Dead Bodies Must be Buried — Anton Bosch

Luke 23, and I'm going to read verse 50, a long reading through chapter 24, verse 12. So we're coming to the end, we'll probably get into the last chapter of Luke today. So Luke 23, reading from verse 50, going through chapter 24, verse 12.

Now behold, there was a man named Joseph, a council member, a good and just man. He had not consented to their decision and deed. He was from Arimathea, a city of the Jews, who himself was also waiting for the kingdom of God.

This man went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Then he took it down, wrapped it in linen, and laid it in a tomb that was hewn out of the rock, where no one had ever lain before. That day was the preparation, and the Sabbath drew near.

And the woman who had come with him from Galilee followed after, and they observed the tomb and how his body was laid. Then they returned and prepared spices and fragrant oils, and they rested on the Sabbath according to the commandment.

Now on the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they and certain other women with them came to the tomb bringing the spices which they had prepared. But they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, and then they went in and did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.

And it happened as they were greatly perplexed about this, that behold, two men stood by them in shiny garments. And then as they were afraid and bowed their faces to the earth, they said to them, Why do you seek the living among the dead?

He is not here, but he has risen. Remember how he spoke to you when you were still in Galilee, saying, The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified, and the third day rise again.

And they remembered his words. Then they returned from the tomb and told all these things to the eleven and to all the rest. And it was Mary Magdalene, Johanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other woman with them who told these things to the apostles.

And their words seemed to them like idle tales, and they did not believe them. But Peter rose and ran to the tomb, and stooping down, he saw the learned class lying by themselves, and he departed, marveling to himself at what had happened.

And so we see that Jesus dies, and we know from the other gospel writers, not from Luke, but that the soldiers then come, and they come to break the legs, and of course the purpose of that is so that they could not pull themselves up any longer to breathe, and so they would suffocate and finally die.

This would not be the normal thing, but because it was the Sabbath the next day, I'm going to talk about that, this would be a mercy killing, if you will, in order that the Sabbath not be desecrated, as far as the Jews are concerned.

Of course, these are Romans. They came to Jesus, you remember, and he is already dead, and they're amazed that he is dead, as we saw in the passage last week, that he gave up the ghost, that he breathed his last.

So Jesus said, I have power to lay down my life, and power to take it up again. So Jesus chooses the moment of his death, once the work had been done. And so now there is Joseph then, who is now going to ask for the body of Jesus, in order to take it down from the cross.

The law, remember, speaks in the man who hangs upon the tree. But the same passage also requires that the body not hang on the tree, or on the cross, or wherever it is nailed. In one instance, they were nailed to the wall over the Sabbath, in order to not desecrate the Sabbath.

So the bodies need to be removed before the end of the Sabbath. Now, the two thieves, we don't know what happened to them. If they had family, they would have asked for their bodies, and they would have given them some kind of burial.

If they didn't have family in the area, or family who wanted to be identified with them, the bodies would be thrown out on the trash heap, and be burnt. And so Joseph is a council member. So he's one of the Sanhedrin.

Remember that Israel is ruled from a religious point of view by a council called the Sanhedrin, 70 elders of Israel, all scholars, theologians, if you will, plus the high priest. And the high priest had the casting vote, so if you had 35 and 35 in a vote, the high priest would say you had 71.

So he is part of the council. He is part of the Sanhedrin, one of the leaders of the Jews. So he's a council member, and normally that would be a negative statement. That would not be a good thing, to say that he is a council member.

Of course, as far as the Jews were concerned, that was fine. But from a Christian point of view, and from a follower of Jesus, that was a negative thing, because they were the ones who wanted Jesus out of the way.

But it says he was a good and a just man. A good and a just man. Now, again, this does not mean that he was justified before God in the sense that he is saved, but he acts justly. There are unbelievers, there are judges in the world, who are just judges.

I don't know that there are many of them, but there are some. It doesn't mean they're saved. It just means that they are just, that they make right decisions. They make decisions based on the facts and based on what is truth, and not on anything else.

So he is a good and a just man. But his qualification is that he had not consented to their decision and deed. Now, Luke is not being specific, but obviously he's assuming that we understand what he's talking about.

