Luke 24:36-43
We are at the end of Luke’s Gospel in Luke chapter 24, so you’ll want to turn there in your Bibles, and you can follow along as I read. I’m going to jump right into it, Luke 24, starting in verse 36 to the end of Luke’s Gospel. “Now while they were telling these things, he himself stood in their midst and said to them, ‘Peace to you.’ But being startled and frightened, they were thinking that they were seeing a spirit. “And he said to them, ‘Why are you troubled? And why do doubts arise in your hearts? See my hands and my feet, that it is I, myself. Touch me and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones, as you see that I have.’ And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. And while they were still not believing because of their joy, and were still marveling, he said to them, ‘Have you anything here to eat?’ They gave him a piece of a broiled fish, and he took it and ate it before them.
“Now he said to them, ‘These are my words which I spoke to you while I was with you, that all things which are written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the psalms must be fulfilled. Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and he said to them, ‘Thus it is written that the Christ would suffer and rise again from the dead the third day, and that repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in his name to all the nations beginning from Jerusalem.
“‘You are witnesses of these things, and behold, I am sending you the promise of my Father upon you. But you are to stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.’ And he led them out as far as Bethany, and lifting up his hands, he blessed them. And it happened that while he was blessing them, he parted from them and was carried up into heaven. And they, after worshipping him, returned to Jerusalem with great joy and were continually in the temple blessing God.”
We might think of that final section, verses 36-53, as the end of this account, as the end of Luke’s Gospel, as Luke is kind of taking his readers down for a smooth landing, maneuvering the plane across the tarmac, taxing to a stop at the terminal where everybody disembarks. Literarily, that is exactly what Luke is doing but theologically, biblically, redemptively, it’s far more accurate to see that this Gospel does not end at a terminal where we all disembark to move on with our lives. In fact, at the end of this Gospel, the plane is taking off again.
So Luke is bringing us into, at the end of this Gospel, into full certainty of understanding, as he set out to do from the very first section in the Gospel, Luke chapter 1, saying that he’s writing this to Theophilus to instill certainty in him about the things he’d been taught.
So he’s landing the plane, you could say, in full certainty, bringing the readers into full confidence and assurance so that they’re ready to take up Christ’s Great Commission at the end. The Lord ascends into heaven, and the disciples receive his blessing, and they don’t sorrow over him at that point. Interesting that what Luke tells us is that they worship him. In fact, that’s the first time it’s said in this chapter. It’s remarkable that he said that anybody worships him.
They’re there worshipping the resurrected Christ. They know who he is. They have full confidence about what his resurrection, the, the reality of his resurrection, the meaning of it for them, and they return to ministry back to Jerusalem in great joy. After that, Luke turns a page to volume two, the book of Acts. The coming of the Holy Spirit causes the Word to explode. Shock waves send the disciples out with the gospel, with doctrine of the gospel, to go plant churches, build churches, and perpetuate the spreading of the gospel further and further. That story continues all the way down to our day, our time, and our church.
So there is no landing of the plane for Luke’s Gospel. It’s more like what pilots refer to as a touch-and-go. This flight is not stopping. It continues on. Government shutdown or not, this flight is going to continue, and there’s no need to get off at a terminal. It never terminates. The gospel comes to every tribe and tongue and nation and it continues to build Christ’s church.
Our interest today is in verses 36-43. And as we’ve been talking about this, we saw it last time, we’ll see it again here, that Jesus has gathered his little flock together. No matter how many thousands or tens of thousands gathered around him through his life in ministry, even heralding and preaching and proclaiming and rejoicing in his entrance into Jerusalem just one week before, we’re down to a very few who are really with him, real disciples. He gathers them together to rejoin them, to reassure them and that’s needful in light of all that’s happened over the past few days.
Remember, these disciples all watched as their twelve Apostles, the twelve chosen ones, all of them defected. One of them betrayed Jesus, and the other eleven, they didn’t fare so well either. They scattered at his arrest. Two of them found the courage to venture back into the belly of the beast, as it were, into the high priest’s courtyard and household, tried to stay close. But then Peter denied knowing him; he didn’t stand up under the test.
We need to note that none of that affected the plan of God. Not in the slightest. All this has happened according to plan. None of that knocked God off of his sovereign throne. None of that upset his timetable. Nothing, none of that prevented Jesus from accomplishing the most, the greatest victory, the most powerful triumph in history, which is the redemption at the cross.
None of that hindered the power of God to affect the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Why not? Because, as Jesus told the two on the road to Emmaus, “‘All this is necessary.’” All this had to happen. It’s divinely necessary. God spoke it. God decreed it. He spoke based on his decree. He decreed, he spoke, it’s going to happen. It’s going to be done, that Christ should suffer these things and then enter into his glory.
Now the Lord is back, and he is back in power. He is resurrected. His body is the same but different and he’s come back to continue the plan that God sent him to accomplish. It didn’t end at the cross. In fact, you could see the cross as a commencement of all that God is fulfilling in the end time. The plan, as we see and as I read, there, at the end of Luke’s Gospel, involves these men, these women, these disciples, though here we see them at the outset, they are weak and fearful, and yet the Lord has come back to gather them all into one place, to settle their hearts and then redeploy them for effective and joyful and powerful service to him.
And so that’s what we’re going to see today in verses 36-43, that the Lord of peace comes to them to settle the hearts of his people. The battle is over; the victory is won. They don’t know that full well. He does. So he comes to calm his people, to reassure them because he intends to send them back out there to preach repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And when he sends them out there, they’re going to sent, be sent in full confidence, full joy, full assurance and certainty.
So I’ve got three points today. Here’s the first one: the salutation of peace. Number one, the salutation of peace. If you just want to write down greeting, it’s fine. That’s what it is. He gives them a greeting of peace, and to see this salutation of peace, we’re going to get a running start to that back in verse 33 as the two disciples come back to Jerusalem from experiencing something quite remarkable in Emmaus.
Well, let me back up, actually, to, let’s go back to verse 30. “It happened when he had reclined at the table with them, Jesus took the bread, blessed it, and after breaking it, he was giving it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he vanished from their sight. “And they said to one another, ‘Were not our hearts burning within us while he was speaking to us on the road, while he was opening the Scriptures to us?’ And they stood up that very hour and returned to Jerusalem and found together the eleven and those with them who were saying, ‘The Lord has really risen and has appeared to Simon.’ And they were relating their experiences on the road and how he was recognized by them in the breaking of the bread.”
You can imagine as they reenter and regather and re-engage, you can imagine the elation that they feel, celebrating as they share their testimonies. We celebrated this morning, didn’t we, as we heard those testimonies, all of it reminding us of, of God’s grace in our own lives and hearing what he’s done in these remarkable people chosen by him and saved by him.
