Matthew 2024

So the reading is from Matthew chapter 27.

Starting at verse 45. From noon until 3 in the afternoon, darkness came over all the land. About 3 in the afternoon, Jesus cried out in a loud voice, Eli, Eli, Lemma Sabakthani, which means my god my god. Why have you forsaken me? When some of those standing there heard this, they said, He's calling Elijah.

Immediately, 1 of them ran and got a sponge. He filled it with wine vinegar, put it on a staff and offered it to Jesus to drink. The rest said Now leave him alone. Let's see if Elijah comes to save him. And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit.

At that moment, the curtain of the temple was torn in 2 from top to bottom. The earth shook. The rocks split and the tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs after Jesus resurrection and went into the holy city and appeared to many people.

When the centurion and those with him who were guarding Jesus saw the earthquake and all that had happened, they were terrified and exclaimed, surely He was the son of god. Many women were there watching from a distance. They had followed Jesus from Galladi to care for his needs. Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joseph. And the mother of Zebedee's sons.

As evening approached, there came a rich man from Aramothea, named Joseph, who had himself become a disciple of Jesus. Going to pilate, he asked for Jesus' body, and pilate ordered that it be given to him. Joseph took the body wrapped it in a clean linen cloth and placed it in his own new tomb that he had cut out of the rock. He rolled a big stone in front of the entrance to the tomb and went away. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were sitting there opposite the tomb.

The next day, the 1 after preparation day. The chief priests and the pharisees went to pilot. Sir, they said. We remember that while he was still alive, that deceiver said after 3 days, I will rise again. So give the order for the tomb to be made secure until the third day.

Otherwise, his disciples may come and steal the body and tell the people that he's been raised from the dead. This last deception will be first will be worse than the first. Take a guard Pider answered, go. Make the tomb as secure as you know how. So they went and made the tomb secure by putting a seal on the stone and posting the guide.

Thank you, Anne. And, good evening everybody. My name is Tom. I'm 1 of the pastors here, and, nice to be with you, and welcome to anybody who's, joining us online. We will come back to Matthew's Goss bull in just a minute's time.

But I'd like us first, if you will, to turn to another passage from the Bible. We're gonna have a look at 1 Corinthians 15. So if you'd like to turn to 1 Corinthians 15, it's, on page 1156, 1156, and we're just going to have a short reading from the start of that chapter. This is a Paul writing to the church in corinth And, in chapter 15, he says to them, now brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. By this gospel, you are saved.

If you hold firmly to the word I preach to you, otherwise you have believed in vain. For what I received, I passed on to you as of first importance, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures, and that he appeared, and then there's a list of people and places, which he appeared. And so it's a very interesting little passage this, and I just want you to think in your mind. When it when it comes to the gospel, what would you say are the things of first importance? What are the things of first importance, the things you mustn't leave out, the things you mustn't compromise on, the things you mustn't forget in your gospel presentation.

You see, I think lots of us and certainly me When we think about the gospel and what's included in the gospel, we would include the cross on which Jesus died for our sins, and we would include the resurrection on Easter Sunday morning when Jesus rose from the dead. But we wouldn't want to say much or we would forget to say much about what happened in that middle bit. We wouldn't include his burial. I don't think most of us in our gospel presentation. And to be fair, when you kind of turn through the letters of the new testament, it is true that the actual burial of Jesus doesn't receive a great deal of attention.

And yet, in in this summary of the gospel, Which in New Testament writing is 1 of the clearest summaries of what the gospel message actually is. Paul includes not only the crucifixion in the resurrection, but the burial of Jesus Christ. That he says is a thing of first importance. Or if you could put it provocatively, there is a sense in which you don't get saved. Unless you trust in the Jesus, who was also buried.

Yeah? Now why might that be? Why do we think the burial is so important to Paul here? Well, last year, you may remember in our morning services, we were making our way through the new city catechism, which is kind of a clipped version of the Heidelberg catechism, which is just an old question and answer way of learning the Christian faith. And what's interesting when you go into some of those creeds and confessions from the past is that the burial of Jesus is nearly always mentioned and is seen to be a very important part of the gospel message.

And here's how it's put in the Heidelberg catechism. His 2 questions, number 40 and 41. Why was it necessary for Christ to humble himself even unto death? Because of the justice and truth of god, satisfaction for our sins could be made in no other way than by the death of the son of god. And then notice the next question doesn't just accelerate on to the resurrection.

