Reflective Bible Study

Over the past few episodes, we have been focusing on Jesus’ time hanging on the cross. However, we now come to the point in this event where it is time for Jesus’ corpse to be removed from the cross. While Jesus fulfilled a surprising number of prophecies while hanging on the cross, when Jesus’ body is ultimately removed from the cross, a previously unknown disciple, and a secret disciple both step forward with exactly what was needed to save this weekend.

Let’s read what happened and how Joseph and Nicodemus save this Passover weekend.

Our passage is found in John’s gospel, chapter 19, and we will read it using the Contemporary English Version of the Bible. Starting in verse 38, John tells us that:

³⁸ Joseph from Arimathea was one of Jesus’ disciples. He had kept it secret though, because he was afraid of the Jewish leaders. But now he asked Pilate to let him have Jesus’ body. Pilate gave him permission, and Joseph took it down from the cross.

³⁹ Nicodemus also came with about seventy-five pounds of spices made from myrrh and aloes. This was the same Nicodemus who had visited Jesus one night. ⁴⁰ The two men wrapped the body in a linen cloth, together with the spices, which was how the Jewish people buried their dead. ⁴¹ In the place where Jesus had been nailed to a cross, there was a garden with a tomb that had never been used. ⁴² The tomb was nearby, and since it was the time to prepare for the Sabbath, they were in a hurry to put Jesus’ body there.

Some people have speculated that since Joseph and Nicodemus were in a hurry to prepare for the Sabbath, they didn’t prepare Jesus’ body properly, allowing Jesus to have survived. However, this thought doesn’t stand up to the logic that if Jesus could have been alive, these two disciples would not have been allowed to take Jesus’ body off the cross, and Jesus’ legs would have been broken, which we looked at in our last episode.

However, while Joseph and Nicodemus hurriedly prepare Jesus’ body for burial because of the Sabbath, these two men step in with exactly what is needed to save this Passover weekend.

Nicodemus believed and understood that Jesus had died, and while he may have remembered Jesus’ words to him during a secret, late-night meeting several years earlier, Nicodemus brought spices to prepare Jesus’ body for burial. Depending on the translation, we can understand that Nicodemus’ gift of spices weighed anywhere between 75 to 100 pounds. If Nicodemus believed or understood Jesus to be only in the tomb for less than 48 hours, a gift of that many spices to mask the odor of a body decomposing does not make sense. It is very possible that Nicodemus overdid it on the spices because they didn’t have much time, and it is better to have too many spices than too little.

However, Joseph’s gift is equally as significant. While offering Jesus a tomb to lay in doesn’t sound all that significant, it is exactly what everyone that weekend needed. If there was no tomb, then Jesus’ body likely would have been thrown in a communal grave and His body quickly lost among the other corpses. If a resurrection happened following Jesus’ body being tossed in with a bunch of other corpses, rumors would begin to spread that the person who was resurrected wasn’t really Jesus.

With this said, a funny thought just entered my mind. If Jesus’ body was thrown in a mass grave, I wonder if it would have caused every corpse in that grave to have been resurrected. This would have been similar to what happened in 2 Kings, chapter 13, verses 20 and 21 when the corpse of a man is hastily thrown into Elisha’s tomb and when the corpse touched Elisha’s bones, it returned to life. With Jesus’ though, I suspect the effect would have been significantly more powerful.

However, before we digress too far, what everyone that weekend needed was a single location to watch to see what would happen to Jesus’ body. The religious leaders need a place to watch, and to send soldiers to guard so that Jesus’ followers won’t steal the body away. The women need a place to return to in order to pay their respects to Jesus following the Sabbath. And the disciples themselves need a place to go to in order to confirm the women’s crazy story of an empty tomb and to also ultimately come to the conclusion that Jesus rose from the dead. Everyone that weekend needed a place to watch and Joseph steps in with the perfect gift at the perfect time.

Both Nicodemus and Joseph step in with what is needed at that time. Both of these men are described as secret disciples, or as disciples who followed Jesus, but didn’t do so publicly. While we might be tempted to follow the lead of Nicodemus and Joseph, understand that if either of these men had stayed silent, we would have no idea who they were.

