Three Days - "Saturday - The Tomb"

 We are jumping back into a three part series here on Easter weekend called Three Days. And so hopefully you heard the sermon last Sunday as we focus in on, on, on that dark Friday that Jesus was crucified. But these three days that we celebrate next weekend around the world they, they, they really change the world.

And the goal of this series is to make sure those days continue to change us. And they're based on the Scripture there on the screen in 1 Corinthians 15. Verses 3 through 4, Paul has, in the early churches, established the facts of the gospel. That on Friday, Jesus died on a cross. On Saturday, His body lay lifeless in a tomb.

But on Sunday, right on Sunday, He rose again. Which we will focus on Sunday. Next week, and I look forward to that. And last week we explored Friday, that dark, terrible day the Messiah took on the sin of the world on the cross. In his death that Friday, Jesus displayed remarkable brilliance, breathtaking courage, and inexplicable love.

And we, we know a lot about, you know, Sunday, the, you know, the resurrection day. We, we talk a lot about the cross, but we don't often focus in on the day in between. Which we're going to do today, the idea of Saturday. Jesus lay in the tomb, and that was a day of silence, a day of confusion, and a day ultimately used by God, even for our good today.

And so I want to explore this concept today of Saturday. Saturday is an interesting day in the Easter weekend. It's probably the one day in the last 2, 000 years perhaps no one believed in Jesus.  Because we know the disciples who believed in him the most, they fled.  They were, they were confused. They didn't know what was going on.

Peter denied him. His most loyal disciple denied him three times, right, on that day. You know, in the scriptures themselves, we don't have a lot of information about Saturday. And again, if you have the church app, church notes are on there for this Sunday. Every Sunday, upload your church apps. I was in the back, Glenn Hodge had his church notes.

He had the sermon app already on his, his, his iPad there and he's ready to take notes. He's got the scriptures downloaded. Use the church app to get the sermon notes every Sunday if you really want to follow along and dig into these scriptures. But in Matthew chapter 27,  it's the only actual record.

It's the only actual record of what the gospel show happened on that Saturday. Matthew 27, verses 62 to 66. The next day, after the Friday Jesus is crucified, the one after Preparation Day, the chief priests and the Pharisees, in Matthew 27, verse 62, 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. And, of course, the rest of the story we know that did not work.  You know, the seal was broken and the body did, of course, raise again.  And this fact that Matthew records in his gospel  is a very interesting apologetic fact to the validity of the resurrection of Jesus, his bodily resurrection.

Because Jesus critics knew where he was buried. They knew where the tomb was where Joseph of Arimathea put his lifeless body. All his critics had to do was produce the body. To end this, Jesus has resurrected business. Which was proclaimed in the same, in the same city where he was buried, 50 days later, the disciples are saying Jesus rose from the grave.

To stop Christianity, all, all the judicial leaders had to do in that day was produce the body. But that never happened. And the rest, as we say, is history. Amen.  You know, Friday we study in Noel, Sunday is the glorious and epic end of this story, and we're gonna celebrate that next week. For sure, I think there will be an Easter egg hunt as well, so, you know, get the kids out.

And, and I, and I really hope, you know, we made some invitations, we handed those out last week. I really hope you're sharing your faith right now. There is such good news, you know, in Easter weekend. There's such good news. Let's be, let's be sharing our faith with our friends, our co workers, our neighbors, our families.

Let's, let's get them out next Sunday if we didn't get them out this Sunday, because there's so much good news that's coming up next Sunday. But today we're going to focus on Saturday, on Saturday and see what we can learn from it. I believe, I believe a lot of our faith exists in Saturday. The time after that, but the period before this.

That's what I mean when I just use that general term Saturday. I'm not literally talking about a literal day, right? I'm referring in an analogy to the Saturday Jesus body lay in the tomb. When I say Saturday today, That's generally what I'm saying. So hopefully you can get your mind around that. You know, a little bit of English and semantics and all those things. 

