Church Write-Up: And the Evening and the Morning Were the Seventh Day

In his Easter Sunday sermon, the pastor shared a conclusion that he drew during his personal morning devotional time.

In Genesis 2:1-3, God rests on the seventh day after creating the heavens and the earth. The seventh day is the only day in this creation account that is not punctuated with “and the evening and the morning was the Xth day.”

We finally find the completion of the Sabbath in Luke 23:56. Speaking of the women who were following Jesus’s dead body to the tomb, the passage states: “And they returned, and prepared spices and ointments; and rested the sabbath day according to the commandment” (KJV). The very next verse, Luke 24:1, refers to the first day of the week, when the women encountered the empty tomb.

The point here, according to the pastor, is that Jesus’s resurrection marks the beginning of a new week, even a new creation.

The question that the pastor raised was how this can be true, when people’s dismal lives of death, dysfunction, disappointment, alienation, and even tragedy (such as that in Sri Lanka) continue. We will wake up the morning after Easter, and our lives will remain the same.

The difference is that Jesus is with us in those lives and offers us hope in the midst of them. The pastor engaged Luke 24:12, which states that Peter marveled after seeing the empty tomb. He was baffled and confused. But his later encounter with the risen Christ led to a joyful certainty.