At Easter, most of the focus is on Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday (Easter Sunday). Last year, On easter weekend, I found myself thinking a lot about Saturday. I was counseling a couple of friends through some hard times and I thought about how much of our lives many of us live on Holy Saturday, that time between the hope shattering events of Good Friday and the victory of Easter Sunday, that time when it seems like all is lost and it will never get better. This is part 1 of a 2 part series concerning this topic.
Think about how Peter felt on Holy Saturday. Peter, along with James and John, were Jesus’ inner circle, the disciples He was closest to. Despite Jesus’ prophecy to the contrary, Peter had told Jesus that, even if he had to die with Him, he would never deny Him (Matthew 26:34-35). Peter was the one who cut off the ear of the high priest’s servant (John 18:10), when they came to arrest Jesus. But then, when the heat was really on, during Jesus supposed “trials”, Peter denied being a follower or even knowing Him, three times, just as Jesus had said he would and, after the third time, Peter went out and “wept bitterly” (Matthew 26:69-75). Sunday was coming but Peter didn’t know that. Can you imagine how hopeless Peter felt on Saturday? Do you ever feel like Peter? I certainly do.
Let’s take a step back and look at the overall timeline of history. Think about the intertestamental period, the roughly 400 years between the Old Testament and the New Testament. After Malachi, God no longer spoke through the prophets. It was a long time between the last uttered prophecy which foretold the coming of Jesus and His birth. This was a time of great instability for Israel, during which they were conquered many times. They had been told that a savior was coming but where was He?
Now, let’s step back a little further in time, to just before the intertestamental period. Let’s think about the Babylonian captivity. Jeremiah 29:11 says “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.” This verse is very often quoted out of context. When God said this, the people of Judah were about to be conquered by Babylon and carried away into captivity that would last for 70 years. This was God’s punishment for the idolatry they had fallen into and His way of curing them of that idolatry. They ended up coming back to a right relationship with God but it took time. God did bring them back out of captivity, after 70 years, once His purposes had been accomplished. But how do you suppose it felt during that 70 years? It would have been made even harder by the fact that the Babylonian captivity led into the intertestamental period, the period of God’s silence.
Just as was the case with the Babylonian captivity, there is always purpose in the pain. God gives it purpose. He does not always cause the pain but He will always use it, He always works through it for the good of ourselves and others (Romans 8:28).. However, it can be really hard to see that in the moment because, often, when God is not visibly working in our lives, when we cannot clearly hear His voice, when He appears to be silent, that silence hurts. We may take that silence as apathy on His part but that is never so. He is always working.
In the intertestamental period, during which God appeared to be silent, He was still working. As I have said, this was a time of great instability for Israel, during which they were conquered many times. During much of this time, they were part of the Persian Empire, which was then conquered by Alexander the Great, so they were under Greek rule and influence. The Greeks had some interest in Judaism, enough that the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) was translated into Greek. This first Greek translation is called the Septuagint. This helped to allow for Jewish interest and influence to spread beyond Israel. The Septuagint was also used by many in the early Christian church. This would have particularly been the case for the gentiles, who did not speak Hebrew, and this would have played a significant role in Paul’s evangelism of the gentiles. The Septuagint was also quoted at least some (exactly how much is heavily debated) in the writing of the New Testament. All of this played a huge role in the building of the early Christian church. During the silence, God was preparing His people for the time when He would break His silence.
Think about the name Emmanuel. As you probably know, Immanuel is a Hebrew word, meaning “God with us”. You most often hear this talked about at Christmas. God is still with us. He is within all Christians, in the form of the Holy Spirit. This name first appears in Isaiah, as part of a promise that Jesus would come to save His people from their sins. It isn’t seen again until Matthew, roughly 700 years later, when Joseph was being told of Mary’s pregnancy. Did you ever notice that, in Isaiah, the name starts with “I”. However, in Matthew, it starts with “E”. You probably haven’t noticed because, in many modern translations, they changed it in Mathew to “I”. The reason for all this is that the English rendering of the Hebrew word starts with “I” and the English rendering of the Greek word starts with “E”. Isaiah, being old Testament, is written in Hebrew. Matthew, being New Testament, is written in Greek. In many modern translations, they changed it in Matthew to “I” because Matthew was quoting from Isaiah. I’m not a big fan of the King James translation of the Bible but that’s one thing I actually like. I think of the change from “I” to “E” as symbolizing the transition between a promise made and a promise kept. God keeps His promises.
One of His promises is Romans 8:28, which says “And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose”. It’s often hard to see the good in what is going on in the midst of hardship but He is always working in whatever we may be going through.
