Holy Week Day by Day-Saturday or the Sabbath-Christ in the Grave

“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. So because of the Jewish day of Preparation, since the tomb was close at hand they laid Jesus there.” –John 19:41-42(ESV). “The next day, that is, after the day of Preparation, the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered before Pilate and said, ‘Sir, we remember how that impostor said, while He was still alive, ‘After three days I will rise.’ Therefore, order the tomb to be made secure until the third day, lest His disciples go and steal Him away and tell the people, ‘He has risen from the dead,’ and the last fraud will be worse than the first.’ Pilate said to them, ‘You have a guard of soldiers. Go make it as secure as you can.’ So they went and made the tomb secure by sealing the stone and setting a guard.” –Matthew 27-62-66 (ESV). “The women who had come with Him from Galilee followed and saw the tomb and how His body was laid. Then they returned and prepared spices and ointments. On the Sabbath they rested according to the commandment.” –Luke 23-55-56 (ESV).

On Friday a hurried burial occurred, because the Jewish Sabbath was fast approaching. The Day of Preparation, or the sixth day of the Jewish week, was from 6:00 p. m. on what we know as Thursday until 6:00 p. m. on Friday when the Jewish Sabbath officially began. According to the laws given in Exodus, all the necessities for life, as food and drink, had to be prepared in advance of the Sabbath during the Day of Preparation. Jesus’ trials, scourging, and crucifixion occurred on Friday, the Day of Preparation. Scholars have noted that at about the time of the offering of the lamb at the Feast of the Passover, the Lamb of God was being offered up on the cruel cross for the sins of the world. Quickly, before the beginning of the Sabbath at 6:00 p. m. on Friday, they hurried to bury Jesus. It is rather amazing that some of the chief priests and Pharisees would go to Pilate after the Sabbath had begun to plead with him to set a guard at the tomb where Jesus was buried. It was a sinful act to associate with a Gentile on the Sabbath. These who observed the law in all its fine points, broke their law by going, because they had such hatred for Jesus, and remembered that He had said, “After three days I will rise.” They did not anticipate His rising (or did they?). They wanted, instead, to have burly guards keeping vigilance beside His tomb lest the disciples take His body away and claim that He had, indeed, risen from the dead. This plotting and maneuvering of the Jewish leaders to secure Jesus’ tomb, and the Romans to put an official seal on it, joined forces to prove a most important tenet of the Christian faith. The grave and all the human attempts to secure it could not hold the Lord Christ.

But let’s think about Saturday—or the Jewish Sabbath. Jesus is in the grave. We hear no word about the disciples on that day. The gospel writers are silent on what they did from about sundown on Friday until Sunday morning. We have from Luke one single statement that the women who followed Jesus from Galilee used the rest of the Day of Preparation to gather ointments and spices to anoint Him for His burial, a loving act they had not been able to do because of timing. Then, “On the Sabbath they rested according to the commandment.” This, no doubt, was a general statement for all of the disciples. How much they needed rest! How emotionally and physically draining had been the cruel, crushing, heart-breaking events of the Day of Preparation—which had turned out to be the Day of Crucifixion and burial. Did any of them remember that Jesus had said He would die and then rise again? If any of the disciples or the women remembered on the Sabbath, no gospel writer made mention of such recollections. No doubt they mourned. Later, Peter would write about Christ in his Epistle by the same name: “For Christ also suffered once for sins, 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, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through the water...For this is why the gospel was preached even to those who are dead, that though judged in the flesh the way people are, they might live in the spirit the way God does.”(I Peter 3:18-20; 4:6, ESV). This hard-to-understand passage from I Peter is considered by some Bible interpreters as Jesus preaching to those spirits in Hades during the period of time His body lay in the tomb, the spirits in this view being the fallen angels cast into hell to await the final judgment. Other scholars think it refers to Jesus being in sprit with Noah as he tried to get persons to repent and turn to God before the great flood came to destroy all humanity except the eight in Noah’s family. Still another interpretation sees this as offering a second chance of salvation to those in hell, a view which lacks theological credibility. When Peter preached on the Day of Pentecost and 3,000 persons accepted Jesus Christ as Savior, Peter said, among other great statements, “He foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ, that He was not abandoned to Hades, nor did His flesh see corruption” (Acts 2:31, ESV). [Note that the Hades is the Greek term equivalent to the Hebrew term Sheol, which means “place of the dead,” and also “realm of the unbelieving dead.”]. We may have difficulty understanding the meaning of what Peter wrote and preached about where Christ’s spirit was when He lay in the grave parts of three days. The important truth is that the grave was not the end for Jesus. Thanks be to God! Those closest to the Lord needed a day of rest, a Sabbath, a time to pray, reflect and remember.

“Low in the grave He lay,
Jesus, my Savior;
Waiting the coming day,
Jesus, my Lord.”

(from the hymn, “Low in the Grave He Lay,” words and music by Robert Lowry (1826-1899).

And that ‘coming day’ was near at hand! Let us ready our own hearts for the resurrection and the first day of the week, a new dawning and a new assurance!