We are closing the Gospel of 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 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. 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 that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die”? He did 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 get 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 than 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 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 the room, 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 saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost.” That is another witness. Before He died, He said, I will meet you in Galilee. Did He not 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 matters little 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? 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 the 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, “Before the cock crow twice, thou shalt deny 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 relink him with Himself again; but He took him up at the critical point where He had left him. He puts him into the ministry again.
The Lord knows the path of your spirit and will take 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 has 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 never have done with His uplifted 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 eucharistic priesthood. They went back to the city with great joy, “And were continually in the temple, praising and blessing 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 give 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 blessing 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.
“Rise, my soul, thy God directs thee,
Stranger hands no more impede;
Pass thou on, His hand protects thee,
Strength that has the captive freed.
“Is the wilderness before thee,
Desert lands where drought abides?
Heavenly springs shall there restore thee,
Fresh from God's exhaustless tides.
“Light divine surrounds thy going,
God Himself shall mark thy way;
Secret blessings, richly flowing,
Lead to everlasting day.
“God, thine everlasting portion,
Feeds thee with the mighty's meat;
Price of Egypt's hard extortion,
Egypt's food no more to eat.
“Art thou weaned from Egypt's pleasures?
God in secret thee shall keep,
There unfold His hidden treasures,
There His love's exhaustless deep.
“In the desert God will teach thee
What the God that thou hast found,
Patient, gracious, powerful, holy,
All His grace shall there abound.
“On to Canaan's rest still wending,
E'en thy wants and woes shall bring
Suited grace from high descending,
Thou shalt taste of mercy's spring.
“Though thy way be long and dreary,
Eagle strength He'll still renew:
Garments fresh and foot unweary
Tell how God hath brought thee through.
“When to Canaan's long—loved dwelling
Love divine thy foot shall bring,
There, with shouts of triumph swelling,
Zion's songs in rest to sing —
“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.”
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