Grave concerns- where was Jesus for three days?
One of the greatest archeological discoveries of all time was made in 1922 when Howard Carter located the 2000-year-old, undisturbed tomb of Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun. On the brow of King Tut’s burial mask was an engraving of a cobra whose task was to defend the Pharaoh’s spirit for eternity. Superstitious people feared it was bad luck to disturb the dead, and they took the cobra as a warning. This omen was ignored by the excavators until hours after the discovery when Carter’s pet canary was killed and eaten by a live cobra. Instantly rumors began to emerge that the tomb was cursed. The media gleefully lapped this up. And novelist Marie Corelli stirred the journalistic pot by declaring publicly that there would be dire consequences for disturbing Tut’s rest.
The watching world waited eagerly for any sign of “dire consequences.” Sure enough, less than two weeks later one of the lead archeologists, Lord Carnarvon, received a mosquito bite that he nicked while shaving. It became infected. He fell ill, caught pneumonia, and much to the media’s smug satisfaction, died at the spritely age of 57.
At the exact moment of his death, there was a blackout in Cairo, while back in England Carnarvon’s dog, Susie, died on the same night. Coincidence? Some think not. Five months later, Carnarvon’s brother died. And six of the 26 present at the opening of the tomb were dead within a decade.
I think what we can learn from this is that there are some tombs better left unexplored. But there is another famous tomb that begs to be explored, and the results aren’t a curse, but a blessing. So let’s explore Christ’s tomb before the resurrection.
3 PROBING QUESTIONS SO WE CAN EXPLORE THE GRAVE CONCERNS OF WHAT HAPPENED AFTER JESUS DIED
1. WHERE WAS HIS BODY?
John 19:39-41
Open in Logos Bible Software (if available) Nicodemus also, who earlier had come to Jesus by night, came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds in weight. So they took the body of Jesus and bound it in linen cloths with the spices, as is the burial custom of the Jews. Now in the place where he was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid.
This is significant in that it prevented any confusion on Sunday morning, as to whether there was a corpse in there or not. This was a binary situation: the tomb was empty, then it had a body in it, and then… it was empty again. There was no chance of his body being “misfiled” or overlooked.
The body was cleaned, wrapped in linen strips, and covered in spices that were intended to make the tomb smell better as the body decomposed. Why is this significant? It shows that Joseph and Nicodemus weren’t staging a resurrection. They didn’t take the body to the Upper Room and watch it for three days. They put it in a grave, they wrapped it up, smothering the face with a cloth. They slathered the corpse with oily myrrh and crushed aloe. It’s not like they tied a string to his finger, attached to a bell in case he roused from a coma. They treated his body like they would treat any other corpse that was going to be there permanently.
The custom was to return after a year to break up the bones and put them in an ossuary (bone-box) so that they could fit a whole family in the same tomb, by reducing the space, to stack them.
There is no anticipation of the resurrection whatsoever. By swaddling him in a straitjacket of linen, caking him in 75lbs of goo, and rolling a stone over the cave, they were making it impossible for a live person to escape the tomb.
But guess what… that didn’t matter one little bit.
Anyone powerful enough to escape the pangs of death, is going to make short shrift of the straightjacket and glue.
2. WHERE WAS HIS SPIRIT?
John 19:42
Open in Logos Bible Software (if available) So because of the Jewish day of Preparation, since the tomb was close at hand, they laid Jesus there.
The Apostles Creed, which all Christians confess, states “He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried, He descended into Hell, on the 3rd day he rose again from the dead.”
That comes from Ephesians 4:9
Open in Logos Bible Software (if available) In saying, “He ascended,” what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower parts of the earth?
Some have said Jesus went to hell to suffer for our sins or to do battle with Satan for our souls. Well, that’s not true. The reason Jesus didn’t have to suffer in hell for your sins, nor be tortured by Satan is because …
a) he said “It is finished” on the cross, he died “once for all” for our sins, and he “canceled our debt by nailing it to the cross.”
b) we don’t owe a debt to Satan, we owe a debt to God. Hell is not Satan’s turf, it is his prison, and he’s not there now anyway, but will be cast into the Lake of Fire in Revelation 20:10Open in Logos Bible Software (if available).
c) There is no verse in the Bible to suggest that Christ’s descent into the realm of the dead involved any suffering in the afterlife. Nowhere is our atonement ever linked to any suffering but that of Good Friday.
But then what did happen?
Luke 23:42-43
Open in Logos Bible Software (if available) And he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” And he said to him, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.”
From this we know that the same day his body died, he was alive in the Spirit, in Paradise.
But… then there is 1 Peter 3. There was a stop on the way there, or on the way back maybe, where we are told this happened…
1 Peter 3:18-20
Open in Logos Bible Software (if available) For Christ also suffered once for sins [i.e. on the cross], the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison because they formerly did not obey when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah…
“Proclaimed” is not the word for good news or evangelize, but for “preached, declared, heralded.”
Jesus went somewhere to proclaim the news to someone.
Spirits are not the word for souls and is never used in this way by humans, but only by angels and demons. These demons from the days of Noah were kept in a prison in the lower parts of the earth. You can read about their sin in Genesis 6, and it is mentioned in Jude 6Open in Logos Bible Software (if available).
So, where did Jesus go and what did he do there?
Short answer: he went to heaven, and then came back to earth to be resurrected, but first he descended into hell, not to suffer, but to proclaim victory over the demonic spirits in prison.
3. HOW LONG WAS HE DEAD?
John 19:42- 20:1
Open in Logos Bible Software (if available) So because of the Jewish day of Preparation, [Friday] since the tomb was close at hand, they laid Jesus there. Now on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, …
Jesus consistently predicted that he would be dead for three days. But, if Jesus died Friday at 3pm, and rose Sunday at dawn, how was he in the tomb for three days/ 72 hours? Jesus was in the tomb for the parts of three days, totaling about 36 hours.
Now, before you shoot me for heresy, let me remind you how we interpret the Bible.
We employ a historical-grammatical hermeneutic. What that means is we interpret the meaning of the words the way the people at the time understood it. Why? Because they wrote it. They used grammar in the context of their setting. Jews at the time of writing the Bible used to say “three days and three nights” to refer to any period of time that was longer than a day but shorter than four, with “a day” meaning any part of a day.
So, when Jesus predicted he would be in the grave at the same time Jonah was in the fish, for three days and three nights, no one thought he meant 72 hours. No one kept time rigidly in those days. So, Friday was the 1st day, Saturday the 2nd, and Sunday the 3rd even though it was only a few hours. Bear in mind that they considered sundown, not midnight, to be the end of the day.
CONCLUSION
Jesus in his death was able to proclaim victory.
While his people mourned and wrapped up his body and acted like that was the end of him, he was working, he was proclaiming victory, and showing his power and glory.
How was 2020 for you? How about 2021 and 2022? Are you mourning and fretting and grieving because it looks like God isn’t in control?
Are you acting like Jesus is dead?
Well, don’t. Jesus is alive. So live like it.
We are overcomers, we are Heavenites, we are victorious. Why? Because our Savior is alive and death could not hold him.
If you do not yet know the risen Savior as your Savior, this Easter is a great time to believe that Jesus died for you and then rose again, turn to God in repentance and become a child of the risen King!
Clint Archer
