The Significance of Jesus’ Burial

Matthew 27:55-66

Last Sunday we sang that profound African American spiritual, “Were You There?” Its haunting questions invite us to witness the crucifixion, burial, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. One of my favorite renditions of that hymn is by Jubilant Sykes, who often sang at Grace Community Church in California. Sadly, his life was taken earlier this year, but he is literally now jubilant in the presence of the Lord in heaven. Jubilant Sykes always started this hymn singing in a soft, intimate whisper leading the church to lean-in emotionally and spiritually to reflect on Christ’s suffering and death. His powerful baritone voice made you feel the passion as he rumbled the refrain, “Tremble, tremble, tremble”. Were you there when they crucified my Lord? As the song progresses and the orchestra comes in, Jubilant’s voice rises to a thunder as he reaches the final verse, “Were you there when He rose up from the grave?” and instead of trembling, he shouts, “sometimes I feel like shouting Glory, GLORY! GLORY!”

Were you there? In two weeks, we will celebrate again the glory of Christ’s resurrection as we come to Matthew 28. But before we get there, we have one more place to stop, reflect, and ask, “Were you there when they laid Him in the tomb?”

Matthew 27 has taken us on the journey through the last hours of Christ’s life until His climatic death on the cross. We have walked through Jesus’ unjust trial, brutal scourging, merciless mocking, violent crucifixion, and dramatic death. We saw Jesus cry out from the cross and yield up His spirit as the earth quaked, the rocks split, the graves of saints were opened, and the centurion who observed it all declared, “Truly this was the Son of God!” (Matt. 27:54).

Jesus’ death on the cross for our sins is the climax of the gospel narrative. And we know from the rest of scripture that it is essential for our salvation from sin. Paul wrote about the gospel in 1 Corinthians 15,

“³ For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, ⁴ and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures, ⁵ and that He was seen …” (1 Cor. 15:3-5).

We know it is important that Jesus died just as He said He would in fulfillment of scripture. We also know it is important that Jesus resurrected on the third day just as He promised. But today, we want to consider what happened between those two most significant events: “that He was buried.” Paul called it a matter of first importance. All four gospel accounts record Jesus’ burial. The old spiritual asks, “Were you there when they laid Him in the tomb?” Why is it so important that Jesus was buried?

At Jesus’ burial, we don’t see any miraculous events like we did at the death of Jesus or like we will at Jesus’ resurrection. But God is powerfully at work, providing for all the details of the burial in fulfillment of scripture.

Jesus’ burial is important because by it …

1. God provided witnesses to His Death and Resurrection (Matt. 27:55-56, 61).

Matthew writes,

⁵⁵ And many women who followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering to Him, were there looking on from afar, ⁵⁶ among whom were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joses, and the mother of Zebedee’s sons. (Matt. 27:55-56).

These women played an integral role in the life and ministry of Jesus. The twelve disciples weren’t the only ones who followed Jesus. These women had followed Jesus all the way from Galilee, “ministering to Him.” This simply means that they were serving Him. Luke 8 tells us,

¹ Now it came to pass, afterward, that He went through every city and village, preaching and bringing the glad tidings of the kingdom of God. And the twelve were with Him, ² and certain women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities–Mary called Magdalene, out of whom had come seven demons, ³ and Joanna the wife of Chuza, Herod’s steward, and Susanna, and many others who provided for Him from their substance. (Luke 8:1-3).

Jesus had graciously ministered to these women. And in grateful love, they ministered to Jesus from Galilee all the way to the cross. Ironically, due to their gender, they would not have been viewed as a public threat and so could safely accompany their Master.^[1] They kept a faithful vigil at the cross, “looking on from afar.” Matthew singles out three of these women by name: “Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joses, and the mother of Zebedee’s sons” (Matt. 27:56). Mary Magdalene had been possessed by seven demons, until Jesus cast them from her (Mark 16:9). Certainly, this act of saving mercy compelled her to love and to follow Jesus. His kindness to her was something that she would never forget. Then there was another Mary the mother of James and Joses. Mark calls this disciple James the younger or James the less (Mark 15:40). Likely, this Mary is called the wife of Clopas in John’s Gospel, although another possibility is that this could be Mary the mother of Jesus. Finally, the mother of Zebedee’s sons, James and John, is also called Salome (Mark 15:40). These women knew Jesus well, loved Him, and were faithful all the way to the cross and the tomb.