Only when each of these men stand up and side with Jesus do their stories get recorded. In Nicodemus’ case, the three times He is mentioned in scripture are only in connection with Jesus. The first time is when Nicodemus comes to see Jesus late at night. The second time is when Nicodemus stands up for Jesus while sitting in a hostile-towards-Jesus meeting of religious leaders. And the third time Nicodemus is recorded is in this passage, when he brings spices to assist in Jesus’ burial.

In Joseph’s case, the only mention of him that I am aware of in the entire scripture is during Jesus’ burial. While I don’t know if Joseph reverts back to the religious leaders after Jesus’ resurrection, or if his story as a disciple gets lost among all the other amazing events in the first century Christian church, Joseph is remembered as the giver of the gift of a tomb for Jesus’ body.

Both Nicodemus and Joseph teach us a powerful truth: If we want our lives to last longer than our lives, and if we want to be remembered for what we have done for eternity, we must step into God’s story and align ourselves with Jesus. When we publicly side with Jesus, letting our lives move God’s story forward, our lives and our witness will be remembered for eternity!

If you have been living as a secret follower of Jesus, consider this a gentle nudge to step forward when God calls you to step forward, and to publicly proclaim Jesus while allying yourself with Him!

As we come to the end of another podcast episode, here are the challenges I will leave you with:

As I always challenge you to do, intentionally seek God first in your life and choose to ally yourself with Jesus. If you have been afraid to share your faith, ask God for the strength and courage to stand up when the time is right and to give you the confidence and words to say when you do stand up for Him. Don’t let fear in this world keep you from publicly proclaiming your allegiance to God!

Also, as I always challenge you to do, keep praying and studying the Bible for yourself to personally grow closer to God each and every day. Through prayer and study, you can grow closer to God, and the closer you grow to God, the more the Holy Spirit will show up in your life and transform you into the person God created you to be. With the Holy Spirit in your life, nothing Satan throws your way can scare you out of God’s plan for your life!

And as I end every set of challenges by saying in one way or another, never stop short of, back away from, chicken out of, or shy away from where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!

During the past couple of podcast episodes, we have been looking at how Mark describes the time Jesus spent on the cross. For this episode, we will conclude looking at what Mark tells us happened during the hours Jesus spent on the cross, and discover what we can learn during the last portion of this event.

Our passage for this episode is found in Mark’s gospel, chapter 15, and for this episode, we will read from the God’s Word translation. Starting in verse 33, Mark tells us that:

³³ At noon darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. ³⁴ At three o’clock Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”

³⁵ When some of the people standing there heard him say that, they said, “Listen! He’s calling Elijah.” ³⁶ Someone ran and soaked a sponge in vinegar. Then he put it on a stick and offered Jesus a drink. The man said, “Let’s see if Elijah comes to take him down.”

³⁷ Then Jesus cried out in a loud voice and died. ³⁸ The curtain in the temple was split in two from top to bottom.

³⁹ When the officer who stood facing Jesus saw how he gave up his spirit, he said, “Certainly, this man was the Son of God!”

Without any question in my mind, the moment Jesus cried out in a loud voice and died is the darkest point in the entire Bible. For three hours, darkness covered not only the entire region but specifically Jesus on the cross. I wonder if this darkness was caused by supernatural forces, if there was some type of eclipse that blocked out the sun, or if this happened because of a thick cloud cover. It was as though the last three hours of Jesus’ life were aimed at prompting Jesus to feel like He was all alone.

Mark doesn’t describe anything that happened during these three hours, and I wonder if nothing noteworthy happened, perhaps except for Satan trying to mock and taunt Jesus that His death was for nothing and that His sacrifice would not be accepted by God.

Whether the darkness ended immediately after Jesus gave His last breath, or whether the darkness ended at the point Jesus cried out about feeling like God had abandoned Him, the last hours leading up to Jesus’ death gave Jesus time to reflect on His sacrifice. These three hours likely felt like an eternity, but it was an eternity where Jesus was able to reflect and resolve that His death would open the way for our salvation.

