God’s Burial of Jesus

Published by Stanley Pouw in 2015 · 6 September 2015

One of the greatest and the most essential attributes of God is that God is above all things sovereign. Theologians call it the supremacy of God, that is to say that God controls all things. The ramifications of that are beyond our ability to grasp, but that is what the Bible teaches. The One who created all this is also the One who sustains it all. The One who ordained is the One who brings it to pass. The One who established the plan is the One who sees it to its fulfillment.

Daniel 4:35 says, "God does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand or say to him, “What have you done?” And Ephesians 1:11 says, "He works all things according to the purpose of His own will." The world and the universe and all that is going on with the billions of isolated circumstances are not functioning at random. There is a design and a designer and a purpose and an objective and an intention in all of it.

How God could take an infinite number of circumstances, attitudes and events that exist both in the natural and the demonic world and pull them all together to work out His own will is really beyond our comprehension. How the infinite mind of eternal God can collect, collate and bring to perfect harmony every isolated bit of data that exists in the entire universe and make it all work for His will is well beyond our understanding.

We need to understand that God basically rules the world through two things. The first one is miracles. In other words, in order to accomplish His purpose there are times when He interrupts the natural course of history. He interrupts it supernaturally. He overrules natural law. He invades it with supernatural power to accomplish His will. So to achieve His goal He sets aside the natural laws and does things that are scientifically inexplicable.

Scripture is full of things like this. Creation obviously was the first interruption when God in a matter of six days, created all that exists. Then there was the flood when God drowned the entire world except for saving eight people and two of each kind of animal. And then the plagues that came in Egypt and the death of the first born when God overruled nature to get His people out of Egypt and into the Promised Land.

And then the miracle of the parting of the Red Sea for the people of Israel but then closed to drown the armies of Egypt. And then we remember that God brought water from a rock, miraculously overruling the natural. God provided manna from heaven and birds to eat when the people wanted flesh to eat. God on one occasion caused the sun to retreat and go backwards on a sundial. On another occasion He had the sun stand still for a day, the earth stopped revolving.

But there is a second factor that is equally significant. God not only takes the world and the universe to its destiny by the use of miracles, but secondly, by the use of providence. Now the word ‘providence’ is not in the Bible. It is like the word trinity, which also isn't in the Bible but the trinity exists. Providence is a term to describe a very important way in which God controls things that are happening in the universe. It means that God manipulates and uses all of the events that are happening to fulfill His own ends, to bring His predetermined conclusion to pass.

Now in many ways providence is a greater miracle than a miracle, to me the greater wonder is that God can take it all and still make it work for His will. The diversity of an innumerable number of events, circumstances and attitudes that occur within the limited freedom of men and demons are all pulled together by God to accomplish exactly what He wants done. It is incredible not only to conceive that it can be done but to make it happen. But that is always what God does.

And within this, all of these beings are making random choices, all of these things are functioning in a way that seems at least to them to be detached from any sovereign control. But God sets the birth and death of every man. He sees all they do. He knows all they think. He hears all they say. He uses their good and He uses their bad. He uses the free choices of men. They are made to fit perfectly into His eternal purposes. Even the choices being made by fallen angels called demons are fitting perfectly into His purposes.

Paul said in Philippians 2:13, "It is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure." He controls everything, even sin, He allows some, He prevents some and limits all of it to His purpose. In Proverbs 16:9 it says, "The heart of man plans his way, but the LORD establishes his steps.” In John 5:17 Jesus says, "My Father works and I work." In other words, while He is on earth He says we are still working. What are You doing? We are controlling everything to bring about the eternal plan.

Now let us look at a biblical illustrations. Joseph was one of 12 brothers who hated Joseph because he was the favorite son. So they decided to get rid of Joseph. There were a group of Midianite traders heading to Egypt through the land of Canaan. And so they sold Joseph to these traders who took him to Egypt and made him a slave. He became a slave because of the whim of his brothers because of their hatred.