In Matthew 27:61, we read that later, after Jesus was buried, “And Mary Magdalene was there, and the other Mary, sitting opposite the tomb.” Mark, in his Gospel, tells us that they “observed where He was laid” (Mark 15:47). Luke, in his Gospel, tells us that they “observed the tomb and how His body was laid”; and that they then “returned and prepared spices and fragrant oils” in order to come back and anoint His body after the Sabbath (Luke 23:55-56).

Why do the Gospels tell us about these women at the tomb? Because these are the same women who will return to the tomb early Sunday morning to find the tomb empty. Through them, God provided witnesses that the same body of our Lord that was crucified was also the same body that was buried in that tomb. They saw His body taken down from the cross. They saw His body carried to the garden tomb. They saw Him wrapped in the burial cloth and laid in the tomb. They saw the stone rolled over the entrance. They knew this was the same Jesus whom they had followed and served. He was the same Jesus who healed them and saved them. They did not lose track of Jesus’ body. No one switched His body for another. These women witnessed it all. They didn’t go to the wrong tomb on Sunday morning. They knew exactly where Jesus’ tomb was.

Then we see that Jesus’ burial is important because by it …

2. God provided a rich man’s tomb (Matt. 27:57-60).

More than 700 years before the burial of Jesus Christ, Isaiah prophesied this about the Lord’s death and burial:

⁸ He was taken from prison and from judgment,
And who will declare His generation?
For He was cut off from the land of the living;
For the transgressions of My people He was stricken.
⁹ And they made His grave with the wicked–
But with the rich at His death,
Because He had done no violence,
Nor was any deceit in His mouth. (Isaiah 53:8-9).

Isaiah prophesied that the Servant of Yahweh, the Messiah, would die and be assigned a grave with the wicked. But, Isaiah counters, He would be with the rich at His death. Yet, we know that Jesus wasn’t a wealthy man. He owned nothing but the clothes on His back, and they even took those. So, how was he going to be with the rich in His death? In God’s providence, He worked through a rich man named Joseph to accomplish just that very thing.

Matthew 27:57 tells us, “Now when evening had come, there came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who himself had also become a disciple of Jesus.” Matthew makes a point of labeling Joseph as a “rich man”. To own a new rolling-stone tomb cut out of the rock and use the quantity of spices reported by John, Joseph must have been well-to-do.^[2] Matthew also indicates that Jospeh was a disciple of Jesus, meaning he had learned from Jesus and was committed to following the Lord. Luke tells us that Joseph was “a good and just man” who “had not consented to their decision and deed” and that he “himself was also waiting for the kingdom of God” (Luke 23:50-51). John tells us that Joseph was “a disciple of Jesus, but secretly, for fear of the Jews” (John 19:38). Mark 15:43 may indicate why he was afraid—because he was “a prominent council member”—that is, a member of the Sanhedrin that had condemned the Lord to death.

But Joseph’s secret discipleship became public this day. He stood up for Jesus as all disciples of Jesus will do. He would not sit by and let Jesus’ body be discarded like a vile criminal. So Matthew tells us, working up courage (Mark 15:43), “This man went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Then Pilate commanded the body to be given to him.” (Matt. 27:58). It is unusual that Pilate would have granted such a request to hand over the body of Jesus. D. A. Carson points out in his commentary that permission to take a body down from the cross was “usually granted to friends and relatives of the deceased who made application, but never in the case of high treason,”^[3] which was the case with Jesus. Why did Pilate make such an exception? I believe that he did because he knew of the innocence of Christ. As Isaiah prophesied, Jesus was with the rich in His death, “Because He had done no violence, Nor was any deceit in His mouth” (Isaiah 53:9). Pilate granting Jesus’ body to Joseph confirmed Jesus’ innocence.

