THE KING ENTERS HIS HEAVENLY GLORY TO AWAIT HIS EARTHLY KINGDOM
(Suggested Reading: Chapter 24)
The closing chapter of Luke's Gospel gives us two great foundation truths the resurrection and the ascension. The death and resurrection of Christ are the two pillars of the Gospel. Christ "was delivered for our offenses, and was raised again for our justification" Rom. 4:2525Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification. (Romans 4:25). The ascension is connected with our hope— the second coming of the Lord to take the Church to the Father's House and afterward establish His earthly kingdom, the rule of which we shall share with Him from heaven.
The Vision of Angels—24:1-12
The women from Galilee had previously seen the Lord's body in the tomb just as Joseph of Arimathea had laid it. They went away, prepared burial spices and ointment, and waited for the Sabbath to pass before returning to the tomb. Then they take "certain others with them," no doubt recognizing the limits on their strength faced by such an unaccustomed task. First, they find the stone which sealed the rocky grave has been rolled away (such stones were circular and could be moved in a pre-arranged groove to seal or enter a tomb). They enter. The tomb is empty. They cannot use their spices, for the Lord's body is not there and they do not know He is risen. In their perplexity "two men stood by them in shining garments." Fear seizes them and they look at the ground to escape such a sight. The angels ask them why they seek the Living One among the dead. Then they tell them "He is not here, but is risen." Heaven's messengers proclaim the empty tomb so those on earth can re-echo the message. When they had followed the Lord in Galilee, He had told them that He must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and rise the third day. We might remark that the Jews counted part of a day as a full day. The chart on the following page explains the three-day period.
The evidence of the empty tomb and the testimony of two angels made the women remember the Lord's words back in His Galilean ministry. They go back to the eleven Apostles and tell them the message of the angels. Their testimony seems like idle tales to the Apostles, "and they believed them not." They were believers with the Apostles, but the Apostles are singled out to contrast them with the simple faith of the women. Again the Lord's strength is made perfect in weakness. Peter arises to see for himself. He sees the linen clothes with which Joseph had wrapped the Savior's body laid in perfect order. He leaves as perplexed as the women when they had entered. God will not repeat the message of the angels it is enough.
The Lord Appears, Vanishes, and Re-Appears—24:13-49
The angels had testified that the Lord was alive. Now the Lord appears to support the witness of His servants. Two disciples out of the group assembled with the eleven Apostles in Jerusalem decide to leave the city and walk to their suburban home at Emmaus. One of them is identified here as Cleopas. It is unlikely that the other was another man, as many commentators seem to think much more probable that she was Mary, the wife of Cleopas John 19:2525Now there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother, and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene. (John 19:25). She had stood by Jesus' Cross and was likely telling her husband about the crucifixion as they walked from Jerusalem to Emmaus, "and they talked together of all these things which had happened.”
Jesus comes up to them and joins them. They do not recognize Him. Is it because "they reasoned" that their eyes were shut? Well, here is the One Who alone can open not only their eyes, but many other things, as we shall see. The Lord asks them what they are talking about as they walk along so sadly. They are surprised at His question. How could He, a stranger alone in Jerusalem, as far as they could see, come from the city like themselves and not know what had happened there? The Lord draws them out further, asking them, "what things?" They tell Him that a mighty prophet, Jesus of Nazareth, had been delivered up by the chief priests and rulers, and crucified. Their hope was that He was the Messiah. But certain women known to them had visited His tomb, could not find His body, but saw a vision of angels who said He was alive. Others visited the tomb, but did not see Him.
The Lord replies by rebuking them— "O senseless and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken." The key to this rebuke is that they only believed some of the things the prophets had spoken, not all. This was not because they were senseless naturally, but because they were "slow of heart." Their affections believed those Scriptures which spoke of a reigning Messiah, for that was what they wanted, and ignored the Scriptures which spoke of a suffering Messiah whom they did not want. So the Lord continues, "Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory?" Here is another key. After suffering, Christ was "to enter into His glory"— that is, in heaven. His glory in this world is future, when His earthly kingdom is established. The Lord then begins with Moses and all the prophets, and interprets the things concerning Himself to them from the Scriptures.
