HCC Monthly Harvest Seed
Mark 15:42-47 (NLT) - This all happened on Friday, the day of preparation, the day before the Sabbath. As evening approached, 43 Joseph of Arimathea took a risk and went to Pilate and asked for Jesus’ body. (Joseph was an honored member of the high council, and he was waiting for the Kingdom of God to come.) 44 Pilate couldn’t believe that Jesus was already dead, so he called for the Roman officer and asked if he had died yet. 45 The officer confirmed that Jesus was dead, so Pilate told Joseph he could have the body. 46 Joseph bought a long sheet of linen cloth. Then he took Jesus’ body down from the cross, wrapped it in the cloth, and laid it in a tomb that had been carved out of the rock. Then he rolled a stone in front of the entrance. 47 Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joseph saw where Jesus’ body was laid.
One of the most overlooked parts of the Easter story is Saturday.
We focus a great deal of attention on Friday and the Crucifixion- with good reason.
We focus a great deal on Sunday and the Resurrection, with good reason.
Very little is said publicly or in the Bible about what Jesus was doing on Saturday.
Saturday was the day In-Between – It is known as Silent Saturday.
~ Max Lucado - God made himself heard on Friday. He tore the curtains of the temple, opened the graves of the dead, rocked the earth, blocked the sun of the sky, and sacrificed the Son of Heaven. Earth heard much of God on Friday.
Nothing on Saturday. Jesus is silent. God is silent. Saturday is silent.
Remember that just before Jesus died, He declared – It is Finished!
The work of Salvation and redemption had been completed.
Just as God rested when He had finished creation Jesus rested from the finished work of the cross.
Saturday is the day after the cross, but before the resurrection. The day when everything feels silent.
The Pharisees were busy sealing the tomb. The Soldiers were busy guarding the tomb; but Jesus was silent. He was resting. He descended into Sheol to set those who had followed Him free.
Ephesians 4:10 (NLT) - And the same one who descended is the one who ascended higher than all the heavens, so that he might fill the entire universe with himself.
Christ descended from Heaven and became a man. God gave His one and only son to bring us life through His death and resurrection.
Saturday was the day when everything fell silent, it seemed like all hope was gone. It was the day when the people who loved Jesus were left grieving, waiting, wondering if any of His promises were true.
The work that Jesus did on Friday and Sunday was important but just as important was the work that Silent Saturday was doing in His disciples.
Just because it felt hopeless didn’t mean that hope was gone.
God was still working.
While the disciples were weeping, while the world thought that it had won, God was preparing for resurrection.
There is incredible value in the Silent times in our life. While we are called to do, we are also called to be still.
The older I get the more I really like quiet. We all need quiet we all require quiet.
We all need the quiet that allows us to rejuvenate and the type of quiet that allows us to contemplate.
The disciples in the Silence of that Saturday; that Sabbath – were remembering all that Jesus had taught them.
We need quiet to think and to comprehend.
Silent Saturday gives us a time of quiet to really think about all that Jesus work on the cross was about. What His sacrifice really meant.
Quiet is important. As a matter of fact, I have found that in the car I will actually turn down the radio so that I can think and concentrate and focus better.
In stillness there is more focus and greater clarity.
We live in a very noisy society. We always have things that always keep us on – Phones, TV’s, Radios.
Very few people really know how to just sit in silence and stillness.
Many of us have forgotten how to sit in the presence of the Lord and just be silent and just be still. To not talk.
Too often we confuse praying with doing and saying but being in the presence of the Lord also just involves silence.
Silence allows us to really hear what is being said. You really get to know someone in the silent times.
Just because it is quiet doesn’t mean that nothing is happening.
The greatest power moves of God often happen in the silence.
Sometimes in the silence the more serious things are.
I found as a parent that silence was golden in three very powerful ways:
One - just sitting together in the quiet could be very bonding. Some of our best times were when the kids were little and they would just snuggle.
Two – when I was disciplining the kids I found early on that I didn’t need to raise my voice. They discovered that the quieter I became the quicker they better listen.
Third – There were times that people were messing with my children that I would just step in and didn’t need to say much. It was understood that you don’t touch my kids.
On Saturday Jesus was silent– He had said all that needed said on Friday. The message was already sent.
I have found that many times Jesus is silent because He is allowing us to just talk.
There are times, I think, we misunderstand the silence of the Lord. It’s not that He is silent, it is that He is listening. When we talk to God we wind up working many things out while He listens. He speaks without saying a word.
God doesn’t always try to fill the silence. He didn’t on Saturday. It was time to rest.
Quiet is necessary for our peace of mind, it is necessary to think about things and through things. It is necessary to contemplate. It is necessary for rest.
We need to learn to become comfortable with the silence.
God is able to do powerful things in silence.
If you read the Word of God closely you will be surprised to find out how much Salvation and Stillness go hand in hand.
I think that many times we miss out on what God is doing because we don’t get still and silent to notice what God is doing.
Stillness is where we can take in the beauty.
Stillness is where we are able to process life.
Stillness is where we are able to really take in and observe all that God is doing in all of His glory.
We find God, not in the midst of the intensity and busyness, but in the stillness.
I have found that God works through seasons. Including seasons of silence.
Ecclesiastes 3:7 - a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak,
Seasons of quiet, Seasons of waiting, seasons of stillness.
Silent Saturday was just important as Crucifixion Friday and Resurrection Sunday.
Silent Saturdays. We all have those seasons.
The day between the struggle and the solution; the question and the answer; the offered prayer and the answer of the prayer.
Saturday’s silence is hard. Is God angry? Did I disappoint him?
God knows Jesus is in the tomb, why doesn’t He do something?
Or, in our situations -- God knows our career is struggling, our kids are hurting, our finances are in the pit, our marriage is in a mess.