But I believe a lot of our faith exists in these Saturday type days. You know, the disciples that Saturday, what were they thinking?  The disciples that Saturday, what were they feeling?  We could imagine all kinds of things were going through their hearts and their minds on that day. And we don't know. It doesn't really say in the Gospels what they were thinking or feeling on that day.

But the Gospels do show us. As Jesus now has resurrected, how the disciples were behaving when Jesus starts to show up on the scene. The disciples you know, on that Saturday, I think John 21 and Luke 24 gives us a hint of what maybe began on that Saturday. Because you see it as Jesus starts to appear as  the resurrected Christ to them.

For example, in John 21, 1 through 4. You know, Peter and Thomas, Nathanael, the sons of Zebedee, James and John, and two other disciples who were together, it says there in John 21, 1 through 4. And what does Simon say? Simon says, I'm going to fish. And they all go with him. And what's interesting is we know only Andrew and Simon and James and John were fishermen.

Now more of the disciples have joined, joined back with the fishing crew and are out there fishing. So, so they certainly have lost their way a little bit. They've gone from Apostles now back to, from Fishers of Men back to Fishermen. And so I think John 4 indicates some of the confusion and the lack of clarity that they were having that I believe began, you know, on that Saturday.

And of course, he appears on the shore the rest of the chapter, you can read it later, and they don't realize it's him, you know, you know, at first. Another great account is Luke 24 it's called the, you know, the Road to Emmaus. Two disciples are walking, it doesn't identify who those disciples are, And Jesus, the resurrected Jesus, appears and starts walking beside them, you know? 

That's just a great movie scene right there. Hopefully the Chosen will do that, I don't know. But and, you know, Jesus says, What's going on? And they say, Oh, have you not heard what happened in Jerusalem? And they're sharing with Jesus kind of what's happened.  And Jesus says in Luke 24 verse 25, How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken. 

And eventually they figure out it's Him.  I'm sure the hard, dark doubt and discouragement we see in John 21 and Luke 24 was planted and grew very quickly on that Saturday. The day after Jesus was crucified and His body lay lifeless in the tomb.  Much has been written about Saturday and Sunday, but not much again about Thursday.

I'm sorry, Friday and Sunday. Not much has been written about Saturday, but I love this ancient homily. What it spoke of on that day, that Saturday. What happened today on earth? There is great silence. A great silence and stillness. A great silence because the king sleeps. God has died in the flesh and hell trembles with fear.

He has gone to search for our first parents as for a lost sheep. And so that's a speculation on, you know, Jesus going back to the very beginning of humanity now as he lies in the tomb to, to restore even those under the old grave. But like this homily, that Saturday is a day shrouded in mystery and confusion and uncertainty.

And we as, as Christians, we don't, we don't like to live in that realm. We don't really like the idea of a Saturday. You know, we want a Friday or we want a Sunday, but we don't always like the Saturday. As Christians, but today I think we need to look a little bit into this mystery and this uncertainty and see what we can learn.

Because life has a fair share of Saturdays.  If you've been around, you know what I'm talking about. And if you don't know what I'm talking about, one day you will.  And you're probably young and that's okay.  You know, life has a fair share of Saturdays. You know, I, I, I'm proud to say I'm a, I'm a fan of the Phoenix Suns.

I don't know if there's any of the Suns fans out there. A few of us went to the Faith and Family Night Thursday. And you know, and I think Suns fans, they get Saturdays.  You, you know it's possible. It's possible. We've come very close  to winning that championship.  But we haven't quite yet. And now we've got the Super Team.

And again, we're, we're hoping we're not in Saturday. Maybe we can get to Sunday. But our fear is we're going to live in that eternal Saturday. Sunday.  of sports as Phoenix fans.  And that's a silly example, but just try to help us understand what Saturday is going to feel like as we talk about it here. But in all seriousness,  you know, Saturday is, is, Saturday is the day after a desperate prayer. 

