God’s Word for You

Lamentations 5:20 The tomb

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Saturday, April 19, 2025

20 Why do you forget us for so long?
  Why do you forsake us for so many days?

With this verse, we see the anguish of the exiles. We also see our own anguish when our crosses become difficult, and threaten to be too much for our bodies and minds to hold up under. We are brought to the realization that there will be a cross in life that will be the last cross, the cross that brings death to the body. Pray for strength and pray that the Holy Spirit would strengthen your faith about all things at that time.

When we apply these words to the second cross, the cross of our Lord’s suffering and death, we are reminded of his central cry from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). In these meditations on the three crosses, we have pondered those words of our Savior along with 1:3-4; 1:21; and 3:31. We recall that Christ experienced hell while he was on the cross, in many physical ways but also and especially regarding the Father turning away his face from his Son. And when the eternal Son of God experienced the agony of hell, his eternal nature made that agony an eternal agony. He suffered the eternal punishment of hell, and this remains a mystery to our understanding. But the proof of it remains: the nail prints in his hands and feet, which were there after his resurrection (John 20:25) and which remain as trophies of his victory in heaven.

But we also want to remember his time in the grave. When he was a baby, the Father and the Holy Spirit handed him over into the care of a man named Joseph, who was his protector and who married his mother. When he was in danger, that Joseph took Jesus away to safety in Egypt, fulfilling the words of the prophet Hosea, “Out of Egypt I have called my son” (Hosea 11:1). And so also when Jesus died, Pontius Pilate handed him over to the care of a man named Joseph, who took Jesus’ body away to bury it in his own tomb, to fulfill the words of the prophet Isaiah, “He was assigned a grave with the rich in his death” (Isaiah 53:9). And that prophet also says: “Go, my people, go into your rooms, and shut the doors behind you. Hide yourselves for a little while, until his wrath has passed over” (Isaiah 26:20 EHV). His grave, his place of rest, was prophesied to be glorious and honorable (Isaiah 11:10).

Professor Gerhard lifts up his voice: “What are you doing, Joseph of Arimathea, that you ask for the very same body which was slain as a murderer and a seditionist… the body over which all the people shouted: Crucify! Crucify him!... the body which Pilate himself had condemned to death on the cross? Don’t you realize that Pilate will deny the body to you, that the high priests will kick you off the council (the Sanhedrin), that the people will stone you?” But Joseph trusts in the Lord. And God directs things so that Pilate gives him the dead body of Christ for burial.

And another man, another member of the Sanhedrin, who had come to Jesus at night to learn the way into the kingdom of God (John 3), also gave a glorious gift. Joseph provided the risk of asking the question, and Joseph also provided the tomb. Now Nicodemus provided the aloes and the spices so that they could anoint the Lord’s body for burial. And so Psalm 45:8 is also fulfilled: “Myrrh, aloes, and cassia perfume all your garments.”

And Jesus was buried in a new grave. It was used because (1) It belonged to Joseph already, who had made it for himself, but who now gave it willingly for his Savior. (2) It was nearby (John 19:41-42). But (3), being a new tomb, that no one had even been buried in (John 19:41). Therefore no one could ever ask or even imagine whether it was perhaps someone else who miraculously rose from that grave. For if he had been buried in the tomb of David, might someone think that it was David who rose? Or if he had been buried in the tomb of King Uzziah (who was also buried in Jerusalem), might someone think that it could have been Uzziah who rose? Or any of the other kings of Judah? Or someone like Absalom? But no, Jesus was the only one there. It would be, could be, Jesus alone who rose from that tomb.

Jesus’ burial fulfilled other prophecies. “You will not abandon me to the grave, nor will you let your Holy One see decay” (Psalm 16:10). “You lay me in the dust of death” (Psalm 22:15). And there are types, that is foreshadowings of Christ’s burial throughout the Old Testament. These types are made clear first of all because there is a release or an escape from the prison or prisonlike place which equates with Jesus’ burial and resurrection. And second of all, these types are only made clear to those with faith, because unbelief will always latch onto the type as nothing but a literary device, and will reject the true miracle of Christ altogether. Some of these types that are seen through the eyes of faith include:

1, Jonah’s three days and nights in the belly of the whale (Jonah 1:17). Jesus pointed this out more than once, looking ahead to his own three days in the belly of the earth, that is, the grave (Matthew 12:40, 16:4).

2, Joseph’s three years in captivity in Egypt (Genesis 40:1, 41:1) before he was released and exalted to glory, having the position of Pharaoh’s right hand (Genesis 41:39-41).

3, Samson was imprisoned in the city of Gaza before he broke the gate of the city from off it hinges and carried it away (Judges 16:3).

4, Daniel was thrown into the lions’ den from which no one expected he would ever return, but he was spared and brought out to much glory (Daniel 6:26-28).

5, The prophet Jeremiah was thrown into a muddy cistern and sank into its mud with no hope of escape and left there to starve, but a good servant brought ropes and rags and with the permission of the king he rescued the prophet from the pit (Jeremiah 38:12).

6, To these we might perhaps add the case of the Egyptian slave who was abandoned and left for dead by his master, and had nothing to eat or drink for three days and three nights, but was revived and rescued by David, which led to a great victory over the Amalekites (1 Samuel 30:11-18).

Let us remember that in our baptism, we are buried with Christ into his death (Romans 6:4), and that his burial is certainly proof of his death, and of his sacrifice to atone for our sins. He was not abandoned to that grave. He was not completely forsaken by his Father. But he shared the grave with us, so that we know that our Lord went in and came out again, and he promises to bring us out, as well. God does not want us to keep our sins and transgression, nor our guilt and shame. He wants us to trust that Christ already destroyed all of that, crushing it into less than dust, into nothingness, and he promises to bring us up out of the grave and into complete holiness and righteousness in the resurrection, to everlasting life in heaven.

Behold, I tell you a mystery! We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the blink of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. (1 Corinthians 15:51-52).

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

Browse Devotion Archive