What was their decision, and what was their deed? Their decision was to hand Jesus over to Pilate and to demand his crucifixion. And so he does not agree, he did not agree with the decision. Now, that opens a whole discussion, and I don't want to get too sidetracked in the technicalities, but in order for someone to be condemned by the Sanhedrin, it had to be a unanimous decision.

And in fact, one of the gospel writers does say that it was a unanimous decision. Now, if Joseph did not agree, then it could not have been a unanimous decision, which simply means that he wasn't present when the decision was taken.

We also know from John that there was another leader, his name was Nicodemus. We meet him in John chapter three. He is also a leader of the Jews. While it doesn't say that he was a member of the council, he was a leader of the Jews, and so we assume that he was also a member of the Sanhedrin.

And he goes together, well, he doesn't go with Joseph, but once Joseph gets permission to take the body, he then helps Joseph, and they take the body, and they put spices on it and wrap it, and they put it in the tomb.

And so he clearly did not agree. He had met Jesus earlier on. Jesus had told him that he needs to be born again, and he now identifies with Jesus at the end. So there are at least two out of the 71 who did not agree, and so they could not have been present.

The explanation is pretty simple, and that was that they had called the meeting in the night, which was illegal. You could not call such a meeting during the night because it would mean that not everybody would necessarily be able to be present.

So it looks like it was a kangaroo court, and Joseph is left out, and Nicodemus is left out, and so they were able to make a unanimous decision with no dissenting votes, but these men had not agreed. And so he had not consented to their decision indeed.

I think that this took some courage. Now, I remember Nicodemus, he came to Jesus at night because he didn't want to be identified with Jesus, and he then disappears from John chapter 3 right through to the end.

We don't hear about him again. So did he secretly follow Jesus? I think he probably did. We're not absolutely sure, but we're reading into the fact that he's there at the beginning, and then he reappears at the end.

The fact is that at the end of the day, when it mattered, they stood up, and they identified with Jesus. You see, we can be secret disciples to a certain point, but the time comes when we have to stand up and be counted.

We can't keep hiding in the shadows. And so I think that these two men really stand out of all the people in Israel, and you know, as we've been through these last chapters, as we've been through the crucifixion and the trial of the Lord Jesus, we see the reaction of the different people and different groups, and I'm not going to get into all of those groups, but we know that there are many different.

There are those who are standing afar off. There are those who are opposed. There are those who don't know what's going on, but there are also those who are standing up when it matters. Now Joseph probably was one of the few who would be trusted to take the body, because he was a part of the Sanhedrin, and so Pilate would interact not with the ordinary Jews, but he would interact with the leaders, because they needed the help of the Sanhedrin to be able to govern the nation.

So he was probably known to Pilate, and he was certainly respected and had a title, if you will, or a position that would for Pilate to say, okay, you know, I trust this guy. Let him take the body, and so it says he was from Arimathea, a city of the Jews.

Now, we don't know where Arimathea is now. Different commentators point to different kinds of cities. It doesn't matter. It's a city within Israel. It is a Jewish city. He clearly is Jewish. He's probably not living in Arimathea anymore for two reasons.

One, because he is part of the Sanhedrin, which was a semi-full-time job, and so he needed to be in Jerusalem, and he has this tomb that he had purchased for himself, and that's just outside of Jerusalem, so clearly he is now living in Jerusalem.

The reason why it mentions that he was from Arimathea was simply to identify him as different to the other Josephs. There were a number of other Josephs, and so this is just a way of identifying him as to who he is.

Now, the important thing about him is this last part of this verse, who himself was also waiting for the kingdom of God. Now, remember that what people had in mind when it came to the kingdom of God was really a political kingdom, and yet there were those who understood that it was far more than that, and Joseph is one of those.

The Kingdom of God and the Righteous Remnant

Now, it's very interesting that we're now at the end of Jesus' life, Jesus' earthly life. He has died. He now needs to be buried, and so this is the end of his earthly life. Obviously, he's still going to minister for a period and then ascend, but that we find Joseph appearing here and his qualification, the thing that identifies him, is that he is waiting for the kingdom of God.

Why is this significant? It's significant because the book opens with two other people who were doing the same thing, and so if we go to Luke chapter 2 and verse 25, and behold, there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon, and this man was just and devout.

