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  DEAD BODIES MUST BE BURIED
  by Anton Bosch
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Summary: This sermon delves into the events surrounding the burial of
Jesus, focusing on the actions of Joseph of Arimathea and the
significance of burying the old life. It emphasizes the importance of
truly dying to the old self and burying sinful habits and lifestyles in
order to fully embrace the new life in Christ. The burial of Jesus
confirms his death and serves as a symbol for believers to put away the
old self completely.

Duration: 45:43 Topics: "Burial of the Old Self", "Embracing New Life in Christ"
Scripture References: Luke 23:50, 1 Corinthians 15:3, Romans 6:4, Romans 6:6, Colossians 2:12, Galatians 2:20

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DESCRIPTION
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This sermon delves into the events surrounding the burial of Jesus,
focusing on the actions of Joseph of Arimathea and the significance of
burying the old life. It emphasizes the importance of truly dying to the
old self and burying sinful habits and lifestyles in order to fully
embrace the new life in Christ. The burial of Jesus confirms his death
and serves as a symbol for believers to put away the old self
completely.

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CONTENT
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Luke chapter 23 and I'm going to read verse 50, a long reading through
chapter 24 verse 12. So we're coming to the end, we'll probably get into
the last chapter of Luke today. So Luke chapter 23 reading from verse 50
going through chapter 24 verse 12.

Now behold, there was a man named Joseph, a council member, a good and
just man. He had not consented to their decision and deed. He was from
Arimathea, a city of the Jews, who himself was also waiting for the
kingdom of God.

This man went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Then he took it
down, wrapped it in linen, and laid it in a tomb that was hewn out of
the rock, where no one had ever lain before. That day was the
preparation and the Sabbath drew near.

And the woman who had come with him from Galilee followed after, and
they observed the tomb and how his body was laid. Then they returned and
prepared spices and fragrant oils, and they rested on the Sabbath
according to the commandment. Now on the first day of the week, very
early in the morning, they and certain other women with them came to the
tomb bringing the spices which they had prepared.

But they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, and then they went
in and did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. And it happened as they
were greatly perplexed about this, that behold, two men stood by them in
shiny garments. And then as they were afraid and bowed their faces to
the earth, they said to them, Why do you seek the living among the dead?
He is not here, but he has risen.

Remember how he spoke to you when you were still in Galilee, saying, The
Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be
crucified, and the third day rise again. And they remembered his words.
Then they returned from the tomb and told all these things to the eleven
and to all the rest.

And it was Mary Magdalene, Johanna, Mary the mother of James, and the
other women with them who told these things to the apostles. And their
words seemed to them like idle tales, and they did not believe them. But
Peter rose and ran to the tomb, and stooping down, he saw the learned
class lying by themselves, and he departed, marveling to himself at what
had happened.

And so we see that Jesus dies, and we know from the other gospel
writers, not from Luke, but that the soldiers then come, and they come
to break the legs, and of course the purpose of that is so that they
could not pull themselves up any longer to breathe, and so they would
suffocate and finally die. This would not be the normal thing, but
because it was the Sabbath the next day, I'm going to talk about that,
this would be a mercy killing, if you will, in order that the Sabbath
not be desecrated, as far as the Jews are concerned. Of course, these
are Romans.

They came to Jesus, you remember, and he is already dead, and they're
amazed that he is dead, as we saw in the passage last week, that he gave
up the ghost, that he breathed his last. So Jesus said, I have power to
lay down my life and power to take it up again. So Jesus chooses the
moment of his death once the work had been done.

And so now there is Joseph then, who is now going to ask for the body of
Jesus in order to take it down from the cross. The law, remember, speaks
in the book of Deuteronomy, speaks about the fact that cursed is any man
who hangs upon the tree, but the same passage also requires that the
body not hang on the tree or on the cross or wherever it is nailed. In
one instance, they were nailed to the wall over the Sabbath in order to
not desecrate the Sabbath.

So the bodies need to be removed before the end of the Sabbath. Now, the
two thieves, we don't know what happened to them. If they had family,
they would have asked for their bodies, and they would have given them
some kind of burial.

