Jesus appoints a place to meet them after His resurrection.
Here again we get the blessed Lord encouraging the hearts of His disciples in view of His death. As we have seen, the Shepherd was to be smitten, and the sheep scattered. But He would rise from the dead and show Himself to them again. “After I am risen again,” he says, “I will go before you into Galilee.”
If Jesus had not forewarned the disciples of His death, and told them that He would rise again, and that He would show Himself to them, the darkest despair must have seized them. But He told them before, and though they were very slow to take it in, and could not understand it, it must have preserved them in some measure from giving all up.
In John 16, He says to them, “A little while, and ye shall not see me: and again, a little while, and ye shall see me, because I go to the Father.” They did not understand Him, and He tells them they would weep and lament while the world would rejoice. But He also tells them that while they would be sorrowful, their sorrow would be turned into joy. They were about to lose Him in death, and would be full of sorrow, but He assures them that He would see them again in resurrection, and then their hearts would rejoice with a joy that no man could take from them. All this was in connection with going to the Father, but He went to the Father by the way of the cross. He passed through death on the way, and it was when He went down into the river of death that they lost sight of Him and were filled with sorrow, and then when He came out of death they saw Him again and rejoiced.
How gracious that Jesus should tell them all this beforehand, and appoint a place where they would see Him after His resurrection! Little though they understood it, it must in some measure have softened the trial they were to pass through.
May the Lord help us, dear reader, to appreciate His tender care and consideration for His own. If we are His, He thinks of us and our trials with the same tender care as in the case of His being taken from His disciples. His love never changes, and never grows weary, and happy are we if we trust Him and believe His blessed words.
And if perchance my reader is not yet one of His, oh! do not delay to accept Him as your Saviour. Accept Him now, and then you can take all the comfort to be found in His words of cheer and encouragement spoken to His own.
ML 01/28/1906