Notice he's also just, waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him, waiting for the promise, waiting for the comfort that would come from the Messiah, and so you remember, if you can remember back, it's been quite a few years that we've been in Luke, but right at the beginning, there is this old man, and he's in the temple, and he has one thing in his mind, and that is to see the Messiah, to see the Lord.

He's not looking for anything other than the Lord Jesus. I want you to notice also that he was just and devout religious. When we have our eyes on the kingdom, it must change our behavior. This man has his eyes on the kingdom, and he is just.

Joseph has his eyes on the kingdom, and he is just. It affects the way that we live. You see, here's the problem. Today we find many Christians live compromised lives, live lives that are involved in sin, and all sorts of unrighteousness, and all sorts of immorality, and are worldly in every way, and basically what they are saying is that we are not looking for the kingdom of God.

We're looking for what we can get out of life. These two men, Simon at the very beginning, and Joseph at the very end, bookends to the life of Jesus, are looking for the kingdom, and it changes the way that they live.

Peter says, seeing that all these things will be dissolved, what manner of people ought we to be? You see, they saw beyond this life, and they saw into eternity, and it changed how they lived. If we believe in the coming of the Lord Jesus, in the second coming of the Lord Jesus, if we believe in the kingdom of God, it must change the way that we live.

It must result in us being just, not just justified by faith, but just in the way that we live our lives. And then, of course, there's the other one in Luke chapter 2, also verse 38, and coming in that instant, she, and her name is Anna, gave thanks to the Lord, and spoke of him to all those who looked for redemption in Israel.

And so there's these two people at the very beginning, both looking for the same thing, looking for the Messiah. And here is Joseph right at the end, and he is looking for the Messiah. I find in that a great consolation and comfort, because when you look at the masses of people who follow Jesus, who saw the miracles, who heard him preach, who saw him raise the dead, who ate the food that he made, the bread that he multiplied, and the fishes, and all of those things, and you see how they turned against the Lord Jesus.

You see how that at the cross, or at his trial, they cried almost unanimously, crucify him, give us Barabbas. And yet in the midst of all of that, God always has his remnant. He always has a few who remain faithful to him.

And so there at the beginning, you remember that when Jesus was born, it was dark times in the history of Israel. There was no open vision anymore. God was not speaking. God had not spoken for 400 years.

And then comes John the Baptist, and he begins to preach. And there's Joseph, sorry, there's Simeon that we saw, and there's Anna, these two old people. And then there is Jesus' parents, and there is John the Baptist's parents.

And remember when we, and I can clearly remember when we looked at these chapters way back, how that I highlighted the fact that in all of Israel, there's only this handful of people who are righteous, who are looking for the coming of the Messiah.

The others were looking for a kingdom, an earthly kingdom, but they were not looking for the Savior. And yet there's this handful of people, less than 10, who are looking for the Savior. And here we come to the end, and the whole nation had turned against him.

All the leaders had turned against him, but there's still a remnant. There's still Joseph and Nicodemus who are looking and believe that he is indeed the Christ and the Messiah. And so it is today where the world and the church in general has turned against the Lord Jesus.

Remember the book of Laodicea, they locked him out of the church, and he's standing at the door and he says, I'm knocking. If any man, if any individual, he's no longer speaking to the church, but he's calling individuals.

If any man, any individual, any person will hear my voice, I will come into him and dine with him and he with me. And so that's where we are today. We're back in the same place where Joseph is, here at the end of Jesus's earthly life.

Identifying With the Crucified Christ

The masses have turned against him. The churches in general have no time and room for Jesus. They have their programs, they have their money, they have their building, they have their fancy preachers, they have all of the things that they need, but there's no room for Jesus.

But there's still a minority, there is still a remnant who are looking for him and for him alone. And I pray that we individually and corporately would be such a group of people who are looking for Jesus.

We're not looking for an earthly kingdom. We're not looking to get out of this life what we can get out of this life, but we have our eyes set on the kingdom and we're looking for the redemption of the church, for the saving of the church out of this world.

And so if we go back to Luke chapter 23, this man went to Pilate and he asked for the body of Jesus. Now we know according to John that Pilate then calls the centurion and makes sure that Jesus indeed was dead.