These two disciples are telling all the others what they learned from the Lord, what they experienced with him, how their hearts were burning in the explanation of Scripture, and then about his sudden disappearance in the breaking of the bread. Neither of these two had eaten much, so probably wasn’t before long that food and drink was brought out in this gathering. Mark 16:14 kind of alludes to that; it says, “It happened when the disciples were reclining at the table,” which is kind of a, just a way of saying they sat down for food. They ate food together.
It’s getting late about this time in the text, maybe around 10:00 p.m., maybe later. So you’d could kind of think about this meal as kind of a midnight snack on Easter Sunday night. They’re finding some measure of rest with each other, refreshment in each other’s company. They’re enjoying food, they’re enjoying drink and conversation around the table and then verse 36 happens, “While they were telling these things, he himself stood in their midst and said to them, ‘Peace be to you.’”
The suddenness of his appearance while they are enjoying themselves, enjoying the company, the suddenness of his appearance is mind-blowing. One second, it’s just them talking. You can imagine a room full of loud voices, laughter, noise as there’s just talking back and forth. In the next second he is there. All conversation stops. You could hear a pin drop as he says, “Peace to you.” Everybody heard him because nobody’s talking when this guy shows up out of nowhere.
John writes this parallel account, John 20 verse 19, “While it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, while the doors were shut where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, ‘Peace be with you.’” Just as suddenly as Jesus had disappeared while he reclined at the table of the two disciples in Emmaus in verse 31, he just as suddenly reappears here, standing in the middle of the room. He didn’t pass through a door, he did not crawl through a window, he did not crawl in through a tile removed from the ceiling. Luke is very explicit in telling us he stood there. Just appears. He’s in the midst of them. He’s in the center of the room and everyone surrounding him. He just materializes out of thin air. Lots of witnesses to this.
Now knowing the effect of his sudden appearance on these weak-hearted and rather jittery disciples who are there because, in locked doors, because they’re fearing the Jews, Jesus speaks the most fitting words that he could speak for this moment: “‘Peace to you.’” Some would say that that greeting, and I think they’re correct in pointing this out, that, I mean, they’re technically correct, “Peace be to you,” that greeting, typical Hebrew greeting, “Shalom, peace be to you,” it’s their version of saying, you know, something like what we say today, it’s like, Hey, what’s up? How’s it going? That’s what they say. Shalom.
When you think about our greetings of, Hey, what’s up, how’s it going?, does that seem a little superficial and trivial to you? Think about it. Our greetings make very little sense. Like What’s up where?” I have kids do that to me? Hey, what’s up where? They’re just discovering sarcasm. They try it out on me. Or, Hey, how’s it going? They ask, how’s what going? Where’s it going? Why should I be paying attention to it? Why do these questions matter, old man?
We enter into our conversations, don’t we, I mean, when you think about it, with a little bit of triviality and with some bit of superficiality. I think we could be best served by returning to something a little more substantial, more meaningful. At least this Hebrew greeting, Shalom, kind of lovely, isn’t it, to bless each other as we come into each other’s company and presence, to offer a blessing, greet one another with peace? When we greet one another with peace, we bring to mind truth about what peace means, how peace was accomplished, what peace we can enjoy because of the accomplishment. Even the classical Greek greeting, chara, rejoice, that’s what that means, rejoice, which actually predates the New Testament, but classical Greek.
Better still, we could use a distinctively Christian greeting, as Paul does in all of his letters, “Grace to you and peace.” Grace, which is the unmerited favor of God that energizes all of what he has accomplished in our salvation and “Grace to you,” acknowledging that that has happened and acknowledging our continuing need for it and “peace,” peace being the result of a reconciled relationship with God, and then the subjective peace that flows when we grow and understand the grace of God for us and how nothing can touch us and nothing will affect us or hinder our relationship with him. Well, that brings a subjective sense of peace, doesn’t it? What a great way to greet one another. “Grace to you and peace.” If you start a new trend here, I will jump on board.
Jesus is coming, here, I believe, not in a, in a flippant or thoughtful way with just a common greeting. He’s not just trying to say, Hey, what’s up? He comes with these words specifically chosen for the moment. Paul tells us in Ephesians 4:29 that we should be watchful, a lot more watchful about what we say, Ephesians 4:29 telling us to be careful about what comes out of our mouths. He says, “Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth.” That’s a Greek word, sapros, which can mean rotten, rotting, decaying. Don’t let any of those words come out of your mouth.
It doesn’t just mean don’t swear, don’t cuss. It’s far more important than that. It, it’s far, far broader than that. Don’t use critical, criticizing, cutting-down speech. Don’t use speech that is wasteful, trivial, superficial. Don’t use speech that’s going to be distracting. Don’t use speech, certainly, that’s going to be acerbic or decaying. “Don’t let any unwholesome word proceed out of your mouth.” He didn’t say, don’t just use sentences or paragraphs. He says word. Don’t even let one of those words proceed from your mouth.
You can help what you say. We all can. That’s the assumption there. But we’re only supposed to use such a word as is good for building up, edifying, uplifting. We’re only supposed to use such a word as for building up what’s needed. That is, we’re to be targeted and thoughtful about the need that the other person has for whatever we think is edifying. Sometimes what we think is edifying and what they really need, they don’t match up. We need to be thoughtful, wise in the use of edification. We’re supposed to only target through our mouths the word “that is good for building up what’s needed so that it will give grace to those who hear.”
Our mouths and by extension, our entire bodies, our minds, our imaginations, our desires, our dreams, everything, our priorities are all to be used to give grace to those who hear. We are a conduit. It’s a, it’s a high and holy calling, isn’t it? Your life matters. Your life is a conduit of the grace of God to other people. That’s how you need to think of yourself. So Paul wrote that well after these events that we’re reading about in Luke 24.
But since he wrote his letters by the Spirit of Christ, we know where the source of that inspiration came from, which is Christ himself. His exhortation came from the example of the careful, edifying speech of Jesus Christ, which we see right here, Luke 24:36. When Jesus says, “Peace to you,” he is targeting the need of the moment, and the need of the moment is to settle and still the anxious hearts of his disciples, to calm them, to restore them and bring them back to the gospel peace that he won for them.
Peace has been thematic in Luke’s Gospel, starting with the very first chapter, Zechariah’s song back in Luke 1:79, where Zechariah prophesied that by the visitation of the sunrise from on high because of God’s tender mercy, giving his people the knowledge of the salvation for the forgiveness of sins and he ends that, that section with a promise of hope that God is going to shine upon those, who, those people who sit in darkness, who sit underneath the shadow of death. He’s talking to a people living in a land that is subject to sin and decay and trouble and worry and anxiety and pressure. Those who are in darkness, under the shadow of death, they have no truth, they have no light, they have no hope. But he’s going to guide their feet in the way of peace.