Notice the care that Joseph gives to Jesus’ body. Matthew writes, “⁵⁹ When Joseph had taken the body, he wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, ⁶⁰ and laid it in his new tomb which he had hewn out of the rock; and he rolled a large stone against the door of the tomb, and departed.” (Matt. 27:59-60). Clearly, Joseph was treating the body of our Lord with the utmost honor. John tells us that another council member helped Joseph, writing, “And Nicodemus, who at first came to Jesus by night, also came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pounds.” (John 19:39).

Finally, the large round, flat stone—a stone that weighed as much as one-and-a-half to two tons and rested in a trench carved in the ground—was rolled into place to close the tomb in a permanent way. Joseph was not intending for it to be opened again, or for anyone else to ever be placed in it but the Lord.

So, even though Jesus was crucified like a common criminal, He was buried like a rich man. God providentially arranged that Jesus’ body would be put in a place of honor during those three days of waiting.

Jesus’ burial is important because by it God provided witnesses, provided a rich man’s tomb, and third …

3. God provided safe-keeping for Jesus’ body (Matt. 27:62-66)

Matthew is the only Gospel that tells us what happened the next day, which was Saturday (the Sabbath day). Matthew 27:62 says, “On the next day, which followed the Day of Preparation, the chief priests and Pharisees gathered together to Pilate.” Friday was the “Day of Preparation” when the Jewish people prepared everything in advance for the High Sabbath of the Passover that Saturday. John’s Gospel tells us that on Friday, Pilate had to go out at the trial of Jesus before the chief priests because they would not go into the Praetorium “lest they should be defiled, but that they might eat the Passover,” (John 18:28). Yet on this Holy Sabbath, they break their own rules and gather together to the Gentile Governor Pilate.

They come to make a request of Pilate. In Matthew 27:63 they say, “Sir, we remember, while He was still alive, how that deceiver said, ‘After three days I will rise.’” Wait a minute! When did they hear Jesus say that? Back in Matthew 12, disputing with Jesus over His healing on the Sabbath and casting out demons, the scribes and Pharisees had asked Jesus, “Teacher, we want to see a sign from You,” (Matt. 12:38). Do you remember how Jesus answered? He said, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” (Matt. 12:39-40). Possibly, they remember Jesus saying that.

But here’s another possibility. Do you remember the accusation they made about our Lord at His trial? Do you remember how they twisted His words? He had said, back in John 2:19, “Destroy this temple (meaning His body), and in three days I will raise it up”? At His trial, they accused Him of blasphemy; saying, “This fellow said, ‘I am able to destroy the temple of God and to build it in three days’” (Matt. 26:61). But now they come to Pilate, concerned that Jesus had said that after three days He would rise! As it turns out, the chief priests understood what Jesus meant all along!

“Therefore,” they proposed to Pilate, “command that the tomb be made secure until the third day, lest His disciples come by night and steal Him away, and say to the people, ‘He has risen from the dead.’ So the last deception will be worse than the first” (Matt. 27:64). In other words, they wanted to make absolutely sure that the body of Jesus remained in the tomb. They didn’t want anyone to tamper with it, steal it away, or do anything that would make it possible for people to think that Jesus truly had risen as He said. These religious leaders wanted to make sure that they did everything possible to snuff out the name of Jesus from the pages of history.

Pilate agrees to their request saying, “You have a guard; go your way, make it as secure as you know how,” (Matt. 27:65). No one would have messed around with anything that Roman soldiers were guarding!

