Archived Daily Manna | Rejoice Fellowship | A mission to release people to rejoice in the world.

Message: The four gospels contain great narrative detail about Jesus' burial. All four recount that a man name Joseph of Arimathea, who held some position in the Jewish religious establishment, claimed Jesus' body and buried it in a tomb cut into rock; John adds another Jewish official, NicodemusSee John 3:1-21 for more about Nicodemus., who brought myrrh and aloe to prepare the body. (John 19:38-42) He was wrapped in a linen shroud made of multiple cloths; John, who gives us the most detail, adds that his head was wrapped in a separate “napkin” or face cloth. (John 20:5-7) Shroud of Turin (Side note: Remember the Shroud of Turin? Anyone who has read John 20 must wonder how even the most gullible Christian could believe it was Jesus' burial shroud. The Shroud is a single cloth with the imprint of a face and body, but John tells us, in plain clear language, that Jesus' head was separately wrapped; and all gospels except Matthew tell us it was made of multiple parts.) Someone who has spent time reading the Gospels will eventually notice an oddity: the degree of physical detail given here is missing in almost every other aspect of Jesus' life. Matthew has been following Jesus for three years, without once recording details of his clothing. Yet, he describes the cloth in which He was buried. In fact, the details of the burial are not particularly important in themselves; the critical point of the story is that He was buried. He was a human being, and he was dead. Matthew (and all the gospels) seek to give credibility to the fact of his burial by reciting details, for a detailed story is more credible than a cursory statement. Christ's burial proves that He actually died. Opponents would fabricate any possible hypothesis to discredit Christ's divinity, and one forseeable attempt to discredit the Resurrection was (and still is) that the crucifixion did not actually kill Jesus. His Jewish enemies claimed that He was taken from the cross, unconscious but alive, and that his subsequent appearances were no miracle, but a fraud. Hence such details as a guard of Roman soldiers who seal the tomb. Even if one believed He was alive when He was taken down from the cross, He would hardly have survived his burial. It also, as the Scripture states, forestalled fabrications of his body having disappeared by theft. His burial is also important symbolically, for it realizes prophecy, both of the Old Testament and of Christ himself: “For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” (Matthew 13:40) God and King David We have talked about parallelism before, so the psalm today has the second line indented, as it follows the two-line parallel form strictly. Notice the different ways in which the second line relates to the first. It might be a variation or restatement of the first line in different words. Especially in the third section, the second line might complete a simile begun in the first. Notice also the final verse, where the second line narrows and defines the first. There is a technical grammatical name for this kind of construction, appositionWe do not normally think of nouns as modifiers, but apposition is very common and we hardly notice it, as it becomes intuitive to us. “President John Adams” is nothing but a string of three nouns in apposition. In fact, whenever we use a first and last name, it is technically appositional: “Adams” is a noun that defines and limits the preceding noun, “John”. It is partly noun and partly modifier, because it answers the question, “which John?” For you hardcore grammar geeks, yes, “John” also answers the question “which Adam?” But it is conventional to parse the first noun in such a construction as the primary noun, and those following it as standing in apposition to the first.. Now notice the difference between the three sections. The first section is a prayer of praise. David blesses God and then describes Him with three verses beginning with “Who”. The second section also describes positive attributes of God, but notice the difference in tone and purpose. David is now instructing the listener directly. But the attributes are stated in a more general sense. In the third section, there is against a slight shift in emphasis toward the personal. Here, David tells the reader/listener not so much what God has done in general that is wonderful, but what He has done and will do specifically in relation to the listener. There is some overlap, but the psalm has a general direction from the general character of God towards the specific relationship of God with the faithful. The theme of Section one is “Bless the Lord”; section two is “the Lord is righteous”; and section three is “He has not dealt with us according to our sins.” We don't want to get so caught up in structure that we ignore the meaning. The psalm is very Christian-sounding, especially the theme that God does not deal with us according to our sins; and we are fortunate that He does not! God forgives us, something that we must remind ourselves about. How great is His mercy? At what point will His mercy run out? God's mercy towards those who fear Him is as high as the heavens above the earth, which is to say, infinite, beyond our ability even to imagine. As far as east from west; and again, the distance from east to west was, to David, the entire world; to us it actually has an even greater significance, because we know that we can go east forever. One word about the expression “fear the Lord.” In English, “fear” has a single meaning, but in both Greek and Hebrew — neither of which had nearly as many words available as we do in English — the same word also meant “have a profound sense of respect and reverence”. Certainly one might be afraid of God, and at times He was indeed fearful to the Hebrews, as when they were at Mt. Sinai. (Exodus 19) But the meaning of profound reverence, rather than being afraid, is more the sense that is intended when the expression is used by David (and Solomon).