In my mind, it is significant to pay attention to what Jesus cries out here in Mark’s gospel. After three hours of darkness, Jesus cries out in verse 34 saying, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”

This cry of Jesus is a cry we all may be tempted to believe when we go through dark points in our lives. In our lives, we all will have times when things go our way and when life is looking up, and we will all have times when it seems like everything is going wrong. It is tempting to think God is with us in the good times and that He has abandoned us in the bad times, but if we choose to believe this, we may be believing a lie Satan wants to trick us with.

I have no idea whether the darkness during the last hours of Jesus’ time on the cross was caused naturally or supernaturally. I don’t know whether it was something symbolizing God turning His face away from Jesus or whether it was a move by Satan to try to break His spirit.

However, I believe that regardless of the source of the darkness, and regardless of Jesus’ cry out to God about feeling abandoned, I have no doubt in my mind that God was 100% focused on this moment in history. Even though Jesus felt like God had left Him, I don’t believe for a moment that God turned His back on Jesus’ sacrifice.

One of the most famous verses in the Bible tells us that God loves humanity to the point that He sent His Son to face death for us. Jesus took the punishment we deserved onto Himself because God loves us that much. God accepted Jesus’ sacrifice because Jesus returned to life the following Sunday morning. The weekend of the cross was what the entire Godhead had been directing history towards.

However, with God’s focus present on this moment, I don’t believe God felt joy during this moment. Instead, in ways that would be hard for us to imagine, I believe God felt pain during the hours Jesus hung on the cross. Regardless of whether a skeptic could rationalize God’s perspective and say that He knew Jesus would be alive days later, God knows what it is like to watch someone you love die. God understands one of the greatest pains we can experience in our human lives.

In this event, we discover that Satan wanted Jesus to feel as though He was alone, and in this regard, it is possible that he succeeded. However, Satan wasn’t strong enough to convince Jesus that His cries to His Father would not be heard.

This means that for us living today, Satan can try to trick us into believing that we are all alone and that God is uninterested in our lives. Satan can try to trick us into believing that our prayers fall on deaf ears, or no ears at all. However, Satan is powerless to stop our prayers from being heard by the Father, and Satan is powerless to stop the Father from being passionately in love with us!

The best Satan can hope for is tricking us into not praying and seeking God, because he knows that if we turn to God, God is more than willing to help us in our time of need.

When Jesus gave up His Spirit, the curtain in the temple ripped in two from top to bottom. This spiritual and significant act opened the way for sinners to come before God directly and ask for forgiveness, ask for help, and ask God for answers to our prayers and requests. Jesus’ death makes coming to God possible, and Jesus’ death bridges the gap sin had created between humanity and God.

Everything worth anything in life hinges on Jesus’ death, and because Jesus died on the cross, we are able to accept the gift of eternal life through Jesus that extends into eternity!

As we come to the end of another podcast episode, here are the challenges I will leave you with:

As I always challenge you to do, intentionally seek God first in your life. Resolve today to never let Satan trick you out of praying and seeking God. Satan’s best chance is tricking you into thinking that God doesn’t care about you and letting your mind resolve to give up on God. This is because Satan knows that God is unwilling to give up on us. Jesus came to prove to us that God loves us with all His heart and that He wants us together forever with Him in heaven!

Also, continue praying and studying the Bible for yourself to learn, grow, and fall in love with the God who gave Himself for you and me. Through the pages of the Bible, discover just how much God loves you and what He was willing to give up in order to redeem you and I for eternity.

And as I end every set of challenges by saying in one way or another, never stop short of, back away from, chicken out of, or deviate away from where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him – even when Satan tries to convince us we are living alone and God has forgotten. God never forgot Jesus, and He will never forget you!

We have come to the place in the gospel of John where Jesus is hanging on the cross, and He has just given His last breath. As our passage opens, Jesus has died, but His corpse has not yet been taken down from the cross.

