Holy Saturday

Scripture Reading: Matthew 27:62-66, Luke 23:54-56, Psalm 130:5-6

As I sat down to write this Holy Saturday devotional, it struck me that I was doing so on my own “Sabbath” day. A few years ago, I chose Friday as my day of rest, and it has become a vital and meaningful discipline in my life. When I read today’s passage in Matthew 27, I was reminded that Saturday was the Sabbath for the Jewish people, the day after the day of preparation, and Jesus was lying in the tomb on the Sabbath, dead. 

Depending on your tradition, conviction, or beliefs, you might feel strongly that we need to rest on a certain day of the week, or you might not go as far as “die on that hill” but instead argue that we just need to rest. 

Let’s revisit Holy Saturday, reflecting on what just happened on Friday and what was happening on Saturday. Jesus was betrayed, tried, flogged, and crucified, and He died on Friday. He was taken down from the cross, His lifeless body was prepared for burial, and He was laid in a tomb. The man who was familiar with sorrow and bore the weight of the sin of the world was buried.

What do we remember on this specific Sabbath day known as “Holy Saturday”? We are not just recalling that Jesus died but acknowledging that Jesus was, in fact, dead. However, I thought that the Sabbath was a day for us to remember to practice the discipline of rest. To some extent, this is true. But I believe a question we need to consider is not “What are we resting from?” but “What are we resting in?” Based on his pattern of rest established at creation, God commanded His people to rest and remember their release from slavery in Egypt. Similarly, We rest from doing certain things so that we provide ourselves space to remember the One who did what we could never do.

Before Christ’s resurrection and before we received His Spirit, who raises us from death to life, we were dead in our trespasses and sins (Ephesians 2:1). On Holy Saturday, Jesus was lying in a tomb because He was dead. He died for our sins, and we no longer have to be bound or buried by them. The next time we take a Sabbath day, let’s not just rest from work—we should also rest in the truth that since we have been buried with Christ, we are free. When Pilate commanded the religious leaders to “go and make it as secure as you know how” (Matthew 27:65), he meant to keep Jesus’s body in the tomb. Yet his words unintentionally remind me of a deeper truth: Nothing and no one can undo what God has accomplished in Christ. The tomb was sealed, but more importantly, so was our forgiveness and freedom.

Written by Will Heydel