The Empty Sepulcher

Why did the women carry spices with them to the sepulcher on the first day of the week, the third day after Christ was crucified? Was it what He said that made them do so? Or was it what they saw, together with their own thoughts about it, without any reference to a word that came out of His mouth on the matter? This was it! They saw the sepulcher and how His body was laid, and then they went to prepare the spices and ointments. But they did not remember His words. If they had remembered His words, they would have gone on this third day to see the empty sepulcher and to look for their risen Lord. The very sight of the stone rolled away would have been a joyous sight, and not to have found the body of the Lord Jesus would have been a sight more joyous still.
The very acts by which the purposes of God are accomplished will perplex those who have not communion with the mind of God in those acts. Those who saw His works for forty years, but did not learn His ways, could not enter into His rest, and therefore the word of warning is, "To-day if ye will hear His voice, harden not your hearts." Heb. 3:15.
But God was merciful to those poor women who, though ignorant, were full of love to Jesus, so He sent the two men in shining garments to say to them:
“Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen: remember how He spake unto you when He was yet 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." Luke 24:5-8.
Even the very apostles themselves were in a worse state than those women. God would warn us through them that the very chief of Christ's disciples, even His chosen apostles, could not walk by sight.
There are the two disciples going to Emmaus the day on which they should have known that Christ was to rise from the dead.
“And, behold, two of them went that same day to a village called Emmaus, which was from Jerusalem about threescore furlongs. And they talked together of all these things which had happened. And it came to pass, that, while they communed together and reasoned, Jesus Himself drew near, and went with them." vv. 13-15.
The subject of their conversation was "the things that had happened." The nature of the conversation was that they "reasoned" together. They told what one person did and what another person said, and then they puzzled themselves to know why all this was so. Oh, poor disciples! Did they speak one word of what God had said in all this matter, and what God had done, and of all the glory that was now awaiting them? No, they did not! Now if walking by sight has gotten them into their trouble, God will show them, and through them show us, that it is not by sight that He will get them out of it. Objects of sight may draw out one's own thoughts, but it is by the Word of God that He communicates His thoughts.