Welcome to Hank’s Place
It’s another episode of our Great Salvation in JESUS! Today: “He died and was buried so the grave could not hold me.”
Joseph of Arimathea was a very wealthy and notable member of the Sanhedrin. After Jesus died, he comes before Pilate to request the body.
He is a good and upright man — and a secret disciple of Jesus. John 19:38. The reason Pilate allows Joseph to leave with official permission to bury Jesus is not known. Perhaps Pilate wanted to make clear that he also thought Jesus had been wrongly accused and unjustly put to death.
It is approaching sunset and the entertainment is over at Golgotha. The crowds have left; the soldiers are gone. The three victims hang lifeless. Only a somber cluster of women keep vigil nearby. They watch as Joseph sets about the task of taking down the body. Both he and Nicodemus, another secret follower in the Sanhedrin, tenderly lower the body from the cross. They carry it to the nearby garden cemetery where Joseph places it in his own new tomb, suitable for royalty. Nicodemus has brought 75 pounds of myrrh and aloe. A huge amount. But the Sabbath is about to start so they have to leave and wait until Sunday.
Notice that the Father made sure there was clear and irrefutable physical evidence of Jesus’ death and burial. His burial was closely observed by a number of witnesses, many of them identified and named. The two men who buried Jesus were well educated, highly respected and well known in Jerusalem. The location and age of the tomb was described. The women who followed Joseph were reported as seeing the tomb and how His body was laid in it.
The priests and the Pharisees were terrified that perhaps someone would take His body and claim a resurrection so they requested Pilate to post a Roman guard around the tomb, which he did. That’s a boatload of witnesses, friend!
The second Adam was undoing the garden of Eden disaster. The second Adam was doing what the first never could, by allowing Himself to be brutally executed and buried. And it was all part of the Father’s wonderful plan.
Romans 5:17 declares, ‘For if by the transgression of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.”
Receive His grace today my friend, to reign in THIS life, and — COME ALIVE!
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