Luke 24:52

TO JERUSALEM WITH GREAT JOY

‘And they worshipped Him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy.’

Luke 24:52

The message of that descent from the hill of the Ascension is a message for all time, and for all the people of God, until ‘this same Jesus, in like manner, shall so come again, as He was seen going into heaven.’ Briefly and in much simplicity let us unfold some of the contents of it.

I. For every believer there is a Jerusalem.—He has to live in some scene of the will of God, which is quite sure to present, with its manifest mercies, its manifest trials too. Very various are these Jerusalems. For one, the place lies quite at home; for another, it is at the antipodes. It may be a household, a place of business, a place of service, a room of suffering, a school, a college, a mission-station, a parish, a diocese, a kingdom. Where there is real duty there is sure to be something of the Cross with it. And at times the Cross-aspect of Jerusalem expands itself so much to the man sent to dwell there, that it dominates all other aspects; and he by no means associates Jerusalem with great joy.

II. Yet nothing is more certain than that in the Lord’s will and plan we are meant to be joyful in our Jerusalem.—We are to ‘praise and bless God’ there. We are to be known there, and by unfriendly witnesses, if such there be, as those who ‘have been with Jesus.’ It is in Jerusalem—not in a self-chosen solitude—that we are to expect, and to receive, ‘the promise of the Father.’ It is in Jerusalem that we are to bear witness for our ascended and returning Saviour, with the joyful hope of winning others to find out what He is.’ In Jerusalem it is possible to do this ‘with great joy.’ To Jerusalem it is possible to return from the most charming or the most hallowed retreat ‘with great joy,’ as to the Lord’s own chosen scene of work, witness, and blessing, till He come.

III. The secret of this joy lies in that old, immortal principle, ‘We walk by faith, not by sight.’—It is by faith; by ‘taking Him at His word’; by making use of Him in all His wealth of Person, Character, Offices, Promises, Presence, as our strength and our salvation. It is not by sight; not yet; not till the walk by faith has capacitated us for the eternal mode of walking by sight. No, not by sight; such is the deliberate purpose of our King. He would at present school us, to our infinite gain, in the art of trusting Him without appearances, not to say against them. ‘Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed,’ was the last beatitude He spoke to His disciples in His days on earth.

‘The life that I live now in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God.’ That is to say, I live it by the trustful use of Him as a reality amidst the realities of the hour; by returning to my Jerusalem, and living and walking in it, as one who knows that the Lord Jesus, Who has borne my sins, is for me at the right hand of God, and in me amidst ‘the plottings of men, and the strife of tongues,’ and all that surrounds ‘a sinner in a world of care.’

Bishop H. C. G. Moule.

Illustration

‘So we leave the quiet hill-top between Olivet and Bethany. “It is towards evening and the day is far spent.” See, the sun descends, as we retrace our steps to the city round the southern shoulder of the Mount. Its rays stream over the roofs and towers of Jerusalem, and are reflected as if from water by the broad marble pavement of the Haram area, where the dome of Omar stands up dark as night in the midst. We walk back, past the trees of the Garden of Gethsemane, and round to the northern walls, and to that green Mound crowned with Moslem graves which looks across the road to the Damascus gate; and so home for the night. And we carry with us a message good for all the days and nights of life in front of us. The charm and wonder of the Palestinian sojourn is soon over. It is soon time to return to all that is meant by common duty; to scenes rich in manifold mercy, but in which the days and hours are always bringing their problems pressing for solution, and many a heartache in the course of them. But we go back with a new realisation of what is meant for us by the Ascension of the Lord to heaven, and the descent of His servants to Jerusalem. We have walked as it were with the Apostles to the quiet hill and back with them to the city so terribly unquiet. We saw them go with many a wistful thought and unanswered question heaving in their hearts; may we not gather this from the opening verses of the Acts? And the Blessed Friend to Whom they had turned so often with their doubts and fears had now risen from the midst of them and vanished out of sight. But they walk with a totally different air and bearing as they come back from their farewell:—

Sure of their Master’s truth, sure to succeed,

And well content to suffer and to bleed.’