In the annunciation of Jesus’ birth, the angels cried out, “Glory to God in the highest and on earth,” what? “peace,” right? “Peace among men with whom he is pleased.” The saintly Simeon, old man, saw baby Jesus at the temple, and he blessed God after living a long time, hoping, longing for the redemption of Israel and he says, “‘Now, Lord, now, you are releasing your slave in peace.’” “I have a subjective sense of peace because it’s,” as it says there in the text, “according to your word.” He sees in Jesus the fulfillment. He did not need to continue living as an old man. He was ready to go. He didn’t need to keep on living to witnessing the entire career of the Messiah that was ahead of him because he believed. He anchored his hope in the promise of God and seeing baby Jesus was enough. It’s, it’s happening. I can go now. He was relieved. He was at rest because Jesus came to fulfill God’s peace.
Several times in Jesus’ ministry when he would see someone’s faith and announce the forgiveness of their sins, Jesus really liked to attach the blessing of peace. He said to that notoriously sinful woman of Luke 7, who had repented of her sins, she was known throughout town, but crashed a lunch meeting and bowed at his feet, weeping over him at his feet, seeing that she’s making a mess, and she wipes up the mess she’s making on his feet with her hair. She anoints him with her tears. He turns to her and says, “‘Your sins have been forgiven. Your faith has saved you. Go in peace.’”
“Your sins have been forgiven” means there’s been an objective peace accomplished, reconciling her to God, and based on that fact, that her sins are now forgiven, that he announces to her, now she can subjectively live in peace, go in peace, walk in peace.
The woman who’d suffered a 12-year hemorrhage came to him in faith, hoping only to touch the edge of his outer cloak. She’s in a crowd. He’s moving on the way from one place to another. He’s trying to get to somebody else who needs him, and she doesn’t want to trouble the teacher. She reaches out, touches the edge of his outer cloak. Immediately, she’s healed. She knows she’s healed. She’s been identified. He knew power had gone out from him. She’s been called out. She comes trembling before him, and Jesus says to her so tenderly, “‘Daughter, your faith has made you well, go in peace.’” I think he called her out so he could tell her that. So kind.
At the end of his earthly ministry, less than a week before his death, Jesus entered Jerusalem in the spirit of Solomon. Solomon, whose name is derived from the word peace, shalom and he came riding on a donkey’s colt into Jerusalem in what’s called the triumphal entry. We noted when we talked through that section, he didn’t come riding on a war horse, a stallion, powerful, projecting power, projecting authority, telling everybody what kind of conqueror he’s going to be. No, he came mounted on a donkey, Zechariah, 9:9, “even on” the, “a colt, the foal of a donkey.” What’s he projecting, there? Don’t worry about the conquering, guys. I got that taken care of. Let’s talk about peace. I come to bring peace, prosperity.
His disciples were heralding the news, the good news to all the people of Jerusalem. They made the connection plain in Luke 19:38, saying, “‘Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord, peace in heaven and glory in the highest.’” Jesus, for his part, hearing that, he wept over the city. He said, “‘If only you had known this day, even you.’” He’s talking about the entire city. He’s talking about their leadership. He’s talking about those who are under their leadership who will continue being deceived by that false leadership and following that, “‘If only you’d known this day, even you, the things which make for peace, but now they’ve been hidden from your eyes.’” He knows what’s going to happen to that city.
What are the things that make for peace? What are the things they didn’t see? Everything written about the Son of Man and Moses and the prophets, all that the Scripture had revealed and predicted about him, that he’d be delivered to the Gentiles to be mocked, mistreated, spat upon, that he’d be scourged, put to death as a substitute for sinners, things that make for peace, not between men, primarily, but between God and man. Peace between God and man, reconciling guilty sinners to the holy God, things that make for peace, all of that being accomplished on the cross and this is why I say Jesus spoke the most fitting words that he could speak, so appropriate for this moment. “Peace be to you.” He’d accomplished the objective peace between God and man by his atoning work on the cross.
So peace has been accomplished. There’s a cessation of the war. That’s what we talk about, peace between two nations, a cessation of war, ending of hostilities. Here it’s the ending of hostility from God against unbelieving, unrepentant sinners, those who trust him, those who repent of their sins and turn to him in faith. God ends the hostility by looking at Christ, what he’s accomplished.
That objective peace, satisfaction of his justice, which was accomplished on the cross as he died and paid for every single sin of all who will ever, ever believe or ever have believed, going back from Abraham forward, even Adam forward, all who believe Jesus on the cross paid for their sins. Not one sin is left neglected, overlooked.
So he comes to calm his people, to reassure them because he intends to send them back out there to preach repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Travis Allen
So that’s an objective peace. Having expended his full wrath on Christ on the cross, there’s nothing now to offend in us. Having covered all of his people in Christ’s righteousness, not only nothing to offend God, but everything to bring him joy, for him, his soul to delight in because of the holiness he sees on us covered in the righteousness of Christ; it’s objective.
This objective peace results in a subjective sense of peace for us, a feeling of peace, a sense of peace that either waxes or wanes, right? Jesus would have that sense of peace, that subjective peace, wax strong in us. He wants us to live in that subjective sense of peace, always calm of soul and heart at rest, content. He wants that to be grounded in the assurance of his love, the accomplishment of his salvation. He wants us to experience the joy that that should give and live in full gratitude.
So here in a locked room for fear of the Jews, wondering if the soldiers are going to break in and arrest them, Jesus says to them, “‘Peace to you.’” Uncertain are their thoughts about the future, whether they’re ever going to see the risen Christ again. And Jesus says to them, “‘Peace to you.’”
But what if they do see him? What if he shows up? Are they going to be overwhelmed with shame, their consciences condemning them for the sins that they’ve committed? They all broke their promises to the Lord. They abandoned their friend, and they did that after boasting, “Even if all fall away, I’ll die for you.” Really, will you? Cowardly sins that they committed. Of all the sins that we commit, I think some of the things that cause us the most shame are when we should have stood and spoken, and we didn’t. We felt cowardly, fearful. Will Jesus accept them? Could Jesus ever forgive them? “‘Peace to you.’”
Notice he makes no mention of their offenses, the serious sins that they actually had committed against him. Didn’t even bring them up. Just this: “‘Peace to you.’” I love J. C. Ryle’s encouragement on this point. He asks, “Where is the sinner? However great his sins, who needs to be afraid of going to a Savior such as this?” Guilt erased, sin forgiven, because of God’s grace and the redemption that Christ accomplished on the cross. The gospel message for them, for this moment, so appropriate: “‘Peace to you.’”
Acquainted as we are with this cast of characters, though, right, we know they’re not calmed and settled at this moment. We already read it, this salutation of peace from the risen Lord, they had not processed that yet. So second, we’ll talk, number two, about the disruption of peace. The disruption of peace. And surprisingly, it’s him. He’s the disruption, but it’s not his fault. It’s their weakness. It’s their fear. It’s things pertaining to how they receive it, not anything that he did wrong.
