Luke 24:36-49
While the disciples and others who loved the Lord Jesus were in a house in Jerusalem, and those who had seen Him alive that day were telling the rest of Him, suddenly He stood among them.
He said, “Peace be unto you!” Yet they were very frightened; those who had seen Him that day could not have been afraid as the others, who thought Him a spirit.
He asked them, “Why are ye troubled?... Behold My hands and My feet, that it is I myself; handle Me and see: for a spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see Me have.”
He showed them His hands and His feet where the nails had been so cruelly put through (Ps. 22:16; John 20:25, 27). Yet they could not think Him real, and He asked for food, and ate before them.
By those plain ways they learned He was the One they loved: by His voice, by seeing His wounds, by touching Him, talking to Him, seeing Him eat, and by His same tender care for them.
His body was not just as before, but a real body. He spoke of His “flesh and bones”, not flesh and blood, as people say of a living person. He had been flesh and blood (Heb. 2:14), but His blood flowed out from the wounds in His hands and feet, and when the soldier thrust the spear into His side.
God had said when an animal was offered in sacrifice for sins, the blood was to be poured out on the altar (Deut. 12:27). That showed the life had been taken, as natural life is in the blood. So Christ, the holy sacrifice for sinners, gave His blood, His life. But He had also a far greater life though different: He appeared without opening the door and could vanish from them, yet He said, “It is I Myself.”
We do not understand this, but we can wonder and believe and joy as those people then did in the great fact that the Lord Jesus arose. It was not to stay long on earth, but to have those who had known Him before, certain that He was alive again.
He showed them that evening, the same as He did the two on the walk to the village, that all these things had been written of Him in the scriptures. He said, “Thus it is written, and thus it behooved (necessary and right for) Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day.”
We might think angels would be sent to tell of the One who came to die for men, but the Lord told His disciples who had believed and loved Him, had seen Him die, then alive again, to “preach” (tell forth) this story to all nations. They did go to all people, and some of them also wrote all these things, so now when anyone tells the story of Christ they speak from the words of those men.
Who was “the promise of the Father” for whom the disciples were to wait? and where to wait? (v. 49 and John 15:26).
Next time we will have words which were written of Christ long before.
ML 04/07/1946