Transformed by the MessiahSample

Day 1: A Grave in a Garden

The Lord used Isaiah 53:4 during my personal journey to recognize Yeshua as the Messiah. This prophecy describes the Messiah’s death, burial, and all He would do for us. “Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows,” it proclaims.

According to Isaiah, Yeshua’s grave should have been with the wicked, yet He was buried in a rich man’s tomb. How? When the officials executed criminals from Golgotha, they buried them in an unmarked mass grave near the Valley of Gehenna along with the poor and the wicked.[i] Jesus should have been put in that place. But as we read in John 19:38–40, Joseph of Arimathea, a secret disciple of Jesus because of his fear of the Judean leaders, had received Pilate’s permission to have the body of Jesus. Joseph, joined by Nicodemus, who came bringing a large quantity of a mixture of myrrh and aloes, took the body and wrapped it with the spices in strips of linen cloth, as per the Jewish burial custom.

If Jesus had been buried in a mass grave in Jerusalem, how would we ever be able to verify that He had fulfilled the promise to resurrect on the third day? Because Joseph and Nicodemus buried Jesus in a guarded, one-person, sealed, rich man’s tomb, when the tomb was found empty, it was undeniable that Jesus had risen. He was indeed alive and resurrected from the dead!

Still, there was a further purpose in His being buried in a garden tomb. The world’s brokenness and death began in a garden with the first Adam; its restoration and healing were realized in another garden by the Last Adam. Jesus came to reverse the sin of Adam and Eve that began in the garden of Eden when they broke God’s command and took from the tree. Jesus “returned” to a garden to reverse the curse, restore the blessing, and bring life out of death. In that garden grave, the story came full circle.

Prayer:

Lord God, what a wonder it is to realize that life started in a garden and that Jesus secured eternal life for His people, including me, by rising from a garden tomb. To You be all honor and glory! Amen.

[i] Walter A. Elwell and Barry J. Beitzel, “Gehenna,” in Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible (Baker Book House, 1988), 844.