So, even though it was a high Sabbath day, the chief priests and Pharisees “… went and made the tomb secure, sealing the stone and setting the guard,” (Matt. 27:66). The seal would have been an official, Roman pronouncement that the tomb was not to be opened by anyone. Imagine the absurdity of soldiers standing guard around the tomb of a crucified, dead man! How pathetic that seal and those guards must have looked to God. There is no way that guards and a seal are going to keep Jesus from raising from the dead! Death is powerless when life bursts onto the scene Sunday morning. But this is how God provided for the safe-keeping of Jesus’ body.

Those chief priests and Pharisees were unwittingly being used by God to protect the body of Jesus for the very thing that they were trying to prevent from happening. In trying to prevent the resurrection, they actually give greater proof to the resurrection, because the guard made it impossible for the disciples to come steal the body! Through them, God sovereignly preserved our Lord’s body from being stolen or lost from view, so that all the world would know that the same body that died on the cross is the body that rose from the dead in resurrection glory!

And why did God do all this? It was so that you and I could know for certain today that Jesus Christ truly has risen from the dead. This is how God works. The wicked may attempt to thwart and deny God, but it simply won’t happen. By seeking to prevent a “false resurrection” from taking place through the theft of the body, they actually helped to prove the resurrection.

This is how Matthew 27 ends. Jesus has been crucified. He is dead, having given up His spirit. His body has been carefully wrapped and honored in a rich man’s tomb. The tomb is sealed and guarded. The women have seen it all. And if we were to end the story of Jesus there, it would seem that His life had been a tragedy. But hallelujah! it’s not the end!

In the year 1727, Johann Sebastian Bach wrote his magnificent oratorio, St. Matthew Passion, for the Good Friday service at St. Thomas Church in Leipzig, where he was Kapellmeister (Director of Music). It is a monumental musical work. Setting the entire Passion narrative from the Gospel of Matthew to music, plus a libretto of commentary poetry by Bach’s friend Christian Friedrich Henrici, the whole thing takes almost three hours to perform.

The St. Matthew Passion ends with what Leonard Bernstein called a grand exalted lullaby to the entombed Jesus. It includes some of the oratorio’s most beautiful lines, reflecting that with Christ’s death, we receive rest, and salvation from sin.

We sit down with tears
and call to you in the grave:
rest gently, gently rest!
Rest, you exhausted limbs!
– Rest gently, rest well. –

Your grave and headstone
shall, for the anxious conscience,
be a comfortable pillow
and the resting place for the soul.
– Rest gently, gently rest! –

Highly contented,
there the eyes fall asleep.

The oratorio closes with a final, lingering, unresolved chord that leaves the listener in a state of unresolved sorrow and longing for more. It was Bach’s ingenious way of saying that the story of Jesus is not over. There is more to come.[4]

What does Jesus’ burial mean to us today? It means He truly died. It means He truly was raised the third day. And having repented and believed in Jesus, we have died with Him to sin. This is what baptism pictures for us. Paul writes in Romans 6,

³ Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? ⁴ Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. ⁵ For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection, ⁶ knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. (Romans 6:3-6).

Jesus died for sin and was buried so that, by faith, you and I could be united to Him in His death and burial. It was for my sin that Jesus was nailed to the cross. It was to pay the debt of death I owed that He died. Let me ask you today: Have you died with Him who died for you? Have you been buried with Him who was buried for you? Can you say with the Apostle Paul,

²⁰ I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. (Galatians 2:20).

Colossians 3:3 says about us who in Christ, “For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” Were you there when they crucified my Lord? Were you there when they laid Him in the tomb? O, tremble, tremble, tremble as you come to Jesus who loved you and gave His life for you.

^[1] Craig Blomberg, Matthew, vol. 22, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1992), 422.

^[2] D. A. Carson, “Matthew,” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Matthew, Mark, Luke, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein, vol. 8 (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1984), 584.

^[3] D. A. Carson, “Matthew,” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Matthew, Mark, Luke, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein, vol. 8 (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1984), 584.

[4] Andy Davis, The Burial of Jesus Christ (Matthew Sermon 148), https://twojourneys.org/sermons/series/matthew/the-burial-of-jesus-christ-matthew-sermon-148-of-151/