Holy Week: Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Days In-BetweenSample

Saturday

Jesus died around 3pm on Friday. The Jewish way of counting days was from sundown-to-sundown (unlike Roman days which ran midnight-to-midnight), so the next day – a Sabbath day – was fast approaching. Not wanting the bodies left on the cross during the Sabbath, especially this, a Passover Sabbath, the religious leaders asked Pilate to have the bodies taken down.

Joseph of Arimathea, one of the Sanhedrin and a disciple of Jesus, went to Pilate and asked to have Jesus’ body so he could bury Jesus in Joseph’s own tomb. But things had to be done in haste. With the sun setting and Sabbath coming, there wasn’t even time to prepare Jesus’ body properly for burial. So Joseph took Jesus, placed him in the tomb, and rolled a big stone in front of it.

That brings us to Saturday. Sometimes called Holy Saturday, this is the day Jesus’ dead body rested in the tomb.

You wouldn’t think much would happen between the time Jesus was laid to rest in the tomb and Easter Sunday. But it’s not the end of the story, and it’s not the end for Jesus.

Saturday morning, the chief priests and Pharisees went to Pilate again, this time to have him post guards and secure the tomb with an official seal. They wanted to make sure nobody would come and steal Jesus’ body, and then claim he had raised from the dead.

That’s what was happening around Jesus. But what was Jesus doing? Surprisingly, the New Testament tells us.

First, his body was at rest. Appropriate, that Jesus would be laid to rest on the Sabbath. As he cried out from the cross, his mission was accomplished. Time to rest. And the New Testament says his body saw no decay.

More surprisingly, Peter writes that on that day after his death and before his resurrection, Jesus went to hell. Not to suffer, but to proclaim victory. Like a general storming an enemy capital, Peter tells us Jesus went to proclaim victory over Death itself (1 Peter 3:18-19). To proclaim that he won. To proclaim that Death no longer has ownership. To proclaim to the dark powers that they have been defeated.

It was an epic day for Jesus. But his story isn’t over. Sunday was coming! And his resurrection was about to begin.

If this plan helped you, bring it to its climactic finish with our next plan: “Easter, Jesus, and the Resurrection.”

You can read about Jesus’s burial in Matthew 27:57-66; Mark 15:42-47; Luke 23:50-56; and John 19:38-42, along with some other insights in Acts 2 and 1 Peter 3.