And you wake up and you're hoping God's going to answer that prayer, and all you seem to get is silence.  And maybe that Saturday is not just one day, maybe it's months.  Maybe it's years.  That's a Saturday.  Saturday is the day after a soul crushing defeat, and it feels impossible  to get back up and keep going.

And you're tempted to no longer even believe in God, because you can't believe God would allow such a thing in your life. That's a Saturday.  Saturday is the day after your dream dies,  or all you believed in seems to make no sense all of the sudden.  Saturday is the day what you thought was going to happen has not happened.

Don't.  And you don't understand why.  Saturday is the day in between despair and joy,  confusion and clarity, bad news and good news. The day in between darkness and light.  The day in between hate and love.  And we have, and we'll all have them.  And maybe today, Saturday, is the perfect description of how  And I hope what we look at today will help you in your time of need. 

Three ideas here to consider so we can find faith and hope even in our Saturdays in life. Because we know, as with the rest of Jesus story, one way or the other, our Sunday will come as Christians. Amen?  I think the first thing here is to consider is, is Saturday teaches us in silence.  We often think of, of learning, we, we, we need to get information in. 

And it often has to do with words and ideas and sermons. But sometimes silence from God and because of God can be a great teacher to us.  And that day as Jesus, you know, body lay lifeless in the tomb, that indeed was a day of spiritual silence.  You know, C. S. Lewis was a bachelor for most of his life.

Don't read this quote yet. That's a picture of him, though. He's written some great books Chronicles of Narnia, Mere Christianity, and in his late fifties he actually was a bachelor, but in his late fifties, he met a woman named Joy, Joy Davidman. And tragically, right after they got married, she died  shortly after of cancer.

And he just died a few years after that of cancer himself. But in his despair, C. S. Lewis wrote a book called A Grief Observed. And it's a Saturday type book. And he speaks honestly of our Saturday's silence, and how it can make us struggle with God. He says, When you are happy, so happy you have no sense of needing Him, referring to God.

So happy that you are tempted to feel His claims upon you as an interruption, if you remember yourself and turn to Him with gratitude and praise, you will be, or so it feels, welcomed with open arms.  By God Himself, right? But go to Him when your need is desperate.  When all the help is in vain, and what do you find?

A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside, and after that, silence.  If you've really faced real trials and challenges and temptations in the Christian walk, you know exactly what C. S. Lewis is talking to here.  You know, we will all face Saturday's silence in life, and so the question is, As we wrestle with this, like he is in this quote, what do we do? 

Well, it's clear we must learn from the silence, because C. S. Lewis died very faithfully to God. Like the disciples on that Saturday, that Saturday can teach us patience,  when we don't want to have it.  That Saturday can teach us to learn how to wait on God, no matter what. And that Saturday can teach us even to find a deeper meaning of hope, than we would have had without going through that challenge.

And there's a scripture that I think refers to this.  The value of, I think, the silence that we might receive on a Saturday. It's Romans 5, It's a passage that I just continue to go back to in my own faith, and in counseling others in their faith. Romans 5, verse 1, Paul is referring to the, again, the gift of Jesus and what we have in Him in verse 1.

Therefore, since we've been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,  to whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. Amen. Justification, peace, grace, and access to God. That's what a Christian has because of what Jesus did for us on the cross.

Can I get an amen on that? That's a, that's a beautiful and amazing and powerful thing. And I think oftentimes we hear these words and we take them for granted.  Faith and justification, grace,  and access to God is yours if you are a Christian today. But he goes on, right, Paul? He says, And we boast in the hope of the glory of God.

Okay, now we're getting to the Even, even the better stuff here. We can boast about it. Not only so, he says, but we also glory in our sufferings.  So Paul says you should glory in your Saturdays,  your sufferings. Because we know that Saturday, and I'm putting that word in here in the scripture,  produces perseverance.

