The Day After: The disciples were confused and depressed on the “Silence Saturday.”
- John 19:30; John 20:13, 19.
- I want to introduce a term to you: “Silence Saturday.”
- When we think of Holy Week, we think of the various important days: Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Sunday. Generally we overlook Saturday of Holy Week as being inconsequential. I want to argue in this sermon series that we’re missing an opportunity in ignoring Saturday. I propose calling it “Silence Saturday.” Over the next three weeks I want to talk about some of the ways it speaks to important parts of our faith.
- The first of those ideas is our focus for the sermon this morning.
- Jesus had died on Friday and was placed in a tomb. We know the miracle that’s going to happen on Sunday, but let’s not run past what the disciples felt for Saturday. I’m sure they were scared, confused, brokenhearted, depressed, uncertain, and questioning. (See John 20:13, 19.) They had been confident that Jesus was the Messiah, but now that belief lay in shambles.
- And Saturday God was silent.
- What do we do with moments like that? How do we respond when we face a season in our life when we’re living through a “Silence Saturday”? Ours may last a lot longer than one day, though. I want to talk about a few encouraging truths to help make it through the “Silence Saturday” times in your life.
Encouragement For “Silence Saturdays”:
1. Find comfort that “Silence Saturdays” are part of the walk of faith.
- Jesus is our Savior and our Lord, but His life also serves as a pattern for ours. Some of the things we learn from the most important week of all time (Holy Week) is the importance of those we surround ourselves with (Maundy Thursday), the need for sacrifice and atonement (Good Friday), and the hope of new life (Easter Sunday). One of other things we learn is that there are moments when God is silent (Silence Saturday). This is part of the pattern of faith. This is something that every believer goes through.
- You can’t get to Sunday without going through Saturday.
- You can’t get to the answer without going through the struggle.
- We should find comfort in the thought that this isn’t unusual. It helps to know that we’re not the first to go through this.
- Silence for a season doesn’t mean that you’re forsaken forever.
- We may struggle more with this issue than most throughout history because we are so unaccustomed to waiting. We can pull up information instantaneously on Google, we can text or call anyone around the globe instantly, we can order anything on Amazon Prime and have it here in two days, we can access any show we want on our DVR anytime.
- Go back through the Scriptures and you see story after story with this. Abram waits for a child. David waits for the throne. Israel waits for a Messiah.
- God doesn’t seem particularly interested in our impatience.
2. The disciples were uncertain but were in the middle of God’s will.
- Certainly Jesus had told the disciples ahead of time that He was going to be turned over and killed, but they never figured out what exactly that meant. What that meant after Jesus’ death was that they were consumed with uncertainty on that Saturday.
- What kind of uncertainty?
a. Why did Jesus die?
b. Wasn’t Jesus the Messiah?
c. If Jesus wasn’t the Messiah, how did He do all those miracles?
d. What’s going to happen to us now?
e. Are we going to be arrested by the religious leaders who killed Jesus?
- There were lots of questions to consume them.
- When we face similar times, we can presume that we’ve gotten off track.
- Examples:
a. We can’t figure out which way to go as we try to figure out a major in college.
b. Our church can’t find a clear direction on who our next pastor should be.
c. Where does God want me to serve?
d. Why is God allowing this sickness in my life?
e. Why am I not getting an answer to this prayer?
- We can face many uncertainties in our lives.
- The point that I want to draw out here is that the disciples were uncertain and yet they were right in the middle of God’s will. Yes, they were in the middle of a “silence Saturday,” but God had a plan and the answer was on its way.
- It’s easy to presume in such moments that we are off track or have made a mistake of some sort. We’ve listened to preachers who lead us to believe that a faithful Christian will have a life of smooth sailing and perpetual blessings.
- Our spiritual lives are going to include times when we are uncertain and yet we are right where we are supposed to be.
- Why do we feel like this?
a. We are used to getting things without waiting.
b. We don’t understand that building trust requires such moments.
c. The uncertainty makes us anxious and apprehensive instead of pushing us to trust.
- God never promised that each step would make sense. That’s a difficult truth.
- God is in charge, not us.
- It’s ok for us to be uncertain as long as God is certain.
3. Great faith produces great answers, but great faith requires great waiting.
- We know how essential faith is in bringing answered prayer. But faith isn’t something that you can buy off the shelf. It has to be grown within you.
- Great faith produces great answers. We want to be people who have that kind of faith. But building that kind of faith requires great waiting.
- How does that work? Faith is the evidence of things not seen and so we have to believe that God is still at work even when we don’t see it. Continuing to believe that over a period of time builds the “muscles” of our faith.
- Having to wait certainly can be frustrating, but it is encouraging to know that it’s not wasted time. God can be working in that wait to grow us in our faith.
- “Silence Saturdays” help renew our attention to where we’ve put our hope.
- The absence of the answer that we want is frustrating, but also serves to refocus our attention to what we are looking for and the fact that we haven’t received it yet. It can cause us, if handled correctly, to renew our vision concerning who we are hoping in.
- We wait with hope.
- True, we don’t like to wait. But we wait with hope. We have hope in God to answer us, even if there’s a wait.
4. In general, keep walking in the same direction through the silence.
- So what are we supposed to do when God isn’t answering? What are we supposed to do when He is silent?
- This is obviously something that could vary from situation to situation, but I want to share some general advice.
- I think, in general, we should continue to walk in the same direction that God pointed us toward when last we heard Him.
- Why do I say this? We can get discouraged or depressed by the silence and begin to question whether we’re off track (as we discussed earlier in the sermon). That can lead us to question God and question ourselves and question the path we are on.
- “Nothing is happening, so maybe I should do something different?”
- “God isn’t answering, so maybe I need to go in another direction?”
- It’s easy to doubt ourselves and decide that we need to make a change.
- Going back to what I said earlier, we need to know that silence is part of the journey of faith. Hearing silence doesn’t mean that we need to change paths.
- My experience has been that I should keep walking in the direction that God last pointed me. If He wanted me to change, He’d have told me something.
5. Find hope that not only will God “never leave you,” but also that He “goes before you.”
- Deuteronomy 31:6-8; Hebrews 13:5.
- If there is one New Testament verse that would pop into many people’s minds regarding this subject of God’s silence, it might well be Hebrews 13:5, where God promises that He will never leave us or forsake us. That verse is actually a quote from the Old Testament and the original context of the verse provides some useful details as we close out this sermon.
- We have the imminent death of Moses and an unproven leader in Joshua. There is a giant obstacle before them with the occupied Promised Land. Yet God tells them to be strong and courageous. He also tells them not to fear. How are they supposed to do that? Two promises are key. One, God promises that He will never leave them. Second, He promises that He will go before them.
- How could Israel be courageous and not fear when facing a giant obstacle with an unproven leader? God was with them and went before them.
- Both ideas are important.
a. God is with you.
- Yes, you certainly will feel sometimes as though He is not with you. You will not have a sense of His presence. You will not feel a closeness to Him. It’s essential to know, though, that feeling does not change the fact that God is still with you.
b. God goes before you.
- Equally encouraging is that He knows where we’re heading. God knows the plans that He has. God knows where this thing is heading. He’s not up there desperately looking around trying to figure out how to land this plane. He’s already working ahead, orchestrating things and bringing details together.
- The most obvious example is the “Silence Saturday” that we’ve been talking about this morning. The silence on that Saturday of Holy Week was necessary because of the Old Testament prophecies about the death of the Messiah. God knew what He was doing and everything was moving forward on schedule, but the plan required that day of silence.
