Sermon Tone Analysis

By Pastor Glenn Pease

Doctor Martin von Butchell was a London dentist who lost his wife in 1775, and was reluctant to part with her.

There was no law against it, so he had her embalmed, and kept her in a glass case in his home.

He introduced visitors to her as my dear departed.

Word spread of this spectacle, and the good doctor was forced to take action to stem the tide of sightseers.

He had to put an add in the paper informing people that only those he was personally introduced to could see his wife, and those only from 9:00 to 1:00.

Eventually he remarried, and the new Mrs von Butchell was not fond of the presence of the dear departed, and so the doctor was forced to arrange for a suitable burial.

It would have been a grave mistake not to bury her, but he had plenty of time to get the job done.

The burial of Christ, however, was a rush job if there ever was one.

Since nobody expected Jesus to die, there were no arrangements for Him to have a suitable burial.

The victims of crucifixion were usually left to be eaten by birds and wild animals, or thrown, like worthless garbage, into the dump, and burned.

This was the likely fate of the two thieves who died with Jesus.

For Jesus, however, there was a swift but suitable burial.

None of His family did it, nor did any of His chosen disciples.

Surprisingly, the two men who buried Jesus were the two men who, while Jesus was alive, were afraid to make a public show of their faith in Him.

Joseph of Arimathea was a recent disciple, and Nicodemus had come to Jesus at night.

Both of them were Jewish leaders who feared the Jews, but now, when Jesus is dead, they are the only ones who go into action to see that the body of Jesus gets a suitable burial.

In John 19 we read that Joseph went to Pilate to get permission to take the body, and Nicodemus went to buy seventy five pounds of myrrh and aloes.

Together these two men wrapped Jesus in strips of linen with the spices.

In verse 40 John is careful to tell us, "This was in accordance with Jewish burial customs."

Jesus received from these two leaders an official Jewish burial.

There was no funeral, no eulogy, no orations, for the greatest man who ever lived.

There was only this quick and quit burial, but it was a dignified burial.

There was a garden tomb near the place of the cross, and it was a tomb where no man had ever laid.

There they placed the body of Jesus on that first Good Friday, late in the afternoon.

Jesus died about three in the afternoon, and so by the time they got permission and prepared the body it would be getting late.

John implies that they had to hurry, for the Sabbath was approaching, and no work could then be done.

Chapter 19 of John ends with this verse describing the urgency, "Because it was the Jewish Day of Preparation and since the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there."

There was no time to make other arrangements, so they did what had to be done, and hurriedly got Jesus's body prepared and into the tomb before the Sabbath.

So hasty was the burial that the women who stood at a distant watching were not satisfied it had been done right, and so they got more spices and prepared to go back after the Sabbath to give Jesus a completely suitable burial.

It is just like women to think that they men did not do it right, and so they would have to come behind and finish the job.

It could be they were right, for Joseph and Nicodemus were public officials and not undertakers.

Maybe their hasty job was far from professional.

But God, in His providence, knew that even a poor job would last the weekend.

That was all the longer Jesus was going to be in that tomb.

We can thank God that His plan does not always call for everything being done as good as the women want it done.

If Jesus was going to be buried for centuries, that is one thing, but if only for a few days, then the way men do it will be just fine.

The interesting thing about the burial of Jesus is, that in spite of the fact that all four Gospels record it, and in spite of the fact that Paul makes it one of the three historical facts of the Gospel, you can hardly find an author that has written anything about the theological significance of Christ's burial.

It is, without a doubt, one of the most neglected, ignored, by-passed, and avoided subject in the history of Christianity.

It is not that commentators do not mention it, but the problem is, that is all they do.

In volumes galore the authors will go on for pages about the death of Christ, and then merely mention the burial of Christ before going on to a lengthy discussion of the resurrection.

When I read the NIV of I Cor.

15:3, I got motivated to discover new truths I never saw before.

Paul says, "For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance."

Then he lists the three facts of the Gospel.

Paul says the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ are matters of the first importance.

We all know the death and resurrection are vital, but I never heard anybody say the burial of Christ was of great importance, so when I read that I got excited.

I was going to find out why Paul put the burial of Christ on the same level with His death and resurrection.

To my surprise, I discovered nobody would tell me.

I looked up the burial of Christ in some of the great theologians of our century, and it was not even in the index.

I figured the older theologians would deal with it, but I was wrong.

Martin Luther states it in his catechism, but with no explanation.

Calvin in his Institutes, of over 800 pages of theology, has less than one half of a page on the burial of Christ, and says as near to nothing as possible.

I turned to the preachers for help.

Certainly D. L. Moody in his sermon, What Is The Gospel, would expound on all three of the facts of the Gospel.

But he didn't.

And so it went with all the authors I searched.

Then it dawned on me: The Apostles Creed was my answer.

The Apostles Creed and some of the other great creeds of history have the statement, Christ was dead, buried and descended into hell.

I knew there were many books written on the creeds, so I went to the seminary library and found dozens of books.

Pay dirt at last? Wrong!

Most of them just skipped anything to say on the burial, and the few that did had almost nothing to say of significance.

I was beginning to regret that I ever got excited about the burial of Christ.

It was a puzzle to me why Paul even mentioned the burial of Christ.

It seems like such an incidental detail.

I wondered if I was trying to make something of nothing.

Certainly the burial of Christ cannot be a part of the saving Gospel that the church is to carry into all the world.

Paul must have just slipped this in with no deep thought.

But then I discovered that Paul in his own preaching of the Gospel actually included the burial of Christ.

Dr. Luke records one of Paul's sermons that he preached on his first missionary journey.

In Acts 13, after dealing with the death of Jesus, Paul writes in verse 29, "When they had carried out all that was written about Him, they took Him down from the tree and laid Him in the tomb.

But God raised Him from the dead."

Paul actually preached the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ as the Gospel.

Paul meant it; the burial was to him a vital part of the Gospel.

But why?

That is the question.

If we look at that weekend that changed the world, we see an interesting fact that few ever consider.

It took six hours on the cross for Jesus to die.

It took from 9:00 in the morning until 3:00 in the afternoon.

It took only seconds for Jesus to rise from the tomb.

When He comes for His bride those Christians still living will be transformed in a twinkling of an eye.

I am sure it took no longer for Jesus to go from a dead body to a Risen Redeemer.

That means six hours and a few seconds of the weekend are involved in the two great facts of the Gospel: Christ's death and resurrection.

But the third great fact, the burial, not only took several hours in preparation, it was the only one of the three that covered all three days of that weekend.

He was buried on Friday, He stayed buried all through Saturday.

This was the only complete 24 hour period in this Christ event.

Then He was still buried on Sunday morning, and so He was buried some part of all three days.

For sheer quantity of time the burial of Jesus was the dominate theme of the weekend that changed the world.

But this longest of the three facts of the Gospel is the least considered in Christian history.

The whole of the Gospel happened in a short space of about 36 hours.

It was the most important span of time in all of time, but the greatest portion of it Jesus was buried.

The silence on this subject is awesome.

Everybody acknowledges that it was important, but nobody will say just why.

It is in the creeds, and, therefore, it is to be believed as basic doctrine, but there are no reasons given as to why it is basic.

The mystery of the burial of Christ aroused my curiosity all the more when I considered that this fact had to be like the other two facts of the Gospel.

It had to be good news.

Christ died for our sins, and that is good news.

He was raised on the third day, and that was good news.

But why is it good news that He was buried?

To be a fundamental fact of the Gospel it has to be established that Christ's burial was a positive thing, like His death and resurrection.