When he gets the guarantee that Jesus was indeed dead and he's surprised because it's a little early, he gives the body to Joseph. Joseph then took it down and I want you to see what Joseph is doing. Joseph is one of the top 70 men in all of Israel.

He's wearing fancy robes with long tassels with the Lord bound upon his forehead and bound on his arm. He is a man of dignity. He is a man who is respected and feared by the people. And yet here he comes to the cross and he handles that piece of flesh beaten to a pulp, spat upon, bloodied.

And in all of his finery, and remember Jesus abrades the Pharisees for the way they dressed. And in all of the way that he was dressed and all of his elevated status, he embraces that body of the Lord Jesus.

How do you take a body down from the cross without embracing it? And folk today, we no longer want to embrace the brokenness of the cross. We want a glorified, risen, resurrected Lord and yes he is that, but he is still the one who was crucified from the foundation of the earth.

And if we do not identify with his cross, then how will we identify with his glory? Remember the stained glass in the back of the building, the cross and the crown. There is no crown without the cross.

You cannot identify with him in his glory if you will not identify with him in his shame. And Joseph doesn't just come and with a finger touch the body of Jesus. He embraces it, takes it down, carries it probably with the help of of Nicodemus at the stage and lays it in a tomb.

Folk, we want to identify with the church. We want to identify with our own ancestral history. We want to identify with our nationality, with our ethnic group, but will we identify with Jesus? And allow the blood and the brokenness and the spit and the shame to soil us because it's only in that that we're cleansed.

And so Joseph sets aside his position, sets aside his fancy robes, sets aside his privilege and embraces the broken body of the Lord Jesus. Unfortunately, somehow we sanitize our relationship with him.

It's an empty cross. We no longer have a body on the cross in front of us because he is risen. But we must identify with his brokenness, with his death that we might identify with him in his resurrection and in his glory.

And so he took it down. He wrapped it in linen and he laid it in a tomb that was hewn out of the rock. And we know that this was his own tomb and where no one had ever lain before. Remember those days they didn't really bury in the ground the way we do.

They tended to find either caves or they would make a hole in the rock and they would put the body in there. Remember Lazarus was in that kind of tomb. Obviously, they would have employed someone to dig a hole or to chop a hole out of the rock and they would roll a stone.

And remember one of the problems we have when we come to these pictures, well, there are two problems we have. The one is that there are places that tourists visit in Israel today that are said to be, well, this is the tomb or that is the tomb.

We don't know where the tomb is. And we're not called to worship at the tomb. We're called to worship at the throne of grace. We need to be careful of making these things tourist attractions and feeling all sanctified and holy because we went to the place where Jesus was crucified and a place where he was buried.

For good reason, we don't know exactly where those places are. Tradition has identified two places for the tomb and two places for the cross at least, but we don't know where that is and it doesn't really matter.

But it's a brand new tomb, fulfills Isaiah 53 that he made his grave with the rich. Remember, Joseph is a very wealthy man. These men made good money out of their religion. And so he is laid in a rich man's tomb as Isaiah 53 had prophesied.

And so he was put in there. No one had lain there before, was brand new. And the day was the preparation and the Sabbath drew near. So the day of preparation would be the day you would prepare before the Sabbath.

The Timing of the Burial and the Sabbath

Now here's where we have a problem. In certain traditions, it is said that this is on the Friday and that the Sabbath is on the Saturday. The problem is simply, well, there are two problems. The first problem is that it does not, if this happened on the Friday, then it does not fulfill the scripture that said, and Jesus himself said, as Jonah was in the fish for three days and three nights, so the son of man will be three days and three nights.

So if you have Friday night, Saturday night, and he rises on Sunday morning, you have two nights. I know they argue and say, well, three days because a part of a day is a day. So he is buried before sunset on, or he dies before sunset on Friday.

So that's one day. Saturday is one day. He rises on Sunday after the sun had risen. And that's not exactly true. It seems he rose before the sun had risen. So now they get three days, but you still only have two nights.

So I believe that as every other scripture concerning his death and his burial and his resurrection was fulfilled in detail. So the three days and the three nights have to be fulfilled in detail. So I don't believe that he could have been crucified on the Friday, that the day of preparation is not Friday, but is probably Thursday and maybe even Wednesday, but probably Thursday.

