of getting fired. The time is coming when we may be forced to choose between our faith and our jobs. How would you handle that? If you had to choose between following Jesus and keeping your position, what would you do? I'm not asking that flippantly. That's not a flippant question. It's a very serious one, isn't it? It was serious for Joseph. It was serious for Paul. Paul gave up a good gig, right? I think he was well-respected and probably very well-compensated for hunting down Christians and killing them, or at least getting them into prison. And he gave that up. He gave it up to pursue Christ. How was he rewarded? Well, he got a life of beatings, shipwrecks, stonings, imprisonment, and eventual beheading. But oh, he also got integrity for the first time. He got peace with God for the first time. He got a clear conscience for the first time. And to add to all that, he got eternal security for the first time. That's how Paul could write, for I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed with us. Remember in Philippians, he said, hey, I was a Hebrew of Hebrews, right? I was among Pharisees. As to the law, absolutely blameless. He said, I count it all as rubbish compared to knowing Christ Jesus as Lord. So Joseph is given permission by Pilate. He goes and buys a linen shroud. He takes Jesus' body down from the cross with Nicodemus' help. Remember John's gospel gives us some more information there. Nicodemus, who also used to be a what? secret disciple. He came to Jesus in John chapter 3 in the night, right? Nobody might have seen me coming to Jesus, so I'm going to go at night time when nobody can see me and I'm going to talk to this guy. Who are you really, right? Well Nicodemus obviously is a disciple of Jesus too. So Joseph and Nicodemus together take the body off of the cross. John's Gospel records that they wrapped it in a linen shroud that contains 75 pounds of spices, myrrh and aloes. And I think the idea was to preserve the body at least a little bit. They didn't put it in an airtight coffin and in a sealed, you know, what do they call that thing? The what? The vault, yeah, they put in a vault, right? They just wrapped it in a cloth and put some spices in there to kill some of the odor of decomposition and to perhaps delay decomposition for just a little bit. But we know from Lazarus' story that on what day does the body start really decomposing? Day four. It had been four days since Lazarus had been in the tomb. And that's why they said, Lord, don't open that tomb. It's gonna stink, right? So here we are, we've wrapped Jesus and they laid him in a tomb that had been cut out of the rock and they rolled a stone against the entrance to the tomb. That leads us to the last point, Jesus borrowed tomb. Matthew tells us that this was Jesus or Joseph's own new tomb. John tells us that no one had ever been laid in it before. Now did anybody find that curious? I mean, I hope not. I mean, who wants to get buried in a used grave? By the way, you know, your Aunt Myrtle was in here, but we moved her to another spot. We'll put you... No! But look, we don't understand the first century way of burial. The tombs during the first century consisted of several burial chambers that were cut into the sidewalls, into the rock, little caves. And a new tomb usually had three benches in it. You only see one in this picture here, just a depiction. But in normal tombs in that day, there were three benches, stone benches that were cut out of the rock or left in the rock, you know, cut around it. And on those benches, you would put the dead body or on one of them, you'd put the dead body wrapped with spice-filled linen. Remember, Mary enters the tomb on Sunday and she sees a young man sitting on the right side, it says. Well, he was sitting on one of those benches, we presume. And then when John raced Peter to the tomb on Sunday, remember, John beat Peter to the tomb, he's younger and faster, and he looks in and he sees on one of the benches, we presume, the linen cloths that Jesus had been wrapped in. And he sees the face covering lying in a different spot in the tomb. If a stone was rolled in front of the tomb, the stone was there only to protect the corpse from animals. But something I didn't know until this week, that was a luxury only afforded by very wealthy people. Most people would not have a stone in front of their tomb. They simply couldn't afford the luxury of having that trough built and the stone carved and then it placed there. But Joseph obviously was a man After a year, when decomposition was complete, check this out, then the body, the bones, that's all that's left, the bones were put into an ossuary, which is a box that holds bones. And the ossuary was not necessarily a box, it could be, but oftentimes they just dug a little hole under one of those benches and the bones were placed in that hole in the rock And then that bench is now freed up. Next. And so that's why it says the tomb had not been used. This was a new tomb. It had never been used. And it turns out that the first person who used it did not need it very long. The psalmist wrote this, for you will not abandon my soul to Sheol or let your holy ones see corruption. Peter mentioned this prophecy on the day