Hello folks. I gave the message today to my local congregation, so I’m sharing it with you. It’s based on the Hebrew Word Lesson, On the Third Day, which was written way back in 2019. The exact phrase in Hebrew is ba-yom ha-sh’lishi (on-ba, day-yom, the-ha, third-sh’lishi).
Next week will be Pt.2, and Pt.3 will be Easter Sunday. I will have a new word lesson on Palm Sunday. I hope you are all well in this time of Lent, and may I just say, Thank you! Thank you for being supportive readers and encouraging brothers and sisters of the faith. It means a great deal to me!
Without further ado, here’s today’s message:
Luke 18:31-34
Now Jesus took the twelve aside and said to them, “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and all the things that have been written through the prophets about the Son of Man will be accomplished. For He will be handed over to the Gentiles, and will be ridiculed, and abused, and spit upon, and after they have flogged Him, they will kill Him; and on the third day He will rise.” The disciples understood none of these things, and the meaning of this statement was hidden from them, and they did not comprehend the things that were said.
Jesus shared the story of His death and they just didn’t get it. They heard the words, but they didn’t sink in.
Today, we are in the season of Lent. What is Lent? It is the 40 days leading to Passover/Easter. And it is reminiscent of the 40 days Jesus spent in the wilderness before He began His ministry. Lent ends on the Thursday before Good Friday, the day that Yeshua was crucified. Then, ON THE THIRD DAY, Yeshua rose up from the grave, defeated death, and returned to the earth.
Have you ever asked yourself, “why the third day?” Why not just immediately return, in front of everyone? Why wait? What’s so meaningful about the third day?
So, today, we’re going to take a look at a few Old Testament passages where the phrase “on the third day” occurs.
We’re going to suss out its meaning and its purpose, and to do that we need to start by looking at the third day of creation:
Genesis 1:9-13
Then God said, “Let the waters below the heavens be gathered into one place, and let the dry land appear”; and it was so. God called the dry land earth, and the gathering of the waters He called seas; and God saw that it was good.
Then God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees on the earth bearing fruit after their kind with seed in them”; and it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed after their kind, and trees bearing fruit with seed in them, after their kind; and God saw that it was good.
There was evening and there was morning, a third day.
This is what happened on the third day of creation: God set up the world so that humans could inhabit it and survive it. It was on the third day that the dry land appeared and vegetation flourished… fruit trees, and seeds, and plants to sustain human life. This all happened before humans inhabited the planet. These things rose up out of the ground to give life and nourishment!
Then, if you were to read on, just after the third day, what does God do? He puts the great lights in the sky to separate light from darkness, day from light. On the third day life rose up, just before the sun and moon rose into the sky to put order to everything. Jesus mirrored this creation story, rising up on the third day, allowing us to see the light.
This is why it makes so much sense for Jesus to be referred to as “the Branch” and “the Vine”. Like the plants day of creation, He rises up on the third day.
Now you may say, that’s a bit of a stretch. But I don’t think it is, because this is what Hebrew poetry looks like! Creation is beautifully designed and (from a literary standpoint) absolutely poetic! It used the phrase (“a third day”) as a reminder of the crux of the Biblical narrative: the Messiah saves! He rises up, He feeds and He nourishes, and He saves humanity!… on the third day!
This is what the Bible does really well, again and again. It takes a phrase or a theme and weaves it throughout the Bible, constantly reminding you that the entire narrative is connected and pointing in the direction of God’s plan of salvation.
So, where does the third day show up in the Bible? The answer is: All over the place, in at least 26 different places in the Tanakh, but it can also be found in the New Testament (which we’ll look at next week). The phrase, “on the third day” can be found in multiple Biblical books written by multiple authors over a wide span of time. And that doesn’t include other phrases like “after three days” or “for three days”. The three day motif is expansive and bigger than you can imagine.
Often the phrase just gets dropped non-chalantly into a story and you might just gloss over it. But when you start to pay attention, the phrase “on the third day” will jump out at you and you realize what it’s doing. It’s pointing to the crux of the whole metanarrative of the Bible… the biggest moment… the day the Messiah fulfills His purpose of saving humanity. It’s on day three, folks! God’s great victory happens, on the third day!
So let’s start by looking at the first story that uses the phrase on the third day. It’s the story of the sacrifice of Isaac. Let’s read:
Genesis 22:2-3
[YHWH to Abraham:] “Take now your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I will tell you.”
So Abraham got up early in the morning and saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him and his son Isaac; and he split wood for the burnt offering, and set out and went to the place of which God had told him.