I’m guessing that in verses 33 through 35, the disciples have been feeling pretty peaceful already. You know, they’re safe and sound behind closed and locked doors. They’re contented. They’re at rest, maybe even a bit happy. There may have been a warm fire going, food and drink aplenty. Good conversation with good friends and all of a sudden, to interrupt that, a ghost seems to materialize out of nowhere, and the ghost starts talking to them. Verse 37, “Being startled and frightened, they thought they were seeing a spirit.” Our translation says, spirit. It’s a good translation.
But the idea here in this context is really ghost, what we would kind of consider a ghost. He himself stood in their midst, and their reaction to him kind of reinforces what we understand, that he suddenly appeared. He’s there all of a sudden. We’re meant to understand this is a supernatural appearance. He didn’t naturally walk in through a closed and locked door, knocking on it first and then unbarring the door and opening the door and he enters into the room. No, this happened startlingly, suddenly, and supernaturally. That’s how they saw it. Those who were there, that’s what they witnessed. They thought, thought they were seeing a spirit. They thought they were seeing a ghost.
Now we all know the concept of ghosts, that’s not true, but as it is in our day, so it wasn’t theirs, that there was this popular notion, a superstitious notion of ghosts, who were supposedly departed souls that haunted the living, specters that kind of wandered familiar places. One commentator described that superstition of these specters, disembodied spirits, but they were not, he says, quote, “not in any sense, any proper sense, the person. That’s not what the ghost was. That’s not what the spirit was, “but rather,” he says, “it was more like some sort of residue of what had been the life of the person.”
That’s how they kind of thought about it. Was kind of like this spiritual, immaterial, supernatural stuff. It isn’t the person, but it’s kind of attached to the person and it manifests itself. There’s another instance of this kind of superstitious thinking, even among, if you can believe it, the disciples. In Luke’s second volume, the Book of Acts, it’s after Peter been put in prison in Acts chapter 12, and the church had been praying for his release, God answered that prayer.
Remember, remember that Peter was miraculously released by an angel, came in, escorted him out. Peter went back to the place that the disciples had been praying. He knocks at the gate, the locked the gate, and Rhoda, the servant girl, answered the door. She’s excited to see Peter. She’s bewildered at his appearance, and she left him standing there at a locked gate. So she runs back into the prayer meeting, reports Peter’s arrival, and the believers, still gathered together in a prayer meeting, praying for his release, they told her she’s nuts, continue praying. They kept telling her, it’s Peter’s angel. It’s not him, it’s his angel. You’re seeing a spirit.
So hopefully, even in hearing that and wondering how could these disciples, I mean, these are the Apostles. These are the guys who were foundation stones of the church that we rest upon. How could they think that way? I hope you can be just a bit sympathetic with the disciples about this, put you back then in that same place, in that same room. I mean, imagine the week has been kind of a roller coaster emotionally. Heights of triumphant, heights of the triumphal entry to the depths of hopelessness and despair, as the tragic, painful, excruciating, shameful death of Christ on the cross; someone most dear, far more than any friend of yours, he is the Savior. He is the hope of all Israel.
So it’s been quite a week. They hadn’t had much sleep over the past several days, and now they’re locked in this room with, they’re in fellowship with those who’ve been in fellowship with Jesus, those who were part of the messianic movement that he had led, walked with him, talked with him. They’re talking about the possibility of his resurrection. Some of them had seen him. They’re reporting it. They’re moving from all the doubts and the despair and the hopelessness and kind of being moved in their thinking, now, toward returning to a glimmer of hope, and this seems hopeful, and, well that seems interesting, and wow, I hadn’t considered that.
But now they’re going to remember the fact that they’d abandoned him. I mean, back and forth, right? Up and down with their emotions. This is psychological whiplash in the extreme. And when you add in the physical exhaustion of these people thinking, you, this thing, this form materializes right in front of you and starts talking, you think you’re seeing a ghost. It’s easy to misinterpret the, even the risen Lord for a disembodied spirit. We can imagine that being an easy mistake to make. Not excusable, not okay, not right. Easy to make, though.
Obviously, at this point they hadn’t discerned who he was; perhaps more accurately, they hadn’t discerned that he is the resurrected Jesus. Maybe some of them said, that’s Jesus, but immaterial. He’s a spirit, a ghost. They didn’t absorb at that moment the theological import of his greeting. Just words. Luke joins, there, in verse 37, two words that portray the, kind of the inner turmoil of the disciples. They’re startled and frightened.
The first word is ptoeo, try to spell that however you want to and it’s related to a noun for, like, sheer terror, craven fear. I’ve had moments like that in my life. I’m assuming you have, too. This craven terror may be coming very close to death, or something startling you. And you ever, you know, kids will pop out from behind something and, Boo! and all of a sudden, you’re totally terrified, but then you want to, so like, I’m too old for this. You send me to my grave with a heart attack, it’s on you! But that’s this word, this sudden sheer terror.
The second is the noun phobos, but it’s strengthened by a preposition. So “em” plus phobos or emphobos, which is to be in a state of fear. So not just fearful, but then as state, a lasting state of fear. So the sense we’re getting from what Luke has described, here, is that startled and terrified means they’re emotionally paralyzed, here, with fright. They’re locked up mentally. Their intellect isn’t working properly. It’s seized up, like kind of a, a machine that’s run out of oil. It’s locked up, and you are not getting into that thing and making it go again unless you take everything apart, and you’ve got some repair work to do. That’s what’s happened in their brains. They’re perplexed, they’re fearful.
But notice in verse 38, the Lord is so gentle, here. He’s so wise to keep on talking to them. He keeps on speaking to them. He doesn’t say, oh, sorry, I can see you need a moment. He didn’t say that. He stays there. He speaks to them, and his purpose is to coax them out of their fear. Verse 38, he says to them, “‘Why are you troubled?’”, the verb tarosso. Why are you disturbed, agitated, cast into confusion? And then, “Why do doubts,” or you could say, disputing arguments, kind of a rising up in your hearts?
He asks them questions. So like our Lord to do that, isn’t it? He doesn’t rebuke them. Notice, he doesn’t tell them how foolish they are, or slow of heart to believe. Not here, not now. He knows exactly what’s disturbed them: his sudden unexpected appearance. He understands. It’s not lost on him.
He knows his physical form just materialized suddenly in their midst. They’ve never seen that before. It’s not at all natural to them. He’s not oblivious to what’s troubling them, and so he doesn’t condemn them for being troubled. But he does ask a couple of questions. He is using those questions to lead them gently, coax them gently, out of their fear and into faith, believing, trusting, knowing.
