Recreate Church, Pastor Michael Shockley—Service, October 6, 2024

Faith in the Dark Today, Pastor Michael is talking about darkness and faith in the dark.  Here, Michael talks about how Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate for Jesus’s body. Joseph was a member of the Sanhedrin, but Joseph had a secret.  Joseph had become a believer in Jesus!  So Nicodemus and Joseph carried Jesus’s body to a nearby garden, to a tomb that Joseph had.  They put his body in the tomb and rolled the stone across the entrance and felt that they wouldn’t see anything here for a year.  The world was so dark that an act of faith seemed pointless. Faith does not require that we understand every detail.  Faith requires that we understand God can be trusted. No matter how dark and troubled the world gets, even in the dark, God is still working.  Two women, Mary Magdalene and Salome, were first to the tomb the next day.  But when they got there, the stone was rolled away, and the women encountered a young man dressed in white, telling them that Jesus had risen! So, everyone has a story about wrestling with the dark.  Trust Jesus in the dark!  (CSB Bible Notes) Jesus’s burial was hastily performed because it was already evening on Friday. The Sabbath was soon to begin, a time when burial labors were not permitted. The day of preparation (the day before the Sabbath) was when pious Jews prepared whatever they needed for the Sabbath. Today’s verses can be found in Mark 15: 42 - 47. Scripture quotations marked CSB have been taken from the Christian Standard Bible®, Copyright © 2017 by Holman Bible Publishers. Used by permission. Christian Standard Bible® and CSB® are federally registered trademarks of Holman Bible Publishers.