It stops on the burial. It wants us to know something about the burial. Why was he buried? His burial testified that he really had died. And that seems to be how the burial is functioning in 1 Corinthians 15 as well.

He died for our sins according to the scriptures. How do we know? He was buried. He rose again on the third day. How do we know he was seen?

The seeing testifies to the resurrecting, and the burial testifies to the dying. And, you know, still today, even in our kind of language, we do speak like that. So it might be that you're at work and you've been assigned a particular project, and it hasn't gone well, and you've decided to pull the plug on the project. Someone might say to you, oh, you know, how's that project you're working on? And you might say, mate, it's dead and buried.

Yeah. It's dead and buried. It's finished. What you mean is not just dead. You mean dead in the fullest sense.

It is dead and buried. It's completely dead. Yeah? On a more serious note, it's, sad, isn't it? You know, when people lose loved ones.

Overseas, and they're waiting for the body to come home. There is a sense in which you can't have proper closure until you've had a burial until the body has come back. And you, in 1 sense, have to live in uncertainty if that body is never recovered. What happened to them? How do you really know how they ended their life and what may have occurred in those final days?

There's a there's a sense in which the the burial brings closure to the death. The death has really happened when the body is there. And it seems to me that that is why the burial of Jesus Christ is so important to the gospel writers. You know, last week in our q and a, if you stayed for our q and a after the service, 1 of the things we were talking about is that rather strange and unusual bit in Matthew's gospel where we're told that at the death of Christ, all these holy ones of old suddenly come suddenly come bursting out of the tombs and make their way into the city. And, 1 of the questions I think Dean asked, which is a good question, was given that weirdness of this event, why isn't it that more gospel writers don't record it and talk about it?

You'd think they'd all be. Sort of wanting to make that point. And Pete was saying that actually no, when you look at these eyewitness accounts, actually what gives credibility to them and and supports them as authentic documents is they don't all say the same things about the same events. They all kind of witness and write about different things. That's true, and yet there are also other events which seem to be so central to the writers that they all include them.

And they're not gonna leave them out because You know, it's critical that it's known. And that's why I think the burial occurs in all 4 of the gospels because it is so important that we know not only the death and the resurrection, but what happened in between. And we notice as we come to this passage this evening that the burial of Jesus is not just talked about in a Q and A catechism style. The doctrine is taught to us through through beautiful story. And so I want us to look now at Matthew 27.

So do turn back to Matthew 27, and we're gonna see 3 things from this passage. The first of which is the saving power of Jesus Christ. The saving power of Jesus Christ, and we'll go from verse 57. As evening approached, there came a rich man from Arabothea. Now we're not quite sure where that was.

People think it was in a nearby hill country named Joseph, who had himself become a disciple of Jesus, a rich man who had become a disciple. Now, we don't know exactly when Joseph of Arab mathias did become a disciple, but that sentence alone is a miracle. A rich man had become a disciple. Because if you know Matthews's gospel, you might remember back in chapter 9 18, and you can flick there if you want. Chapter 19 verse 16, a rich man comes up to Jesus.

Remember that interaction? And the rich man says teacher what good thing must I do? To get eternal life. And then they have this discussion about the commandments. Jesus says, wow, you shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, and he goes through them.

And then the young man says in verse 20, all these I have kept. So what do I still lack? And then Jesus said, if you want to be perfect, go sell your possessions and give to the poor, and then and then and then follow me, and you will have treasure in heaven. When the young man heard this, he went away sad because he had great wealth. Then Jesus said to his disciples truly, I tell you it is hard.

For someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. And the disciples, like, are absolutely astonished by this, and cannot work out what has just happened because I think in their mind, wealth means in this and blessing. He's a rich man, and he keeps the law who could be more in than him. But Jesus responds by saying, no. No.

No. It's actually the other way around. For the wealthy to shift their allegiance to me is a thing that is humanly impossible, but not with God. All things are possible with god. And so we see in verse 57 a rich man had become a disciple.

And if we know Matthew, we're supposed to be thinking miracle. A miracle has happened. Something impossible has been made possible by the lord Jesus. And so in the last couple of weeks, we've seen a centurion saying truly this was the son of god. That was a pretty amazing miracle.

