Mark 15:33-47 | The Death and Burial of Jesus

Apr 7

Apr 7 Mark 15:33-47 | The Death and Burial of Jesus

The Death of Jesus

33 And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. 34 And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” 35 And some of the bystanders hearing it said, “Behold, he is calling Elijah.” 36 And someone ran and filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink, saying, “Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to take him down.” 37 And Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed his last. 38 And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. 39 And when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, “Truly this man was the Son of God!”

40 There were also women looking on from a distance, among whom were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome. 41 When he was in Galilee, they followed him and ministered to him, and there were also many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem.

Jesus Is Buried

42 And when evening had come, since it was the day of Preparation, that is, the day before the Sabbath, 43 Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of the council, who was also himself looking for the kingdom of God, took courage and went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. 44 Pilate was surprised to hear that he should have already died. And summoning the centurion, he asked him whether he was already dead. 45 And when he learned from the centurion that he was dead, he granted the corpse to Joseph. 46 And Joseph bought a linen shroud, and taking him down, wrapped him in the linen shroud and laid him in a tomb that had been cut out of the rock. And he rolled a stone against the entrance of the tomb. 47 Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses saw where he was laid.

Introduction

If you’re like me, you wonder, “Does God really love me?” I’m look at me! So much grumbling, so much resentment, so much uncleanness. But Jesus knows all of it. In fact, he sees the ugly parts of me I can’t even see. When I find it hard to believe that God could love me, a passage like this gets up in my face and says, “Oh, let me show you the extent of my love!”

The way John 13:1 says it is so comforting, “Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.” I need a love, and you need a love, that doesn’t stop halfway. I’ve had enough halfway love in my life. I need a love, and you need a love, that goes all the way to the end. A kind of love that reaches all the way down into the darkest corners of my heart and brings the light in where I didn’t even know I needed it. A halfway love brings a halfway salvation, but an all the way love, like we find in Christ, brings an all the way salvation. Jesus loved us to the end: to death.

God didn’t do this begrudgingly, like a parent helping their child out of frustration do something the child could easily do themselves. We couldn’t do it ourselves. He’s not angry that it took this drastic measure. He’s not counting the cost to himself. He’s happy with his work. In fact, as our intercessor now in heaven, he’s still saving us. The way the author of Hebrews says it, he loves to the “uttermost” (Hebrews 7:25). Jesus loves us to the uttermost of our need, to the uttermost of our sin, to the uttermost of his divine capabilities. Jesus is the only one who can perfectly say, “I love you to death.”

That is not to say that the death of Jesus isn’t something to look at soberly. It is, as is every death. There was a reason he had to die. Our darkness drove him there, and that’s what we need to look at today.

Before we see the newness of life that comes Easter morning, we must first see the darkness of Good Friday, the darkness of the death of Jesus. We will do that under three headings:

The Darkness On the Earth
The Darkness Over the Son
The Darkness In the Grave

The Darkness on the Earth

It’s not hard to see today that something is deeply wrong with the world. When a virus spreads so quickly that even a handshake could be a greeting of death, we cannot say the world is okay. What happened to God’s good creation? The Bible tells us that the goodness of God wasn’t enough for our original parents. Instead, Adam and Eve listened to the lies of Satan and took matters into their own hands. No one was going to tell them how to live.

From there, sin went viral, passed down from generation to generation. We’ve all contracted this sickness unto death. It shadows all we do. The Puritan William Beveridge put it this way.

I cannot pray, but I sin. I cannot hear or preach a sermon, but I sin. I cannot give an alms or receive the sacrament, but I sin. Nay, I cannot so much as confess my sins, but my confessions are still aggravations of them. My repentance needs to be repented of, my tears want washing, and the very washing of my tears need still to be washed over again with the blood of my Redeemer.

In other words, we are not good people who occasionally do bad things. We are evil people proving it all the time. Sin separates us from God. There is a chasm so large no one can bridge it on their own. Sin separates us from other people. Maybe it’s difficult during this quarantine to find peace in your home. Sin separates us from the creation. Right now, there is a virus spreading around the globe, seeking to kill and destroy. And sin separates us from ourselves. Our own flesh fights against our desires. Maybe you’re seeing that these days too. The shadow of sin stands over this world because we have rejected God. As a result, here is Jesus on the cross.

By this point in Mark’s gospel, he’d been there for three hours. At noon, the sixth hour, the very heart of the day, darkness covered the whole land until 3PM, the ninth hour. Some scholars try to write this off as just a solar eclipse—nothing special. Do you remember the eclipse we had a few years ago? The darkness lasted maybe fifteen minutes. This was three hours. This was an act of God. He was showing us the darkness of sin that placed Christ on the cross.

The Old Testament prophets talked about the darkness of the “Day of the Lord,” which was like biblical-code language for Judgment Day. For example, Jeremiah said, “I looked on the earth, and behold, it was without form and void; and to the heavens, and they had no light” (Jeremiah 4:23). The physical darkness represented our spiritual darkness.