Joseph ends up serving a man named Potiphar. Now Potiphar’s wife liked the way Joseph looked. And so she decided to seduce Joseph, but he won't have a thing to do with it and runs. She grabs his coat and accuses him falsely of intending to rape her. He is then thrown into jail for 14 years. In jail he comes across another prisoner who has a dream. He interprets the dream with God’s help. Then Pharaoh has a dream and the Pharaoh says, "Who can interpret my dream?" And somebody says there's a guy in jail who can interpret that dream. So he comes to the Pharaoh, interprets the Pharaoh's dream, and Pharaoh makes him Prime Minister of Egypt.

The Pharaoh's dream said there would be seven years of plenty and seven years of famine, so during the seven years of plenty Joseph collects 20 percent tax from everybody of all their grain and stores it away to feed his nation during the seven years of famine. So what happens? The people living up in his homeland don't have any supply, they haven't prepared for this. So they all come to Egypt to buy some food to bring back. So Joseph's family comes to him to get food.

And what happens is recorded in Genesis 45:4, "Joseph said to his brethren, Come near to me, I pray you. They came near and he said, I am Joseph your brother whom you sold into Egypt." That's a long way from where they thought he would be. For in verse 5 he says, "Now therefore be not grieved nor angry with yourselves that you sold me here, for God did send me before you to preserve life."

Now God could have just picked up Joseph and dropped him into Egypt and made him Prime Minister instantaneously. But He didn't do that. That would have been a miracle. God instead used His providence. A lot of random choices by a whole lot of people did nothing but work out God's perfect plan. Verse 6-8, "For the famine has been in the land these two years, and there are yet five years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvest. 7 And God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors. 8 So it was not you who sent me here, but God.”

But, you will never in any account of Scripture see the providence of God anymore graphically then you will see it in the scene we are in right now in Matthew 27. That was just the introduction. The greatest illustration of the sovereignty of God and the providence of God is in the death of Jesus Christ. That's the greatest illustration.

God used all of the human and satanic forces to kill His Son to accomplish His redemptive purpose. There were many miracles surrounding it, the earthquake, the darkness, the rocks splitting, the tombs opening, people coming alive, the tearing of the veil from top to bottom. But the cross itself and the crucifixion of Christ and His death and His burial was non-miraculous. But God controlled everything. God controlled the hatred of the Jews. God controlled the hostility of the Romans toward the Jews.

God controlled even the defection of the disciples. He controlled every element, the betrayal of Judas, the denial of Peter, every piece of that entire scene was controlled by God, so much so that Jesus even rode into the city on the very day that Daniel prophesied He would do it. Jesus rode into the city the very day everyone else was selecting their Passover lamb, He came as the true Passover lamb. He died on the very day that the Passover lambs were slaughtered. Every single detail was covered.

Now with that theological perception as a background, let us go to the text now and just briefly mention what we saw last week. We see the providence of God at work with fulfilled prophecy in Matthew 27: 57-60. And the man God uses to do this is a man named Joseph of Arimathea. Isaiah 53:9 says, "His grave was assigned to be with wicked men, but He was with a rich man in His death." He was supposed to be thrown with the criminals but He wound up with a rich man in His death.

The second prophecy of His death is in Matthew 12:40 and that says that as Jonah was three days in the belly of the great fish, so the Son of Man will be three days in the earth before His resurrection. The Jews had come earlier and begged to have the bodies down. Joseph wanted the body. Pilate ordered to take it down. The real reason it had to come down was Jesus had to be in the grave on Friday so He could be there Friday, Saturday and Sunday. And all these people acting on their own were working out God's plan.

Now the second way we see the providence of God here is through the two women in verse 61. If Joseph was used to show the deity of Christ through fulfilled prophecy, they are used to show it through first-hand testimony. And then finally we come to the third group that God providentially orders in the scene to bring about the amazing burial of Jesus Christ are the chief priests and the Pharisees.

