I. The burial of Christ lies between His humiliation and His exaltation. It is the pausing point of His history, who, for the suffering of death, was made a little lower than the angels; the moment when the hope and faith of His followers was most sorely tried; when victory seemed to be with His enemy. But it was only seeming. The grave was to Jesus Christ the gate of life; He passed through into His glorious resurrection.
II. By being buried, our Lord fulfilled what was written of Him; and not only that, but He thereby has given us the best and most positive assurance that He died for us. Men, it has been truly said, are not put into the earth before they die. The interment only follows after the expiration of soul and body, after life is extinct. The fact that our Blessed Lord was laid in the grave, sets the surest seal upon the reality of His sufferings. It proves that the awful scene on Calvary was no shadowy picture, no figment of man's invention, but a thing that actually occurred.
III. Again, the burial of Jesus Christ was needed as a preparation for His glorious resurrection. That great event that on which our hope of living again rests would have wanted its full proof, had it not been preceded by His interment. Men cannot be said to rise who have never died. If Christ our Lord, who came down from heaven, and was made man for us and for our salvation, had, by the power which was in Him, gone back to heaven without dying as He surely might have done we could have had no sure pledge that we shall rise out of our graves. Assured as we are that Christ was buried, and that He rose again and left His tomb, we may have cheer and comfort in the prospect of our own death, and in looking back on their deaths who have gone before us.
R. D. B. Rawnsley, Village Sermons,3rd series, p. 84.
References: John 19:41; John 19:42. H. Melvill, Voices of the Year,vol. i., p. 376; Homiletic Magazine,vol. ix., p. 142; Homilist,vol. vi., p. 33. H. W. Beecher, Sermons,1870, p. 31. Joh 20:1. Homiletic Quarterly,vol. v., p. 164.John 20:3-10. H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxv., p. 10. John 20:8-19. Clergyman's Magazine,vol. iv., p. 224.