Now, how do we deal with the idea of the Sabbath? Because it's very specific. The next day is the Sabbath. Well, remember that the problem with the Sabbath is, well, it's not a problem, but the thing with the Sabbath is that not only was the Saturday called the Sabbath, but any other holy day was also called a Sabbath.

And so, in fact, in instituting the Passover, it was said that this would be a Sabbath unto you. So the Sabbath means simply rest, and it applies to any holy day. Today we have the word holiday from holy day.

And so there were certain holy days which were regarded as Sabbaths. You had to keep all the laws that applied to the Sabbath. You couldn't cook, you couldn't walk beyond a certain distance, and so on.

All of those laws would be applied to that day, whether it fell on a Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, it didn't matter. So the way I understand this, and I'm, you know, we can get into all of the different gospels and all of the different arguments, but I'm just going to give it to you the way I understand it, is that Jesus is crucified on the Thursday, the day before the Passover, which is on the Friday.

It's a Sabbath day. Well, the first day of unleavened bread is the Friday. Passover is on the Thursday. Then the next day is Saturday, which is Sabbath. So you have two Sabbaths back to back. That's the only way you can get to three days and three nights.

So let's do the sums again. If he dies on Thursday, he's in the grave Thursday night, Friday night, Saturday night. He rises again on the Sunday. So I'm not going to argue about that. I know people like to make a big deal of that.

That's just my understanding. It's the only way I can reconcile these very difficult scriptures. But the fact is that the next day is a holy day. On the holy day, they cannot handle the body. They cannot do any kind of work.

So whatever needs to be done needs to be done today. And so they take the body, put it in the tomb. The woman prepared spices. The woman who had come with him from Galilee followed after, and they observed the tomb and how his body was laid.

Now, just a technical thing. Just remember that the Jews did not embalm. They were not Egyptians. The Egyptians embalmed, in other words, they treated the body so that it would be preserved. The Jews did not embalm.

All they did was they put all sorts of fancy smelling stuff on the body so that it didn't smell too bad as it rotted. I mean, that's just the way it is. It had nothing to do with embalming. It's interesting that Joseph and Nicodemus, it seems that Nicodemus brings the spices that he brings, and it's a hundred pounds, which would be what you would use for a king.

So Jesus is treated in a sense to a king's burial, a hundred pounds of spices put in a rich man's tomb, fulfilling Isaiah chapter 53. And so the woman who had come with him from Galilee, we must again notice these women.

They come up over and over and over. Now, remember when we started Luke, we said that Luke deals, focuses a lot on the minorities, those that were outcast, the Gentiles, those who were sick, those who were despised by Israel, the tax collectors, and the woman.

And these women had followed Jesus all the way from Galilee. For a year, they had followed him and they'd been with him. Remember that we saw in the previous section, that they were standing at a distance, observing what was going on.

And so the woman who had come with him from Galilee followed after. In other words, they saw Joseph and probably Nicodemus carry the body of the Lord Jesus and lay it in the tomb, and they're following these men.

And they looked and they witnessed that the body was laid in that tomb. Now, folk, here is an important thing for us to consider. In Paul's definition of the gospel in 1 Corinthians chapter 15, and you should know these verses off by heart.

Paul says, this is the gospel, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, that he was buried, and that he rose again on the third day according to the scriptures. So part of the gospel is the burial of the Lord Jesus.

We say, well, what's that got to do with anything? Surely his death and his resurrection are the important things. No, the burial is also important because the burial speaks of two things. It speaks of something concerning Jesus and something concerning us.

The Burial Confirms Christ's Death

The burial confirms his death. The burial confirms his death. One of the conspiracy theories that has always floated around is that Jesus never really died. That he was in a coma and that somehow they took his body down and they were able to resuscitate him and he was able to survive.

Now, remember that, you see, when we bury someone, it's a, it's not something we do ourselves. We pay the mortician to handle the body and to deal with it. And if it's an open casket thing, then yeah, we'll go and look at the body and we'll say, yeah, okay, this is the person.

But Joseph and Nicodemus handled the body. They felt the coldness. They felt the stiffness and all the signs of death. His death was certified by the centurion because Pilate says, is he really dead? And he says, yeah, we made sure he's dead.

We stuck a spear in his side and into his heart and out came water and blood. He's dead. So the burial confirms that he was really, really dead. Because in order to do away with Jesus, you have to do away with the resurrection.