The Old Testament Scriptures are full of types of Christ, His sufferings, death, and glory. Here is a lesson for young Christians. Store your mind with Scripture while you are young, even though you do not understand it. Even the Lord could not interpret Scriptures to these two if they had never read them. If you acquaint yourself with Scripture while you are young, the Lord will open it out to you later, as He did to these two. The question is, do you value His Presence? He will not force Himself on you. As they drew near to their village, the Lord indicated that He was about to pass on. But they compelled Him to come into their house. How could man force God to do anything, you ask? Well, Jacob did. He wrestled all night with God and said, "I will not let Thee go, except Thou bless me" Gen. 32:2626And he said, Let me go, for the day breaketh. And he said, I will not let thee go, except thou bless me. (Genesis 32:26). So did these two, and look at the blessing they received.
The Lord took bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them. Now clearly this wasn't the Lord's Supper, for there was no wine. The breaking of bread as a social custom was well established with the Jews, but it wasn't that either. It was the sign of His death, pointing on, perhaps, to the use of the bread in the Lord's Supper, but actually more connected with His words that Christ should suffer these things and enter into His glory. He gives them the bread in fellowship with these truths, and their eyes are opened. It was, no doubt, the sight of His pierced hands as He broke the bread which opened their eyes. As soon as they know Him, He vanishes. This anticipates the Christian position of remembering an unseen Christ.
At the beginning of Luke, the heavens were opened and God looks down and takes delight in His Son 3:21, 22. Here, at the end, men's eyes were closed as to Who He really was 24:16 -until He opens them. Then they understand why the sepulcher was opened, for He opened the Scriptures to them. On His second appearance in Luke, which we shall consider next, He went further and "opened their understanding that they might understand the Scriptures." Then, at the very end, He is carried up into the heaven, opened now to receive Him, as it once was to behold Him on earth.
The effect of all this was to make "our heart" burn within us— two people, notice, but one heart, no longer "slow of heart," as at first, but burning. Now they had told the Lord "it is toward evening, and the day is far spent," yet they immediately reverse their steps and go back to Jerusalem. They find the eleven gathered together with others, and they tell them their own experience. The Lord is about to appear once more to this assembled company, which includes, lest we forget, these two from Emmaus whose affections for Christ were so stirred that they had walked back to Jerusalem in the night.
The Lord Appears in the Midst—24:36-43
The Lord now appears in the center of the reunited company. When He appeared to the two on the way to Emmaus, His great purpose seems to have been to establish from the Scriptures that Christ must suffer and enter into His glory— a thought alien to the Jew, who thought only of the earthly kingdom. Here, His great purpose seems to be to establish clearly that His resurrection is a reality. He is "in the midst"— His sufferings over, His glory to come. The Lord makes it abundantly clear to all that He is a Man. They do not think so at first, take Him for a spirit, and are terrified. This is man's natural reaction to resurrection. Resurrection always concerns the body. Enemies of Christianity, many of whom are in well-placed Church offices, will agree to a spiritual resurrection. But God will not have that— "Thou wilt not leave My soul to Sheol neither wilt Thou allow Thy Holy One to see corruption" Psa. 16:1010For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption. (Psalm 16:10). The Lord first tells the disciples to look at Him, and then handle Him, neither of which you can do to a spirit. "A spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see Me have." Note that the Lord does not say flesh and blood, for the blood was shed in redemption. He has a spiritual body of flesh and bones. This is the body we shall receive "in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump" 1 Cor. 15:5252In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. (1 Corinthians 15:52). Its life principle is not breath, as with our Adam bodies, but spirit— read 1 Cor. 15:3535But some man will say, How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come? (1 Corinthians 15:35) to end. Yet the Lord is a real Man. He has already shown that by appealing to their sight and hearing and showing them the marks of the Cross. He concludes by eating in their presence a piece of broiled fish and honeycomb as a man would. He had given bread to the two on the way to Emmaus, but not eaten Himself; here they give Him food cooked and in its natural state, and He eats it before them.