If they didn't have family in the area or family who wanted to be
identified with them, the bodies would be thrown out on the trash heap
and be burnt. And so Joseph is a council member. So he's one of the
Sanhedrin.

Remember that Israel is ruled from a religious point of view by a
council called the Sanhedrin. Seventy elders of Israel, all scholars,
theologians, if you will, plus the high priest. And the high priest had
the casting vote, so if you had 35 and 35 in a vote, the high priest
would say you had 71.

So he is part of the council. He is part of the Sanhedrin, one of the
leaders of the Jews. So he is a council member, and normally that would
be a negative statement.

That would not be a good thing to say that he is a council member. Of
course, as far as the Jews were concerned, that was fine. But from a
Christian point of view and from a follower of Jesus, that was a
negative thing, because they were the ones who wanted Jesus out of the
way.

But it says he was a good and a just man. A good and a just man. Now,
again, this does not mean that he was justified before God in the sense
that he is saved, but he acts justly.

There are unbelievers, there are judges in the world who are just
judges. I don't know that there are many of them, but there are some. It
doesn't mean they're saved.

It just means that they are just, that they make right decisions. They
make decisions based on the facts and based on what is truth and not on
anything else. So he is a good and a just man.

But his qualification is that he had not consented to their decision and
deed. Now, Luke is not being specific, but obviously he's assuming that
we understand what he's talking about. What was their decision and what
was their deed? Their decision was to hand Jesus over to Pilate and to
demand his crucifixion.

And so he does not agree, he did not agree with the decision. Now, that
opens a whole discussion, and I don't want to get too sidetracked in the
technicalities. But in order for someone to be condemned by the
Sanhedrin, it had to be a unanimous decision.

And in fact, one of the gospel writers does say that it was a unanimous
decision. Now, if Joseph did not agree, then it could not have been a
unanimous decision, which simply means that he wasn't present when the
decision was taken. We also know from John that there was another
leader, his name was Nicodemus.

We meet him in John chapter 3. He is also a leader of the Jews, while it
doesn't say that he was a member of the council, he was a leader of the
Jews, and so we assume that he was also a member of the Sanhedrin. And
he goes together, well, he doesn't go with Joseph, but once Joseph gets
permission to take the body, he then helps Joseph, and they take the
body, and they put spices on it and wrap it, and they put it in the
tomb. And so he clearly did not agree.

He had met Jesus earlier on. Jesus had told him that he needs to be born
again, and he now identifies with Jesus at the end. So there are at
least two out of the 71 who did not agree.

And so they could not have been present. The explanation is pretty
simple, and that was that they had called the meeting in the night,
which was illegal. You could not call such a meeting during the night
because it would mean that not everybody would necessarily be able to be
present.

So it looks like it was a kangaroo court, and Joseph is left out, and
Nicodemus is left out, and so they were able to make a unanimous
decision with no dissenting votes, but these men had not agreed. And so
he had not consented to their decision indeed. I think that this took
some courage.

Now, I remember Nicodemus, he came to Jesus at night because he didn't
want to be identified with Jesus. And he then disappears from John
chapter 3 right through to the end. We don't hear about him again.

So did he secretly follow Jesus? I think he probably did. We're not
absolutely sure, but we're reading into the fact that he's there at the
beginning, and then he reappears at the end. The fact is that at the end
of the day, when it mattered, they stood up, and they identified with
Jesus.

You see, we can be secret disciples to a certain point, but the time
comes when we have to stand up and be counted. We can't keep hiding in
the shadows. And so I think that these two men really stand out of all
the people in Israel.

And, you know, as we've been through these last chapters, as we've been
through the crucifixion and the trial of the Lord Jesus, we see the
reaction of the different people and different groups, and I'm not going
to get into all of those groups, but we know that there are many
different, there are those who are standing afar off, there are those
who are opposed, there are those who don't know what's going on, but
there are also those who are standing up when it matters. Now Joseph
probably was one of the few who would be trusted to take the body,
because he was a part of the Sanhedrin, and so Pilate would interact not
with the ordinary Jews, but he would interact with the leaders, because
they needed the help of the Sanhedrin to be able to govern the nation.
So he was probably known to Pilate, and he was certainly respected and
had a title, if you will, or a position that would, for Pilate to say,
OK, I trust this guy, let him take the body.