In the questions he asks, he does two things. Firstly, his questions kind of step in and rescue them and extract their hearts from the grip of fear and what he asked them, it gets their minds working again. Instead of them staying bound in fear, he, he kind of reaches in and enlists their thinking, enlists their minds to join his cause, to set their minds about finding answers to his questions. Isn’t that, that brilliant; very effective way to help people out of psychological trauma, help those in the grip of fear to escape their fear, to get a grip, so to speak.
Secondly, his questions are targeting the two functions of the heart and really activating the two, two aspects of faith: feelings and the thoughts, the emotions and the intellect. So the first question, “‘Why are you troubled?”’ kind of enlists the mind, there, to figure out the emotions. “Why are you troubled?” Why are you feeling this way? Is there any good reason? They’re supposed to be asking, yeah, wait a minute. Is there any good reason that I’m troubled, agitated, frightened? Is this really a ghost, a disembodied spirit? Wait a minute, I don’t even believe in ghosts. So what am I seeing? What is this, why is this ghost-like person sounding so reasonable, here, so thoughtful?
The thinking is enlisted to analyze the feeling. It helps to untangle a knotted-up heart. It helps to release the mind to reason more carefully. I like what John Calvin says. He does a really good job getting to Jesus’ intent, here. He says, “By these words they are exhorted to lay aside terror and regain the possession of their minds, that having returned to the rigor of their senses, they may judge of a matter which is fully ascertained. For so long as men are seized with perturbation, they are blind amidst the clearest light. In order, therefore, that the disciples may obtain undoubted information, they are enjoined to weigh the matter with calmness and composure.” End quote. That’s what he’s doing. He’s trying to arrest their attention, deploy their mind to answer a question that analyzes their feelings.
Boy, we need to do this a lot, don’t we? We’re actually encouraged by our culture, by everything around us, especially the marketing guys, they love us to feel, not think, because if we feel and don’t think, we spend a lot, a lot of money. Amen? Husbands, can I get an Amen? Come on. We need to stop and analyze our feelings and our emotions. We do that by our thinking.
Second question addresses the intellect again and calls them to start thinking about their thinking. So not just thinking about why they’re feeling the way they are, but then back it up to say, let me think about my thinking. Why do doubts arise in my heart? Why are these disputing arguments kind of forming? Why are these wrong reasonings kind of percolating up and, and taking control? Why are these thoughts arising in your hearts? Again, by this question, Jesus is addressing what’s happening inside them. You can see it. It’s the blinding power of doubt. When doubts arise in their hearts, it blinds them and he wants to stop the influence of doubt and call them back to reasoning by faith, which is what they’ve been doing.
The fact that doubts are in this moment arising in their hearts, again, doubts adversely affect their reasoning, doubts cloud the judgment, but the fact that those doubts are in this moment arising in their heart gives us a little bit of insight into the nature of the problem that he’s trying to overcome, here, because just one moment before Jesus’ arrival, they were reasoning well, they were thinking rightly. They’re judging things accurately, they’re filled with joy, they’re excited, they’re enjoying sharing stories and testimonies and experiencing the grace of God together.
They’re reasoning from faith by faith to faith, and they’re experiencing the benefit of life and light, joy and thanksgiving. Verse 34, they’re saying, “‘The Lord really has risen, has appeared to Simon.’” They’re talking about that reality, they’re reasoning from that truth and thinking about all of that, the implications from that truth.
Cleopas and his companion arrive, verse 35. They’re relating their experiences on the road, how he was recognized by them in the breaking of the bread. They’re telling about the, how he interpreted the Scripture to them and opened it up. And some of the burning light in their heart that they experienced and the joy they experienced in their hearts, they’re lighting the candles of everybody else in that room. So feelings and thoughts just a moment before were perfectly aligned: intellectual processing truth by faith, emotions following with the feelings that come from an intellect informed by the truth, feelings of contentment and peace and joy and deep spiritual satisfaction.
All of a sudden, something changes. Throw a little supernatural visitation into the midst of them, something they don’t quite understand. And though it’s a good thing, and though it’s a blessing of Jesus himself and his personal presence, the fright of their emotions dominates their intellects. They can’t think well, anymore. They can’t reason correctly.
But just stop and think about it. Had any of the realities that they had just been rejoicing in one moment prior, had any of that changed? No, it had not, not at all. All those things are still true, still true to this day. The one they think is just this form, ghosts, it’s actually the Christ they knew, walked with, trusted, knew. They just, if their emotions were under control of their intellects, there would have been a continuity between one moment to the next. In fact, his presence among them would have lifted them to heights of elation and joy unknown before.
What if, remaining strong in faith, they’d reflected on the truths that they knew, they’d been talking about, when something happened that they didn’t understand, and they kept that going, how would that have changed the narrative? How would’ve that flipped the script? Wait, Cleopas just told us about this. He said the risen Lord walked to Emmaus with them. He illuminated the Bible to them. He explained the Scripture to them. And then after breaking bread, they’re at the table, he suddenly vanishes. Who else is going to be able to materialize suddenly in the middle of this room out of thin air and talk like this, speak to us like this, greet us like that?
Disciples, use your minds. Don’t use your intellects to nurse your doubts. Don’t use your minds to entertain suspicions and superstitions. Instead, reason from faith in truth. Use your minds. Cultivate a habit of using your minds to move from truth to truth to truth. Nurture your faith by feeding it with more truth and more truth, and you will grow strong in faith. You will enjoy full assurance of understanding. You’ll settle your hearts in peace. And the more you do that, when the extreme happens, the more there will be continuity from one moment to the next in your life as you handle any trial, any affliction, any trouble that God puts in your path.
In spite of Jesus’ salutation of peace, the disciples had experienced a little disruption of their peace. And so wise and so gentle, Jesus ministers to them right where they are. He addresses them with questions that engage the mind that activate their reasoning from faith. “Why are you troubled? Why do doubts arise in your heart? Think about your feelings and then think about your thinking.”
He acknowledges their emotions. Nothing wrong with emotions; it’s just what order are they in? Are they informed by truth? He bypasses their emotion in this way to address their thinking. And this is how Jesus tenderly reassures his disciples. It’s how he shepherds them into his peace.
Third, third point, we come to, number three: the restoration of peace. The restoration of peace. Jesus restores peace in the hearts of his disciples in two stages, in verses 39-43. At each stage he calls them to examine the evidence. At each stage he calls them to employ their senses, to inform their thinking, their reasoning. The evidence that Jesus gives them and helps them to interpret is not to convince; this isn’t about convincing unbelievers that the resurrection is true. All believers in this room.
The call to examine evidence doesn’t have, here, an apologetic aim to convince unbelievers. The call to examine evidence is, here, for those with faith to help them combat doubt, to put off wrong thinking, to assure their hearts, and to strengthen their faith. Again, notice the call to examine evidence comes in two stages. In the first stage, verses 39-40, notice that Jesus commands them. He commands them. This is not a suggestion. It is an aorist imperative command, a very strong form of the command. It’s with urgency. He’s commanding them in a sense that means, do it and do it now.