Perseverance, character.  And character, hope.  And hope does not put us to shame. Because God's love has been poured out into our hearts Through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.  We, we all want the hope, don't we? Every day, and we need hope as humans. We gotta have hope.  Spiritually to survive, you must have hope. 

But we, we, we love to shortcut  the suffering.  The Saturdays.  We, we, we wanna run from that.  But without entering into that tomb spiritually,  The resurrection oftentimes does not come.  And that's exactly what Paul is saying here to me. In Romans chapter 5, verses 1 through 5. But once you go through that, and you persevere, and you build that character, then you can find that hope.

And that hope pours out God's love into your heart, through the Holy Spirit. Which perhaps is the greatest point of our Saturdays. That no matter what we face, God is enough.  God is enough.  The Psalms of Saturdays force us to go deeper and further.  And then ultimately, it will help us to find true and lasting and eternal hope. 

But like I said, it's very tempting to skip and try to microwave our Saturday moments in life.  And if you've ever seen someone suffer through cancer,  or seen someone, you know, on their deathbed and just die so faithfully, and I've been able to, I've had the privilege of being there with people on their deathbed so many times.

And just to see their faithfulness to God, and their joy, and their contentment, and their peace as their body is wasting away. You, you walk away from that as a healthy person and you think, how do they do that? How do they, how have they found that? Well, they've, they've, they've allowed that Saturday to teach them what real hope is. 

And the problem is we, we live in the now. We live in the temporary. We don't focus on the eternal. But that person often times in that Saturday, they found real hope because they've, they've changed their, their viewpoint from eternal. Temporary to eternal.  From a physical body to a one day spiritual body.

And so it doesn't matter what happens to their body.  Because Jesus is going to come back one day and He's going to resurrect their body. Just like He did. But we, we just think so temporarily and we can't think eternally. That is our challenge to really embrace these Saturdays. You know, Jesus said in John 17, verse 3, This is eternal life.

That, that they know you, talking to His Father, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, referring to Himself, Whom you have sent. Jesus says, if you know Him and you know God, you have eternal life. It is yours. And eternal life is not just quantitative, meaning it goes on forever, it's also qualitative. Meaning it's the highest degree of quality you can have in life.

That sounds pretty good, amen? But again, it's hard to grasp. And so just a little thing, maybe I've done this before, I don't know. How do you grasp eternity? Quantitatively and qualitatively.  Well, this little analogy, I think, can help.  The moon is, is 238, 900 miles from the earth.  If you could drive from the earth to the moon, which is not possible right now, just to let you know,  it would take you driving 60 miles per hour, which no one in Arizona does, but were you to drive 60 miles per hour,  it would take you 166 straight days to drive from the earth to the moon.

That's how far away it is. That's a long way, and we're not even mentioning bathroom breaks and that, right? That's just straight 166 days. That's a long time of driving.  So that's a, that's a long way away. But, but imagine if we asked a little tiny ant, the little insect, right, the little tiny ant, imagine if we asked an ant to take every grain of sand on the earth,  from the earth, from every beach, every desert,  every backyard in Arizona, you know,  take one grain at a time, every grain, one grain at a time, all the way from the earth on a string, one All the way up to the moon, and then back. 

You know, how much sand is there on the earth? Well, there's 3, 281, 579 grains in one cup of sand.  A scientist actually counted that with his assistants for like, they spent a thousand hours. I found this on the internet, it's fascinating.  Maybe that was a waste of time, but it works great for my sermon illustration. 

How long would that, how long would it take an ant To walk, on a string, 283, 000 miles, 283, 000 miles, to just take one cup of sand.  To, to take three million, three million grains of sand back and forth. How long would that take? Just to get one cup?  It's unfathomable, isn't it? I mean, I, How long would it take to get just, just, just a beach?

