WE are closing the Gospel of St. Luke, and we still find the same thing that we were meditating on the last time-the unbelief that lurked in their hearts touching the resurrection. Now the Lord sets Himself to dissipate it. It must be dissipated, for it is fatal to the faith of God's elect. Nothing could be a substitute for it [resurrection.] The whole dealing of God with sinners depends on its being an accomplished fact. In several cases during His ministry we get the people expecting Him to interfere between sickness and death. But that was not God's way. The wages of sin is death. So now, He must go into death. He must meet the enemy in the place of his strength and defeat him there. In the history of Jairus's daughter it was just that. He tarried so long that she died, a beautiful witness that the Lord did not come to intercept death, but to defeat death. So in the case of Lazarus. The Lord tarried till the sickness ended in death. They were all crying and bewailing-howling over the ravages of death. That was the very place for the Son of God to display Himself in. To be sure He did heal and cleanse, but He came into the world, not to interfere between sickness and death, but between death and life again. He is the holder of victorious life. Supposing He had met sickness and not death, nothing would have been done, for the wages of sin is death. Did He come to qualify the original judgment, "In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die?" He did not-He could not. He came to meet it, suffer it, verify it, and get the victory on the other side of it.
When the two disciples are satisfied, they go back to the city, to report what they have seen, and while they speak Jesus Himself stands in the midst of them. There are many things for us to observe here. I will tell you a sweet thing. He not only rose, but He rose the same as He died. Could you put up with an altered Son of God? Though throned in glory this moment, He is the very same as He was at the well of Sychar. If you want to know what Christ is now, go and learn Him in the four gospels. Do you want. a different Jesus from the one that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John have introduced to you? Perhaps it is hard to understand that He is the same now in glory as He was here. It is part of the business of the post-resurrection scenes, to assure us that He is the very very same. Treasure that up in your souls. It will make the pathway to heaven so easy. He has come into your world before ever He asked you to go into His, and the way to make the path there easy is to know that you will find in yonder world of glory, the very same Jesus that came into your world. The Lord of the distant glories has been in the midst of my ruins and has shown me that He is the same in the midst of the glories as in the midst of the ruins. It is among the moral wonders of the gospel that the blessed Lord has taken such means to accommodate my eye and ear to future glories. He has given beautiful pledges of that. As He entered, He said, " Peace be unto you." Had He ever said that before? Were those strange words on His lips? He was only redeeming His pledge. Before He died He said, " Because I live, ye shall live also." After He rose, " He breathed on them and said, ' Receive ye the Holy Ghost.'" That is another witness. Before He died He said, "I will meet you in Galilee." Did not He take up the pledge? You may say that was a little thing, but whether big or little, a risen Christ makes good what a ministering Christ had promised. Circumstances cannot change Him. Ruins here and glories there have no power to touch Him. He said before He suffered, "I go to prepare a place for you." After He rose He said, " I ascend unto my Father and your Father." If you go through the post-resurrection scenes, you will be able to track a risen Christ in company with a ministering Christ, taking up the pledges and showing all the beautiful traits of character that He exhibited before. Do you ever think of sudden death? You may be borne without a moment's notice into His presence. Will it be a strange place to you? I may be a stranger to His circumstances, but not to Himself Therefore the more we acquaint ourselves with Jesus, the more we are in heaven already. It is little matter about His palace if I know Himself. The blessed Lord wants to make us intimate with Himself. So in the post-resurrection scenes, He lets us know that we know Him already.
