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In Christ, Mark
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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy
word.
The next day, the one after Preparation Day, the chief
priests and the Pharisees went to Pilate. “Sir,” they said, “we remember that
while he was still alive that deceiver said, ‘After three days I will rise
again.’ So give the order for the tomb to be made secure until the third day.
Otherwise, his disciples may come and steal the body and tell the people that
he has been raised from the dead. This last deception will be worse than the
first.”
“Take a guard,” Pilate answered. “Go, make the tomb as
secure as you know how.” So they went and made the tomb secure by putting a
seal on the stone and posting the guard.
Matthew 27:62-66
This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be
to God.
We often place our focus during Passion Week on the
crucifixion, observed on Good Friday, and the resurrection, celebrated on
Easter Sunday. But what about the Saturday in the middle? What about the day
between?
I would like to focus on it in today’s devotion for as we
will see, there was some action taking place on a day where inaction was to be
the spirit of the day by people who knew better but obviously didn’t care. Look
at today’s scripture passage from the Gospel of Matthew:
The next day, the
one after Preparation Day, the chief priests and the Pharisees went to Pilate. “Sir,”
they said, “we remember that while he was still alive that deceiver said,
‘After three days I will rise again.’ So give the order for the tomb to be made
secure until the third day. Otherwise, his disciples may come and steal the
body and tell the people that he has been raised from the dead. This last
deception will be worse than the first.”
“Take a guard,”
Pilate answered. “Go, make the tomb as secure as you know how.” So they went
and made the tomb secure by putting a seal on the stone and posting the guard. Matthew
27:62-65
It was the day after Preparation Day. In other words, it
was the Sabbath, a day that God had commanded to be kept holy, a day when there
was no work that was to be done (Exodus 20:8-10). You see, that’s what
Preparation Day was all about. Any work to prepare for the Sabbath was to be
done on Friday before sunset and on the Friday prior to the Sabbath at the
center of our devotion today, there was certainly a lot of work that had been
done, good and bad.
First, Jesus was betrayed, arrested, tried and convicted
although perfectly innocent, severely beaten, and crucified on a cross where He
died alongside two real criminals, one of which gained salvation in his last
moments of life.
After Jesus was dead, His body was taken from the cross
and given to Joseph of Arimathea, a prominent member of the Jewish Council
(Mark 15:43) but also secretly a disciple of Jesus (John 19:38). Before sunset
on Preparation Day, Joseph, joined by Nicodemus (John 19:39), wrapped Jesus’
body in linens with spices (myrrh and aloes) according to Jewish burial customs
before placing it in a new tomb, owned by Joseph (Matthew 27:60) and located in
a garden near where Jesus was crucified (John 19:41-42). Joseph rolled a big
stone to block the tomb’s entrance (Matthew 27:60) and then he and Nicodemus
went home to rest as the Sabbath was about to begin.
Joseph and Nicodemus weren’t the only people at the tomb
when Jesus was laid to rest. For the scriptures tell us that Mary Magdalene and
Mary, mother of Joses and James, were also there and thus knew where Jesus was
buried. They quickly left there and got to work preparing spices and perfumes
to anoint Jesus’ body right after the Sabbath ended (Luke 23:56), at dawn on
Sunday, the first day of the week. But before that day came, they would rest on
the Sabbath in obedience to what God had commanded (Luke 23:56).
So in sum, Joseph and Nicodemus were obedient in
observing the Sabbath. Ditto for Mary Magdalene, the other Mary, and many other
Jews who committed themselves to do the right thing and remain loyal to God,
their Father and Master. Too bad, the people you would think would be expected
to be faithful to God were the very people who weren’t.
But then again, the Jewish religious authorities were
notorious for not practicing what they preached, weren’t they?
In fact, Jesus called them out for being hypocrites over
and over and over again during His ministry. It was one of the main reasons
they wanted to get rid of Him.
And so, on the Sabbath day, the one after the Preparation
Day, we find the chief priests and Pharisees conducting business with Pilate,
the Roman governor of the region, the one they had influenced before to do
their dirty work and crucify Jesus because by law they couldn’t do it
themselves. Their concern this time around was based on a promise Jesus had made
to them and His followers, a promise that He would not remain dead but would
rise from the dead on the third day.
To the religious leaders, they thought this meant that a
plan was in place for the followers of Jesus to be duped that He was really
raised from the dead, a plan that would have Jesus’ disciples stealing the body
from the tomb and then convincing others that He had actually been raised from
the dead when they hadn’t. Thinking Jesus a liar and deceiver, they proposed
that the final fallacy would be worse than any that Jesus had manifested while
He had been alive.
And so Pilate, believing the Jewish religious leaders,
ordered a Roman guard to be allotted to the chief priests and Pharisees for the
explicit purpose of keeping watch over the tomb after it had been sealed, all
of this done on the Sabbath, the day in between.
With that, all would remain in place until the light of
day came on Sunday, the day after the Sabbath, the day when God would work His
greatest miracle ever and resurrect His Son from the dead.
It’s a day we’ll look at when we finish this Passion Week
series tomorrow.
Amen.
In Christ,
Mark
PS: Please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it.
Send any prayer requests to Gods4all@aol.com
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