In California, all that sand, one grain at a time.  How long would it take to, you know, the southern dunes, you know, in Arizona there, on the Mexican Arizona, you know, how much sand is there?  One grain at a time.  Just imagine an ant doing all of that, taking each grain of sand from the whole world back and forth  on that little 283, 000 mile journey on a string. 

Imagine, try to imagine how long that would take. Now, maybe, maybe and probably not, we've begun to begin to understand the beginning of eternity.  And, and I'm, I'm, I'm overemphasizing this, obviously, because we don't get it.  Saturdays can help us to shift our temporary, gotta have it now, impatient perspective To an eternal perspective. 

And the silence often forces us to do just that.  To know that eternity with God is coming as Christians. And that, therefore, all will be well. Can help us face any sadder day.  And wait expectantly for something better, whether in this life or the next.  Even Jesus had to wait one day in silence.  Before he resurrected. 

The Psalms of Saturdays can teach us more than we know. In our Saturdays we must ask the hard question, What is God trying to reveal to me about eternity?  The second thing here,  Saturdays can teach us.  Is, is to somehow get some kind of meaning out of confusion. Because Saturdays they create confusion.

Saturdays create confusion. Spiritually, mentally, emotionally, and just in life, Saturdays create confusion.  You know, we tend to, as a people,  and even as a church, I've seen this over and over, I've been a part of this church for almost 30 years, in various parts around the world, and we tend to overreact to our Saturdays. 

When the Saturdays come to life, we tend as a people, and we tend as even as a church to overreact to our Saturdays. Do you understand what I'm saying?  We tend to overreact. This happened shortly after the first Easter weekend, as the young church was growing up. And this is, this is years after you know, that Saturday.

It's interesting in 1 Corinthians 15,  verse 12, Paul is alluding to something that's going on in the church of Corinth. And he says, if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection What is going on here? Well, we can tell from the text, some in Paul's day were creating a Saturday that did not exist. 

They were saying, we're not going to resurrect.  It's not going to happen.  And perhaps they were even saying Jesus himself did not resurrect bodily from the grave.  There was a Saturday mindset. That was becoming doctrine. That was very much false doctrine and heresy in the church in Corinth.  You know, as Saturdays happen, we can start to get a Saturday mindset in life.

That at some point is unbiblical.  What is the Saturday mindset that we can create that's false? Sunday's never coming!  It's always going to be Saturday.  You can call him a spiritual pessimist,  an eternal party pooper,  a sisterly Debbie Downer. You can call him whatever you want, but the more you get in this Saturday, faithless, stinking thinking mentality,  thinking it's always going to be Saturday, the more you live that way, the more jaded you get in your view of life, and the more bitter you become. 

So we've got to watch out for that and the confusion of our Saturdays.  Because that's no place God wants us to be.  Saturday will end, one way or the other, if we believe in God. And then the other, the other example is, is the person who thinks, It's always Sunday!  You know, they're just, they're just skipping through life.

It doesn't matter what happens, because Jesus is Lord! Why are you down, brother? Why are you down, sister? God is good all the time! You know, you know, it's, it's, it's, again, that is true. That is true.  But we can overreact. That is true. A lot of times when we do that, to the Saturday that someone's going through,  or we're going through, and we start to minimize, and perhaps even pull them away from what they might learn  through their Saturday by over emphasizing Sunday.

This happened in Paul's day in 2 Timothy 2, in the church in Ephesus. He's writing to Timothy there, and he says, Avoid godless chatter, in verse 16, because those who indulge in it will become more and more ungodly. Their teaching will spread like gangrene. That sounds pretty bad.  What is it? Well, among them are Hymenaeus and Philetus who have departed from the truth.

How have they departed from the truth? They say that the resurrection has already taken place. And they destroy the faith of some.  You know, these guys, you know, they were saying it's always Sunday, basically. We're in it right now, to avoid the pain and the confusion, perhaps, that Saturdays were bringing at that time. 