So he has commanded them to enlist a few additional senses of the body to come to the aid of their visual senses. Beginning in verse 39, “‘See my hands and my feet,’” and then the next command, “‘Touch and see, touch me and see.’” Why does he employ the sense of touch, tactile sensation, to aid the eyes? Because we learned from the Emmaus account, if we learned anything, the disciples’ eyes were not that reliable, not on their own, not unaided, without interpretation.
Cleopas and his friend walked with Jesus himself, resurrected, for seven miles, three to four hours with him, and their eyes did not interpret accurately. Now the resurrected Lord stands in their midst and says, and that, and that, what do they say? Ghost. Their eyes aren’t working very well. Not alone. Their eyes need help. There’s an imperative translated, to touch. Touch, it’s a verb that describes the groping of the blind, those who rely on their tactile senses to feel their way around the room and stay safe and not get hurt.
So he’s saying here, not only touch me, but really get a good grip, like, go ahead, explore my physical frame. I want you to feel the bones and the bones’ structure, the skeletal structure, the muscles, the tendons. I want you to feel that. The verb isn’t really a common one in the New Testament, but it’s used here and there. But it means this: feel, make contact with, pselaphao, in an exploratory fashion. Grope, has a bad meaning or a connotation in our time, but that’s, it didn’t mean that then, it was, it meant to feel around. Used in Acts 17:27 of the spiritually blind who seek God, “if perhaps they might grope for him and find him.”
So in addition to commanding them to use their visual, tactile senses in combination, here, Jesus doesn’t leave them to come to their own conclusions. He doesn’t leave them on their own to figure it out. He doesn’t want them to be unaided, so he gives them true interpretation. This is not like a Rorschach test, putting down an ink blot and say, tell me what you see. What does this mean to you? It’s not helpful to leave weak and struggling people to their own judgment. That’s not loving, that’s cruel.
It’s not honoring free will and individual right to choose, to let them drift into error. No one has the right to choose error in the face of truth. We’re not allowed that choice. Every time truth confronts us, we must embrace it. That’s why when we send our kids to school or colleges, and the professor says, I’m going to give you eight different views, and just take your pick. You be you. Your truth, my truth, everybody, her truth, his truth.
When we doubt, when we struggle in believing, we all benefit from the gentleness of Christ. He’s the one who shepherds us back to perfect peace. Travis Allen
That’s not, that’s not this. Jesus helps struggling people to interpret accurately and let me tell you, beloved, you should, too. I’ve heard parents sit there and say, I’m, I’m raising my daughter to be kind of, just, open. I’m raising my son to just kind of choose whatever he wants. Choose your own adventure. I don’t want to raise him in my faith. That’s kind of to superimpose and be oppressive and use my power and my position to impose a way of thinking on my child. Nah, I’m just going to let her, I’m just going to let him kind of figure it out.
I, I’m telling you folks, that’s a form of child abuse. Jesus didn’t do that. He’s the Good Shepherd, who says, no, there aren’t eight ways. There’s one way. “I am the way and the truth and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through me.” It’s exclusive. He says, “‘See my hands and my feet, that it is I, myself.’” He fills in the gap for them, doesn’t he? He fills in their blank. He shows this room full of disciples what Thomas demanded in John 20:25, “‘Unless I see in his hands the imprint of the nails and put my finger into the place of the nails and put my hand into his side, I’m not going to believe.’” Jesus has pre-empted that.
Thomas, by the way, is not with them in this moment. He’s absent on this occasion, and yet Jesus tells his disciples, a roomful of them, “‘See my hands, see my feet.’” And then he interprets for them what they’re going to see, “‘It is I myself.’” In other words, “You saw three men crucified. I’m one of them, and you yourselves know which one.” And then to deal with the superstitious nonsense that they’ve been entertaining, that he’s some kind of disembodied specter that happens to materialize in the room, Jesus says further, “‘Touch me and see.’”
And then he provides the interpretation, again, of what they’re going to feel, what they’re going to see. “‘Touch me and see, for,’” here’s the interpretation, “‘a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.’ Then when he said this, he showed them his hands and his feet.” Let me help you out. Let me get near you. Let me pull those sleeves up so you can see clearly. Nail prints. Let me pull up the hem of my garment so you can see in my sandaled feet, there they are. There are the marks. Feel the flesh of the hands. Grip the hand in a firm, manly handshake. Feel the muscles in my hands, my forearms.
He’s got carpenter’s hands, carpenter’s forearms. He’s got the strength of a tradesman: bone structure, skeletal frame, quite obviously to them, a real human body. I love how the Apostle John, he used that same word for touch in his first epistle. Because John, “the disciple whom Jesus loved,” we always find him in his own Gospel as he refers to himself, not by name, but as “the disciple whom Jesus loved” in kind of an oblique way. But he’s always shown himself at the table reclining, and he’s laying his head back on Jesus as if to say, I’m the beloved one. Look at the position I have. Look what I get to do.
So it’s no surprise when John starts out his epistle in saying this, “What was from the beginning, what we’ve heard,” sense number one, “what we’ve seen with our eyes,” sense number two, and then “beheld,” and that’s a word that actually means to kind of take in what you’ve seen with your eyes, but then interpret it and wonder about it, process it. So he’s beholding it. And then he says this, “and our hands handled,” that’s the word, “concerning the word of life.”
So John is saying, listen, we heard him say, “Peace to you.” We saw him stand in our midst. We beheld him, observing very closely, and we came near and touched and examined with our own hands. We kind of touched down at the nail prints on his feet and looked at that in his hands and his wrists. Man, that’s that same hands. I remember shaking those hands. That’s that same chest that I laid my head on. So Jesus gives them the conclusion, or brings them to the conclusion that he gave them at the start, “‘See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself.’”
Before we look to the second stage of his restoring their peace in verses 41-43, it’s kind of worth pointing out, here, that in shepherding these men and these women from doubt to faith and from fear to peace, he starts by convincing them first of his identity. See that it is I myself, your friend, Jesus, Jesus of Nazareth, your Savior, your Lord. Remember me?
He starts with identity, and after that he tackles the fact of his corporal reality, his bodily-ness. It’s not a word, but I’m using it. He’s saying, mine is a bodily resurrection. I’m not a phantom. I didn’t rise from the dead to be a, a disembodied spirit that materializes so you can see and then I go away. This is not what I am. This is not an apparition; it’s physical. The resurrection is not merely spiritual in nature; it is physical as well.