However, before John tells us about what happens to Jesus’ body after it has been removed from the cross, two more prophecies need to be fulfilled during the time Jesus is hanging on the cross. John draws our attention to these two connected prophecies immediately following Jesus giving up His Spirit.

Our passage is found in John’s gospel, chapter 19, and we will read it using the New American Standard Bible translation. Starting in verse 31, John tells us:

³¹ Then the Jews, because it was the day of preparation, so that the bodies would not remain on the cross on the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was a high day), asked Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away. ³² So the soldiers came, and broke the legs of the first man and of the other who was crucified with Him; ³³ but coming to Jesus, when they saw that He was already dead, they did not break His legs. ³⁴ But one of the soldiers pierced His side with a spear, and immediately blood and water came out. ³⁵ And he who has seen has testified, and his testimony is true; and he knows that he is telling the truth, so that you also may believe. ³⁶ For these things came to pass to fulfill the Scripture, “Not a bone of Him shall be broken.” ³⁷ And again another Scripture says, “They shall look on Him whom they pierced.”

Over the past few episodes, we’ve seen how John’s gospel described prophecies that Jesus fulfilled at His death. However, the two prophecies in this passage are powerful when we stop to look at them a little closer.

Hundreds of years before Jesus walked the earth, the prophet Zechariah wrote God’s message: “I will pour out on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Spirit of grace and of supplication, so that they will look on Me whom they have pierced; and they will mourn for Him, as one mourns for an only son, and they will weep bitterly over Him like the bitter weeping over a firstborn.” This prophecy is found in Zechariah, chapter 12, verse 10.

In this verse, it is amazing that not only do we have the reference to Jesus being pierced, but we also have God promising the Spirit of grace coming to God’s people because of the death of God’s Son. We have in this prophetic verse a picture of the sorrow and mourning that would take place on the weekend Jesus would die. And all this was predicted and written hundreds of years before the events took place.

However, the reference to Jesus being pierced isn’t the only prophecy that was fulfilled in our passage. Our passage also included a reference to a prophecy about Jesus’ bones not being broken. This prophecy is found in the Psalms of David. We will read it from Psalm 34, and while the prophecy is in verse 20, we’ll start reading in verse 19 to give it context:

¹⁹ Many are the afflictions of the righteous,
      But the Lord delivers him out of them all.
²⁰ He keeps all his bones,
      Not one of them is broken.
²¹ Evil shall slay the wicked,
      And those who hate the righteous will be condemned.
²² The Lord redeems the soul of His servants,
      And none of those who take refuge in Him will be condemned.

Tucked within David’s reminder that God will be with those who take refuge in Him, we have a reference to the Lord, the Messiah, keeping all His bones, without any being broken. This is amazing to think about, because this was written several hundred years before Jesus walked the earth.

This is also incredible, because both of these prophecies are fulfilled against the orders of those in command. Our passage opened with the religious leaders asking Pilate to break the legs of those hanging on the cross so they would die faster and be taken down from the cross before the Sabbath had begun. I suspect that Pilate agreed and we read in verses 32 to 34 that “the soldiers came, and broke the legs of the first man and of the other who was crucified with Him; but coming to Jesus, when they saw that He was already dead, they did not break His legs. But one of the soldiers pierced His side with a spear, and immediately blood and water came out.”

In this passage, the soldiers have orders to break the legs of all the men, but with Jesus, they don’t break His legs, but instead they pierce His side. These Roman soldiers defied their orders to break the legs of the men, and while they understood the reason for this was to speed up the death of these men, they don’t need to speed Jesus’ death up. Piercing Jesus’ side, which would have punctured His heart for blood and water to have come out, proves Jesus’ death. From what I know, one cannot fake the separation of blood and water, or survive with a hole in their heart after experiencing critical blood loss.

All evidence points to Jesus’ execution being successful by all the measures of success.

However, is there another reason why Jesus’ bones were not broken?

