“When we study the Scripture as a whole we begin to notice patterns. One of the patterns we run across from the Old Testament, for example, is that of sin, judgment, and deliverance. The people turn away from God, fall into calamity, call out to God in repentance, and God sends a deliverer. You’ve noticed that, I’m sure, if you’ve ever read the Old Testament.
Another pattern or theme we see is that of God choosing his people. Seth begins a godly line. Noah finds grace in the eyes of God. Abraham is called out of idolatry to go out into a land. Prophets are chosen and commissioned. Kings are chosen and appointed. Priests likewise. God chooses a people and makes promises to bless them in spite of their sin. This is the case in the Old as well as the New Testaments. This ties in to the next theme we notice, that of covenant.
Perhaps the two most prominent themes in the Bible are those of covenant and redemption. God makes covenant promises to Adam, then to Noah, then to Abraham. God makes covenant with his people through Moses at Mt. Sinai. In fact, the history of God’s people in the Old Testament is that of covenant breaking and covenant renewal (which takes us back to and ties into that earlier theme we noted about sin, judgment, repentance, and renewal.) It is the covenant that the people are being called back to—covenant faithfulness.
But redemption, now that’s the big one. If the Bible has one overriding theme it would have to be that of redemption—and that redemption is focused on God’s Son, God’s unique Son, His Only Begotten Son, Jesus Christ. That is why when we look back at the Old Testament through New Testament eyes we are looking for Jesus in types and shadows and prophecies, for that is what Jesus himself has taught us to do. He is the theme of the Old Testament because redemption is the theme of the Old Testament. In fact, we might say that redemption is the theme, while covenant is the framework. Our failure is what necessitates this (the cycle) and God’s choosing his people is part and parcel of covenant. All of the Bible is important. To disagree with that last bit is to disagree with Jesus about the theme and purpose and importance of the Old Testament.
Last week we finished with the pronouncement made by the Roman centurion who had been in charge of the crucifixion: “Truly this man was the Son of God!” It was the climactic moment of Mark. It was a Gentile, a Roman, stating boldly and clearly the premise that Mark had boldly and clearly set forward in the first line of his book. Everything between that first line and this climax had been building toward it. And it happened at the foot of the cross.
Now as we approach the end of this gospel there is still a little bit more story to tell. Jesus has given up his life in fulfillment of the Scriptures—specifically the suffering servant passages of Isaiah and those Psalms written with a similar theme. What was to become of him? What was to become of his message? What was to become of his body? Did they leave him on the cross?
You might think that last was a silly question, but history says otherwise. It was Roman practice to leave people on crosses for days and days, sometimes until their bodies decomposed. Burial for someone crucified was rare in the Roman world, though perhaps less rare in Palestine. In fact, it was forbidden except by magisterial decree. Usually the most one could hope for was being dumped into a mass grave. But the story of Jesus’s burial is a bit different, a bit unusual—worth telling, evidently, or Mark wouldn’t have spent so much time on it.
In fact, the burial of Jesus becomes a part of first century gospel witness. When Paul gives his famous statement on what the gospel is in his letter to the church at Corinth, he includes Jesus’s burial in his proclamation of the good news.
Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain.For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures,—1 Corinthians 15:1-4
“That he was buried.” Mark spends seven verses on it, more or less, and deems it that important to his story. Jesus died, that was last week. Jesus was buried, well, that happens today. Was the burial of Jesus pointed to in any way in the Old Testament? Jesus seems to think so. He claims that Jonah in the fish was something that pointed forward to his burial.
For just 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.—Matthew 12:40
Three days and three nights was an idiomatic expression, not a literal 72 hour measurement, but the point is still clear. Jesus really, really, really died. He was in the ground for three days. No mistake about it. Mark, too, wants us to know that.
Mark begins this story of the burial in an odd way. He begins it with women.…”
Click here: Mark 15:40-47 - The Burial of Jesus
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