The first 1 in the kingdom, if you like, was a Roman centurion, a gentile. And also we're seeing that a rich Jew has now come into the kingdom, and that's a thing of impossibility. And so brothers and sisters we're supposed to in this account behold the saving power of Christ that a rich man and a gentle centurion have been saved. But it gets even better than that because in Mark's gospel, and you don't have to turn, but the reference is chapter 15 verse 43. In Mark's gospel, we learn that Joseph, well, there's was a rich man, and also a member of the top religious council.

And so Joseph of Arab Mate was not only wealthy. He had a kind of political and religious importance. So many people think that that ruling council was the Sanhedrin that he was part of. And they had both spiritual responsibility and political responsibility. And Joseph had made it into the sanhedrin and was, we're told an influential member of that count and so if you were a Jewish mum or dad with a little boy, this is like your dream for them.

What are they gonna become? They're gonna be wealthy, and they're gonna be really significant. They're gonna have a a status. But unlike lots of the members of that ruling council who hated Jesus and gave him up to death, Luke tells us that Joseph did not consent to their decision. He was on the ruling council, but when it came to the handing over of Jesus, he did not consent to that decision or action.

That's Luke 23 51. Now why did he do that? Well, it's most probably because he had begun to trust in the lord Jesus Christ and had become a disciple. And so what a miracle? A rich member of the Sanhedron?

Has become a follower of Jesus. I wonder if there's anybody in your life you can think of who you reckon could not be converted. You know, maybe you think they are just too wealthy They're just too wealthy and they're just too comfortable. They can have all the holidays they want. They can have all the life pressures alleviated by money.

They don't want for anything. Or maybe there's someone you can think of who couldn't be converted because they seem to just be too significant in this life. They've got status. What would being a child of god add to them when they've got all the status that the world could offer? Sometimes we can be tempted to put up impossibility barriers, can't we?

But here we see that there is nobody too rich, successful, or influential to become a disciple of the lord Jesus Christ Joseph was such a man. And so we see in this burial account the saving power of Christ. Secondly, and this 1 is a bit wordy. The courageous, caring, costly love of god's people. That's what we see in these burial accounts.

If you wanna write it down, I'll give you just a minute. The courageous caring, costly, love of god's people, brothers and sisters see the courage of Joseph of Arabothea, verse 58. Going to Pilate, he asked for Jesus' body and pilot ordered that it be given to him. Joseph took the body and he wrapped it in a clean linen cloth. Now that seems to be just a detail, but we must not underestimate how significant this action is.

Remember, Jesus Christ is enemy number 1 to the religiously of the day, and Joseph is a member of that religious elite. And so when he goes to pilot to ask for the body and then goes to take the body, it is clear now that he is associating himself not with the sanhedrin, but with Jesus. It's a very clear demonstration that his allegiance has shifted from the religious council to Jesus. He wants the body. He wants to be associated in death with Jesus.

And notice he's happy to go public with that because to take a body from a cross in a well known place is a public association. Yeah? People knew where Folks got crucified. It was something of a spectacle. There were passersby and mockers.

We know all that. And for Joseph to be seen at the cross with the body is a way of going public with his new affiliation. He's now come out as a disciple, and people are seeing that. And it's clear from the text that the word did get around quite quickly. If you look at verse 62 and verse 64, the next day, the 1 after preparation day, The chief priests and the pharisees went to pilot, sir, they said we remember that while he was still alive, that deceiver said, after 3 days, I will rise again.

So give order for the tomb to be made secure. Now what do they clearly know at this point? They know that the body is where. It's not on the cross anymore. Give order that the tomb might be sealed.

Because they know the body is there, and surely, therefore, they would have known who exactly had taken it and where it had gone. They know that Joseph has come away from their ruling elite and has now associated himself. With the lord Jesus. This this is a big deal. This is a type of courageous love that he is showing.

In John 19 verse 38, we're told that Joseph to begin with was a secret disciple. But there is nothing secret about his actions now with the body of Jesus Christ. So what has happened to him? What has happened to him? It's the love of Jesus Christ on the cross has drawn out his discipleship and his courage.

You know, who knows? Maybe it was going through Joseph's mind as he looked at the cross, heard about the cross. Maybe he thought to himself There was nothing secret about god's love for me. I now see that now. It has been demonstrated in the most public of ways, and so I'm going to move from secret to open.

Because the love of Christ on the cross has drawn the courage out of me to be with him now. It can happen that way. Can't it for us? You know, hospital or work or school? You know, sometimes we want to operate as those secret disciples, don't we?

