Luke 21:38

EXAMPLES OF EARLY SERVICES

‘And all the people came early in the morning to Him in the temple, for to hear Him.’

Luke 21:38

The circumstance mentioned here, and in the verse just before it, was connected with our Lord’s last days on earth. It was one of the things that happened in the last week of His earthly life. The Holy Spirit inspired the Evangelist to write down the record of this circumstance for our instruction and profit, that, as it is brought before us, we might gain from it what it is meant to teach us.

Let us pass on to the teaching of the New Testament on this subject. This teaching is what we may call indirect teaching, but there is a great deal of this indirect teaching in the Bible, and by this indirect teaching it speaks to us as well as by its direct teaching.

I. Look at our Lord’s own example of early devotion.—It is mentioned in Mark 1:35. What an example our Lord here sets us in this matter! Whilst men and women were wrapped in slumber, when all around was calm and still, before the time for men to go out to work, He, our Lord and Master, arose, and went out to pray, not only with the first break of dawn, but even before the dawn, ‘a great while before day,’ as Mark says.

II. In the text we are told of the people coming to our Lord in the Temple early in the morning.—Our Lord gave them the authority of His own consent for it. He gave them the opportunity of thus coming to Him in the Temple at this particular time, viz. early in the morning. If He had not given them the opportunity they could not have come, but He gave them the opportunity, and they availed themselves of it, and came.

III. There is another instance which seems to point to the value of early services.—In Luke 24:1, it is mentioned that it was ‘ very early in the morning’ of the first Easter Day that the holy women came to the sepulchre in which our Lord’s body had been buried. They came ‘very early in the morning,’ and oh, what they gained by coming thus early!

—Rev. T. H. Simpkin.

Illustration

‘Apply this teaching to the Early Celebration of the Holy Communion. Is it not an opportunity given to people to come in the early morning into our Blessed Lord’s spiritual, though real Presence, vouchsafed to us here in His Temple through His especial Presence in the Blessed Sacrament of His love, just as of old He gave to those people of whom we read in the text an opportunity of coming into His visible Presence in the Temple? And were it not well if we could carry the parallel on still further? Were it not well if men in these days were more ready to come early in the morning to God’s House to meet the Saviour when He comes by means of His Sacramental Presence and brings His Sacramental blessing with Him?’