In the run-up to this Easter weekend, we have been considering the various groups that the Gospel writers tell us gathered under the shadow of the cross. The soldiers in their brutality. The scoffers in their cynicism. The criminals who were crucified, one on each side of the Lord Jesus. And now tonight on Good Friday, I want to look with you briefly at the moment in John’s gospel, John chapter 19, when Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus came to take Jesus’ body down from the cross and prepare Him for burial and lay Him in Joseph’s tomb. So if you would, take a Bible in your hands and turn with me please to John 19, verses 38 through 42. If you are using a church Bible, that’s on page 906.
I want you to see two things with me here as we reflect on this passage. First of all, there is an almost tragedy in this story, an almost tragedy. It is there in the account of Joseph of Arimathea who, until this moment, has only been a secret follower of Jesus. It is an almost tragedy here in the tale of Nicodemus who, at least according to the Scriptural record, so far as we know, never has been a follower of Christ. There’s an almost tragedy because if you track what we know of these two men, it seems they have much to do with Jesus and yet they are missing Him where it matters most, at least until this moment. An almost tragedy. And then the second thing to see, of course, is the amazing transformation that takes place in the lives of these two men as the shadow of the cross falls upon them. It is the transforming power of Calvary. An almost tragedy and an amazing transformation. That’s where we’re going. Before we unpack those themes, let’s pray and then we’ll read the Scriptures together. Let us pray.
Lord Jesus, You see our hearts. You know where our heads are at. You know the burdens of our lives. You know our distractions. You know our disappointments, our burdens, our fears. You know our sin. You know our blindnesses. So come, now, by Your Spirit through Your Word. Bring us together, please, to Calvary with these two men, so like us in so many ways, that in each of our lives, tragedy might be averted that we would then come to bend our knee to Christ who was crucified. Lord Jesus, would You do that in our lives now by Your Word and Spirit we pray, for the honor of Your name. Amen.
John 19 at verse 38. This is God’s Word:
“After these things Joseph of Arimathea, who was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly for fear of the Jews, asked Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus, and Pilate gave him permission. So he came and took away his body. Nicodemus also, who earlier had come to Jesus by night, came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds in weight. So they took the body of Jesus and bound it in linen cloths with the spices, as is the burial custom of the Jews. Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid. So because of the Jewish day of Preparation, since the tomb was close at hand, they laid Jesus there.”
Amen.
An Almost Tragedy
Well let’s consider the almost tragedy in this story first of all. Jesus’ body, as the story begins, Jesus’ body still hangs on His cross, although His heart no longer beats. Verse 31 reports the hypocritical concern of the Jewish leaders who have conspired together to have Jesus murdered, now worried about desecrating the Passover Sabbath by leaving Jesus’ body on the cross. It is the epitome of spiritual blindness that sends soldiers to break the legs of the dying men to hasten their end so that the chief priests and the Pharisees can go to worship with a clean conscience. But when they came to Jesus of course, there was no need to break His legs. They discover He is already dead, although the soldier pierces His heart with a spear just to make doubly certain. Now normally, victims, Roman victims of crucifixion would have been left after death to decay upon their cross as carrion for the birds and as a warning for others. But the Jews typically preferred to bury even victims of crucifixion, although they would not desecrate an existing grave by burying people they regarded as objects of such obvious divine curse and scorn by burying them among the existing dead. They were generally disposed of at a site outside the city without ceremony or any care; an ignominious end for people worthy only of contempt.
But that would not be Jesus’ fate. Isaiah had prophesied, “They made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death.” And so, according to Scripture, as the Lord had decreed, one wealthy member of the Sanhedrin, the Jewish ruling council, Joseph of Arimathea, came to Pilate to ask for Jesus’ body that he might bury Him himself. Now we know really nothing beyond this text about Joseph of Arimathea. We are told about him here and in the other gospels, all narrating the same events at this crucial moment. In verse 38, John says that Joseph was a disciple of Jesus but secretly, for fear of the Jews. Matthew tells us he was a rich man, echoing the words of Isaiah’s prophecy. Mark tells us Joseph was a respected member of the Council, of the Sanhedrin, who was himself looking for the kingdom of God. And Luke adds that he was a good and righteous man who had not consented to the decision of the Sanhedrin to murder Jesus. So Joseph is a wealthy, prominent individual. He is among the Jewish religious elite. He is a leader. He sits as a member of the Sanhedrin and he is a believer in Jesus Christ.