I believe there is. In both Exodus and Numbers, we have a description of the Passover sacrifice. The Passover event marked the night when the angel of death went through Egypt killing the first born in every home. The only protection given was to kill a lamb and spread its blood on the doorposts.

The Passover is significant, because not only does this finally break the Pharaoh and cause him to release the Israelite slaves, this event is also a reminder for all that in order for us to be saved, Someone else must take the punishment. In the context of Passover, the “someone else” is an innocent lamb. In the context of Christianity, Jesus stood in our place and became our “Someone else”.

While the lamb’s blood was used to mark the doorposts of the home, giving the house protection, Exodus, chapter 12, verse 46 describes how the Lamb should be prepared to be eaten. Moses told the people: “It is to be eaten in a single house; you are not to bring forth any of the flesh outside of the house, nor are you to break any bone of it.”

In order for Jesus to stand in as our Passover Lamb, which Christians all over the world today believe He did, none of His bones could be broken. Through the symbolic Passover meal, which Christians celebrate as the Last Supper, we also remember what Jesus told His first followers, specifically that the bread represents His body, and the juice represented His blood.

While Satan tried to break this prophecy and symbolism through the religious leaders requesting for the legs of all those on crosses that day to be broken, we discover that Satan could not overturn God’s plan, God’s prophecy, and Jesus’ successful completion of the work of salvation – which required Jesus’ bones to remain whole!

Jesus’ sacrifice was successful, and His sacrifice was accepted. Because of what Jesus did for us, we have the invitation available to us to take Jesus’ death and let it stand in our place. Jesus is our Passover Lamb when we exchange our life for His, and when we look to Jesus as the “Someone Else” who paid for our sins, we are promised eternal life and resurrection just as Jesus was resurrected from the tomb!

As we come to the end of another podcast episode, here are the challenges I will leave you with:

As I always challenge you to do, intentionally seek God first in your life and choose today to place your faith, your hope, your trust, and your belief in Jesus and in His sacrifice to cover your sins. Choose today to live each day moving forward with God and leaving your past sinful lives in the grave with Jesus’ sacrifice. Starting today, you can live a new life with God, and when you live your life moving forward with Jesus, your life will extend beyond this life and into eternity!

Also, continue to pray and study the Bible for yourself to personally grow closer to God each and every day. While other people have ideas to think about, always filter what you hear, read, and see through the truth contained in the Bible. The Bible is God’s story for the world, God’s story of Jesus, and through the Jesus that we discover in the Bible, God has made the way available for us to be saved!

And as I end every set of challenges by saying in one way or another, never stop short of, back away from, chicken out of, or abandon where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!

As we continue looking at the details Mark includes in the crucifixion portion of his gospel, we come to the section of this event that frames who Jesus died with, and the messages Jesus was receiving from those present. While it would be easy to see these verses and the messages Jesus was receiving as simply the mocking of hostile people, what these people were saying has a profound spiritual truth that might have even encouraged Jesus to press forward to His last breath.

Let’s continue reading and discover what the next verses can teach us about Jesus, and about God’s love for us. Our passage is found in Mark’s gospel, chapter 15, and we will read from the New International Version of the Bible. Starting in verse 27, Mark tells us that:

²⁷ They crucified two rebels with him [referring to Jesus], one on his right and one on his left. ^[28] [And the Scripture came true that says, “They put him with criminals.”]  ²⁹ Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads and saying, “So! You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, ³⁰ come down from the cross and save yourself!” ³¹ In the same way the chief priests and the teachers of the law mocked him among themselves. “He saved others,” they said, “but he can’t save himself! ³² Let this Messiah, this king of Israel, come down now from the cross, that we may see and believe.” Those crucified with him also heaped insults on him.

Let’s stop reading here. From these verses, it doesn’t seem like anything in the messages Jesus was receiving is positive.

However, let’s look a little closer at what was said. The first “insult” Mark describes coming from people who passed by, and these people said, “So! You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, come down from the cross and save yourself!” While these people believed or understood Jesus’ statement to refer to the building that was called the temple, John’s gospel tells us Jesus meant His body and He called His body the temple when making that claim.