You probably came to the conclusion already, but why is the priority of identity over corporal reality important? Why is that order important? Because what good does it do to them to be convinced of the bodily resurrection of anyone other than Jesus? They saw Lazarus resuscitated, pulled out of the tomb, rise from the dead. The widow’s son at Nain, same thing, pulled off the funeral pyre and walking, restored to his mother. They saw all that. No salvation in the widow’s son. There’s no salvation in Lazarus.
There’s salvation in him. It’s in Jesus that all their hopes are realized, all their fears are calmed, in whom all truth resides. It’s in Jesus and his proclaimed, predicted truth that he himself fulfilled and that he’s risen from the dead. He’s powerful. He overcame the grave. He’s resurrected in power. So if it’s him, that changes everything; it changes everything. Peter said it best, John 6:68, “‘Lord, you,’” no one else, “‘you have the words of eternal life.’” That’s why identity is so important. Understanding who he really is, so important. And then we kind of get down to the doctrines of resurrection, bodily resurrection, clarify that issue.
So he starts with his identity, “See my hands, my feet. It is I, myself.” Then he starts to help them interpret his bodily presence. What he said in verses 39 and 40, it’s a good start, helped; but the disciples need to come all the way into resurrection peace and rest. Verse 41 says, “They still were not believing because of their joy, and they were still marveling.”
Don’t take that note about not believing as a regression back into unbelief. That’s not what’s going on, here. It’s more like saying something we say, this is too good to be true! One commentator says, “This is just a rhetorical expression of amazement. They were incredulous in the sense it was hard to believe this is really happening.” That’s what that commentator says. He’s so right. It’s like this thing, dude, pinch me, is this happening?
So they’re still believing, and they’re not abandoning all faith. That’s not what it means when it says, “They were still not believing.” They were just wrestling with the reality of what’s been just revealed to them. And that’s why Luke adds that “they were still marveling.” Thaumadzo is the verb, there. Same word used of Peter back in verse 12. He went, examined the tomb, and he’s now back by himself, processing it and marveling.
Calvin puts his finger again on the right sense here. He says, “They were not purposely incredulous, like persons deliberately resolved not to believe, but while their will led them to believe eagerly, they were held bound by the vehemence of their feelings,” I like that expression, “vehemence of their feelings,” so they could not rest satisfied. You ever been held by the vehemence of your feelings? You’re like, yeah, every time I turn on the evening news, every time I go to vote, every time I see my good vote set aside and some other knucklehead wins. Vehement feelings.
“Certainly,” Calvin goes on, “certainly the joy Luke mentions arose from nothing but faith. And yet, bound as they were by feelings, it hindered their faith from gaining the victory.” End quote. That’s what Jesus wants for them, faith to gain the victory, the full victory, to bring them into full rest, full joy. So in verse 41, Jesus engages their reasoning yet again. He says to them, “‘Have you anything here to eat?’” Verse 42, “They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate it before them.” Just to expand on something, there, have you ever, “have you anything here to eat?’” That’s kind of important. It’s the word enthade, here in this place, specific, not in some other place.
Why is that important? Jesus isn’t pulling out his own snack out of his sleeve to eat before them. He’s not encouraging some guy to go get food from elsewhere, run down to the market, grab something, bring it back. He doesn’t want them to be in any doubt, to latch onto anything like, hey, he’s doing some parlor trick, here. No, he wants them to get the food that they know of in the room that they’ve prepared behind locked doors. So he is providing for them verification for their sakes, about this particular food, food that these people have eaten on this night, a piece of a broiled fish, broken off that same broiled fish they had been eating.
Another test of physicality, known, examined, verified by several senses. So they could see the fish, they could smell the fish, they could touch the fish, they could taste the fish, and they had done so for themselves. Jesus now partakes of the same, proof positive. This is no ghost. The entity standing before them has taste buds like I have, a mouth that opens, teeth to bite down and chew, a tongue that moves that food around the mouth, crushing it up into little bits and then moving it to the throat, the throat muscles performing the swallowing motion, going down the esophagus, down into the stomach where it lands safely, and that fish then is broken up further. Stomach acids digest it, and I won’t go any further.
All of this is performed for positive verification, confirmation. Many witnesses in the room surrounding him, seeing him, touching him, hearing him crunch down on the bones of the fish. Every time, right, you eat fish, you always have a bone in it. You got to pick it out with your fingers. He does the same thing. The physical senses, here, are all engaged, all in, and what they’re interpreting with their minds comports with reality. This is no ghost. This is a flesh-and-bone man, not just any man, but the God-man, Christ Jesus, Savior, Lord, and my friend.
We learn from reading ahead, the disciples, they do get on the right side of this. All believers get on the right side when they’re confronted with truth. All believers are able to put their feelings in subjection to their intellect, and their intellect informs their feelings, and their feelings, then and, and the intellect directs their will. We all do that as believers. It’s a good thing, too, because Jesus has so much more to teach them, so much more to show them, commissions them for the centuries ahead, the century we live in.
There’s so much more to learn and see as we come to the end of Luke’s Gospel. So we’re not through, yet. And even though Luke is not intending to land the plane, so to speak, I need to, and I need to let you disembark, gather your things and go home. But let me first draw a few points into focus for reflection and contemplation, so we can learn from this and grow and rejoice in this. First, if you like to write down a little list, it’s fine. I think I have what, five points, very briefly.
First, consider the implications of Jesus’ resurrection on your life. That is, resurrection is a bodily resurrection. He conquered death. Man, what does that tell you, that he conquered death and rose from the grave and walked out of the tomb. He lives now. The power that raised Jesus from the dead is also going to give life to our mortal bodies, for all those who trust and follow him. Man, meditate on that. It’s so good.
This changes absolutely everything, that he has risen from the dead, he’s conquered sin, he’s conquered the grave. We do not need to fear, and, and a lot of Christians will not fear death in an ultimate sense. They’ll say, yeah, I’m, I’m ready to go to Heaven. I can’t wait to see Jesus. But they fear every single day “the sin that so easily besets” them, and that sin that’s just the sting of death, death itself is a big deal. Christ conquered that. Can he not conquer your sin, too? You need to be encouraged by the resurrection, because that power that raised Jesus from the dead has power to mortify and kill and terminate your sin, too. Now. You can live in victory. You can hope in his power to address your salvation and your sanctification.
Second, consider how saving faith enlists all the faculties of the heart: the intellect, the emotion, the volition. We examine evidence from Scripture, evidence from history, evidence from science. We examine truth by the means of our senses. We reason from faith with our minds. So we believe the world that God created was created by him, was created good. We fell into sin. Sin has corrupted many things, but God is still powerful. He’s still in control. He’s still on the throne. He’s still sovereign. We reason from faith with our minds.