And so it says he was from Arimathea, a city of the Jews. Now, we don't
know where Arimathea is now. Different commentators point to different
kinds of cities, it doesn't matter.

It's a city within Israel, it is a Jewish city, he clearly is Jewish,
he's probably not living in Arimathea anymore for two reasons. One,
because he is part of the Sanhedrin, which was a semi-full-time job, and
so he needed to be in Jerusalem, and he has this tomb that he had
purchased for himself, and that's just outside of Jerusalem, so clearly
he is now living in Jerusalem. The reason why it mentions that he was
from Arimathea was simply to identify him as different to the other
Josephs.

There were a number of other Josephs, and so this is just a way of
identifying him as to who he is. Now, the important thing about him is
this last part of this verse, who himself was also waiting for the
kingdom of God. Now, remember that what people had in mind when it came
to the kingdom of God was really a political kingdom, and yet there were
those who understood that it was far more than that, and Joseph is one
of those.

Now, it's very interesting that we're now at the end of Jesus' life,
Jesus' earthly life. He has died, he now needs to be buried, and so this
is the end of his earthly life. Obviously, he's still going to minister
for a period and then ascend.

But that we find Joseph appearing here and his qualification, the thing
that identifies him is that he is waiting for the kingdom of God. Why is
this significant? It's significant because the book opens with two other
people who were doing the same thing. And so if we go to Luke chapter 2
and verse 25, and behold there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was
Simeon, and this man was just and devout.

Notice he's also just. Waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the
Holy Spirit was upon him. Waiting for the promise, waiting for the
comfort that would come from the Messiah.

And so you remember, if you can remember back, it's been quite a few
years that we've been in Luke, but right at the beginning there is this
old man, and he's in the temple, and he has one thing in his mind, and
that is to see the Messiah, to see the Lord. He's not looking for
anything other than the Lord Jesus. I want you to notice also that he
was just and devout, religious.

When we have our eyes on the kingdom, it must change our behavior. This
man has his eyes on the kingdom, and he is just. Joseph has his eyes on
the kingdom, and he is just.

It affects the way that we live. You see, here's the problem. Today we
find many Christians live compromised lives, live lives that are
involved in sin and all sorts of unrighteousness and all sorts of
immorality, and are worldly in every way.

And basically what they are saying is that we are not looking for the
kingdom of God. We're looking for what we can get out of life. These two
men, Simon at the very beginning, and Joseph at the very end, bookends
to the life of Jesus, are looking for the kingdom, and it changes the
way that they live.

Peter says, seeing that all these things will be dissolved, what manner
of people ought we to be? You see, they saw beyond this life, and they
saw into eternity, and it changed how they lived. If we believe in the
coming of the Lord Jesus, in the second coming of the Lord Jesus, if we
believe in the kingdom of God, it must change the way that we live. It
must result in us being just, not just justified by faith, but just in
the way that we live our lives.

And then, of course, there's the other one in Luke chapter 2, also verse
38, and coming in that instant she, and her name is Anna, gave thanks to
the Lord, and spoke of him to all those who looked for redemption in
Israel. And so there's these two people at the very beginning, both
looking for the same thing, looking for the Messiah. And here is Joseph
right at the end, and he is looking for the Messiah.

I find in that a great consolation and comfort, because when you look at
the masses of people who follow Jesus, who saw the miracles, who heard
him preach, who saw him raise the dead, who ate the food that he made,
the bread that he multiplied, and the fishes, and all of those things,
and you see how they turned against the Lord Jesus. See how that at the
cross, or at his trial, they cried almost unanimously, crucify him, give
us Barabbas. And yet in the midst of all of that, God always has his
remnant.

He always has a few who remain faithful to him. And so there at the
beginning, you remember that when Jesus was born, it was dark times in
the history of Israel. There was no open vision anymore.

God was not speaking, God had not spoken for 400 years. And then comes
John the Baptist, and he begins to preach. And there's Joseph, sorry,
there's Simeon that we saw, and there's Anna, these two old people.

