The Confession of a Sanhedrist

Very glad to have you all with us. We're going to be thinking about the theme of confession today. It's said of our Lord Jesus that he confessed or made the good confession in front of Pontius Pilate.

In other words, he acknowledged the reasons why he had come into the world. So I'll be sharing this evening the Apostle Paul, he said that we are to confess with our mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in our hearts that God has raised him from the dead and we will be saved. And then we're going to be looking this morning specifically at a man who rather in extraordinary circumstances confessed by implication who Jesus is.

Let's pray. Father we thank you for that great note of triumph. We have so much to be proud about in terms of our Lord Jesus.

We boast about him and what he has done and what you sent him into this world to achieve and the fantastic way in which he accomplished every aspect of his life's commission. Lord we want to tell others about this Lord Jesus Christ. So help us now in our praise and in our worship to bring to you through him and in the power of your spirit all the commitment and all the adoration that is due to your name for the Savior's sake.

Amen. This morning's reading is taken from John's Gospel chapter 19 starting at verse 16 and reading through to the end of the chapter. Finally Pilate handed him over to them to be crucified.

So the soldiers took charge of Jesus carrying his own cross he went out to the place of the skull which in Aramaic is called Golgotha. There they crucified him and with him two others. One on each side of Jesus and in the middle.

Pilate had a notice prepared and fastened to the cross. It read Jesus of Nazareth king of the Jews. Many of the Jews read this sign for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city and the sign was written in Aramaic, Latin and Greek.

The chief priests of the Jews protested to Pilate do not write king of the Jews but that this man claimed to be king of the Jews. Pilate answered what I have written I have written. When the soldiers crucified Jesus they took his clothes dividing them into four shares one for each of them with the undergarment remaining.

The garment was seamless woven in one piece from top to bottom. Let's not tear it they said to one another let's decide by lot who will get it. This happened that the scriptures might be fulfilled which said they divided my garments among them and cast lots for my clothing.

So this is what the soldiers did. Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas and Mary of Magdala. When Jesus saw his mother there and the disciple who he loved standing nearby he said to his mother dear woman here is your son and to the disciple here is your mother.

From that time on this disciple took her into his home. Later knowing that all was now completed and so that the scripture would be fulfilled Jesus said I am thirsty. A jar of wine vinegar was there so they soaked a sponge in it put the sponge on a stalk of the hyssop plant and lifted it to Jesus lips.

Jesus said it is finished with that he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. Now it was the day of preparation and the next day was to be a special sabbath. Because the Jews did not want the bodies left on the cross during the sabbath they asked Pilate to have the legs broken of the bodies and the bodies taken down.

The soldiers therefore came and broke the legs of the first man who had been crucified with Jesus and then those of the other but when they came to Jesus and found that he was already dead they did not break his legs. Instead one of the soldiers pierced Jesus side with a spear bringing a sudden flow of blood and water. The man who saw it has given testimony and his testimony is true.

He knows that he tells the truth and he testifies so that you may also believe. These things happened so that the scripture would be fulfilled. Not one of his bones will be broken and another scripture says they will look on they will look on the ones they have pierced.

Later Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate for the body of Jesus. Now Joseph was a disciple of Jesus but secretly because he feared the Jews. With Pilate's permission he came and took the body.

He was accompanied by Nicodemus the man who earlier had visited Jesus at night. Nicodemus bought a mixture of myrrh and aloes about 75 pounds. Taking Jesus' body the two of them wrapped it with the spices in the strips of linen.

This was in accordance with the burial customs. At the place where Jesus was crucified there was a garden and in the garden a new tomb in which no one had ever been laid. Because it was the Jewish day of preparation and since the tomb was nearby they laid Jesus there.

I think it's a very interesting fact that the subject matter which calls our attention this morning actually is rehearsed in each of the four gospels. It's not often that you find an incident common to all the gospels. Actually the feeding of the 5,000 is another.

In the 27th chapter of Matthew's gospel we read just a little summary of the verses that we've heard from John's gospel. Matthew 27 57. A rich man from Arimathea named Joseph who had himself become a disciple of Jesus going to Pilate asked for Jesus' body and Pilate ordered that it be given to him.

I'll go back to the reading from John's gospel and we're giving the additional information. Verse 39 of John 19. He was accompanied by Nicodemus, the man who earlier had visited Jesus at night.