The Old Testament tells repeatedly of how God’s people broke God’s covenant, dimming the light and ushering in the darkness. Our sin prevents us from seeing the true depth and tragedy of our real plight, our real condition, of what we truly deserve, of the judgment it requires. One author I read (Bolt) points to the prophet Isaiah’s words, “We grope for the wall like the blind; we grope like those who have no eyes; we stumble at noon as in the twilight, among those in full vigor we are like dead men” (Isaiah 59:10). God sees that no one can lead them out of their own darkness, so he will strap on the armor himself and save them. The Redeemer will come to Jerusalem (Isaiah 59:15-20). Here was their Redeemer, hanging on a cross, going under the darkness for them.

What hope do we have in our darkness? We have the cross. It’s messy and it’s bloody because it has to be. The Bible says, “Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins” (Hebrews 9:22) and “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). Nothing less than Christ’s cross can save our soul. The only hope of any light at all is by the Light himself going under the darkness for us, dying in the darkness for our darkness, letting the darkness engulf him and take him down, which is our second point.

The Darkness Over the Son

Jesus felt the darkness that day. Verse 34 says Jesus cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Mark includes both the Aramaic version Jesus actually said and the Greek translation for his readers. According to verse 35, some thought he was calling for Elijah. The Aramaic words misheard certainly could sound like it, and in Jewish thought, Elijah, who had not died but had been lifted into heaven, would come back to help God’s people. In verse 36, they took sour wine to him, fulfilling the prophecy of Psalm 69:21, “for my thirst they gave me sour wine to drink.” This isn’t the wine with myrrh offered to Jesus on the way to the place of crucifixion. This wasn’t to dull his pain but to prolong his life, to see if Elijah would come. But Elijah wasn’t coming. He wasn’t crying out for Elijah anyway. He was crying out for another reason—not for someone to save him but to show the kind of salvation he’s offering. His cry was the first verse of Psalm 22. Why that Psalm? Because there the Psalmist David laments the feeling of forsakenness. The first two verses say, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest.” Do you know that feeling? Have you felt forsaken? Have you felt abandoned? On the cross, that’s how Jesus felt. Dane Ortlund, in his book Gentle and Lowly, says this.

New Testament scholar Richard Bauckham notes that while Psalm 22:1 was originally written in Hebrew, Jesus spoke it in Aramaic and thus was personally appropriating it. Jesus wasn’t simply repeating David’s experience of a thousand years earlier as a convenient parallel expression. Rather, every anguished Psalm 22:1 cry across the millenia was being recapitulated and fulfilled and deepened in Jesus. His was the true Psalm 22:1 of which ours are the shadows. As the people of God, all our feelings of forsakenness funneled through an actual human heart in a single moment of anguished horror on Calvary, an actual forsakenness…The world’s Light was going out.

He who knew no sin was becoming sin (2 Corinthians 5:21). All our darkness was placed on him. As the prophet Isaiah said, “Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” (Isaiah 53:4-6)

On the cross, all the iniquity of all God’s people throughout all history past, present, and future was laid upon his Son. And it killed him. Jesus did not die a normal death of mere physical expiration; Jesus died the extraordinary death of spiritual expiation. In other words, by his death, Jesus set us right with God. He went into God’s courtroom of Divine Justice as our substitute and received a guilty verdict. He was led to the place of slaughter and executed for our sins. Jesus hung there, covered in darkness, physically and spiritually, experiencing the very Hell we deserve. Why? To give us the very heaven we long for. This was a legal transaction—he took our sin and in return gave us his righteousness.

Here’s one result. When Paul says in Romans 8:1, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus” it means there is therefore now no condemnation! Right now, you are free from the eternal punishment of sin. Right now, you are free from condemnation. You might condemn yourself but God won’t condemn you. Right now, God fully approves of you because Jesus paid it all—not some: all. There is therefore now no condemnation for you who are in Christ Jesus. You are utterly and eternally free forever. And all you have to do to receive this amazing gift is accept it with the empty hands of faith. I love the way Gerhard Forde says it.

We are justified freely, for Christ’s sake, by faith, without the exertion of our own strength, gaining of merit, or doing of works. To the age-old question, “What shall I do to be saved?” the confessional answer is shocking: “Nothing! Just be still: shut up and listen for once in your life to what God the Almighty, creator and redeemer, is saying to his world and to you in the death and resurrection of his Son! Listen and believe!”

We see something of this in the Centurion’s reaction to Jesus’ death. Verse 39 says when Jesus made a loud cry and gave up his spirit, the Centurion said, “Truly, this man was the Son of God!” This is the first time in Mark’s gospel a human voice refers to Jesus as the Son of God. That matters because he was confessing who Jesus really is—no more mocking. The centurion saw the struggle of Jesus on the cross. He saw the darkness descend. He heard all the words uttered. He noticed something significant was going on.

What did he see? He saw Jesus representing his people. The Greek Mark uses for “loud cry” is what the author of Hebrews uses when he says, “In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death” (Hebrews 5:7). The context there is Jesus learning obedience through what he suffered. So the cry on the cross was a cry of obedient suffering. Why was he obeying? Because we needed him to. His cry was our cry. His obedience was our obedience. His suffering was our suffering. His forsakenness was our forsakenness. Like Isaac taken up the mountain by his father, Jesus is there as a sacrifice, but this time the Father will not relent. The knife is plunged. The Son dies.

