[Week 14] What Everyone Put Down and What God Picked Up (Luke 24:6-7)

This week, we are memorizing Luke 24:6-7.

• Check out my latest Scripture Memorization song here: Luke 24:6-7
• If you're new here, see my introduction to this series here.

"He is not here, but he has risen! Remember how he spoke to you when he was still in Galilee, saying, 'It is necessary that the Son of Man be betrayed into the hands of sinful men, be crucified, and rise on the third day.'" — Luke 24:6-7 (CSB)

The Perfumes Tell the Story

They watched where he was buried.

Luke tells us that the women who had come with Jesus from Galilee "followed along and observed the tomb and how his body was placed" (Luke 23:55). They saw Joseph of Arimathea take the body down. They saw the linen cloth. They saw the rock-hewn tomb. They saw everything.

And what they saw was a burial that wasn't finished. The body had been placed in the tomb quickly, just before sunset, before the Sabbath began. As far as these women knew, Jesus had not been properly anointed for his burial.¹

So they went home and prepared spices and perfumes (Luke 23:56) as was their custom.

Think about the weight of that for a moment. These women had followed Jesus from Galilee. They had heard him teach. They had watched him heal the multitudes. They had been there when he told his disciples, plainly, what was coming. And now they were standing in a kitchen, grinding spices to anoint a dead body.

Then the Sabbath came, and they rested according to the commandment. Even in the middle of the worst grief of their lives, they kept the Law. One more day of waiting. One more day of sitting with the reality that their Rabbi was in a tomb and they couldn't even finish preparing his body.

And then, on the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they came to the tomb, bringing the spices and perfumes they had prepared (Luke 24:1).

The perfumes tell the whole story. These women expected a corpse.

But, instead, the stone was rolled away. They went in and did not find the body of their Lord Jesus. And while they were standing there, perplexed, two men appeared in dazzling clothes. The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground. And the men said, "Why are you looking for the living among the dead?" (Luke 24:2-5).

And then they said the words we are memorizing this week: "He is not here, but he has risen! Remember how he spoke to you when he was still in Galilee."

Now, when you read that, which word sticks out?

Most people land on "risen." Fair enough, that's the headline. That's the most significant event in all of history. But I want to take you somewhere else today. I want to talk about the word right before it: Remember.

We easily read right past it. "Remember how he spoke to you." Okay, sure, they had forgotten something and the angels reminded them. End of story, right?

Not even close.

In English, "remember" is a passive word. It's what happens when someone says, "Oh yeah, I forgot about that." It's a mental retrieval, like pulling a file from a cabinet somewhere in your head. No action required. No engagement. Just a little flash of recognition and you move on.

But the Hebrew concept underneath this Greek word doesn't work that way. To understand what the angels are actually commanding these women to do, we need to look at two Hebrew words. One for "remember." And one for "forget."

Two Words, No Middle Ground

The Hebrew language was originally a pictographic Semitic (as in, from Shem, the son of Noah) language. Every letter is a word and a picture. When those pictures get connected, they paint powerful images that help us understand these words.

The Hebrew word for "remember" is zakar (זָכַר). Let's look at the letters.

Zayin ז: "Weapon" or "tool." A cutting instrument, something you pick up and use with purpose.

Kaph כ: "Open palm." The palm of a hand, open and available.

Resh ר: "Head." The head of a person, the seat of thought and direction, "in front".

Put the pictures together and you get a vivid image: there is a tool with our hand to our head. It's that gesture we all make when we're thinking hard about something, hand to forehead, intentionally pulling something to the front of our minds. And that's exactly what Zakar means, this isn't passive recall; this is deliberate, purposeful engagement.

Now let's look at the opposite. The Hebrew word for "forget" is shakach (שָׁכַח).

Shin ש: "Teeth." Teeth are used to press, to crush, to consume. (We saw this letter in the word Shalom as well.)

Kaph כ: "Open palm." The same open hand.

Chet ח: "Fence" or "wall." An enclosure, a barrier that separates.

The picture here is just as vivid: destroying something with your hand and putting it in a fence. You're taking it and putting it away, walling it off, placing it behind a barrier (think trash can or a high book shelf in your house) where you no longer see it or engage with it. And that's exactly what Shakach means: to put away, to mislay, or to cease to care.

Do you see the difference? In Hebrew, there is no "it slipped my mind." That concept just doesn't exist. You are either zakar-ing something, picking it up and bringing it to the front of your mind as a tool, or you are shakach-ing it, tossing it away behind a wall where it can't reach you.

There is no passive middle ground. It's a binary.

In fact, Deuteronomy 9:7 uses both words in the same sentence: "Remember (zakar) and do not forget (shakach) how you provoked the LORD your God in the wilderness." God is clearly saying, "Pick it up. Don't put it down. Those are your only two options."

The scholarly definitions confirm exactly what the pictures show. Biblical remembrance is "an action directed toward someone, rather than a psychological experience of the subject."² Or as another scholar puts it: "In the Bible, 'remembering,' particularly on the part of God, is not the retention or recollection of a mental image, but a focusing upon the object of memory that results in action."³

This "remember" that the angels declared. This zakar is not recall, it is action.