Let's keep our Bibles open at John 19 and we'll take our study from that particular rendering of this highly important incident. Have you noticed that the account of our Lord's death in John's gospel in this 19th chapter seems to have two facets to it. What I mean by that is that you get the first part of the chapter given over to Jesus manhandled by his enemies and then from the 38th verse you get the presentation of Jesus lovingly cared for by his friends.

The manhandling of our Savior is such that I would not want to speak on it for too long for my own emotions wouldn't be able to write the descriptions that really need to be given. Sufficient to say that he was butchered in one of the most callous ways that man has ever contrived to rob his fellow of life. Those who should have given Jesus help, the priests, betrayed their ordination vows as with the noise of the rest of the crowd they placed their own cries before Pilate that Jesus should be so terribly so horribly treated.

We pass over the scourging of the Roman soldiers and the way that they injured physically the body of our Lord. Sufficient to leave us with the sight of our Lord's body silhouetted against the mysteriously darkening skyline, mysterious because it's still midday. From the lips of our Lord come the final cry, it is finished.

And after that, have you ever noticed the whole tenor, the whole atmosphere changes. Now it's very important that you do understand this even if you've missed it right to this point in your Christian life and your reading of scripture. Our Lord was so terribly handled by his adversaries during the period leading up to his atonement for the sins of the world.

For three hours during that darkness our Lord went through hell itself. But when the cry left his lips, it is finished. Then the whole scenario changes.

Oh yes, he's still a man on the cross, but you no longer see him as the representative man numbered with the transgressors. You see him in all the potentiality of his kingship, of his kingliness, of his divine relationship with the Father. And from that moment on, no hand will touch the body of Jesus.

No prying eye will discern what happens to the Savior. Only those who love him, only those who follow him, only those for whom he is Lord and ultimately will be recognized as King of Kings. It's marvelous this.

The atoning work is done. And he who made his grave with the wicked shall also find that his burial shall be amongst the rich. He who descends into the very bowels of hell shall be lifted high above all.

The highest place that heaven affords is his by sovereign right. So how do you bury a king? You don't bury a king like you bury a pauper. And this is where I tell you the whole atmosphere changes from the 38th verse of John's gospel and the parallels in the synoptic gospels.

Now we are faced with our beloved Lord being rightly looked after by those who surprisingly have become his accomplices and whose privacy and secrecy is now blown as they discover a fresh confidence and courage. And when Peter's not there and Bartholomew's not there and Thomas is not there, you find Joseph of Arimathea and his colleague Nicodemus going towards Pontius Pilate. We're told that they are members of the council.

What is meant by that is that they are members of the religious ruling aristocracy of Judaism. Seventy men who hurriedly congregated together in a most illegal fashion to pass their own sentence on Jesus of Nazareth. And it seems as though Nicodemus was not there and Joseph dissented to the general conclusion that Jesus should be done to death.

How they managed to go ahead without unanimity, the scripture does not tell us. Maybe Joseph who comes from Arimathea, a place near Joppa, therefore towards the north of Palestine, was distant at that particular point. And when he returns he is horrified as to what has happened.

Now look, God Almighty never has a problem. The finger of God is on every situation. Did you know that? Even in the horrific death of our Lord, it's not that capricious.

Herod and Pilate and the rest, they may be feeling that they're acting as free agents, but they're within the overarching sovereignty of God. The finger of God is at work in the life of Jesus from his infancy to his death. And never more is there evidence of this than in what we will call for convenience's sake the aftermath of the death of Christ in the burial.

How do you bury one who has become sin for us, who has taken upon himself the consequences of human indiscretion and violent rebellion and has come through on the victory side? For it will be our Lord who can say, O death, where is your sting? O grave, where is your victory? So you find a grave for a man who is a king, and his blood-stained body has to be treated like a king's body is treated after the custom of the Jews, but rightly and properly. How would you bury a loved one in those days? You get him the finest of garments. You would scar the wardrobe.

You would go around the best shops and purchase the finest quality linen. It's hard to think that Peter would have had any linen. A successful working-class man, as with the rest of the disciples.

But here you see, within the sovereignty of God there are men who are professional men, businessmen, rich men, who at the right time leave their frailty and their fears behind and go to Pilate and sue him for the body of Jesus. Joseph, who would have had servants. Nicodemus, who was plentiful or seemingly so as far as financial reserves are concerned.

And they come. You see, for the body of Jesus to be released and dealt with appropriate to a king, then it needs someone of influence to sue the procurator. Money talks.