But his was a hidden faith, an undisclosed belief. Back in John chapter 12, John tells us that there was actually quite a group of these secret disciples, but listen to how John describes them, not quite as encouraging as you may at first have imagined. John says, “Many, even of the authorities, of the leaders like Joseph, believed in Him, but for fear of the Pharisees, they did not confess it so that they would not be put out of the synagogue, for they loved the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God.” That was Joseph’s story. He knew Jesus was Messiah, but he was afraid of the opinions of his peers. He hid his convictions. When they held a vote to kill Jesus, Joseph somehow managed to avoid registering his opinion. Maybe he was conveniently delayed that night, unable to be with them. Maybe he simply lurked in the shadows, thankful that no one was calling him out. The issue for Joseph wasn’t that he was uncertain about Jesus, it wasn’t that he needed more data, more information to make up his mind. No, he believed the message that Jesus preached and he knew Jesus was the Christ; he was just too scared to come out and say so publicly. After all, there was a good chance he would lose his position in the community; his reputation would be in tatters. He may well be expelled from the synagogue. He loved the glory that comes from man rather than the glory that comes from God.
And let’s be clear, there remains still to this day a cost for following Jesus, doesn’t there? “In one way or another,” writes one of the commentators on this passage, “every believer in Christ must face the fear of reprisals from the world. In many places,” he says, “believers daily face the fear of arrest and bodily harm. True Christians everywhere face scorn from the world. Ironically, we live in a day when people are coming out of the closet boldly to proclaim every kind of sexual perversion and when virtually every human vice has been set free from scandal. Why then are people afraid to come out as believers in Jesus? The answer is the fear of what people will say and do in response – ‘You are weird. You are narrow minded. You used to be so much fun and now we just can’t relate to you anymore. You make us feel uncomfortable. We don’t want you around.’”
Maybe you know something about that, and the truth is, you’ve been like Joseph for a while now. A secret believer, trying to live two lives with a foot in both camps. You’re more afraid of your peers than you are committed to Christ. No one at work knows you are a Christian. None of your friends know you are serious about Jesus. Oh sure, they know you go to church from time to time, but this is Jackson, Mississippi and who doesn’t? They’ve never seen you put Him first when putting Jesus first might cost you something. They’ve never heard you open your mouth to speak up for Christ or speak a word for Him. Are you like Joseph, I wonder. You love the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God. The truth is, this kind of secret disciple is no real disciple at all. And that is the tragedy lacing this part of Joseph’s story at least.
And I wonder if it finds an uncomfortable echo in your own story. You mustn’t try to live in both worlds. You cannot follow Jesus in your heart and hide it from the world at the same time. “Let your light so shine before others,” Jesus said, “that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” Jesus wants you to be all-in. It’s the only path to discipleship open to us. Matthew 10:27 and following, “What I tell you in the dark,” Jesus said, “say in the light, and what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops and do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore! You are of more value than many sparrows. So anyone who acknowledges Me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven, but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven.” There’s a tragedy to be told here, isn’t there, at least in this part of Joseph’s story, the trajectory that he has been on. Could we tell a similar story about you? Is that the trajectory you’re on?
Well so much for Joseph. What about Nicodemus? Unlike Joseph, the Scriptures never tell us that he was a secret disciple, although likely far more than Joseph ever did, Nicodemus had plenty of opportunity to know and to follow Christ. We only meet Joseph of Arimathea here in John 19 and the corresponding passages in the other gospels, but we meet Nicodemus twice more in John’s gospel. The first, famously, you probably remember in John chapter 3. Nicodemus came to Jesus by night and Jesus told him, “Unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Poor Nicodemus. You remember, he does not get it at all. “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb? How can these things be?” And Jesus says to him, “Are you the teacher of Israel and you do not understand these things?” He ought to have known better, given his training. He is a theologian, a teacher of the Bible, and yet he misses it entirely. John actually names Nicodemus a Pharisee, the strictest, the most rigorous sect of Judaism, and he is also a member of the Sanhedrin along with Joseph of Arimathea.
That’s actually where we meet Nicodemus the next time he appears in John’s gospel – John chapter 7 at verse 50. The Sanhedrin have convened. Jesus’ ministry is creating quite a stir. They have sent soldiers to arrest Jesus, and when the soldiers come back empty handed on that occasion, they are outraged. They begin, the Pharisees begin to denounce Christ and Nicodemus, who John says was one of them, tries to speak up on Jesus’ behalf. This is what he says. “Does our law judge a man without first giving him a hearing and learning what he does?” It’s hardly a sterling defense of Jesus’ innocence. Nicodemus isn’t coming out swinging in support of the Lord Jesus. It was, at least, an attempt, albeit ultimately as we know an ineffectual attempt, to ensure that should they ever manage to arrest Jesus, He will at least be given a fair trial.
