NO one can ever be really happy until Christ is known as a personal Saviour; but, alas! how few today care anything at all about Him; or have even the slightest interest in their soul’s salvation. Pleasure, fame, money-making, and ceaseless excitement are, each and all, greedily sought after; and pride and arrogant self-will are rampant everywhere, in these “perilous times,” when men are “lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God.” Nineteen centuries ago, the streets of Jerusalem rang with the bitter cry of an excited mob, “Away with him, away with him; crucify him, crucify him”; and, when the world had its great election day, it deliberately chose a seditious man and murderer rather than Christ, the Son of the living God. Notwithstanding this, Calvary’s cross stands alone in the history of God’s eternity as the divine center of all His counsels; and will ever be the one and only way of blessing for the guilty sons of Adam. Salvation is only to be found through the death, blood-shedding, and resurrection of the Man Christ Jesus.
On the Sabbath day following His crucifixion, God’s Holy One, who could not see corruption, lay silent in death in Joseph of Arimathea’s new tomb, where loving hands had gently laid Him; but, very early in the morning, on the first day of the week, the sepulcher was found empty; and angel voices announced the glorious tidings, “Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen.” Yet, strange to say, when the good news was carried to the apostles, the women’s words were treated as “idle tales,” and “they believed them not.” True, however, to His oft-repeated word, the Mighty Conqueror had burst asunder the bars of death, thereby proving to an astonished world that He was, and is, the Son of God.
Fresh from His accomplished victory over all the powers of sin and Satan, the risen Jesus was seen that same day on the country road that led from Jerusalem to a village called Emmaus, and, on His way, overtook two lonely hearts, who, in their sorrow, were talking together “of all those things that had happened.” “And it came to pass that while they communed together and reasoned, Jesus himself drew near and went with them.” Never could that day be forgotten by those two sad hearts as the very happiest they had ever spent on earth; and the reason why is not hard to find— “Jesus went with them.”
If you, dear reader, should be a child of God, do you know personally the untold joy of Jesus walking with you, day by day, as you tread life’s homeward way? Though at first their eyes were holden so that they did not know Him, yet His heavenly voice first broke the silence, and, in the quietness of His presence those gracious words fell on their listening ears, “What manner of communications are these that ye have one to another as ye walk and are sad?”
Needless to say, those omniscient eyes knew all that was passing within; but the loving words of Jesus not only awakened their interest, but were meant to elicit their real condition of soul. “And one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answering, said unto him, Art thou only a stranger in Jerusalem, and hast not known the things which are come to pass in these days?”
Not till the close of that eventful day did those sad hearts take in the wondrous fact that the mysterious Stranger who was talking to them was but two days before the central figure of Jerusalem’s bitter hatred and scorn! Never before in, this world’s history, had such a scene been witnessed, nor ever shall again; for the holy Lamb of God had been nailed to Calvary’s cross amidst the cruel jeers of a howling mob, the scorns and derision of priests and rulers, the railing of two dying malefactors, and the bitter malice of Satan and the world.
“What things?” He asked; and their ready answer clearly showed what was so deeply exercising their hearts and minds. “They said unto him, Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, which was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people. And how the chief priests and our rulers delivered him to be condemned to death, and have crucified him.” Here was a sweet confession to His mighty works, yet also to Israel’s guilt; but the full truth as to who He was and what He had done was as yet unknown to them, as now appears. “But we trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed: Israel; and beside all this, today is the third day since these things were done. Yea, and certain women also of our company made us astonished, which were early at the sepulcher; and when they found not his body they came saying that they had also seen a vision of angels which said that he was alive. And certain of them which were with us went to the sepulcher, and found it even so as the women had said; but him they saw not.”
The truth was now fully told out; yet little thought they that the chief actor in their thrilling story was then walking at their side, and an attentive listener to all their thoughts about Himself. Yet so it was; and He, the incarnate Word, at once reminds them of the written word, of which He is the living expression. Quietly, but solemnly, came the Divine reply, “Oh! fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory? And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.”
Neither before nor since have human ears ever listened to such a divine unfolding of truth; nor precious souls ever tasted so rich a repast of spiritual food. Yet even so their eyes were still holden, and as they drew nigh unto the village Jesus “made as though he would have gone farther.” This action on Christ’s part proved to be the true test of how far their souls had really profited by the divine teaching they had just been listening to; for they at once “constrained him, saying, Abide with us, for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent.” And a risen Christ went in to tarry with them. Love begets love, and though some in earlier days, had entertained angels unawares, yet on this memorable occasion was it the privilege of these precious souls to have the Lord of glory as their honored guest.
“And it came to pass, as he sat at meat with them, he took bread and blessed it and brake and gave to them. And their eyes were opened, and they knew him; and he vanished out of their sight.” In the sweetness of divine fellowship, their spiritual vision came, and His company was more to those two hearts than all the world beside. Little wonder was it, therefore, that as He passed out of their sight, they should say to one another, “Did not our heart burn within us while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the scriptures?”
Thus ears, hearts and eyes were all opened that day; and, sweeter still, the scriptures themselves were opened by that Blessed One Himself, of whose wondrous ways and matchless glories all scripture speaks. “Himself” was the divine sum and substance of it all—the one bright and living reality that turned sorrow into joy, and made that day to be the brightest and the best day Cleopas and his companion had ever known.
Reader, do you know this Jesus as your own precious Lord and Saviour, and is He everything to you?
S. T.