We're not going to partake in any blasphemy. We're not going to consent to that sort of action, but we might for a time want to remain secret. And what is the antidote to that? Well, it's the love of the open love of Christ on the cross. The more we reflect on that, the more we find courage comes into our bones to live for him.

Something similar has happened to Joseph here. There's a courageous love, but there's also a caring love. And you see that in verse 59. Have a have a look at how the body is treated. Joseph took the body wrapped it in a clean linen cloth and placed it in his own new tomb.

Do you see the tenderness of the language there? It's very interesting because normally a crucified body was a was a dump thing. Yeah. You would either leave it there to be eaten by the birds, or more commonly the body would be taken down and thrown into a kind of eternal tarpet fire, and it would be despised and dishonored in death, a crucified body. But Joseph is not going to have that for his savior.

And so he takes him, notice the tenderness, he takes him, he wraps him, and he places him. This is the language of care and affection. According to John 19 verse 39, Joseph does all of this with the help of nicodemus. And nicodemus was also quite a senior religious guy who had become a follower of Christ. And in John's gospel, we're told, and I don't know how he did it, that nicodemus comes along with 34 kilograms of myrrh and aloes ready to anoint the body.

And so you've got Joseph and nicodemus once associated with the enemies, now taking the greatest of care over the body of their savior, wrapping it, anointing it, preparing it, looking after it as it goes to burial. Do you see the caring love of god's people? This is not just a body to them. This is an opportunity for them to show devotion to the savior And just as an aside, this is 1 reason why Christians, and not just Christians, as you can see Jews here, have always sought to honor the body in death. Because we understand unlike an ancient kind of nostic teaching, that human beings made in the image of god are both body and soul.

And it's not that, you know, the soul is like the super precious thing, and the body is kind of the shell. You know, as if we were hermit crabs and when the hermit crab is finished with that shell, it just leaves it and starts another home and leaves the old shell. That's the real life. That's just the shell thing. That's not how we understand it.

That a human spirit and soul is also with a body, and so Christians have sought to honor the body in death. Not only because it's part of being made in the image of god, but it's because our savior was treated in way. His body in death was honored by those who loved him, and Christians have always seen it in the same way. So you can see there's a courageous love. There's a caring love.

But lastly, under this point, there's a costly love as a costly love. In the book of Isaiah, there's a prophecy which I I I guess would have been quite mysterious at the time. It's from Isaiah 53 versus 7 to 9. Let's have a look at this. These will be well known words to us.

He was oppressed and afflicted speaking of Jesus, yet he did not open his mouth. He was led like a lamb to the slaughter and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. By oppression and judgment he was taken away, yet who of his generation protested. For he was cut off from the land of the living, for the transgression of my people, he was punished. And here's the key thing for us this evening.

He was assigned a grave with the wicked and with the rich in his death. Though he had done no violence nor was any deceit in his mouth. Now why do I say that might have been mysterious at the time? Well, because you don't normally find those things together. If someone is a signed a grave with the wicked, they don't also get to go along with the rich in their death.

It's sort of 1 or the other. Yeah? If you're assigned a grave with the wicked, in other words, crucified on a Roman Cross, as if you were the most cursed wicked person, You don't tend to then go in the grave of a rich man to be deeply honored in death. And so there's something jarring about the way these 2 ideas come together. And yet in the death of Jesus Christ, don't we see it?

This is exactly what happens. He is assigned a grave with the wicked, crucified not for his own sins, but for wicked sinners like us, counted as a transgressor, and yet he goes into the tomb. Of a rich man and receives honor in his death. Now did Joseph know that he was fulfilling this prophecy at the time? I'm not sure, to be honest, but he was and it happened.

C verse 59 to 60. Joseph took the body, wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, and placed it in his own new tomb that he had cut out of the rock. He rolled a big stone in front of the entrance to the tomb. And he went away. This is a costly love.

I'm told that these sorts of tombs were not cheap at the time. And, if you've ever had to look at tomb options or burial options today. It ain't cheap today either. And so this was a costly thing for Joseph to do. It would have been financially costly, but a tomb like this was actually probably originally a legacy gift to his family.

You know, that's how tombs worked at this time. It wasn't just for you and you alone. Very often, your family, your broader family would also at the right time be buried along with you in these family tombs. And yet now, as Joseph of Aramotheiah holds the body of the savior, he understands that for his own salvation, this is a cost worth paying, and he gives it gladly to Jesus. And in doing that, he actually gives an even greater gift to his earthly family.