Then the last time we hear about Nicodemus is right here in our text in the company of Joseph as together they make preparations for Jesus’ burial. But even here – did you notice – when John mentions Nicodemus, he is Nicodemus “who had earlier come to Jesus by night.” John wants us to remember Nicodemus was this furtive, unsure Pharisee who used the cover of darkness to avoid ever having been seen talking to Jesus. There is some sense in the gospel narrative that Nicodemus is not unfriendly to Jesus’ ministry; he has some interest in it. He is intrigued by Jesus’ ministry. He found something compelling in His words and in His works. But there is no suggestion that Nicodemus was ever a believer, not even a secret one like Joseph.
Now maybe you know the type. There are lots of people who find themselves drawn to spiritual things, aren’t there, like Nicodemus, who hear the Word of Christ, who are intrigued by His person, who toy with the Gospel message some, who flirt with Christianity. There are plenty of people like that who remain utterly lost in their sin. Think about this story. If we assume that Nicodemus’ first encounter with Jesus in John 3 came shortly after the beginning of our Savior’s ministry, well then we know Nicodemus has nursed an interest in Christ for about three years. And in three years, the closest he’s ever come to a settled decision for Jesus has been a very timid reminder that even Jesus deserves even-handed treatment if He finally gets arrested.
I think there’s a warning in this part of Nicodemus’ story. Can you see it? Please don’t be content with a mere flirtation with Christian things. Don’t try and appease your conscience with an occasional expression of sympathy for the claims of Christ. Being around the Lord, among His people, is not the same thing as belonging to the Lord and being one of His people. Maybe it’s time you stopped playing with Christianity, toying with the claims of Christ, skirting around the message of Jesus, and came tonight at last to bend your knee to the One who gave Himself for sinners like us. Of course there would come a time for Nicodemus when he would indeed finally stop stalking in the shadows. It’s right here, isn’t it, in John 19. Suddenly now, his timidity is swallowed up in an open display of devotion to the crucified Christ.
Don’t miss the fact that it’s taken him this long, this long slow process, to get him to this point. And I think there’s a lesson there too, isn’t there? Sometimes people become Christians in a single instant. They were hostile, opposed to Christ, and then all of a sudden, one day the Lord just opens their eyes like Saul of Tarsus, you know, on the Damascus Road, and they are gloriously converted. The Lord sometimes does that. But other times, maybe most of the time, people are much more like Nicodemus. They hear the message about Jesus again and again and again, they’re challenged by it over time, and only eventually do they reach the point of final submission to the lordship of Christ. The key thing is not to look for the same pattern of experience in everyone who comes to faith. The key thing is to look for the reality of faith whenever and however someone comes to it. That’s the issue. Not, “Did I have a Damascus Road, all of a sudden, dramatic conversion?” but “Am I now, right now, today, this moment trusting truly, openly, fully in the Lord Jesus alone to rescue me?”
You see the tragedy in the first part of Joseph’s story. He was a man who feared others more than he loved Jesus and so he refused to commit himself publicly to Christ. And the tragedy in Nicodemus’ story, he was around Jesus, he heard from Jesus, he was intrigued by Jesus, but he never came to a place of true surrender to the lordship of Jesus. We need to search our hearts to ensure that neither tragedy replay itself in our own stories. So there is an almost tragedy here. That’s the first thing I want you to see.
An Amazing Transformation
There is a reason of course they are “almost tragedies” because their story doesn’t end there. They move, wonderfully, from tragedy to amazing transformation. Almost tragedy, and now, amazing transformation. Something has changed for Joseph and for Nicodemus, or maybe better, something changes Joseph and Nicodemus. Now they are both willing, at last, to step out of the shadows. He uses his position, no doubt, as a member of the ruling council to gain an audience with Pilate and he requests Jesus’ body, but in doing so, Joseph risks everything. Mark 15:42 says, “Joseph took courage and went to Pilate.” That doesn’t sound like Joseph at all now, does it? It’s the one thing he’s been lacking all these years. He feared me. He has no courage to stand up and be counted as a disciple of Christ. That eluded him. And now all of a sudden, he is bold. The word Mark uses means “to dare.” One lexicon translates it as, “to be so bold as to challenge or defy possible danger or opposition.” Joseph, of all people? Joseph?