Verse 62, "Now the next day that followed the day of the preparation," which is Saturday, the Passover Sabbath, the holiest day of all the Jewish calendar. "And the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered before Pilate." They represent the Sanhedrin and then the Pharisees, and they agreed only on one thing, to eliminate the movement around Jesus Christ. They were afraid of one more thing. And so they get together in a small group and they come to Pilate.

Yes, they went into the Gentile building to meet Pilate. Before on Friday they wouldn't go in because they didn't want to be defiled for the Sabbath because they were in a Jewish crowd. Apparently they hated Jesus more than they loved their own law, and as long as there is no Jews around to see that they're violating the scruples, they go right in to Pilate. Verse 63, "Sir, we remember how that impostor said, while he was still alive, ‘After three days I will rise.”

They understood what He was saying is that He's going to be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth just like Jonah was. Jonah went in and Jonah came out. They knew that He was saying I'm going to go into the ground, be buried and rise. The disciples didn't understand that He was actually talking about a real death and a real resurrection. But the Jew’s concern was that Jesus had said He was only going to be three days in the earth.

So, in verse 64 they say, "Therefore order the tomb to be made secure until the third day, lest his disciples go and steal him away and tell the people, ‘He has risen from the dead,’ and the last fraud will be worse than the first.” They are afraid that the disciples will fabricate a resurrection to keep the movement alive. The irony of it is the disciples had no such thought, they were somewhere hiding. They don't understand the real death and the real resurrection as happening, even though Jesus said to them over and over.

Jesus said it in Matthew 16:21, Matthew 17:23 and Matthew 20:19. You go to Mark and you see the same thing. Mark 8:31 says, "He began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things, be rejected by the elders, by the chief priests, scribes, be killed and after three days rise again." The disciples still did not get the message. In fact John 20:9 says, "When they came into the empty tomb, as yet they knew not the Scripture that He must rise again from the dead."

The end of verse 64 says, "The last fraud will be worse than the first." What was the first deception? On Palm Sunday Jesus comes riding into the city on the colt, when garments and branches were thrown on the street. They were giving Him all the Messianic accolades as He came into the city and the Jews saw that as a tremendous deception. The whole crowd has gone out to Jesus. They are deceived because they think He is the Messiah.

Verse 65, "Pilate said to them, you have a guard of soldiers and make it as secure as you can." And then verse 66, "So they went and made the tomb secure by sealing the stone and setting a guard.” They put some wax on the stone and some wax on the wall of the cave and sealed the wax so that if anybody moved the stone, they would have to break the seal and they would know it was violated. And that wax may have been stamped with a Roman imprint so that they would know they were violating Roman law.

You see what they are doing? There are people today who still want to say, "Oh, if the body of Jesus was gone the disciples stole it." God made sure that a whole lot of pagans who rejected and hated Jesus Christ set it up so that there was no way possible for the disciples to steal His body. And if that in fact is the case, the only way He could have come out of there was by resurrection. So God uses the wrath of men to praise Him.

What would have happened if there was no guard and no seal? If we were preaching a message that Jesus rose from the dead somebody would surely say, "Don't give me that, it never happened. They just took His body and somebody took on His identity and somebody who looked like Him made a few appearances.” But the unbelieving world itself made sure that there is no other explanation for the absent body of Jesus Christ except a resurrection.

God's sovereignty and God's providence is not some distant doctrine only for theologians. It is when you can't explain the trouble you're going through that you need to understand the providential power of a sovereign God who takes every bit of the diverse data of the universe and controls it all for your good and His glory and eternal purpose. Is that comforting? It doesn't matter what it is. He demonstrated His ability to do it in the death and burial of Jesus Christ.

Whatever happens in your life, whatever you can't understand, whatever you struggle with, whatever doesn't make sense, whatever trials you may be going through, it all fits. Ask no questions. This is part of God who is doing it. He is at work. It's for His glory. It's for our good. He is in control. He hasn't abandoned His throne. Our hope and our confidence is in the God who providentially and if need by miraculously controls all things to His own intended and eternal purpose. Let us pray.