This means that when these people threw Jesus’ words back at Him, while they intended their reminder to be an insult, they were actually reminding Jesus in the moment of His greatest physical pain, that resurrection was just around the corner!

I doubt anyone present would have realized this subtle encouragement, and I wonder if Jesus had planned early on to make this prediction knowing that at the moment He would need some encouragement from hostile people, He could count on them to remember and repeat this coded message back to Him.

But that isn’t the only insult that has multiple meanings in this passage. The other primary insult Jesus received was from the religious leaders, who Mark describes as saying, “He saved others, but he can’t save himself!” Again, similar to how the first “insult” could be reinterpreted to be encouraging, this second insult can also be a great reminder that Jesus could grasp and be encouraged by.

In this second insult, Jesus is reminded why He is on the cross. Jesus faced the cross to save others, not to save Himself.

The only reason Jesus faced the cross was to pay for the sins of those who want to escape the disease of sin and the traps of Satan. Jesus came to redeem sinners and to give those who want to return to God a way to return to God while allowing God’s justness and justice to still be clearly seen. God punishes sin and sinners deserved to be punished. However, someone unworthy of punishment is allowed to step in and take the punishment on themselves, which both allows justice to happen, while also showing love and mercy towards the guilty person. This second insult reminded Jesus why He was on the cross – because He was dying to save all of God’s people throughout history, including you and me!

However, the reason these insults were seen as insults was because of an assumption that those present blinded themselves into believing. This assumption was either something these people had convinced themselves was true, or it was a lie Satan had prompted them to believe in order to give Jesus one big last temptation before His death. The assumption I am referring to is that Jesus did not want to die.

The last big temptation Satan planned for Jesus was the temptation to come down from the cross and to save Himself. This temptation was included in both of the insults that were hurled at Jesus, and the implication is that Jesus needed to do this to prove who He was. This could only be a temptation if it were possible for Jesus to do, and I believe that Jesus was fully capable of leaving the cross if He wanted to.

However, Jesus knew that proving Himself to a skeptic would do no good. If Jesus had abandoned the cross when faced with this last temptation, the religious leaders and skeptics might have believed, or they might have simply come up with another reason they should doubt. One possible doubt would be that the soldiers didn’t do a good enough job driving the spikes into the wood, or that Jesus’ bone structure was uniquely different, allowing the spikes to slip off of Him. A skeptic’s mind can come up with countless reasons to not believe.

If Jesus had abandoned the cross when faced with this temptation, any belief in Jesus would be worthless, because Jesus gave up when times were too tough. Satan’s big claim against God was that God’s law was impossible to keep and impractical for life. Jesus came to demonstrate God’s love and to live a life that fulfilled all of God’s laws, showing us how God’s way is the best way!

Jesus’ chose not to save Himself so that He could save every person who wants to have a new life with God. Jesus used these insults that were thrown His way as subtle encouragements to remind Him why He was on the cross, which was to save sinners, and that the cross would end with resurrection on the third day!

Jesus used the biggest insults His enemies had and He had masterfully planned for them to be a source of encouragement in His darkest, most pain-filled hours leading up to His last breath.

As we come to the end of another podcast episode, here are the challenges I will leave you with:

As I always challenge you to do, intentionally seek God first in your life and choose to accept Jesus’ sacrifice on your behalf. Choose to let Jesus’ death pay for the price of your sins and accept the new life that Jesus offers to each of us because of what He faced. Jesus faced the cross for you and me, and His sacrifice only benefits us when we accept His death on our behalf by placing our faith, hope, trust, and belief in Him.

Also, continue to pray and study the Bible for yourself to learn and grow closer to God each and every day. Choose to pray and study the Bible to discover a God who is passionately in love with you and a God who would stop at nothing to show His love for you because He wants to redeem you from the life of sin you are living in. God loves sinners, and Jesus came to redeem sinners who want to love God in return.

And as I end every set of challenges by saying in one way or another, never stop short of, back away from, chicken out of, or give up on where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!