When he died, verse 38 says the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. That’s important because it tells us another result of the cross. Where there was once separation between man and God in the very heart of God’s temple, there is now open access. The Great High Priest has gone behind the curtain and offered himself as the final sacrifice. When his flesh was torn, the temple curtain came down with it. No more separation. No other mediator between God and man is needed. By his blood, we now have all the access to God we will ever need (Hebrews 10:19-22). We can come boldly to the throne of grace (Hebrews 4:16). God will hear us because on the cross Jesus wasn’t heard. We will never be forsaken because he was. Psalm 22 starts with lament, and that’s what he cried out, but it ends in praise for God’s deliverance. Jesus cried verse 1 to give us the rest of the Psalm. He asked for our deliverance through him, and we received it! Satan can’t condemn us. The world can’t destroy us. We can’t even ruin ourselves anymore. Christ’s once-for-all sacrifice conquered it all!

Jesus endured the darkness of our sin on our behalf. Then, he entered the darkness of the grave. Let’s look at that now.

The Darkness in the Grave

Why does Mark record the burial of Jesus? Throughout history, this has been a contested point of the story. Some say Jesus didn’t really die on the cross. Maybe he passed out, was taken down, and recovered somewhere. Muslims say he was taken to heaven before he died on the cross. Others say dogs ate his body. But from the earliest of days, the burial of Jesus was an important and well-recorded point. All four gospels record his burial, and the earliest Christian creed, the Apostles’ Creed, includes it.

But why does his burial matter so much? Because only a dead Jesus saves. Only a dead and buried Jesus experienced the full wrath of God against our sin. Only a dead and buried Jesus can resurrect. If he wasn’t dead and buried, the resurrection couldn’t have happened, and if the resurrection didn’t happen then, as Paul said, “our preaching is in vain and our faith is in vain.”

The details Mark includes lead us to the conclusion that Jesus really did die and he really was buried. Verses 42-43 tell us that by evening, because it was the day of Preparation, the day before the Sabbath, Joseph of Arimathea, a member of the Sanhedrin council, took courage and went to Pilate to ask for the body. Those details matter because of what comes next. Verse 44 says Pilate was surprised to hear Jesus was already dead. Crucifixion could take days. Jesus was dead in a few hours. So he called the centurion who oversaw the death. After confirming, Pilate gave Joseph his body. This wasn’t normal practice. Usually, to complete the humiliation of crucifixion, the body was thrown in the trash heap. So why did Pilate give the body to Joseph? Mark doesn’t say. All he says is that he did, and that’s important because it’s different from the normal way of things. It’s the kind of thing that is only written down if it’s true.

But it’s important for other reasons too. It’s a fulfillment of prophecy. The Old Testament prophesied this kind of burial for the Messiah. Joseph was a rich man—only a rich man had a tomb like this prepared. Isaiah said the Messiah would have his grave made with a rich man in his death (Isaiah 53:9) and that the tomb would be cut out of a rock (Isaiah 22:16). We know from John’s gospel that this tomb was in a garden (John 19:41), and that also points to a profound truth. The Puritan commentator Matthew Henry puts it this way, “In the garden of Eden death and the grave first received their power, and now in a garden they are conquered, disarmed, and triumphed over. In a garden Christ began his passion, and from a garden he would rise, and begin his exaltation.” In his death, Jesus is undoing the terrible events of the Garden of Eden.

And he’s undoing something deep in his people. If you’re in Christ, his burial represents your burial. As Paul says, “We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death.” That’s important because of what comes next. “In order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4). In other words, when that stone was rolled over Jesus’ grave, he took your sin in there with him. He buried it away in his death, which means you don’t have to bear the punishment anymore. Yes, you still have some darkness in you, but there is also now a new light. His death purchased it and his burial sealed it.

Your sins are there in that grave, dead and gone in the sight of God, never to be resurrected.

Conclusion

Here’s the amazing thing: this good news is available to anyone who will come. All you need is desire. You might think you’re not worthy, but the cross says you can’t be too low for Jesus. He came all the way down to be visible to those at the very bottom. Did you notice Mark’s inclusion of the women in verses 40-41? Why them? Because they were the humblest of them all in those days. They were watching from afar because Jewish convention demanded it. Their witness didn’t even matter in court, but they were witnesses to God’s salvation. When almost nothing else was, God was available to them. His salvation was for them. They saw Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection. God was using them—the lowest—to tell his story. He always does.

Still, you might think, “Okay, but what if I mess up? I mean really mess up. Isn’t there some point at which this can’t be true for me anymore?” John Bunyan was a man who knew this feeling well. He wrote a book called Come and Welcome to Jesus Christ. It was devoted to John 6:37, where in the KJV Jesus says, “All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.” Bunyan confronts these thoughts with God’s word.

But I am a great sinner, say you.