Here’s the question asked by skeptics: why would (or should) anybody believe in a God who asked someone to kill their child?
Okay, sure, that’s a fair question. But is that what, ultimately, happened in the story? Did God ever intend for Abraham to actually kill Isaac? No! And yet, God asked this, rather horrific, request and Abraham doesn’t seem to bat an eye about it. He just immediately prepares for the journey. We like to think of this as a test of faith that Abraham passed with flying colours. But is that what the story is really about?
So together Abraham, Isaac and some servants go in the direction that God sends them to find a mountain for sacrifice. They’re wandering along, and then we read:
Genesis 22:4-6
On the third day Abraham raised his eyes and saw the place from a distance.
I suspect many of you have read this story before… did you ever notice that it says, “on the third day”? On the third day from what? The third day after God spoke? The third day of the journey? Honestly, it doesn’t really matter. It’s not making any sort of difference in the story… other than, on the third day, Abraham SEES the place and carries on:
Genesis 22:4-6
Then Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey, and I and the boy will go over there; and we will worship and return to you.”
And Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and laid it on his son Isaac, and he took in his hand the fire and the knife. So the two of them walked on together.
The mountain, by the way, is Mount Moriah, the mountain that would eventually house the city of Jerusalem. The very place where Abraham went to sacrifice his son, was the very same place where Jesus was crucified. That should sink in!
So, together father and son went up the mountain and Abraham prepared a place of sacrifice. At this point Isaac became suspicious and said to his father:
Genesis 22:7
“My father!” And he said, “Here I am, my son.”
And he said, “Look, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”
Abraham said, “God, Himself, will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” So the two of them walked on together.
But when Abraham saw no lamb, he bound his own son, laid him on the altar and picked up a knife to kill him. The moment that Abraham raised the knife, the Angel of YHWH stepped in:
Genesis 22:11b-14
“Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.”
He said, “Do not reach out your hand against the boy, and do not do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me.”
Then Abraham raised his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram caught in the thicket by its horns; and Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering in the place of his son. And Abraham named that place YHWH Yireh, as it is said to this day, “On the mountain YHWH provided.”
Sounds good, right? We know this story! But… this is one of those places in the Bible that our translators have made a conscious choice to slightly change the wording in an effort to make things easier for us to understand. Part of my job as a Biblical scholar is to question what we miss when translators do this. So, indulge me, if you will, because I think this is worth exploring.
A big majority of translators say that YHWH Yireh (or as we used to call it in the ‘80s “Jehovah Jireh”) means “the LORD provides”…because YHWH provided a lamb to be killed instead of Isaac… but Yireh actually means, “to see” or “to appear”. A more literal translation would be:
And Abraham named that place YHWH Yireh (YHWH appeared), as it is said to this day, “On the mountain YHWH will be seen.”
On Mount Moriah, on the place of the historic crucifixion, YHWH will be seen. That should set off some bells in your brain.
So what is the purpose of this story? YHWH never wanted Abraham to kill Isaac. And it wasn’t just a test to prove Abraham’s faithfulness. God already knew he was faithful.
YHWH was providing a pre-telling of His plan for salvation. One day there will be a Son to be sacrificed on this Mountain, and it will be God’s chosen Son… and He will be lifted up on the very mountain where Abraham lifted the knife towards Isaac. On the spot where a ram, a male lamb, was provided for sacrifice, Jesus, the Son of God would be visible, for all to see, as the ultimate sacrificial lamb. What God asked Abraham to do, He would do instead. On the mountain, the Son of God would be seen and it would be a horrific spectacle. But it would all end, triumphantly, on the third day.
This is masterful story-telling. It is true-story telling… and it should astound you in its (I think) utter brilliance. The phrase the third day is all over the Bible, like a hyper-link, and it is supposed to make you take notice. It is telling you to pay attention: something big is happening on the third day.
The 8th century BC prophet, Hosea, announced a third day prophecy. Hosea lived in northern Israel just before the Assyrians came and decimated the land. The Northern Tribes of Israel had turned away from YHWH and gave their allegiance to the gods of their neighbours, but Hosea stood out with a message of hope:
Hosea 6:1-2
“Come, let us return to YHWH. For He has torn us, but He will heal us; He has wounded us, but He will bandage us.
He will revive us after two days; He will raise us up on the third day [ba-yom ha-sh’lishi], that we may live in His Presence.”