It's a superficial, shallow, cup as always half full approach that doesn't help us deal with and actually redeem our Saturdays, oftentimes. And I, and I get that mindset more, and you probably go one or the other. Some of us, you know, it's always Saturday, that's our temptation. It's just always kind of negative, we don't, we don't, we forget about Sunday very quickly.

But some of us go the other way, and it's just, it's always positive, the cup's always half full. And, and again, you gotta have a little bit of perspective of both to really extract the truth and the beauty and the good of your Saturday. But that's my temptation, you know, I've had to learn to not gloss over my Saturdays with positive thinking. 

And to actually, you know, realize and embrace the silence and the confusion and extract the value of that Saturday as I go through it. You know, I once read, doubt is a good shovel to dig for more faith.  But you have to grab that doubt first, that Saturday, and dig for that faith. And that is our challenge.

Without experiencing some darkness, it's not as easy to enjoy the light.  And the confusion of Saturday can help us go deeper. John Ortberg shares this wonderful insight on, on, on this idea of Saturday. And then I have Evan share a little bit about Saturdays from his own life here for you in a moment.

But John Ortberg shares this wonderful insight. He says, the miracle of Sunday is that a dead man lives.  And we're gonna party like it's 1999 next week about that, amen!  But the miracle of Saturday is that the eternal Son of God lies dead. We don't think of that as miraculous, do we?  So Jesus Christ defeats our great enemy, death, not by proclaiming his invincibility over it.

But by submitting himself to it.  If you can find this Jesus in a grave, if you can find him in death, if you can find him in hell, where can you not find him? Where will he not turn? I'd  like to invite Evan to the stage to share a little bit about Saturdays from his own life. 

Amen. We're in a church. And yeah, my name is Evan Grimes. And Forrest, thank you so much, even just for bringing up this topic. I feel like this message,  it hits all of us. And there's so many ways that Saturday, I feel like, shapes our faith. And I would say, in ways, purifies your soul. There have been many moments that I would say most of us as Christians, if we've been in this room longer than, I don't know, five minutes can share some stories where there's nothing else that we can lean on,  nothing else that we can go to except Jesus.

And so for that reason, I'm grateful for the opportunity just to share a little bit of some of these times. And I would say you know, like I said, each of us will go through these times and have been through these times.  So much so where you get to these places where you start to really yell and scream at God.

And if you haven't been at that place, I, you know, I, I, Amen to that. But those places are actually places that God allows us to go to.  Places of doubt and question. And I would say it actually takes great faith to go to those places with God. To stay in there. To hang in the fight when things get tough. 

When you have nothing else in you to really wrestle with, you go to God.  And so I want to encourage us as we continue to do that as life hits us. And I would say even the Saturdays, we feel like they, they shouldn't be there. They shouldn't be in life. If we're following Jesus. If we're faithful, if we're reading our Bible,  if we're walking with the Lord, if we're in prayer, why are there Saturdays?

And I think Forrest has illustrated some of that.  But yet, we still question that in those moments. We still have these places of doubt that we get to of going, God, why am I here?  What, what on earth am I doing here right now? Why is my heart in this place? Why is my soul overwhelmed? And you could even read any of the Psalms, I would say, that David has written and see very clearly what is going on there.

That there is a purpose there is a wrestle, there is a fight, and something that brings faith. During my early twenties, this was probably the first time that I had ever been in this place. I lived a great life up until twenty, I want to say. It was you guys, most of you guys actually if you've been in the room for longer than, like I said 10, 15 years, you would maybe recognize me back in the day.

But I, I definitely did not have a lot of anxiety, didn't have a lot of depression, things that I had wrestled with. But in my early twenties, that's when it all started to hit. And I began to deal with mental health challenges that I had never ever faced before. And I remember after six months of continually having anxiety attacks after attacks not understanding what's going on, I began to get very depressed. 