Because now we can say to his kids and his grandkids, look, you know, look, you know, we had a grave that was for us, but guess who's been in there first. The king of heaven, The reason we're gonna rise 1 day is because that guy went in our tomb. You'd put a blue plaque on that thing, wouldn't you? BARRied here belonging to Joseph Verimator loaned to Jesus. For a time.

And we will rise. What a gift to your family? That would be. And so as with anything in the Christian life, it is always more blessed to give than to receive the giving of the tomb invites great blessing. Because his tomb now goes to the savior.

It's a costly, but worth it type of costly love. So it's courageous, it's caring, it's costly, but before we move on, just we have to look at these women in verse 61. They only get 1 verse here, but, I mean, it's extraordinary. Verse 61, Mary Magdalene, and the other Mary was sitting there opposite the tomb. You know, these women are the real deal, aren't they?

The 12 blokes have gone into hiding. And, who knows where they are at the moment? I can sort of imagine them in underground bunkers with tin foil hats on, you know, not sure what's happening or what in the world is is gonna go on. They're nowhere to be seen, but these women, they followed him in life, and they did not disappear at the cross. They were there at the cross, and they're with him now at his burial, and they will be there with him on Easter morning.

You see, what is the definition of a disciple in the end? It is a follower of Jesus Christ, and these women have followed him wherever he has gone. Not only in the sunshine times of big crowds and miracles, but they have followed him into the shadows of death and burial, and they'll be there when the sun rises on Easter morning. They're the real deal, aren't they? And so you see the courageous costly caring love in Joseph and these women.

Thirdly, and lastly, let's look at the desperate weakness of the world. The desperate weakness of the world, and they are so desperate, aren't they? Verse 62 to 66. Let's read that second section in whole again. The next day, the 1 after preparation day, the chief priests and the pharisees went to pilate.

Sir, they said. We remember that while he was still alive, that deceiver said, 2 titles used, sir, for pilot, deceiver for Jesus. After 3 days, I will rise again. So give the order for the tomb to be made secure until the third day. Otherwise, his disciples may come and steal the body and tell the people that he's been raised from the dead and this last deception will be even worse than the first.

Take a guard, pilot answered, go make the tomb as secure as you know how. So they went and made the tomb secure by putting a seal on the stone and posting the guard. Now, who's got the power here? Who's got the power? Because at first glance, it seems like the pharisees hold all the cards.

I mean, I don't know what you thought, but pilot in these 2 accounts is as weak as water here. He he's never looked weaker, I think. He clearly still has to sign things off. But there is no root or conviction in the man at all. He just wants the whole thing over.

And so Joseph comes to him to say, you know, can I honor Jesus and have the body? He says, yeah. Go on. Yeah. Go and do what you want.

Yeah. Go and take him take him down. Take him down. And then the pharisees come to him and say Jesus is a liar, and we need to stop him. And he says, yeah.

Okay. Yeah. Go and do what you want. Yeah. Yeah.

I can imagine him just half concentrating. Desperate for this whole Jesus thing to be over, just not caring or engaging as he stamps and signs off these people's request. I mean, they're very different, aren't they? Joseph of Aramotheiah, a lover, pharisees are hater. He just does what either of them want.

You know, yeah. You do that. You do that. And there's there's nothing. There's nothing there.

As long as everybody calls him sir, then he's okay. And so the pharisees are really in charge here or they seem to be. They they get what they want. They get a tomb with a guard around it. There's now a guard protecting this tomb, and it gets a seal Now when you look that up in these days, the way that they would seal a tomb was that they would go to the kind of junction between the rock and the tomb itself, and they would put a rope around it and then put big wax imprints that held the seal to the tomb.

And so they would all know that if the stone had been rolled away or if anyone had got in or out, the seal would be broken and the rope would be gone. So that's how they did it. And they get that. They get the seal. They get the guards But my goodness, they they are all as weak as each other in the end.

Just have a look at verse 64. You can you can see and hear the tremor in their voice. Give the order for the tomb to be made secure until the third day. Otherwise, his disciples may come and steal the body and tell the people that he's been raised from the dead, and this last deception will be worse than the first. Are they really so afraid of the disciples?

Do you think? I mean, as I was just saying, where where are the disciples now? You know, where are they? They're gone. They're nowhere.