Truth informs our intellects, and when that truth informing our intellects, for believers, we’re affected by it. Emotionally, our feelings are moved by the goodness and the kindness of God. Our feelings are moved by his gracious gospel, his tender mercies. We can’t get enough of it. We love him because we see he loves us, and he’s demonstrated it. We keep discovering new ways that he’s loved us. As Paul prayed for the Ephesian church, that “you would discover the height, the depth, the length, the width, the breadth of the love of God in Christ,” man, that’s our daily life.
And then with our intellect and our emotion engaged and rightly aligned, those aspects of faith affect our wills, engage our will, driving us to trust, driving us to obey, driving us to deal with the thoughts of the mind and the heart and putting them off and putting on good thoughts. And we repent and we, we’re engaging our wills. We serve one another in joy and truth.
The pattern of knowing and understanding the truth continues all through our lives. It inflames righteous affections that no longer love sin but hate it, that no longer recoil from righteous, holy living, but love it and long for it. And we strive according to the power of God working in us to trust and to love and to obey and follow Jesus Christ our Lord because we love him.
Third, when we err, when we doubt, when we struggle in believing, we all benefit from the gentleness of Christ. He’s the one who shepherds us back to perfect peace. He’s doing it all the time, isn’t he, in our lives? We hear him through the Word, speaking tenderly to our hearts, assuring us with truth of his love, pointing us back to his accomplishments, everything he did, accomplished, fulfilled. He assures us with all the evidences of what he has done.
I love this verse in Isaiah 26 verse 3 because it really pictures what he has done for us. “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee, because he trusteth in thee.” I memorized it years ago in the King James Version, and I just can’t let go of that. That’s what we, we’re to be doing for others as well, for fellow struggling believers, is to be the instruments, a conduit of grace, the instruments of Christ shepherding hands to shepherd them back into peace.
So it brings us to a fourth takeaway. And for this I’ll read a little portion from J. C. Ryle, who encourages us to follow after Christ’s example as we minister to one another. Ryle says this, “We’re taught here to deal gently with weak disciples. Like our Lord, we must be patient and long-suffering. Like our Lord, we must condescend to the feebleness of some people’s faith and teach them as tenderly as little children, in order to assist them. It would be beneficial if we frequently remembered Saint Paul’s words to the weak: ‘I became weak to win the weak.’”
We’ve all been weak at times. Some of us are perpetually weak. We need the strength of others. It’s okay to admit that. Be gentle with one another, always speaking the truth, but doing so in a way that people can handle at the time. Remember Ephesians 4:29 that I quoted from the beginning. Use your words wisely and then lead them forward by steps through the truth spoken in love.
Finally, let me end with this. I think it’s appropriate. Let, let’s say a few words that will inform our hope of our own bodily resurrection. The older I get, the more precious this is. Consider the nature of Jesus’ resurrected body, because you’re going to get one as well. 1 John 3:2, “We shall be like him because we shall see him just as he is.” Isn’t that awesome? I think I heard some older saints. It was a weak, amen, but I understand because you’re old, you know. Young people are, like, what? I’m strong, I’m mighty. Older people are, like, hey, man, your body’s going to change. Your lungs are going to be filled. You’re going to be able to praise God with strong lungs and strong hearts.
What do we know of the nature of Jesus’ resurrected body from this text? What does, what does it say about what we’re going to receive? Human beings, we’re going to, still going to be subject to time and space limitations. Jesus was. He couldn’t be in two places at once. He did go from one place to another fast.So human beings, we’re still going to be subject to time and space limitations. We’re still a composition composed of reality, of corporeal and non-corporeal properties. We’re composed of body and spirit, matter and immaterial non-matter. And yet in our new bodies we’re not going to be hindered with physical limitations of our current body. I don’t know how this works out.
Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 15, “So also is the resurrection of the dead. It’s sown a corruptible body, but it’s raised an incorruptible body. “It’s sown in dishonor, it’s raised in glory. It’s sown in weakness, it’s raised in power. It’s sown a natural body, it’s raised in a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there will also be a spiritual body. So also it is written, ‘The first man, Adam, became a living soul,’ the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.”
Like our Lord, we, too, are going to be able to cross boundaries of space, moving with the speed of angels, to mitigate current limitations of space and time. Like our Lord, we, too, will be able to dematerialize in one location and re-materialize in another with a thought. Don’t know how it’s going to work, don’t know what that means. I don’t understand the science behind it. It just is. Like our Lord, we’re still going to be able to eat food. Praise God, I like that part. But the calories aren’t going to matter, really. No longer dependent upon food for our life and for our sustenance.
Our body is going to be alive because of his life. We’re still going to have all our corporeal senses: sight, sound, touch, smell, taste. But all of our senses are going to be rightly, perfectly, consistently, constantly informed by the beatific vision of God in the face of Jesus Christ. No error of judgment because of our senses.
Faculties of speech will remain to help us communicating immaterial thoughts. We will verbalize them, move sound waves that affect other people’s eardrums. They’re taken in and processed, so that my spirit can communicate with your spirit, and God’s spirit can communicate with our spirits. We hear thoughts, receive thoughts in our perfected minds, reason always, constantly informed in faith, instructed forever by Christ and by his Spirit.
We’re going to become the lord’s, small “l” lord, but lords of the created order, as God originally intended us to be. We’re going to be led by the great Lord, the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ, who is King of kings and Lord of Lords. But he is Lord, big “L,” of small “l” lords, including us. We’re going to be able to exercise dominion as under his dominion, and rule over creation as he intended us to be, but with greater, glorified properties and faculties that are at our disposal that’ll help us perfect our internal stewardship and serve our God in peace and rest.
So much more we could say, beloved, but let those things encourage you. Let those things encourage you. And if you’re a stranger to the things I’m talking about, the grace of God in Christ, forgiveness of sins, a cleansed conscience that’s no longer condemning you, if you’re a stranger to any of that, let this be the day of your salvation. Let this be the time, now, for you to repent and believe in the gospel that we’ve been proclaiming, the gospel that Jesus fulfilled, and now it sends us out, us Christians out, to proclaim forgiveness of sins by faith in his name. Will you trust in him today?
Let me pray for you now. Father, “What glorious things of thee are spoken,” what wonderful truths that are found in Christ and his gospel. What goodness you have planned, “what no eye have seen, nor has ear heard, nor has it ever entered into the heart of man all that God has prepared for those who love him.” So much ahead, and we’re at the cusp of it right now as we get to take this gospel and proclaim it.
And so I pray, Father, for any here who don’t yet know you, who don’t yet know the marvelous, glorious fulfillment of the gospel in Jesus Christ, who don’t know your grace, who have not yet been rescued from their sin and their fear of death. And Father, would you be pleased to save some even now? Bring them to us. Let us have the conversations we need to have so that we can joyously introduce them to Christ, their Savior. For those of us who do know you, let our hearts be filled with thanks. Let us give our lives wholeheartedly in service to you because we love you. We love you in Christ’s name, and for his glory we pray. Amen.