We may not like the notion, but it does. It carries influence. There are those who feel that the wealthy can never be used in the service of God because they misunderstand the teaching of our Lord, who said that it is not easy for a wealthy man to enter the kingdom of God.

It is like the difficulty that the camel has negotiating the small gate in Jerusalem. But it is possible. And there were and are those who have been blessed with this world's goods and with influence as a result, who use those goods and that influence in the advance of the kingdom.

When Joseph of Aramea speaks, Pontius Pilate listens. So it's he, the rich man, according to the synoptic Gospels accounts, who goes to Pilate and asks for the body of Jesus. And Pilate, so to speak, writes the death certificate equivalent at any rate.

Because having got the information from his soldiers that Jesus is dead, then he entrusts the body to Joseph, who along with Nicodemus are the best qualified to give Jesus the king a kingly funeral, for this will be a royal funeral. And saturated into those fine linen sheets will be the best perfume, not your cheap bric-a-bac stuff from the bazaars. He who owns a cattle on a thousand hills, the wealth of every mine, deserves the best treatment, having taken upon himself the awful consequences of redeeming men and women from sin.

And so, Joseph and Nicodemus, they come and they minister to the beloved Lord. It is they, along with a handful of womenfolk, who prepare the body for burial. I speak with respect to tribes in Dillastons and funeral undertakers here in Worthing, who often have helped us here in the Tab giving dignity to the last rites, so to speak, of many of our beloved church family who are now in glory.

There were never more tender undertakers than these. Never was a body so well treated. The contrast of the butchery and the cruelty of the Roman soldiers as they pushed their fists against Jesus' face and as they'd broken his skin, these men do not mutilate.

They endeavor to bring the skin back together as best as possible, and lovingly they embalm and wrap the body of our Lord. So you see, God in his sovereignty has got his men. He always has.

There is the linen. There is the perfume. There are the men.

There are the women. But if you're going to have a burial, you have to have a tomb. Now listen, the chronology of the crucifixion is given to us carefully by each of the evangelists.

I mean by that, our Lord was buried on the Friday, and the Jewish Sabbath is the Saturday. And according to the Old Testament scriptures way back in the book of Deuteronomy, it is not possible because it breaches the law for a man who has been hung to remain, for his body to remain in that condition on the Sabbath. Deuteronomy 21, 22.

If a man guilty of a capital offense is put to death and his body is hung on a tree, you must not leave his body on the tree overnight. Be sure to bury him that same day, because anyone who is hung on a tree is under God's curse. You must not desecrate the land the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance.

So here is our Lord, and it's gone three o'clock in the afternoon, and by six o'clock on the Friday evening, the Sabbath will have dawned. The Romans would have left the body to putrefy in the heat and in the contrasting cold of the night. But that would go against Jewish tradition.

So here are two godly spiritual Jews, and they come to Pilate, and they ask for the body. And we are given a wonderful piece of information, just a little snippet that indicates again the finger of God. Look at verse 41.

At the place where Jesus was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden, a new tomb. Not miles away, not many hundreds of yards away, immediately available by chance. No, not a bit.

There is no chance whatsoever in the whole of this narrative. Here is God the Father preparing for the death and the entombment of his Son. He who was born by the womb of a virgin rightly is encased in a virgin tomb.

The place had been prepared by Joseph of Arimathea. A cave hewn out of rock with probably several ledgers in the inner area where Joseph's body would have been laid and presumably that of his wife and his children. But this tomb prepared for Joseph, not used, will be succeeded by Joseph for an even more wonderful and memorable person and event.

Joseph offers the tomb, his tomb, to house the body of our beloved Lord. At the place where Jesus was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden, a new tomb in which no one had ever been laid. Because it was the Jewish day of preparation and since the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.

Just sufficient time for the embalming. Just sufficient time for the womenfolk to do what they could in also adding their ministry at this point. And then to leave off, because it was the Sabbath, and then to return on the first Sunday, the resurrection Sunday, to continue the ministry that they had left incomplete or so they thought.

And incidentally, isn't that wonderful? As far as you and I are concerned, there are times when we attend to the work of God and we don't do it as well as we would like to do it. There's an unfinished area and we're hoping that there may be another occasion. And the principle behind this story surely is this.

