It’s the Eighth Day | Luke 24:1-12 | Resurrection Sunday

VideoSermon

Apr 5

When we experience loss, we generally know what to expect. Since the banishment of our first parents from the Garden, death has reigned with a predictable, heavy rhythm. We work for six days, we rest on the seventh, and the cycle repeats—until, one day, it stops.

But as we see in Luke 24, the women who went to Jesus' tomb to perform the expected rituals of death found something earth-shattering. The stone was rolled away, and the body was gone.

In this meditation, we explore the biblical concept of the Eighth Day. While the weekly cycle reminds us of our labor and the curse, the "eighth day" points to a new rhythm and a new creation. From the covenant sign given to Abraham to the resurrection of Christ, God has been pointing us toward a day where the curse no longer has the final word.

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Thank you for joining us for this week's sermon from First Reformed Church in Edgerton, Minnesota. Each week we dig into God's Word trusting that the Holy Spirit will continue the good work of sanctification in us.

It is unsettling to go somewhere and discover that what has always been there is missing. You drive up to a business that you frequented for years and you pull into the parking lot and the sign is gone and the business is closed, or maybe the building itself is just gone. When did this happen? How did I miss this? In our lives, we generally expect things to continue on as they always have. And when that's disrupted, we can feel lost and disoriented because it isn't what we expect. Well, what we read in Luke's account of the resurrection has the women coming to the garden tomb and finding something that was not only unexpected But it was earth-shattering. Now, it's highly unlikely that this was the first time that these women had made their way to the tomb with spices. Death was something that would have been a very frequent experience in their lives. They had likely brought these spices for others—friends, perhaps a parent, maybe even a spouse. The women headed to the tomb knew what they expected to find there because they had seen the lifeless bodies of their family and friends many times before.

And this has been the way of humanity since our fall into sin. The curse and the effects of the curse are always the same. When you go to the visitation or funeral of a loved one, you don't anticipate that the body will be absent because they're actually alive. From the banishment of our first parents from the garden, death has reigned. Day after day. Week after week. Things are perpetually the same, and we don't expect it to change. And this is not only the case of our experience of death and loss, but our lives are on this weekly repeat as well, right? From Sunday to Saturday, things continue in a weekly rhythm. And it goes all the way back to creation when God established that we are to labor 6 days and then rest on the 7th. The rest is a blessing. But then it all flips back over to the first day of the week and the cycle repeats once again. Now, there is a beauty to this rhythm, of course. It gives times and seasons to our lives. And in fact, it's really quite impossible to imagine life without our marking of time this way, right?

But at the same time, it can also make us feel like things are never going to change. We've all felt the dread of another Monday arriving and having to return to the grind. But this rhythm also reminds us that there is a greater grind in the reality of the curse. A fate awaits all of us that is sobering. Someday, the cycle stops. And people will gather to remember us. And when they leave their homes to come to the church for our funeral, they will fully expect our bodies to be there. This is the truth of the curse since the fall. Day by day, week by week, week. But as we have heard this morning, there is good news, and it was promised all the way back in the Old Testament where we would see these promises that a hope would come. There was one who was promised who would come and disrupt the curse immediately following the entry of sin into creation. God made a promise that one would come who would crush the head of the serpent. And then throughout the story of the Old Testament, we would see types and we would see shadows that would point to a future hope that the rhythm of life and death would be disrupted.

And one of these types and shadows was found in the covenant with Abraham and in the practice of circumcision. The male children received the covenant sign on the 8th day. Now, you've likely never given any thought to that at all. It was probably just God wanted them to wait a while, wait 8 days, we'll do this ritual. But actually, those 8 days are significant. The idea was that something was going to break the cycle. Something was going to break into the rhythm of our lives. It was pointing to the idea that one day the cycle wouldn't go back to day 1 after we got to 7, that there was an expectation of an 8th day, a great day. There was hope for a new rhythm, a new creation. And out of this grew a tradition looking forward to an 8th day. A great new day that was looked forward to where we would see the consummation of the promises of God. That the curse would no longer have the final word. A hope that one day the cycle would be complete. A hope that one day after the Sabbath they would awaken to something new.

And as the women headed to that tomb on the first day of the week nearly 2,000 years ago, they didn't realize that they had awakened to the eighth day. They expected the rotting body of their Rabbi to be in the tomb, but He was not there. He had risen because death could not hold victory over Him. The eighth Day had dawned. And this new day is good news for us as the people of God. As those who have been united by faith to Christ in His life, death, resurrection, and ascension, we live in the reality of this 8th day. The Lord Jesus Christ defeated death, and because we have union with Him, death does not hold sway over us. Jesus bore the wrath of the curse, the curse of our sin in His body to accomplish forgiveness for us. And in His resurrection, He secures eternal life for us because He is victorious over death. And it is because of that resurrection that we now live in confidence that even though the curse is coming for us and we will one day breathe our last, That is not our last day. We have the promise of eternal life.

And at the end of history when Jesus returns, we have the sure and certain promise of our resurrection from the dead. And as we stand in resurrected bodies worshiping our Savior, we will know that the 8th day The final day has come in all of its fullness. And this is why we gather on the Lord's Day each week. We know that the victory that Christ has won in His resurrection is our hope. We worship in thanksgiving. But we also come and we worship in anticipation of that final day where our worship will not cease, Because the cycle is finally complete. The new day has come and the curse is no more. And so as you step back into the rhythm and the grind in this coming week, do so with your eyes looking to the great hope that Christ has won. Live confidently in the victory that your Savior has accomplished for you. Daily, turn to Him in repentance and faith and serve God knowing that the 8th day will one day be realized in all its fullness. And you will praise your God and your Savior in an eternal body. For He shall reign forever and ever.

Amen. Let us pray. Great and merciful God, we thank You for the gift Your Word that tells us of Your glorious resurrection. That a new day has dawned. We thank You, O Lord, that You bless us with the message of this truth. We pray that we would live into the life that is called upon us in this new creation. That we would live in gratitude for what You have done. That we would worship You, looking forward to that day when we will be resurrected And our worship will never cease. It's in the name of Jesus that we pray.

Amen.

Thank you for joining us for this week's sermon. For more information about First Reformed Church, head to our Facebook page or website, edgertonfrc.org.

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