When God Remembers, Things Change

Here's what makes this so striking. Every single time God zakar-s in Scripture, something happens. Every. Single. Time.

God "remembered" Noah, and the floodwaters receded (Genesis 8:1). God "remembered" Rachel, and her womb opened (Genesis 30:22). God "remembered" his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the Exodus began (Exodus 2:24).

When God remembers, he doesn't just think about you. He moves toward you.

And when Israel is commanded to zakar, it means to relive and respond. "Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt" (Deuteronomy 5:15). "Remember that the LORD your God led you on the entire journey these forty years in the wilderness" (Deuteronomy 8:2). These are not invitations to nostalgia. They are commands to re-engage with what God has done so that it shapes how you live right now.

This is why Passover is so important to this conversation. Exodus 12:14 declares Passover a zikkaron (זִכָּרוֹן), a "memorial" or "remembrance," built from the same root zakar.⁴ The Passover meal is not a history lesson. It is participatory re-living. Every generation acts as if they themselves came out of Egypt. This feast of remembrance, rooted in zakar, was the very feast currently concluding when the women are standing at the tomb being told to remember.

That's not a coincidence.

So when the angels say "remember," they are not asking if they were paying attention. They are issuing a covenant command with the full weight of the entire Exodus, Passover, and the Torah and the Prophets (Old Testament) behind it.

And the women needed to hear it. Because, just like is so common for us, they got caught up in the "here and now" and they had done the opposite.

They Had Put It Down

You saw it in the opening, didn't you? The spices. The perfumes. The early morning trip to a tomb. These women had shakach-ed the promise. They had placed it behind a wall and come to do the only thing that made sense to them: care for the dead body of a loved one.

And it's not like Jesus hadn't told them. He told them at least three times what was coming, including the most detailed version in Luke 18:31-33: "See, we are going up to Jerusalem. Everything that is written through the prophets about the Son of Man will be accomplished. For he will be handed over to the Gentiles, and he will be mocked, insulted, spit on; and after they flog him, they will kill him, and he will rise on the third day."

And then Luke writes a devastating editorial note: "They understood none of these things. The meaning of the saying was hidden from them, and they did not grasp what was said" (Luke 18:34).

They had taken Jesus' words, words they didn't understand, and placed that book on the highest shelf in the back of their minds. They shakach-ed. They forgot. Not because they were foolish. But because they had just watched the man they believed was the Messiah get arrested, beaten, and nailed to a Roman cross. They heard the crowd mock him. They watched the life leave his body. And then they followed the corpse to a borrowed tomb and went home to grind spices because that was the only thing left to do. I can't even imagine what they were going through.

But God did not shakach.

While his people were putting his promise down, God was picking his Son up. He zakar-ed what he had spoken through David centuries earlier: "You will not abandon me to Sheol; you will not allow your faithful one to see decay" (Psalm 16:10).⁵ Just as he declared at the baptism, zakar back in Week 12, "You are my beloved Son; with you I am well-pleased," now the Father was acting on that declaration. Same God. Same Son. But the words had become reality. God remembered his Son, and he raised him from the dead.

And then the angel reached out to the women starting with one stunning word: "Remember how he spoke to you."⁶ Go pick up that book you placed so far away. The one you put on the highest shelf. The one about suffering and death and a third day. Pick it back up and take action. Right now. All of it.

And it all came rushing back. "And they remembered his words" (Luke 24:8). They zakar-ed. Everything Jesus had told them, everything they hadn't understood, every promise they had set aside, it flooded back into the front of their minds.

And what did they do? Thank the angels and walk away quietly? No, they didn't sit quietly. They didn't keep it to themselves. They ran off to tell everyone that God had not forgotten his Son (Luke 24:9). He had not let him see decay. The real Messiah was there. He was their Jesus. And he had risen just like he had said he would.

Remember, zakar always leads to action. Always.

What Have You Put Down?

As you are memorizing Luke 24:6-7 this week, I need you to hear something. You are not performing a mental exercise. You are not storing data. You are doing zakar. You are taking the promises of God and picking them up, bringing them with an open hand to the front of your mind, and doing something about them, refusing to let them sit stagnant behind a wall.

The women at the tomb had every reason to shakach and put it away. Loss. Grief. Confusion. Fear. Shock. A Roman execution will do that to you. And yet, when the angels commanded them to zakar, they did. And it changed everything. Their remembrance became proclamation. Their grief became witness. Their trip to anoint a dead body became a sprint to tell eleven men that God had remembered and not forgotten.

What promises of God have you shakach-ed? What have you set behind a wall because it was too big, too painful, or too hard to hold onto?

The angels' command is your command too.

Pick it back up. Hold it at the front of your mind and act. He has been raised. God has not forgotten.

"He is not here, but he has risen! Remember how he spoke to you when he was still in Galilee, saying, 'It is necessary that the Son of Man be betrayed into the hands of sinful men, be crucified, and rise on the third day.'" — Luke 24:6-7 (CSB)

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