And then there is Jesus' parents, and there is John the Baptist's
parents. And remember when we, and I can clearly remember when we looked
at these chapters way back, how that I highlighted the fact that in all
of Israel, there's only this handful of people who are righteous, who
are looking for the coming of the Messiah. The others were looking for a
kingdom, an earthly kingdom, but they were not looking for the Savior.

And yet there's this handful of people, less than 10, who are looking
for the Savior. And here we come to the end, and the whole nation had
turned against him. All the leaders had turned against him, but there's
still a remnant.

There's still Joseph and Nicodemus, who are looking and believe that he
is indeed the Christ and the Messiah. And so it is today, where the
world and the church in general has turned against the Lord Jesus.
Remember the book of Laodicea, they locked him out of the church.

And he's standing at the door and he says, I'm knocking. If any man, if
any individual, he's no longer speaking to the church, but he's calling
individuals. If any man, any individual, any person will hear my voice,
I will come into him and dine with him and he with me.

And so that's where we are today. We're back in the same place where
Joseph is, here at the end of Jesus' earthly life. The masses have
turned against him.

The churches in general have no time and room for Jesus. They have their
programs. They have their money.

They have their building. They have their fancy preachers. They have all
of the things that they need.

But there's no room for Jesus. But there's still a minority. There is
still a remnant who are looking for him and for him alone.

And I pray that we individually and corporately would be such a group of
people who are looking for Jesus. We're not looking for an earthly
kingdom. We're not looking to get out of this life what we can get out
of this life.

But we have our eyes set on the kingdom and we're looking for the
redemption of the church, for the saving of the church out of this
world. And so if we go back to Luke chapter 23, this man went to Pilate
and he asked for the body of Jesus. Now we know according to John that
Pilate then calls the centurion and makes sure that Jesus indeed was
dead.

When he gets the guarantee that Jesus was indeed dead and he's surprised
because it's a little early, he gives the body to Joseph. Joseph then
took it down. And I want you to see what Joseph is doing.

Joseph is one of the top 70 men in all of Israel. He's wearing fancy
robes with long tassels, with the law bound upon his forehead and bound
on his arm. He is a man of dignity.

He is a man who is respected and feared by the people. And yet here he
comes to the cross and he handles that piece of flesh, beaten to a pulp,
spat upon, bloodied, and in all of his finery, and remember Jesus
abrades the Pharisees for the way they dressed. And in all of the way
that he was dressed, in all of his elevated status, he embraces that
body of the Lord Jesus.

How do you take a body down from the cross without embracing it? And
folk today, we no longer want to embrace the brokenness of the cross. We
want a glorified, risen, resurrected Lord, and yes he is that. But he is
still the one who was crucified from the foundation of the earth.

And if we do not identify with his cross, then how will we identify with
his glory? Remember the stained glass in the back of the building, the
cross and the crown. There is no crown without the cross. You cannot
identify with him in his glory if you will not identify with him in his
shame.

And Joseph doesn't just come and with a finger touch the body of Jesus.
He embraces it, takes it down, carries it probably with the help of
Nicodemus at this stage, and lays it in a tomb. But we want to identify
with the church.

We want to identify with our own ancestral history. We want to identify
with our nationality, with our ethnic group. But will we identify with
Jesus? And allow the blood, and the brokenness, and the spit, and the
shame to soil us.

Because it's only in that that we are cleansed. And so Joseph sets aside
his position, sets aside his fancy robes, sets aside his privilege, and
embraces the broken body of the Lord Jesus. Unfortunately, somehow we
sanitize our relationship with him.

It's an empty cross. We no longer have a body on the cross in front of
us, because he is risen. But we must identify with his brokenness, with
his death, that we might identify with him in his resurrection, and in
his glory.

And so he took it down, he wrapped it in linen, and he laid it in a tomb
that was hewn out of the rock, and we know that this was his own tomb,
and where no one had ever lain before. Remember those days, they didn't
really bury in the ground the way we do. They tended to find either
caves, or they would make a hole in the rock, and they would put the
body in there.