Why doesn’t He act? What are you supposed to do until He does?
You do what Jesus did. Lie still. Stay silent. Trust God.
After the crucifixion there was a much-needed stillness, after the stillness there is Resurrection!
May you and your Family be filled with the Blessing of the Lord. Know that you are Loved and may you have a wonderful Resurrection Season!
Pastor Marvin & Dawn
Image by Matthias Groeneveld from Pixabay
HCC Monthly Harvest Seed
Genesis 2:2-3 - And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. 3 Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.
Rest is so important that God has woven it into the very fabric of creation. Rest is part of the cycle of life. It is literally in the DNA of everything. We need to rest daily. We need a day of rest weekly, and God even designed the land to need to rest every seven years.
If we want to walk in personal peace and in sound emotional and mental health, then rest must become a regular part of our life cycle. We were created by God to sleep a third of our lives away each day. He also commands that we stop from normal activity one day a week. God created summer for when things are in full bloom and winter for the land to rest. God created our lives and nature to have a rhythm of being active and then times for quiet and recovery. It is through this that God brings a necessary balance to our lives and to nature.
The Bible tells us that God blessed the day of rest and made it holy. To be made holy means to be sanctified or literally set apart as unique and special and dedicated for the purposes that God designed. The Hebrew word for rest is Sabat. It means to cease and desist from labor. God worked then He rested from all of His work. God put such a high value on rest that He made it part of the Ten Commandments. While God has blessed our times and seasons of rest the world curses it as unproductive and intrusive. While we talk about vacations and down time few of us actually practice it.
We talk about how we can work 8-10 hours a day. Read at least 10 books a month. Spend time playing with our families. Exercise every morning, binge watch our favorite shows, keep up with the news, teach our children, cook healthy food every day, keep our house clean and updated and work at the local soup kitchen as we pay it forward.
The world does not praise rest it mocks it as unnecessary and people who flow with the rhythm that God created and commands us to follow are deemed lazy and unproductive. God blesses and even commands us to work hard but He also desires us to rest and enjoy life.
Many people’s idea of a vacation is to fit a years’ worth of adventure into a single week. Most of us come back needing a vacation from our vacation. The truth is we have totally missed the point. Others of us think that we can fit an entire years’ worth of rest into a one- or two-week vacation. Again, we have completely missed the point.
Even the most-high energy, type A personalities and young and physically fit need times to rest. As a matter of fact, if you fit into that category, you probably have a greater need for rest.
Isaiah 40:30-31 - Even youths grow weary and tired, And vigorous young men stumble badly, 31 But those who wait for the Lord [who expect, look for, and hope in Him] Will gain new strength and renew their power; They will lift up their wings [and rise up close to God] like eagles [rising toward the sun]; They will run and not become weary, They will walk and not grow tired. Everyone gets tired, weary and loses strength, stamina and focus. The secret to keep going is to rest and wait on the Lord. This is how we gain new strength, renew our energy and refresh our spiritual anointing.
Rest is the secret to staying close to God and rising like an eagle.
Rest is the secret to being able to run and not grow tired and to walk and not grow faint. We need to understand that rest is a pause. It is not quitting; it is not lazy it is necessary.
~ Someone made this important observation – “All Physical strength is spiritual in cause.” All true rest starts inside of us. We have not truly rested until we have rested within.
How do you know that you need inner rest – that is actually pretty easy to gage. All of us have gotten a full night’s sleep but have woken up having not feeling rested in the least. Our minds and our emotions are still going, we are still thinking, we are still trying to work everything out. Far too many of us shut down but don’t ever turn off. Tiredness affects more than just our bodies. If that was all then a simple nap would solve all of our problems.
While a nap will fix many things. It is vital that we learn to rest in the Lord, Spiritually, emotionally and mentally.
Resting in God is a spiritual discipline much like prayer and fasting. It is not meditation where you empty yourself of everything. You are already on empty. It is where you intentionally fill up Spiritually. It is where we put ourselves in a position to be filled new with all that the Holy Spirit offers.
A car isn’t tired because it ran out of gas, it needs a fill up. There is nothing wrong with the car except it needs an exchange of fuel from another tank into its tank.
When a car is on empty it sputters and spurts. Finally, is shuts down. Jesus said my yoke is easy and my burden is light. I am gentle and humble, learn from me and you will find rest for your souls. When you can’t physically sleep because you are spiritual drained, exchange your emptiness and hurt for his healing and filling.
When you need inner peace, you don’t just need calm you need the Holy Spirit who is the comforter. He is our peace and the Spirit of peace.
We also need outward physical rest. People used to not be so hurried and hassled. This is a historically new thing in many ways.
Those who live by the new rules wear out, burn out and fizzle out.
I hear people say I would rather go out in flames than just burn out and fade away. I have news for you those are not the only two options. You don’t have to go out at all. This is utter foolishness.
Jeremiah 6:16 - This is what the Lord says: “Stop at the crossroads and look around. Ask for the old, godly way, and walk in it. Travel its path, and you will find rest for your souls. But you reply, ‘No, that’s not the road we want!’
Many times, we are tired because we are so busy chasing the new.
The old Godly ways are not passe they are a place of rest. So many people respond like Israel did to God’s invitation of rest. – “No, we don’t want it”. God says when you are at the cross roads and you have a choice stop and choose the old Godly ways. You can’t go wrong, and you will have peace inside and out instead of turmoil and chaos and confusion inside and out.
As we are getting ready to enter the new year, I want to challenge all of us to make sure we make rest, both Spiritually and Physically a part of our normal routines. As we do I believe that we will find ourselves accomplishing what God desires AND living a life of peace.
You are Dearly Loved- Have a very Merry Christmas
Pastor Marvin & Dawn
Image by DanaTentis from Pixabay