And dealing with some of these days, I remember being on my knees with God asking, why aren't you fixing this? I have been praying. I have been reading. I have been crying out to you desperately. Why are you not fixing this?  This is not supposed to be like this. How am I supposed to proclaim your good news, if I'm feeling what I'm feeling right now? 

And I remember having these frustrating times with God, leaving my times with God surrendered, yet at the same time,  at the, just, just full of anger. Full of frustration. And I had to go back and forth to this same prayer spot until I finally got to a place where I was surrendered.  In so many ways, He was putting the right people in my life to support me that time.

And 2 Corinthians 12 was a theme scripture of mine where He says, My grace is sufficient for you. My power is made perfect in weakness.  And I had to keep hanging on to that scripture in those moments.  Years later, I'm married, have an amazing wife, and we're hoping to have kids.  I began to question God after two years of trying, and hoping, and praying.

And only after two years having our first miscarriage. And I remember in that moment,  being so let down by God, going, God, what are you doing? You've seen the pain. You've seen the frustration  that we've been experiencing.  And yet, you bring me to this place that's even darker. Where there's really no hope. 

And I felt felt a lot of pain in that hospital.  As I was crying out to God, felt a lot of pain coming home from that hospital.  As I was questioning God,  whether or not my prayers actually mattered.  And it went on for about a month or so, and I was crying and praying, and I finally got to this place of clarity.

And I remember being there, and I just was like, you know what?  My plans are not your plans. And  I got to a place of surrender where my timing is not your timing, God. But it took a lot of wrestling. It took a lot of pain, it took a lot of tears,  but that was a pivotal moment that I would keep going back to in my faith.

And 2 Corinthians 1 was something that I hung on to, just being able to praise God that He's the God of comfort and compassion. And it says He comforts us in our troubles so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received.  And so there's so many more Saturdays.

I honestly, I could share for probably too long, actually. Of the Saturdays that I have been through. This last year has been challenging. Two years ago after our daughter was born was incredibly challenging. Man, lots of Saturdays, but what does that produce in us? What does that, what do I allow God to do with, with me in those moments?

When I'm like, God, this does not make any sense. And I just sit there in silence.  And I ask God, what are you doing?  I hope that as we encounter these different Saturdays, my prayer for anyone going through that,  those times, is to overcome and to really grow in your faith. And just to trust God in His process.

So, those are my Saturdays I got to share. Thank you guys for your time.  Great job. 

Well, thanks, Evan. I really appreciate the vulnerability and, and just the relatability to the, the, the courage it takes to, to wrestle in our faith and to, to be like those Psalms and, and, and really cry out to God. And in the end, we can find that trust in God, but we gotta be willing to go through that, that Saturday process, unfortunately sometimes, to get there.

Which is kind of the last thing here. We're gonna take communion here at the end. Of this last idea is that Saturdays can help us to reach further for God. That is probably the greatest value of them, as hard as they are, as challenging as they are, is they can help us to reach further for God.

And I, you can hear that as Evan shared about his Saturdays.  You know, Jesus as He was dying on the cross, you know, He, He, He cried out  at about three in the afternoon.  He reached out for God,  and he said and this is Aramaic,  ilāilāi lāma sāpaqthāni, which is translated in Matthew's Gospel here, Matthew 27, verse 46. 

He said, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?  He hasn't died yet, but he's suffering mightily as he's taken upon himself the sins of the world and the physical suffering that the cross brought.  Jesus was feeling the coming Saturday, literally,  spiritually.  But despite the darkness of our sin and the brutal suffering on the cross, I love that he says, He's still my God. 

It's dark, it's brutal, it's terrible, but he, but he calls Him my God. He's not lost his connection to God, and if anything, he's probably even gotten closer to God in one sense in his heart,  despite what he was going through. There's a lot of mystery around that with, you know, was there a separation from God  as he's saying this, because he's taken upon himself the sins of the world, and God has to be separate from sin, and I don't have time to get into all the theological nuances of that.

