This is Day 39 on our 40-day tour through the Gospel of John.

Thanks, as always, for tuning in.

Today we're in John chapter 19, verses 28 to 42, so let's get our Bibles open there. This is the part of the

story where John's gospel starts to come together, where it reaches its concluding points.

Jesus shares his last words from the cross. He dies for our sins and the sins of the world.

His body is taken off the cross and laid in a tomb. And it's that burial of Jesus where I

want to start this episode. And then we're going to work our way back to those last words of Jesus

on the cross because they're so important. There's some important details in the burial part of this

story too. John tells us there are two men specifically who are involved in Jesus' burial. One of them we meet

for the first time in verse 38 of John 19. His name is Joseph of Arimathea. And John tells us here in this

verse that he was a secret disciple of Jesus because he feared the Jewish leaders. This is not the first time

we've heard this kind of phrasing in John's Gospel. If you'll remember back in John chapter 9, the parents of the man who was born blind,

Jesus opened his eyes physically and spiritually.

The parents of this man were appreciative, I'm sure, and they even believed in Jesus,

but they didn't want to declare that publicly, John 9 says,

because they were afraid of what the religious establishment might do to them.

That same motivation is what drives a Pharisee, a religious leader himself named Nicodemus,

to come to Jesus, as it's recorded in John chapter 3, under the cover of darkness.

He didn't come in the broad daylight because it would be more likely that he'd be

discovered by his fellow Pharisees. So he comes in the cover of darkness to ask Jesus some spiritual

questions. Turns out that his religious traditions and narrow-minded legalism aren't soul-satisfying.

And so he's right in sensing that perhaps Jesus has some light

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