So our question is, was this late on Friday, just before the Sabbath, or late on Wednesday, just before the festival Sabbath? The latter of these alternatives would give us our three days and three nights.

            Now notice two fascinating items. It was the custom of the time to wrap a body with spices, mummy style before burial. The problem in this case was that there was no time. Joseph and Nicodemus did a hasty job of preparing the body. The women wanted to do more in the way of burial customs and planned to do so. Luke, from a slightly different perspective, notes: “And the women also, which came with him from Galilee, followed after, and beheld the sepulchre, and how his body was laid. And they returned, and prepared spices and ointments; and rested the sabbath day according to the commandment” (Luke 23:55-56).

  If you are reading carefully, you will realize that there is a problem here. They had to bury Jesus in haste because there was no time. How then could these women go home and do the work of preparing more spices before the Sabbath began?

            There is another account of this in Mark’s gospel. It isn’t a major point with Mark. It is almost an aside: “When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus' body” (Mark 16:1 NIV).

            So they bought their spices when the Sabbath was over, prepared their ointments and spices and then rested the Sabbath day. It is easy to miss since the details of the sequence of events are spread over four gospels. But the women saw Jesus buried in the last minutes before sundown beginning the Sabbath.

Jewish days ran from sunset to sunset, so the Sabbath would begin at sunset rather than at midnight.

Then, when the Sabbath was over, they bought spices, prepared them, and then rested the Sabbath day according to the commandment. This second Sabbath was indeed Saturday.

            When these men wrote all this down, more than thirty years had passed since the events. Each of them told part of the story, but neither saw any reason to explain to us that there were two Sabbaths that week with a day in between –Thursday and Saturday. If we have this right, then we have no problem at all in finding three days and three nights between Jesus’ burial and resurrection.

            But perhaps we should also ask why three days and three nights even matter. How did they get into the picture? To answer that, we can start by looking at another remarkable resurrection. There was a family in Bethany that was very special to Jesus. He loved Lazarus, Mary and Martha, and no doubt had spent a lot of time with them. So when they sent word to Jesus that Lazarus was dying, they plainly expected him to come to them right away. But when word came to Jesus, he delayed for two more days. He told his disciples, “This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby” (John 11:4).

            After delaying these extra days, waiting deliberately for Lazarus to die, Jesus said to his disciples, “Our friend Lazarus sleeps, but I go that I may wake him up.” The disciples didn’t catch his drift at first, so Jesus spoke more plainly: “Lazarus is dead. And I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, that you may believe. Nevertheless let us go to him” (John 11:11-15).

            It is clear enough right from the start that Jesus intended, not merely to heal Lazarus, but to raise him from the dead. The whole episode, though, was terribly hard on Mary and Martha.

            When Martha heard Jesus was coming, she left the house to meet him, Mary staying behind. Then Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died.

But even now I know that whatever You ask of God, God will give You” (John 11:21-22).

            The pain of this moment is palpable. And that last phrase of Martha’s seems to imply that she thought Jesus might indeed raise Lazarus from the dead. Jesus replied: “Thy brother shall rise again.” It is the answer we hear at funeral after funeral of people we love. Your loved one will rise again, you will be reunited in the day of resurrection.

            “I know,” said Martha, “that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day.” Jesus’ answer to this plaintive cry is the hope that all of us carry:  

I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?" (John 11:25-26).

            Martha did believe, and she returned to the house and quietly told Mary that Jesus had come at last. Mary got up quickly and went to Jesus. When she found him she fell down at his feet and said, “Lord, if you had only been here, my brother would not have died.” That had to hurt, even though Jesus knew what he was going to do. Knowing what Mary and Martha had to suffer, “He groaned in the spirit and was troubled.” Here was Mary crying like her heart would break, and a collection of mourners also who had followed her from the house.

            “Where have you laid him?” he asked. “Lord, come and see,” they replied. Jesus wept.

             These two words speak volumes about Jesus’ humanity. Even knowing he was going to raise Lazarus from the dead, he hurt inside for the pain others were feeling. And there is something inside all of us that, no matter how well prepared we are for the death of a loved one, weeping follows in the face of death.

            Still groaning, Jesus approached the cave where they had placed Lazarus. There was a stone across the entrance and Jesus told them to take it away. Martha protested, “But, Lord,” she said, “by this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days” (v. 39).

            And this begins to answer the question of Jesus’ delay. It had to be established that Lazarus was truly dead before Jesus raised him. Otherwise it might have been argued that Lazarus only appeared to be dead. Jesus called out, “Lazarus, come forth!” And the man who had been dead staggered out of the tomb still wrapped in his shroud.

            We tend to forget that in this day and age when we can be more certain through science when a person is dead, that in ages gone by, they were not so sure. Some held a belief that the soul stayed with the body for three days after death. Here is one Jewish source:

Tractate Semahot ("Mourning") says: "One may go out to the cemetery for three days to inspect the dead for a sign of life, without fear that this smacks of heathen practice. For it happened that a man was inspected after three days, and he went on to live twenty-five years; still another went on to have five children and died later" (8:1).

Other Jewish sources believe they should only use wood coffins, and they do not embalm the dead. The reason offered is that “as the body decays, the soul ascends to Heaven.” The decay was assumed to begin after three days. So if Jesus had been buried at sunset on Friday and rose while it was still dark Sunday morning, he would have been in the tomb less than 36 hours. The Pharisees and others might have argued that he had not been dead, that this was no miracle. He had merely lapsed into a coma and then recovered. So the three days and three nights turns out to be quite important.

            But now we have raised yet another problem. This sequence suggests that Jesus rose from the dead on Saturday evening instead of Sunday morning. How do we deal with that little anomaly? This may come as a surprise to you, but there is no passage in the Bible that tells us precisely when Jesus rose from the dead. There is a reason for that: there were no witnesses to the actual event. The first people who saw Jesus alive saw him on Sunday morning, but that does not mean that was the time of the resurrection.