The Lord's Closing Discourse—24:44-49
The Lord appeals once more to the Holy Scriptures as proof that all things written in them about Him had to be fulfilled. He had spoken to the two on the way to Emmaus from Moses and the prophets here, He adds the Psalms, which are also full of Him. He speaks not only of His sufferings and death, but of His resurrection. The testimony to the world is founded on the resurrection. This must go forth from the Jewish center Jerusalem first, as we find it did in the Book of Acts. But Christ could no more be a Jewish Christ, for His own nation had rejected Him. So the door is opened to the Gentiles. The Apostles were witnesses of these things. A new Gospel should be preached— no longer the Gospel of the Kingdom, but our present Gospel of the grace of God. Repentance and remission of sins was the message to be carried to all nations from its start at Jerusalem. Such a message needed power from on high to deliver it. This power was the Holy Spirit. So far, He was not given. They were to wait in Jerusalem until the Holy Spirit came down at the day of Pentecost to energize them. The Holy Spirit remains the only effective power in which the believer can preach the Gospel to this day. This discourse, we need hardly add, is the final proof of Luke's "method" of moral rather than chronological presentation. Forty days actually elapsed and the Lord went into Galilee from verses 44 to 49. Luke is stressing the moral position of the disciples here. The natural man seeks out these apparent discrepancies and uses them to discredit Luke. The divine answer to his folly is given us in 1 Cor. 2:1414But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. (1 Corinthians 2:14) "the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him. Neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned." Who but those taught by the Spirit could realize that Luke has been suggesting to our souls three great truths that were later to characterize Christianity— the knowledge of the Scriptures, the Lord's Supper, and the Presence of the Lord in the midst of believers.
The Ascension
The Lord led His own out as far as Bethany. This town was His link with the world, so to speak. He had visited many houses in this Gospel, but this was "the town of Mary and her sister Martha" John 11:11Now a certain man was sick, named Lazarus, of Bethany, the town of Mary and her sister Martha. (John 11:1). This depicts the Lord as a true Man, with human sympathies and feelings and responsive to love shown to Him as a true man is. Then He lifted up His hands and blessed them. They could see the marks of the Cross in those hands. Without the work of the Cross, there could be no blessing for man. But that work was over now and the blessing is ours.
Luke recounts the scene a little differently when he opens the Acts, telling us that "this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go into heaven" Acts 1:1111Which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven. (Acts 1:11). That is, He shall come for us as He left us, with His hands lifted up in blessing. And that is His character in the interval as our great High Priest. Then He was parted from His own and carried up into heaven. This demonstrates His body to be a real one, but not subject to the limitations of our bodies of humiliation. He had appeared in the midst when the doors were shut, now He is carried up into heaven. The power that carried Him is not revealed— the language is chosen to reveal Him still as a dependent Man. In John, the Gospel of the Son of God, He says, "I ascend" John 20:1717Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God. (John 20:17) the thought there being His own divine power.
“And they worshipped Him." The Lamb is always worthy of worship. Stephen prayed to Him when he saw the heavens opened. There was Jesus standing on the right hand of God. Dear Stephen called upon God, saying, "Lord Jesus receive my spirit" Acts 7:5959And they stoned Stephen, calling upon God, and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. (Acts 7:59). Worship belongs to Him. They return to Jerusalem and are found "continually in the Temple, praising and blessing God.”
"Sing His blest triumphant rising;
Sing Him on the Father's throne;
Sing till heaven and earth surprising
Reigns the Nazarene alone.”