The goal of our existence: get back to the place where we can freely walk with God in the Garden… living in His Presence. When Jesus died, and rose again ON THE THIRD DAY He conquered death and paid the entrance fee so we can see God, face to face. Hosea speaks of this 800 years before Jesus arrives… The Messiah will rise up on the third day so that we can do the same.
If that doesn’t convince you, we’ve got another story to look at… Remember Joseph, the son of Jacob, with the fancy coloured coat? His brothers sold him into slavery and he ended up in Egypt. There he was falsely accused of inappropriate relations with his master’s wife and was thrown in jail. Joseph had the God-given gift of dream interpretation, and he found himself in jail with Pharaoh’s cup-bearer and Pharaoh’s baker. One night they each had strange dreams and they asked Joseph to interpret them:
Genesis 40:9-13, 16-23
So the chief cupbearer told Joseph his dream: “In my dream there was a vine before me, and on the vine were three branches. As it budded, its blossoms opened and its clusters ripened into grapes. Pharaoh’s cup was in my hand, and I took the grapes, squeezed them into his cup, and placed the cup in his hand.”
Joseph replied, “This is the interpretation: The three branches are three days. Within three days Pharaoh will lift up your head and restore your position. You will put Pharaoh’s cup in his hand, just as you did when you were his cupbearer….
…When the chief baker saw that the interpretation was favorable, he said to Joseph, “I too had a dream: There were three baskets of white bread on my head. In the top basket were all sorts of baked goods for Pharaoh, but the birds were eating them out of the basket on my head.”
Joseph replied, “This is the interpretation: The three baskets are three days. Within three days Pharaoh will lift off your head and hang you on a tree. Then the birds will eat the flesh of your body.”
On the third day, which was Pharaoh’s birthday, he held a feast for all his officials, and in their presence he lifted up the heads of the chief cupbearer and the chief baker. Pharaoh restored the chief cupbearer to his position, so that he once again placed the cup in Pharaoh’s hand. But Pharaoh hanged the chief baker, just as Joseph had described to them in his interpretation.
According to Joseph’s interpretation, after three days one of Pharaoh’s employees (the cupbearer) would be lifted up and restored to life, the other (the baker) would be hung on a tree and fall to the grave.
What is the third day? If you look at our life as a three-day scenario, there is the day we are born, the day we live, and the day we die… the third day. The question is, where are you going on the third day… will you fall down to the depths? Or will you rise up and face your Creator?
What did Hosea say?…
He [God] will raise us up on the third day [ba-yom ha-sh’lishi], that we may live in His Presence.
We’ve talked a lot about “Heaven” this year. Is our whole purpose to be good and go to heaven? No. We are to bear God’s image onto this aching world, here and now, and do our best to make it a better place… we are to care for this planet and all the creatures in it… because it is the place where God will come and reside, and we will walk freely in His Presence because Jesus paid the price for us to do so.
But we do have to make a choice to accept our role: We are the children of God… made in His Image. We will all face death on the third day.
Will we be like the Baker and fall, or bear the cup of Christ and rise up? When you carefully read the four Gospel accounts of Jesus’ ministry you’ll notice He talks about drinking from “the Cup” a lot. And that’s a whole other sermon… but know this:
…if you put your faith in the God who created you, on the third day, which will be different for each and every one of us, we will rise up and reconnect with the One who knit us in our mother’s womb… who gave us a beating heart, eyes to see, ears to hear, and a mouth to express love and kindness and praise.
But each of us has an end date in this chapter called life… a day where we will go to the grave, but then we will rise up and be made new in the Presence of God. For many of us, it will be an end to a tough chapter… and the beginning of a whole new beautiful sequel! We shouldn’t fear the third day, we should be living boldly and beautifully, here and now, without fear… God has work for us to do…Feed my sheep, Jesus said. We are to be the caretakers of the planet.
As we count down the days to our reunion with God, let’s now waste a single day fearing what’s to come. Let’s just get busy, doing the work we’ve been asked to do: care for the poor, the sick, the marginalized, the needy, the sad, the suffering. Bring joy to those who ache. To the people who have been pushed down in society, we need to reach out our hands to lift them up, showing them that they are the children of God, just like we are. In God’s eyes, this is what living well looks like.
Sorry if this freaks you out, but there is a day on the calendar that will be your last. It is not something to fear, because if you think life is pretty decent now, just wait until you see what life looks like in the Presence of God! Jesus knew it was worth dying for… and on the third day He conquered death and rose up to show all of us that life is beautiful and renewable, and it is ours for the taking!
Next week: Sermon- On the Third Day, In My Father’s House
Hebrew Word Lessons 