Saturday Sabbath Sorrow? No.
A Prayer for God’s Glory in the Church – Past and Present
Holy Saturday
April 19
Ephesians 3:20-21
Holy Saturday was a Sabbath. What must have the Sabbath worship been like that day?
Jesus was suddenly dead. His burial was quick and occurred by sundown the day He was crucified. As Saturday morning dawned, the disciples and followers and friends of Jesus were most likely numb with shock. It was a high Sabbath; would they go to Sabbath worship? We know that on the following day, Easter Sunday, the disciples were behind locked doors, so it seems that out of fear of more reprisals from the Jewish religious leaders they would miss the Sabbath worship that Saturday.
What did they miss? Although we are not certain, the Sabbath reading may have been the one (actually 2) still read from Exodus 12:21-51. This reading describes the application of the blood of the Passover lambs to the top and sides of the doors of their homes. They used a special hyssop “brush” made from a bush which had special cleaning applications. (“The blood cleans.”)
The latter portions of Exodus 12 describe the grief of the Egyptians who lost their first-born sons, and the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt at night. I am thinking that Jesus’ friends were feeling more like the Egyptians than the Israelites. The Egyptians on the first Passover were lost in grief, while the Israelites were tasting the first freedom they’d had in centuries. Jesus was dead; seeing ahead seemed moot.
But like the same Sabbath service today, there may have been a second reading on the Sabbath after Jesus was crucified. It was from Joshua 5:2-6:1. It was about a new Passover in the new land of Promise. Joshua, whose name is the same as “Jesus,” celebrates the Passover for the first time in the promised land, and the celebration includes a new group of “Israelites,” those who would be newly circumcised at Gilgal. The reading concludes with Joshua having a private meeting with the “Captain of the Lord’s hosts,” Jesus, Who is telling Joshua about how the great city of Jericho will fall to an army of trumpet wielding priests. The walls will come down.
We recall Jesus telling His disciples that “the gates of hell will not prevail” against Christ’s Church (Matthew 16). This is an astonishing couple of readings for the day after Good Friday!! God has freed His people from an oppressive enemy in Egypt by the death of an innocent lamb, and He is about to destroy another enemy with trumpet blasts of praise from priests. Past victory by miraculous vicarious death. (Good Friday. Right!) Future victory by Jesus orchestrating priestly public trumpeting. (Easter. Right!)
The Church often looks like the saints in the aftermath of Good Friday. But we have seen what happened to Jericho’s walls… and death… on Easter. The prayer in Ephesians gives proper praise to our Captain, Christ. He has been in control all along, and after Easter it’s obvious He deserves our praise!
PRAYER: Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen. (Eph. 3:20-21)