It was the Roman pattern, as we said earlier, to leave victims of crucifixion on their crosses. Although a body may, at the discretion of the authority, occasionally be granted at the special request of a family member, but Jesus’ family was in no position to make such a request. Mary’s grief. His brothers, along with all the disciples, scattered. And so isn’t this amazing, Joseph, Joseph the coward, Joseph now openly acts like Jesus’ family and comes and asks for Jesus’ body. And then there’s Nicodemus. When he arrives, he is carrying what our version says is 75 pounds of spices. Actually, scholars think the Greek measurement is closer to 65 pounds but either way it’s a lot. It’s a lot of spices. It would have cost a lot of money. This is extravagance! It’s the kind of thing you did for a king or for a revered teacher. So 500 servants bearing spices like this participated in the funeral of Herod the Great in the first century. About 80 pounds of spices were used in the funeral of Gamaliel the rabbi. Well here is Nicodemus and his 65 pounds; they’re perfectly fitting, but only for a man Nicodemus has come to love. He honors Jesus here like He was his King. He is devoted to Jesus now here as his revered Teacher. It’s amazing!
And notice the text says Joseph and Nicodemus prepared Jesus’ body as was the burial custom of the Jews. So there is a concern here for the Jewish burial custom, and so it’s interesting they don’t wash the body. That was a really important part of the Jewish burial tradition. But the Sabbath is about to begin. There’s no time. And so that means – think about this – these two dignified Pharisees are handling Jesus’ bloody body. They’re wrapping His nail-pierced hands and feet still weeping blood, covering His lacerated back, binding His thorn-pierced brow. All thought now of the opinion of others is gone. They’ve got no care for their reputations now, do they? If we take John’s account at face value, they willingly render themselves ritually unclean according to the requirements of the Mosaic law which, you may know, is what happens when you touch a dead body. They disqualify themselves from the Passover celebrations in which, as members of the Sanhedrin, they would have been expected to take a leading part. Their behavior here, in other words, cannot now be hidden.
You see what’s happening? Nicodemus and Joseph, they are stepping at long last from the shadows and into the light. “Where do they suddenly get such heroic courage from that in the last straights they boldly come out into the open?” asks John Calvin. “It is certain that this was done by a heavenly impulse so that those who were afraid to give Him due honor while He was alive, now hasten to His dead body as if they were new men. This shows the truth of what Christ Himself said – ‘Except a grain of wheat dies, it abideth alone, but if it die, it beareth much fruit.’ Here we have an outstanding proof that His death was even more quickening, more life giving, than His life.” Perhaps Joseph and Nicodemus were among those elders of the people, the gospels tell us, stood there and watched as Jesus died. How else would they have known that Jesus died so quickly to come and ask for His body as they did?
But the point is, it was the sight of His death, the fact of His death, that has changed everything for them. The cross has become the pivot point of their lives. Seeing Jesus give Himself for them meant that they now, now here, they could withhold nothing from Him. And so I imagine them in Joseph’s tomb on that eve of the Passover Sabbath. These two Pharisees, that first Good Friday, now perhaps weeping as they wind the bloody remains of their Savior, and I imagine them quickly singing as we did a few moments ago, “Were the whole realm of nature mine, that were a present far too small. Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all!” They’ve been religious men all their lives. They toyed some with Jesus and His message, flirted with the Christian faith. They never committed, not till they came to Calvary, and they saw Jesus die.
And let me say to you this Good Friday, that’s the whole point. A philosophical Christianity, Christianity understood as a code of ethics, a cultural Christianity, none of these can work the kind of transformation that you see right here, this miraculous change in the lives of these two men. But the cross, watching Jesus die in your room and stead, bearing your penalty, enduring your curse, securing your pardon, giving Himself in love for you – well when you really begin to see what He did, what He bore, what He paid, nothing can be the same again. Nothing.
The symbolism of Jesus laid in Joseph’s tomb shouldn’t be lost on us either. This was Joseph’s place. Jesus fills it. Joseph lives. Jesus died. Isn’t that the Christian Gospel in a nutshell? He died that we might live. “Bearing shame and scoffing rude, in my place condemned He stood; sealed my pardon with His blood, Hallelujah! What a Savior!” I wonder if you’ve been dabbling in Christianity, unwilling to commit, to surrender yourself to the lordship of Christ. I wonder if you’ve been ashamed, unwilling to be known as a follower of Jesus. Well I wonder now if you would come with Joseph and Nicodemus and join them as they lay Jesus in His tomb that first Good Friday and step with them from the shadows at last and own Christ as your only Savior and Lord. He died that you might live. Come to Him and live.
Let’s pray together.
Our Father, we bow before You and we pour out our praise. We surrender ourselves. Here we are. We give it all. There is really nothing that we have or nothing certainly that we could say that would adequately respond that would answer to what He paid and gave for us. But such as we are, we gladly surrender ourselves to Him, not because in the surrender You are somehow compelled to love us, but because You have always already loved us and given Him for us. And so before the wonder of Your love, now we want to stop holding back, keeping You at arm’s length, playing games with the Lord Jesus. Please help us, each of us, all of us, to step from the shadows and into the light, to own Christ as Lord and Savior. For we ask it in His name, amen.