Bye bye. But he, but whatever he was feeling, we don't know, but he still calls him his God.  And our Saturdays can help us, no matter what we go through, to still not just know our God, but be closer to Him.  You know, we have 206 bones in the human body.  And they're always remodeling themselves. And the cells that do that are called osteoblasts.

And it's great to see C. J. Moore here with us today. C. J. just had, like, his 13th birthday. Hip surgery. I probably got the number wrong. How many have you had, CJ?  Fifteen. I'm off.  Fifteen Saturdays, you know, young man going through surgeries because something that he had an infection when he was born, his hip has to continue to be lengthened.

And right now they literally broke his hip for him. Ouch.  And they're actually now helping it pull apart and keep re healing so they can lengthen, they can lengthen the hip. And I don't have time to get into all the, we'll let CJ share one day to us. It's excruciating and beautiful, though. All at the same time that hopefully will help his hip bone grow the length that it needs to grow.

But it's interesting when a bone breaks, and it's great to have you here CJ, proud of your perseverance through your Saturday.  A young man who has a lot of faith. And you know, as the osteoblasts work where a bone  is broken, and this is part of the strategy with this surgery they actually, they actually, wherever those bones heal, it's actually two times stronger.

It's twice as strong as its original strength. Because the osteoblasts show up even more. When the bone is broken and so that's why it's very rare. It's very rare to break a bone in the same place. Twice, because it's twice as strong.  Saturdays help break, I think, our false and imperfect, imperfect hopes, and our false and imperfect faith, and our false and imperfect beliefs, so we can be better, stronger, and ultimately closer to God. 

But this is not easy.  It's not easy.  It often involves, you know, the breaking of our sinful natures and the breaking of our stubborn wills and the breaking of our half truths and our shady hopes that we often want to put our hopes in.  But God can use our Saturdays to, to, to help us to, you know, to ultimately get closer to Him, to ultimately get closer to Him. 

You know, just like Jesus death and burial, God uses the silence and confusion and suffering to take us somehow closer to Him in the end. And so let's remember this hope today, no matter what Saturdays we are currently in, or no matter what Saturdays may come, In our lives, as we take communion together,  as we approach Easter Sunday, no matter how hard our Saturday  is or will be,  in Christ we must remember, in Christ we must remember that Sunday will come. 

Let's pray together and we'll have a little bit longer communion time today. Play a song that reflects on this concept of our Saturdays.  And we'll have some time to meditate.  Despite our Saturdays, we're going to find the hope of Sunday. Let's go ahead and pray for the bread and the juice.  Father in heaven,  like Jesus, we will all face our Saturdays. 

Lord, help us in the silence and confusion and suffering those days bring, those weeks, those months, those years, to somehow get closer to you in the end. Because we know, God, you want to use that for our good.  And I especially want to pray right now, God,  for those who are hurting in this room, who are in a present Saturday. 

Help them, Father, to seek you. Help them to reach for you further. Help them to persevere, to build that character,  as we read about in Romans 5, so that in the end, they can find that hope. And help all of us, no matter what we are going through, or where we are at, help us all look to Jesus more and more in the Saturdays of life.

And as we remember, His body that was broken on that Friday, and the blood that was poured out on that Friday.  And the silence that He faced Himself, even on that Saturday, help us to look to Him in our time of need. And to remember that we take communion to remember that Jesus is our Lord. Jesus is our Savior  as Christians.

And for those in the room, God, who don't know You yet, God, I pray that their Saturdays will help them to seek You. And  that this Easter weekend could be a time of great salvation for them  as they seek you out.  We love you, God. We thank you  for the body and the blood that this bread and juice represents. 

And that it ultimately points to the hope of the Gospel. The hope that we have in His death, burial, and resurrection.  We pray this in Jesus name. Amen.