Holy Saturday

Holy Saturday

April 11, 2020

Text: Matt. 27:57-66

            Jesus says: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28; ESV).  God Himself took a rest in creation week, the seventh day, the Sabbath.  “And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done” (Gen. 2:2).  He didn’t rest because He was tired.  He rested because His work was complete, and it was very good.  And He rested to set us a pattern.  We need rest.  Servants… employees, and beasts of burden need rest.  You need rest.  And as much as that is true of rest from your physical labors, the most important rest you need is in God Himself, in His completed work for you and for your salvation.  You need rest in His Word.  You need rest in Christ.  That is what the Third Commandment is all about.  God is not worried about how many steps you take or whether you mow your lawn on a Sunday.  He bids you come to Him and rest in His gifts.  Come, you who labor as though you had to save yourself by your own good works or worthiness.  Come, you who believe it is up to you to rescue yourself from sickness and pandemic.  Come, you who are heavy laden with sin and death, with grief and shame weighed down.  Come to me, says Jesus, and I… I… will give you rest in the salvation I have won for you, in the burdens I have taken away and buried in the earth.

            When His saving work was complete that Holy Week, Jesus Himself took a rest in the tomb.  The seventh day, the Sabbath, Saturday, Jesus lay in the grave.  Why?  He was dead.  Behold our Lord’s true human nature.  He really did die on the cross for our sins.  He really was wrapped in clean linen by Joseph, placed into the tomb, and sealed in by a great stone.  And He had finished His work that He had done, His sin-atoning work, His work of fulfilling the Law for us and in our place, His work of fulfilling the prophecies in Holy Scripture, His work of undoing all that had gone wrong in Adam’s fall and by our sins, and reconciling us all to the Father.  It is finished.  Time for rest.  Time for Sabbath.  Time for His soul to repose with the Father in heaven and His body to rest in the bosom of the earth. 

            It is interesting that Joseph and the Marys… That’s fun, by the way: Joseph and Mary, just like at the beginning of the Gospel… Joseph and the Marys and the disciples consider this all a done deal when the great stone seals Jesus inside the grave.  Of all people, it is the chief priests and the Pharisees who remember how Jesus said, “After three days I will rise” (Matt. 27:63).  And so, with Pilate’s permission, they set a guard of soldiers to make the tomb as secure as they can.  There is no rest for those who do not believe in Jesus.  They must labor to make certain He stays in the grave, to make certain He stays dead. 

            All that Sabbath, the guards stand watch, while Jesus is still, resting in the grave, resting in God, keeping the Sabbath Day holy.  And the sun sets, and what do we know about the counting of days in the Holy Scriptures and in the Church?  The new day begins at sundown.  “And there was evening and there was morning, the first day” (Gen. 1:5).  As the last rays disappear over the horizon, it is no longer the Sabbath, the seventh day, Saturday.  It is Sunday.  It is the Eighth Day, the First Day of the new eternal reality.  This is the Third Day since Jesus’ death, and we know the Promise of this blessed day: “After three days I will rise”! 

            When did it happen?  What time?  It doesn’t really matter that we pinpoint it, but at any point between sundown on the Sabbath (what we in the modern world would call Saturday evening) and the dawn of the next day, Jesus rose from the dead!  When the women come to the tomb in the morning, remember, they are all worried about who will roll away the stone, and there are angels and an earthquake and the stone rolls away and in the tomb is… Nothing!  Jesus had already risen and exited the grave before the stone was rolled away.  In His risen and glorified body, in His state of exaltation, with His full divinity manifest to all, He is no longer bound by burial linens or stones or the chains of death itself. 

            So where did He go in that time between His resurrection and the morning revelation that the tomb was empty?  He descended into hell.  Not to suffer it.  That is all done on the cross.  It is finished, remember?  But to plant the victory flag!  To preach to the devil and to all the demonic hoard, and to all those who had rejected Him, that He has defeated sin, He has defeated death, He has conquered hell and crushed the head of the serpent.  See, I am risen, Jesus preaches.  You must release the chains of my servants.  They belong to me.

            Do you see what this does for you?  All your sins, your death and condemnation, and all that goes along with them… depression and despair, fear and anxiety, sickness and pain, grief and woe, temptation, guilt, and shame… all of that is buried with Jesus.  It is done to death in Jesus.  Now Jesus is risen from the dead, but all of that is not, and never can be.  That is the sermon Jesus preaches in hell.

            And now you rest in Jesus.  That is the true Sabbath.  In the Old Testament, God’s people rested on Saturday.  That was but a type, a shadow of what was to come in Christ.  Sunday is not the new Sabbath day.  Nor is any day of the week.  Jesus is our Sabbath.  We rest in Jesus who rested in the grave for us, who completed the work of salvation for us, who atoned for our sins and won eternal life for us.  Jesus is the end of our mad rush to justify ourselves and save ourselves and earn merit for ourselves before God.  We can’t.  It will never work.  But Jesus has done it for us.  Rest.  Be at peace in Jesus.  He has taken your load of sin and death from off your shoulders and borne it to the cross and buried it forever in His tomb.  We worship on Sundays, not because that is the new Sabbath, but because that is the Day of Easter.  And the truth is, we could have Church any day of the week, and we worship every day, for we rest in Jesus and His victory every day, receiving His gifts in His Word and in the holy Sacraments.

            And now death itself has lost its sting.  By His rest in the tomb, Jesus has sanctified the graves of all who believe in Him, promising resurrection to our mortal bodies.  That is why we care for the bodies of our dead and treat them as holy.  We do not regard them as husks of the true person or things to be discarded.  Those are not Christian thoughts.  It is true, the souls of believers go to be with Jesus in heaven at death, and take their rest in Him.  But the body is still them, too.  And Jesus redeemed, not just their souls, but their bodies, with His body, by His own bodily death and bodily resurrection.  When we bury Grandpa, we don’t say we put that thing in the grave, we say we put Grandpa in the grave.  And it is okay that he is there.  It is sad, yes, but it is okay.  He is resting.  Soon, Jesus will wake Him.  Because Jesus rested in the grave, and Jesus is risen from the dead. 

            There is nothing that can rob us of our rest in Christ.  The devil sure tries!  He throws our sins in our face, afflicts us with temptations and trials, bodily sickness and harm, even Covid-19.  He wears us down, and then tries to make us despair in the face of death.  But if Jesus has already gone through suffering and death and the grave, and come out the other side alive, and if we are baptized into Christ, why should we fear?  Why should we despair?  We are in Jesus.  Where Jesus goes, we go.  He brings us where He is.  And that is resurrection and eternal life.  Jesus descends into the fiery furnace of death and brings us out again, unsinged and unharmed. 

            So, peace!  Be at rest.  Be still.  Jesus Christ is risen from the dead.  And in the morning, when the darkness fades, we’ll all know it.  The work is complete.  Jesus lives.  In the Name of the Father, and of the Son (+), and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.