Now we come to the verification of the fact of resurrection. Why is that such an important point? Suppose God had said, " Satan has ruined your body, so I will take you to be with me in spirit," it would have been verifying the victory of Satan over the body. Did God come into the world to do that? So the apostle says, " If Christ be not raised, your faith is vain." Then He makes us in our glorified bodies the witnesses of His victory. Resurrection was not only the seal of His victory. He has made an atonement and the throne has owned it by raising the Surety from the dead, but not only so. It is necessary to see that He has got a victory in this world; so to verify this the Lord wonderfully condescends. "He said unto them, Have ye here any meat?" Why was all that 7 Simply to verify that it was no mere spirit that stood before them. The Lord came to fight a battle for you-palpable flesh and blood. Palpable manhood had been destroyed-palpable manhood must be redeemed. Having established that fact in the 44th verse, He makes all to hang on it. Then having recited what He had once told them, He here knits His present ministry with what had gone before. He opens to them in Law, Prophets, and Psalms, the things concerning Himself. We see something like this in His dealings with Peter. He had said, "The cock shall not crow twice till thou shalt have denied me thrice." That came to pass. Then the Lord looked at him. He had awakened his conscience by the crow; He relinked him with Himself by the look. When the Lord rose, He took up Peter exactly where He had left him. He did not want to awaken his conscience again, or to relink him with Himself again; but He takes him up at, the critical point where He left him. He puts him into the ministry again. The Lord knows the path of your spirit, and will you up exactly where you are. He had told them while He was with them that all things should be accomplished, and now He gives them an opened understanding (which. He had not done before)' and sits down to give them a lecture on them. It is beautiful to see how He educates us. What a wonderful moment! and that moment has been continued to this moment. That was a moment that characterized the present dispensation; that on the warranty of His death remission of sins should be preached to every poor sinner. In one sense we have never got beyond it, and we never shall till the last of the elect is brought in. Now He had done everything; and, as a preacher to the world, He was silent. He had declared remission of sins to a world of sinners. As an evangelist, I take leave of Jesus there. As a high priest we have not yet fully seen Him, but as an evangelist, that was a stereotyped moment of His ministry. He cannot add to that. He has told me, as belonging to a world of sinners, that through death and resurrection remission of sins is preached to me.
Now He led them out to Bethany. I believe it was a silent walk. If my spirit is drinking in the simplicity of such a gospel, it will be in deep-toned, silent satisfaction of soul. "And He lifted up His hands and blessed them." That was priestly service. There He "ever lives." I have never done with His up-lifted hands, and in that attitude He was taken up to heaven, to carry on His priesthood on high. What effect has all this on you and me-to look at an evangelist Jesus giving peace to the conscience, and then see Him going up to heaven, in the act of blessing? What effect had it on the disciples? The whole character of their religion was changed. They were no longer trafficking with Moses. Their service became that of a eucharistic priesthood. They went back to the city with great joy, "And were continually in the temple blessing and praising God." Can anything be more divine? Nothing. And there Christ takes leave of you. The heavens will retain Him till the times of refreshing; but have you lost Him? Could He leave a more graphic impression than He has done here? He has accomplished redemption, and He ever lives to bless you. Go to your Jerusalem and be ever praising and Messing Him.
There it drops. " We, through the Spirit, wait for the hope of righteousness." The trail of the serpent is everywhere, but in such shining paths as, I see the feet of Jesus treading here. What He lays His hand to He accomplishes to perfection.
" There no stranger-God shall meet thee,
Stranger thou in courts above;
He who to His rest shall greet thee,
Greets thee with a well-known love."
As source and origin-Thou, Thou only, art God. As channel and means there is no God besides Thee. And lo! all and everything, everywhere, turns itself around Thee-owning that Thou, and Thou alone, art God-as universal end of all.
Oh! that Thou wouldst then so care for Thine own glory and honor in me-as that, little as I am, I may walk in Thy ways and seek Thine ends;-even the honor and the glory of the Son of Thy love, the Lord Jesus Christ!
And may I not say that Thou wilt do this? For whence and from whom is the desire that Thou shouldst be thus the end of all I think, or speak, or do, or am? Is it not Thyself that has wrought in me to will,-to will for Thy glory and the honor of Thy Son Jesus Christ? And if Thou hast wrought in me thus to will,-Thou wilt also, in Thine own time, work in me, also, to do of Thine own good pleasure. Amen.