Pilate said to them, “You have a guard; go your way, make it as secure as you know how.”
-Matthew 27:65
What do we do with God’s moments of silence? I would argue that they are but moments. Jesus Himself assures us that those who seek will find Him, those who ask will receive from Him, and those who knock will see that God opens the door to them.
Nevertheless, we would at times greatly desire to hear from God a specific answer, a clear instruction, and yet He lovingly prolongs our time of waiting a little more. For example, when Lazarus was gravely sick, Jesus stayed where He was for two more days (John 11). Our hearts may also cry out at times to understand why a tragedy occurred or why an aspiration did not succeed, when a circumstance will change or what we can do to change it. Often in those times, God does answer us, not with the desired information, but with peace, with an urge to trust Him, with the assurance of God’s goodness as only the Holy Spirit can convey. Even then, though God is not silent, we must grapple with not knowing every answer or having total clarity on this side of eternity.
If one looks in the gospels for details on the day between crucifixion and resurrection, the most striking impression may not be what is written but what is not. Three gospels are totally silent. Matthew alone speaks of Saturday, and only shares five verses. He tells of how the chief priests and the Pharisees met with Pilate and, as if killing the Messiah were not enough, asked for a guard of soldiers to be placed to secure the tomb. Pilate agreed to give them their request.
It is a small event, but it contains a great resounding encouragement to trust God in every silence. Why should we? Because God is working all things “together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28). He continues to do this even when the only activity we can see is the enemies of God, the darkness seemingly gloating over the light of the world, setting its course to quench every last flame and stamp out the fire of God.
King David wrote, “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies (Psalm 23:5). As a wise pastor once put it, “The enemy may come with a knife, but when God is preparing a table for you, all that knife can do is butter your biscuit.” That is precisely what happens in the silence of Saturday. God, in His divine wisdom, allows those who crucified Jesus to scrupulously secure the tomb. They have no faith that an actual resurrection can occur; they want only to prevent the disciples from stealing the body and claiming that He rose. Ironically, God also desired to prevent something. Through the blindness of their unbelief, God was working to remove any room for hearers of the gospel to say, “His disciples stole the body and made this whole thing up.”
To the believer, that day was dark. Jesus was silenced, conquered. He was crushed by death, evil, and human sin. It is hard to imagine prayers going up on that day. It is easy to envision sorrow gripping their hearts. But God was neither slumbering nor sleeping. Behind the veil of silence, He was holding the broken hearts of the disciples in His hand, Jesus was grabbing the keys of death and hell once and for all, and the Holy Spirit was using the evil intent of evil men as merely a knife to butter the biscuits for the incredible miracle of Sunday morning.
What if, when we feel God is silent, we choose to pray in light of this? What if we remind ourselves of the God who works in this unthinkably glorious way even when darkness surrounds and our answer from God is not yet coming? How great would the peace of our hearts be? How powerful and effective would the faith of those prayers be? May God give us the grace to remember His silent workings when we face our personal Saturdays, so that we have an assured hope for the promise of Sunday.
-Pastor Alex