Do what you can, when you can, and recognize within the sovereignty of God that he will achieve his purposes and ultimately perfect his work through you or through someone else. Here, my brothers and sisters, I give you one of the most remarkable illustrations in the whole of Scripture of a man who finds courage at a point when he's going to so stick his neck out that he will shock Pontius Pilate and be an embarrassment to his colleagues in the Sanhedrin. The moment has come when Joseph and also Nicodemus, who had sought the ministry of Christ before but secretly by night, will now declare their public allegiance to the Lord Jesus.

I'm not reading more into this than Scripture will allow. I'm not suggesting that they had in mind the resurrection, though we are told that Joseph of Arimathea was a devout and a good man and it seems as though he has clung on to the words that he's heard Jesus speak and Nicodemus has already been trained in theology one memorable evening by our Lord. Therefore, it is possible for us at least to speculate that they had some notions, being men well versed in the Old Testament Scriptures, that this was not the end of this man from Nazareth.

Certainly the treatment that they give him is a treatment that is in accord with any man of kingly disposition. And incidentally, isn't it interesting that when our Lord was born in Bethlehem's manger from the east, yes, you remembered, came rich and influential men. He was feted as a king in his birth.

Isn't it just like Jehovah God to ensure that in his burial, after his life's work has been achieved, he shall go out in the same manner in which he came in, because he was born a king and he was buried as a king. And now we know, because we're on the inside of the story, that he is indeed King of kings and Lord of lords. How often do you confess King Jesus? You see, it would have been easy for Joseph and for Nicodemus to have gone the same route as the rest of the disciples and slunk into some sort of anonymity, just to see how things were going to go.

It's amazing how danger has the opposite effect on some people. You know, you expect a number of to just rush away like frightened rabbits, but instead of that, you discover they have tremendous reserves. You know, we had a little lady who used to clean the tab in my early years here.

She was a lovable, simple, faithful soul. And one occasion at a pastoral group meeting, some of our men with all their masculinity were, how this came into a pastoral group meeting, heaven knows, but they were rehearsing their exploits in the last world war. One saying how he had descended from a plane by a parachute.

And this little lady said, I did that. I was a nasty girl. And they dropped me out of a plane.

And she said it as though she was just referring to something quite common a garden. It is quite extraordinary what potential, unsuspecting potential can be locked up in people. And here is Joseph and and here is Nicodemus.

And the very threat of the situation, it brings out the best in these men. And these are the men who've got the right contacts. They've got the power, they've got the influence, and they can be used within the purposes of God to ensure what? That our Lord has a burial fit for a king.

I come to a conclusion. You know, I think some of us perhaps have, as one of the great regrets in our lives, that loved ones went home before we actually told them what we thought of them. I've often felt that it's a bit of a farce sometimes receiving wreaths at funerals.

Don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying that it always is. But when some relative who hasn't seen the person who's been about to be buried for 10 years, then it strikes me it would have been better if they'd come with a bunch of flowers when they were alive.

I wonder if Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus sometime in this incident remonstrated with themselves. If only we'd told them what we thought of him when he was physically with us. I'm not suggesting that this is a direct teaching from the passage, but pastorally I am applying it to you and to me, that with our older friends, with our mums and our dads, while we've got the opportunity, ensure that you let your loved ones know that you really do love them.

But back to base. Here are these disciples and they use their influence and they use all that they have available at that time to give our Lord the burial that is right for him. What must have been their amazement when three days later he's raised in the power of an endless life? Can you imagine the conversation between Joseph and Nicodemus? Don't you think they were absolutely thrilled that they had risked all their reputation and broken etiquette and gone to Pontius Pilate and couldn't care a fig for Caiaphas and Annas? Jesus was back and we were used at a time when he needed us.

Thank God for that. And this is your privilege and mine, perhaps in a different setting, definitely in a different setting, to confess our allegiance to Jesus Christ, to tell others by word and by action that he is indeed the King, the Sovereign. I'd rather have Jesus than riches of gold.

I'd rather have Jesus than wealth untold than to be a king in a vast domain or to live, the words go from me, but you can finish it because it's in your books. Take a sneak look there. The point is this, you show that you love him more than anything else.

And now I offer you in his name bread and wine to take thoughtfully, not carelessly, and in the very act saying, yes, Lord Jesus, like Joseph and Nicodemus, I'm going to witness for you and confess you and enthrone you in my heart, in my life. Let's go to that lovely old hymn, Jesus, thou joy of loving hearts, 383, true source of life and light of men, from the best bliss that earth imparts, we turn unfilled to you again. Stand for the first two verses.