I have always had extremely low vision and, 28 years ago, despite a lot of earnest prayer and truly seeking God’s will, I lost all of my vision, due to a long string of major eye surgeries and a statistically impossible set of complications. As a result, I have faced many hardships and much physical pain. At times, it has been hard to see the good in that. But, in God’s strength, I have been able to bear up against the adversity. Much of adversity that goes with being blind is intuitive and/or obvious and this has led many people to ask how I was able to deal with it. The answer, as I just said, was God’s strength. People asking about that was part of Him working it for the good, as this gave me an opportunity to tell them of His goodness.
My blindness is partially responsible for this platform He has given me to minister for Him. I surrendered to the call to ministry 11 years ago. I lost my vision 28 years ago. There were 17 years there, in which God was preparing me for the call that I would eventually surrender to. However, during that 17 years, I didn’t know that’s what He was doing. There were 17 years, during which God was silent, not concerning everything but concerning the subject of my blindness and related hardships, but, in that silence, He was most definitely working, working everything for the good, for my good and the good of others. Emmanuel keeps His promises.
There is something important to consider here. When it comes to not hearing God, there are two different kinds of silence. One comes from the fact that He is working but He isn’t revealing what He’s doing because we don’t need to know yet. In that case, we don’t hear Him because He isn’t saying anything. However, there is another kind of silence, what might be called perceived silence. In this case, God is talking to us, or trying to, but we perceive Him as being silent because we aren’t listening to Him. Sometimes we hear just enough of what He’s saying to know that we don’t like it and so we turn a deaf ear to it. Sometimes we aren’t walking closely enough with Him to hear Him at all.
I have experienced both his actual silence and what I called his perceived silence. That 17 years of silence for me. That should have been about 15 years. He still worked it for the good but it took longer than it should have, because of me. There were 15 years or so during which He was working, preparing me and preparing the way for me. Then, there were another couple years where I was trying to do it my way, leaning on my own understanding, doing what seemed right to me. God tends to work on a longer time line than we do but, often, we make it even longer by not being patient enough. In trying to hurry it up, sometimes, we slow it down and, in that process, we may miss some of the blessings that He would have for us. We must surrender to and seek His way.
Are you in the middle of a period of God’s silence? Why is God silent? Is He really silent or does He appear to you to be because you aren’t listening? Either way, in the silence, it is tempting to fill the silence with your own noise, to try to figure out things for yourself. In the absence of feeling any clear leading from Him, It is tempting to just figure out what we think we should do and then ask God to bless it. To do so is to assume that God thinks the way we do but He does not.
Look at Isaiah 55, verses 8 and 9.
“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways,” says the Lord.
“For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts.
We are made in His image. However, He does not think the way that we do and so we cannot presume to know His mind, based on our intellect.
Look at Proverbs 3, verses 5 and 6.
Trust in the Lord with all your heart, And lean not on your own understanding;
In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He shall direct your paths.
We have to trust Him. Sometimes, that’s hard. He doesn’t think the way we think and so His ways are often counterintuitive to us. We don’t understand how He’s doing what He’s doing and we often don’t know what it is that He’s doing in the first place. That’s made even harder by the fact that we often have to wait a while to find out. Sometimes, it feels like we’re never going to find out, at least not this side of Heaven, and we feel like we just can’t maintain hope in such a circumstance. David understood that.
The 27th Psalm was written by David, either when he was fleeing from Saul or from his son, Absalom. It is a beautiful picture of what it looks like to cry out to God, when you’re scared and hurting, and to trust Him to eventually bring you through it. Let’s look at how simply, and I think beautifully, it ends.
Look at Psalm 27, verses 13 and 14.
I would have lost heart, unless I had believed That I would see the goodness of the Lord In the land of the living.
Wait on the Lord; Be of good courage, And He shall strengthen your heart; Wait, I say, on the Lord!
We must be willing to wait on the Lord. While we’re waiting, it can be easy to lose heart, but we must believe in His promises, like Romans 8:28, and patiently wait for Him to fulfill them. If we will do that, then we will see His goodness, not just in Heaven, but in the land of the living, here, on Earth, in this life. It may not always look like what we had in mind but we will see it. We may not see all of it in this life but He will show us enough of a glimpse of what He’s doing, here and there, for us to have something to hold on to, to maintain our hope, rooted in Him. As we wait, if we will look to Him, He will strengthen our heart. While we are waiting and being strengthened, what do we do? For some thoughts concerning this, please check out part 2 of this series. If you are to be strengthened by Him, you must first have a relationship with Him. If you do not, please check out the “The Most Important Thing” section of this website.