of Pentecost when he's preaching. Hey, here's proof. Jesus, whom you crucified, this is what it was said of him a thousand years ago. And Paul did the same thing in Acts 13 when he's preaching in Antioch and Pisidia, he mentions this same fact. I mean, this is an important thing to the Jews, and it should be important to us that Jesus' body did not decay. There was no decomposition. He was dead, and then on Friday at 3 p.m., and then of course at 6 p.m. it became Saturday, so he was dead on Friday, he was dead on Saturday, he was dead on Sunday, three days, And then Sunday morning, he was raised from the dead. You know, I love this fact that Jesus borrowed a tomb. As I was working on the sermon, I remembered a newspaper column I wrote several years ago, a number of years ago, and I like to just close with this column. Some things you just don't borrow. How many of you remember your mom's stern warning to you as a child? Do not borrow anybody's comb. Yeah, I see some nodding. My mom was pretty convinced if I ran someone's comb through my hair I would instantly be infested with microscopic creatures that would eat through my scalp and destroy me, maybe life on the planet as we know it. She even said I would be better off drinking out of someone else's water bottle than to use their comb. So I went through my life with irrational fear of hair germs and would break into a cold sweat when I saw teens sharing their combs willy-nilly or their picks. Remember those old people? I was convinced that that's why this kid in high school named Chad went bald at 18. I mean, I think he was sneaking behind the gym every day using somebody else's comb. There's some things you don't borrow, like mouthguards. A mouthguard, you're playing on the basketball team, you're riding the pine, suddenly the coach, which I always did, I rode the pine, Mike, and not like you. Hey, the coach yells at you to get in the game, right? I never expected to be put, we cannot be far enough ahead for them to put me in the game. And suddenly they're calling my, he's calling my name, get in the game, and I can't find my mouthguard. Look, you know what? It's better to risk losing all my teeth in the lane as I'm bumping armpits with my head while trying to get a rebound than to borrow a mouthguard from Lewis, the kid on the bench who was lower on the totem pole than I was. I mean, come on, I knew that Lewis kept his mouthguard in his tennis shoes when they weren't on his feet. And for all I knew, he probably threw his comb in there too. No way am I borrowing his mouth guard. There's some things you just don't borrow, like burial plots. I mean, come on, once you're dead, you're dead, right? There's no way you can borrow a burial plot. You only borrow something you intend to give back. Check the records. There's a burial plot in Jerusalem owned by a certain Joseph of Arimathea. When Jesus was crucified nearly 2,000 years ago, Joseph asked Pilate if he could take the body of Jesus. He put Jesus in a new tomb that had never been used. Three days later, that tomb was available again because Jesus was raised from the dead just as he said he would be. You know what's interesting about the Son of God? He entered the world through a virgin birth. You could say he borrowed a place there. He entered Jerusalem for his final week on a borrowed donkey colt, one that had never been ridden. He was laid in a borrowed tomb on Friday, and he gave it back on Sunday. There's some things you just don't borrow, but I will be eternally grateful that Jesus borrowed his gravesite. That means that I'll only be borrowing mine for a little while, too. And so will you. Father, we're thankful for this story of this faithful follower of Jesus. May we learn to be more like Joseph of Arimathea, who was willing to lose his reputation, to lose his name, to lose his position, to lose his place in order to gain what he could never lose. As Jim Elliott said, he is no fool who gives what he cannot keep. to gain what he cannot lose. And Lord, may we have boldness to witness to the name of Jesus, not foolishly, but certainly not cowardly, but witness to the name of Jesus no matter the consequences. Lord, raise up. Raise up a mighty army of witnesses, even from this church. Lord, we pray, as you taught us to pray, Lord of the harvest, send forth laborers into the fields that are white, unto harvest. Send forth laborers who will be, like Joseph of Myrmethia, bold in their witness. And we're thankful that you give us the grace to do that. You give us the strength. It's not in us. It's not in our boldness. It's not in our courage. It's not in our propensity to speak out is of all of you so Lord be in us speak through us and give us courage to obey that and we're thankful that you are not in that tomb any longer that you are risen from the dead and we roar with the angels our approval and our praise in Jesus name Amen Thank you for listening to this message by Pastor Mark Fox of Antioch Community Church in Elon, North Carolina. Antioch meets every Sunday for worship at 10 o'clock a.m. at 1600 Powerline Road in Elon. You can download other messages by Pastor Fox at antiochchurch.cc. You can also learn how to order his books or subscribe to his blog at jmarkfox.com.