Remember, Lazarus was in that kind of tomb. Obviously, they would have
employed someone to dig a hole, or to chop a hole out of the rock, and
they would roll a stone. And remember, one of the problems we have when
we come to these pictures, well, there are two problems we have.

The one is that there are places that tourists visit in Israel today
that are said to be, well, this is the tomb, or that is the tomb. We
don't know where the tomb is, and we're not called to worship at the
tomb. We're called to worship at the throne of grace.

We need to be careful of making these things tourist attractions and
feeling all sanctified and holy because we went to the place where Jesus
was crucified and a place where he was buried. For good reason, we don't
know exactly where those places are. Tradition has identified two places
for the tomb and two places for the cross at least, but we don't know
where that is, and it doesn't really matter.

But it's a brand new tomb, fulfills Isaiah 53, that he made his grave
with the rich. Remember, Joseph is a very wealthy man. These men made
good money out of their religion.

And so he is laid in a rich man's tomb, as Isaiah 53 had prophesied. And
so he was put in there. No one had lain there before.

It was brand new. And the day was the preparation, and the Sabbath drew
near. So the day of preparation would be the day you would prepare
before the Sabbath.

Now, here's where we have a problem. In certain traditions, it is said
that this is on the Friday and that the Sabbath is on the Saturday. The
problem is simply, well, there are two problems.

The first problem is that it does not, if this happened on the Friday,
then it does not fulfill the scripture that said, and Jesus himself
said, as Jonah was in the fish for three days and three nights, so the
Son of Man will be three days and three nights. So if you have Friday
night, Saturday night, and he rises on Sunday morning, you have two
nights. I know they argue and say, well, three days because a part of a
day is a day, so he is buried before sunset on, or he dies before sunset
on Friday, so that's one day.

Saturday is one day. He rises on Sunday after the sun had risen, and
that's not exactly true. It seems he rose before the sun had risen, so
now they get three days, but you still only have two nights.

So, I believe that as every other scripture concerning his death and his
burial and his resurrection was fulfilled in detail, so the three days
and the three nights have to be fulfilled in detail. So, I don't believe
that he could have been crucified on the Friday, that the day of
preparation is not Friday, but is probably Thursday, and maybe even
Wednesday, but probably Thursday. Now, how do we deal with the idea of
the Sabbath? Because it's very specific, the next day is the Sabbath.

Well, remember that the problem with the Sabbath is, well, it's not a
problem, but the thing with the Sabbath is that not only was the
Saturday called the Sabbath, but any other holy day was also called a
Sabbath. And so, in fact, in instituting the Passover, it was said that
this would be a Sabbath unto you. So, the Sabbath means simply rest, and
it applies to any holy day.

Today, we have the word holiday from holy day. And so, there were
certain holy days which were regarded as Sabbaths. You had to keep all
the laws that applied to the Sabbath.

You couldn't cook, you couldn't walk beyond a certain distance, and so
on. All of those laws would be applied to that day, whether it fell on a
Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, it didn't matter.
So, the way I understand this, and we can get into all of the different
Gospels and all of the different arguments, but I'm just going to give
it to you the way I understand it, is that Jesus is crucified on the
Thursday, the day before the Passover, which is on the Friday.

It's a Sabbath day. Well, the first day, sorry, the first day of
unleavened bread is the Friday. Passover is on the Thursday.

Then the next day is Saturday, which is Sabbath. So, you have two
Sabbaths back to back. That's the only way you can get to three days and
three nights.

So, let's do the sums again. If he dies on Thursday, he's in the grave
Thursday night, Friday night, Saturday night. He rises again on the
Sunday.

So, I'm not going to argue about that. I know people like to make a big
deal of that. That's just my understanding.

It's the only way I can reconcile these very difficult Scriptures. But
the fact is that the next day is a holy day. On the holy day, they
cannot handle the body.

They cannot do any kind of work. So, whatever needs to be done, needs to
be done today. And so, they take the body, put it in the tomb.

The women prepare spices. The women who had come with him from Galilee
followed after and they observed the tomb and how his body was laid.
Now, just a technical thing.

Just remember that the Jews did not embalm. They were not Egyptians. The
Egyptians embalmed.