Remember that the Jews, Paul would preach concerning the Lord Jesus and they accepted that he died on the cross. They didn't really accept that it was an atoning sacrifice, but they accepted that he died on the cross.

But they could not accept that he rose again. And that's why Paul says in Romans that we need to believe that he died, but we need to believe that he rose again in order to be saved. And in order to do away with the resurrection, there's two things you have to do, or there are two things you can do.

The one is to deny that he ever died. And that's what the burial deals with. And the other is to deny that he ever rose again. And of course, that's what 1 Corinthians 15 deals with where Paul gives us many witnesses who witnessed to his resurrection.

And as we get into this next chapter, which we won't do today, we'll see that there is clear evidence that he was raised again. But there's a second reason why the burial is important. And that has nothing to do with Jesus.

It has to do with us. And remember, we've spoken much in recent months, both in Hebrews and in Luke, concerning the fact that we are crucified with Christ. How do we get saved? How do we get born again?

We get born again by dying with him and by being raised with him to walk in newness of life, to use Paul's words in Romans. But in between those two things is still the burial. And that's where we have a problem.

Because we all will accept the theory or the theology of saying, I died with Christ. But if you really died with him, then why aren't you buried? Why is the old man still walking around? And so there's an important point to the gospel.

And that is that we must be really dead with him to the point that we are willing to put away, bury the old life. And that's where we have a problem. We, in a sense, want to be like the Egyptians who want to embalm the body in the hope that it can live in a future life.

And so we take our old sinful self and we refuse to bury it because we want to hold on to what we had then, to the sin, the brokenness, whatever it was. No, folk, we need to bury the old life. We need to put away the old life.

We need to say, I'm not interested in keeping it in reserve, that somehow I've got it in the closet and somehow when it suits me, I want to bring it back to life again. And while it's obviously impossible to raise a dead body, I think what it really speaks to is the fact that we never really died.

Because if I really died, I would be done with it. I want to put it away, bury it, get rid of it. But the fact that Christians, and we know that Christians do this, constantly are resuscitating that old life, breathing life back into it, doing CPR to it, feeding it with the stuff of the old life in order to keep it alive.

And of course, when we come to church, we hide him, leave him in the trunk of the car. But the moment we drive home again, we bring him out. And he comes out in the way that we speak to our spouses, the way we speak to our kids, the way we deal with the things of this life.

No, Jesus was buried because he was really, really dead. And folk, we need to be buried. And the problem is that we don't bury half of us. When we baptize folk, one of my jobs when I do the baptizing is to make sure I get everything under.

And of course, it's not the end of the world if you're guys with a bit of a stomach. But the message is clear. That's why we baptize by immersion and we don't sprinkle because we're saying the old man is buried.

It's all under the water. It's all gone. There is no more old man. Coming back out of the water, new man. Of course, it's not baptism that saves us. It's not baptism that causes us to be born again. It's simply a symbol or an image or a picture of what has already happened.

But here's the problem, that there are those who get baptized but have not really buried the old life. And so really, the baptism is a lie because they're saying, I'm dead. I'm buried. Here I am. I'm gone under the water.

But actually, no. Certain parts of the mind haven't been buried. Certain parts of my life haven't been buried. And so the burial is absolutely important because Jesus really died. And that's the question I want to leave you this morning.

Burying Sinful Habits and the Old Life

Have you really died? And if you have, why won't you put away the things of the flesh? Why won't you bury those habits? Why won't you bury those thoughts? Why won't you bury that lifestyle? Because if you've died, it needs to be buried.

You can't carry it around with you. Remember, Paul speaks, and I think it's in Romans chapter 6, he speaks about who will deliver me from this body of death. Speaking about the man carrying the corpse of the man he had murdered around with him as part of his punishment, with his dead body hanging on him.

And folks, that's how many Christians are living. They're with this old life hanging around them. And Paul doesn't say that in despair, because in the next verse, in the next chapter, he immediately says, thank God through Jesus Christ, my Lord.

We can get victory over who we were. We can get victory over our carnal passions and desires. We can get victory over our habits and lifestyles. And so verse 56 says, and they returned, this is the women, and they prepared spices and fragrant oils.