But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared. And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel. And as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise.” And they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb they told all these things to the eleven and to all the rest. (Luke 24:1-9)
I found it interesting this morning to come to Luke 24 knowing that my journey through Luke is running parallel to the days of this Easter weekend. So today is Resurrection Sunday of Easter weekend and Luke 24 is Luke's account of that event.
What stood out is that the first thing Luke writes is about the women who went to the tomb with their burial spices. In other words, that first Resurrection Sunday, they were planning a FUNERAL!
The disciples had already settled that Jesus was dead and there was nothing they could do about it. They were devoted. They loved Jesus. They were sacrificial. They were serving. But they were filled with grief because of what they had believed (with lots of physical evidence to affirm this).
However, their worship of Jesus was based on their wrong beliefs. Hold on to that thought as we continue!
So, I see very devoted, loving, dedicated women doing a whole bunch of unnecessary work to show their love for Jesus by preparing his body for long-term burial. They were grieving. Their loss would have been the most intense ever since the expectation of the Messiah's coming was the greatest longing of the Jewish people. For them to be 100% convinced Jesus was the Messiah meant they had let their hopes rise to the highest pinnacle of expectation. But Jesus' crucifixion was too graphic, too torturous, too real, for them to believe anything except that he was dead. So they planned to worship him with the best burial anyone had ever received. Jesus deserved it.
What was extra fascinating to me was to see that this was the very way I was beginning my day, like someone had died and I didn’t want to go to the funeral! I was confronted with how many ways we can do the wrong things in “worship” because we believe the wrong things about Jesus. We don’t believe he loves us, so we live like orphans. We don’t think he cares about what we’re going through, so we handle everything ourselves. We don’t think he has answers to the world’s challenges of “Did God actually say?”, so we keep quiet and don’t tell anyone what God actually said! Whatever we believe directs how we behave.
I'm still praying through this for myself this morning. Especially the way the women who were worshiping out of so much grief never would have brought burial spices that morning if they had understood and believed what Jesus had said.
I mean, think about it: even his enemies knew he said he would rise on the third day because that's why they were guarding the tomb! But none of Jesus' disciples could believe something so wonderful after what they had witnessed of his suffering and death.
The point for me today is that it was such a beautiful picture of how the messengers turned the women’s attention from what they were thinking to what was true. No time to feel bad about it, just get on with finding Jesus! He is alive! Just go attach to him! Get in his word! Listen to him! Take his words to heart!
Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. (Colossians 3:16)
© 2025 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8
Email: in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)
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