In other words, they treated the body so that it would be preserved. The
Jews did not embalm. All they did was they put all sorts of fancy
smelling stuff on the body so that it didn't smell too bad as it rotted.

I mean, that's just the way it is. It had nothing to do with embalming.
It's interesting that Joseph and Nicodemus, it seems that Nicodemus
brings the spices that he brings, and it's a hundred pounds, which would
be what you would use for a king.

So, Jesus is treated, in a sense, to a king's burial. A hundred pounds
of spices put in a rich man's tomb, fulfilling Isaiah chapter 53. And
so, the women who had come with him from Galilee, we must again notice
these women.

They come up over and over and over. Now, remember when we started Luke,
we said that Luke deals, focuses a lot on the minorities. Those that
were outcasts, the Gentiles, those who were sick, those who were
despised by Israel, the tax collectors, and the women.

And these women had followed Jesus all the way from Galilee. For a year
they had followed him, and they'd been with him. Remember that we saw in
the previous section, that they were standing at a distance, observing
what was going on.

And so, the women who had come with him from Galilee followed after. In
other words, they saw Joseph, and probably Nicodemus, carry the body of
the Lord Jesus, and lay it in the tomb, and they're following these men.
And they looked, and they witnessed that the body was laid in that tomb.

Now, folk, here is an important thing for us to consider. In Paul's
definition of the gospel, in 1 Corinthians chapter 15, and you should
know these verses off by heart, Paul says this is the gospel, that
Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, that he was
buried, and that he rose again on the third day according to the
scriptures. So, part of the gospel is the burial of the Lord Jesus.

You say, well, what's that got to do with anything? Surely his death and
his resurrection are the important things. No, the burial is also
important. Because the burial speaks of two things.

Speaks of something concerning Jesus, and something concerning us. The
burial confirms his death. The burial confirms his death.

One of the conspiracy theories that has always floated around is that
Jesus never really died. That he was in a coma, and that somehow they
took his body down, and they were able to resuscitate him, and he was
able to survive. Now, remember that, you see, when we bury someone, it's
not something we do ourselves.

We pay the mortician to handle the body and to deal with it. And if it's
an open casket thing, then, yeah, we'll go and look at the body and
we'll say, yeah, okay, this is the person. But Joseph and Nicodemus
handled the body.

They felt the coldness. They felt the stiffness. And all the signs of
death.

His death was certified by the centurion. Because Pilate says, is he
really dead? And he says, yeah, we made sure he's dead. We stuck a spear
in his side, and into his heart, and out came water and blood.

He's dead. So the burial confirms that he was really, really dead.
Because in order to do away with Jesus, you have to do away with the
resurrection.

Remember that the Jews, Paul would preach concerning the Lord Jesus, and
they accepted that he died on the cross. They didn't really accept that
it was an atoning sacrifice, but they accepted that he died on the
cross. But they could not accept that he rose again.

And that's why Paul says in Romans that we need to believe that he died,
but we need to believe that he rose again, in order to be saved. And in
order to do away with the resurrection, there's two things you have to
do, or there are two things you can do. The one is to deny that he ever
died, and that's what the burial deals with.

And the other is to deny that he ever rose again. And of course, that's
what 1 Corinthians 15 deals with, where Paul gives us many witnesses who
witness to his resurrection. And as we get into this next chapter, which
we won't do today, we'll see that there is clear evidence that he was
raised again.

But there's a second reason why the burial is important. And that has
nothing to do with Jesus, it has to do with us. And remember we've
spoken much in recent months, both in Hebrews and in Luke, concerning
the fact that we are crucified with Christ.

How do we get saved? How do we get born again? We get born again by
dying with him, and by being raised with him, to walk in newness of
life, to use Paul's words in Romans. But in between those two things is
still the burial. And that's where we have a problem.

Because we all will accept the theory, or the theology of saying, I died
with Christ. But if you really died with him, then why aren't you
buried? Why is the old man still walking around? And so there's an
important point to the gospel. And that is that we must be really dead
with him to the point that we are willing to put away, bury the old
life.

And that's where we have a problem. We in a sense want to be like the
Egyptians, who want to embalm the body in the hope that it can live in a
future life. And so we take our old sinful self and we refuse to bury it
because we want to hold on to what we had then.