They're fishermen failures. They are not guard overthrows, and that you that they're not they're not there. They're gone. That what, you know, what what serious threat do the disciples pose? How many guards were stationed at this tomb?

Are we are we really are we really so worried that the disciples are gonna overthrow the guards, break the seal and take the body? You see you see this? You see the weakness of them? The reality is that these leaders are trying to suppress every possibility that Jesus will rise again because they're terrified and they're not terrified of the disciples, and they're not terrified of the women. They are terrified because of what Jesus said.

And they're terrified that the power of god might be with him in death as it was undeniably in life. See there, Tara? First 63, sir, they said we remember that while he was still alive, that deceiver said, They know what he said. After 3 days, I will rise again. They are afraid of Jesus' word.

That's what they're afraid of. And do you see the wisdom of god here? Because what they've just done without realizing is that by asking pilot for a guard and a seal, They have only made the resurrection more credible, and not less. Because now if the body goes missing, you've got a serious problem. Because if it wasn't a resurrection, how are you gonna explain it now?

It's the disciples. The disciples came and stole it away. We knew they would. Well, possibly if it was unguarded and unsealed, you know, maybe we could say that if there was no garden, no seal. But now you expect us to believe that's what happened when there was a gardener seal, which you asked for.

You asked for that, and now you're expecting that that was all done away with by the disciples. Well, no. It wasn't that. It was that Jesus wasn't really dead. You know, he was badly beaten, and he was leaking blood, and he was unconscious in a stuffy tomb for 36 hours.

But then he revived. And he managed to come out again alive, well, possibly if the tomb wasn't also guarded and sealed. But now you've asked for that. There's a guard and a seal. Oh, dear.

And so do you see in doing their worst, they have only made the resurrection more credible. The very things that were designed to stop the resurrection have now been turned in the wisdom of god to make it all the more plausible. Every ever to stop the risen Jesus has only served to advance the cause of the gospel in the world. Did they realize that? I wonder at the time.

Obviously not. When they went to pilots and give us a garden a seal, They've provided a 2000 year old apologetic for the Christian church. We now use them as an apologetic argument for the resurrection when they thought that it would stop it. Every effort to stop the risen Jesus only serves to advance the gospel. I love what Paul says in Philippines 1 12.

Similar context, he's in prison. And he writes to the church and he says, now I want you to know brothers and sisters that what has happened to me arrest imprisonment has only served to advance the gospel. Do you see the desperate weakness of the world? Here, you have the lion of Judah preparing to bound across the planes in victory, and there's a couple of termites sort of thinking how they might stop him. How do we stop him running here?

What what can we do? It's it's it's desperately weak and desperately hopeless. And so brothers and sisters, I think we can take great heart from the desperate weakness of the world. No matter what the challenges might be, Whether it be a country around the world, where persecutors are allowed to direct their hatred towards the church, and governments don't seem to care, and Christians seem to get persecuted in the church looks like it's being overwhelmed by evil or whether more locally it might be a classroom that we're in or an office or hospital, and we might feel we have so little freedom to talk about Jesus. And there are so many rules in place to stop us talking about Jesus.

What we can take heart from here is that the message of the risen Jesus Christ cannot be stopped by the guards of this world. All over the world, There are little guards and little seals trying to stop the message of the risen Jesus. But as we learn here, they all in the end only serve to advance the cause of the gospel, and the message of the risen Christ will go boldly to the world. And so we see in this burial account, which is so important. It's a thing of first importance.

We see the saving power of Jesus Christ even in death. We see a courageous caring and costly love from the disciples. And we see the desperate weakness of the world as it foolishly attempts to stop our king from rising. Great stuff, isn't it? Yeah.

Let's pray and give thanks. Lord Jesus Christ, we thank you that you are alive and that you are risen from the dead and that you are king of kings and lord of lords, and we thank you that the message of the risen Jesus will continue to go out to every corner of this world. And no matter who asks for a guard or a seal, it in the end will do nothing. But serve to advance your message. Thank you for your great sovereignty and your plan.

And we do pray that you would help us in our own ways to show the kind of courageous and caring and costly love that we see displayed by Joseph and these women. Help us lord Jesus like these 2 women to follow you in all the seasons of life. Whether it be times of sunshine or times of shadow, we pray we would not leave the Savior's side, even at the darkest times. And we ask all of these things in Jesus' name. Amen.