To the sin, the brokenness, whatever it was. No, we need to bury the old
life. We need to put away the old life.

We need to say, I'm not interested in keeping it in reserve that somehow
I've got it in the closet and somehow when it suits me I want to bring
it back to life again. And while it's obviously impossible to raise a
dead body, I think what it really speaks to is the fact that we never
really died. Because if I really died, I would be done with it.

I want to put it away, bury it, get rid of it. But the fact that
Christians, and we know that Christians do this, constantly are
resuscitating that old life. Breathing life back into it.

Doing CPR to it. Feeding it with the stuff of the old life in order to
keep it alive. And of course when we come to church we hide him, leave
him in the trunk of the car.

But the moment we drive home again, we bring him out. And he comes out
in the way that we speak to our spouses, the way we speak to our kids,
the way we deal with the things of this life. No, Jesus was buried
because he was really, really dead.

And folk, we need to be buried. And the problem is that we don't bury
half of us. When we baptize folk, one of my jobs when I do the baptizing
is to make sure I get everything under.

And of course it's not the end of the world if a guy's with a bit of a
stomach. But the message is clear. That's why we baptize by immersion
and we don't sprinkle.

Because we're saying the old man is buried. It's all under the water.
It's all gone.

There is no more old man. Coming back out of the water, new man. Of
course it's not baptism that saves us.

It's not baptism that causes us to be born again. It's simply a symbol
or an image or a picture of what has already happened. But here's the
problem.

That there are those who get baptized but have not really buried the old
life. And so really the baptism is a lie. Because they're saying I'm
dead, I'm buried, here I am, I'm gone, under the water.

But actually no. Certain parts of the mind haven't been buried. Certain
parts of my life haven't been buried.

And so the burial is absolutely important because Jesus really died. And
that's the question I want to leave you this morning. Have you really
died? And if you have, why won't you put away the things of the flesh?
Why won't you bury those habits? Why won't you bury those thoughts? Why
won't you bury that lifestyle? Because if you've died, it needs to be
buried.

You can't carry it around with you. Remember Paul speaks, and I think
it's in Romans chapter 6. He speaks about who will deliver me from this
body of death. Speaking about the man carrying the corpse of the man he
had murdered around with him as part of his punishment.

With this dead body hanging on him. And folks, that's how many
Christians are living. They're living with this old life hanging around
them.

And Paul doesn't say that in despair. Because in the next verse, in the
next chapter, he immediately says, Thank God through Jesus Christ my
Lord. We can get victory over who we were.

We can get victory over our carnal passions and desires. We can get
victory over our habits and lifestyles. And so verse 56 says, And they
returned, this is the women, and they prepared spices and fragrant oils.

And they were obviously going to go back on the first day of the week.
And they rested on the Sabbath according to the commandment. Notice how
that everything is done by the book.

Father, we pray that you'd help us to understand the need for us to once
and for all bury the dead bodies. Lord, while it's impossible for a dead
person to be resuscitated and to be raised, yet somehow, Lord, we have
the ability to keep the old life alive. And I pray, Lord, that you'd
give us grace that we might once and for all put to death, as Paul says,
the deeds of the flesh.

And Lord, not just put them to death, but bury them so that we can never
raise them again. And Lord, I pray for each one who has bowed before you
this morning. Lord, and for those who are listening online, Lord, there
are things in each one of our lives that we just will not get rid of.

We will just not put them away. And I pray, Lord, that today we may
determine to bury everything that has to do with an old life. That we
might enjoy the resurrection life of the Lord Jesus.

Not be dragged down by the old life. But that we may enjoy the fullness
of the resurrection life. And so, Lord, I pray that you'd help us to
understand.

But above all, Lord, help us to be doers of your word and not hearers
only. Go with us now, I pray. Keep us and protect us.

Bring us together again safely on Thursday. In Jesus' name. Amen.

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Video: https://sermonindex2.b-cdn.net/2HPPdS8_taI.mp4
Source: https://sermonindex.net/speakers/anton-bosch/dead-bodies-must-be-buried/
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