Luke 24:36-49

JESUS APPEARS TO THE APOSTLES SUNDAY NIGHT

Luke 24:36-49; John 20:19-23. “ Then, it being evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors being shut where the disciples were assembled on account of the fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in the midst, and says to them, Peace be unto you!” Soon after the arrival of the two disciples from Emmaus, who at once joined Peter and the sisters in their testimony to the resurrection, Jesus climaxes all and puts every doubt to flight by standing in their midst, ringing out His familiar salutation, “Peace be unto you.”

Luke: “ And being affrighted and terrified, they were thinking that they see a spirit.” Such is the heterogeneity between mortality and immortality that the sight of an angel or a disembodied spirit always fills mortals with trepidation. “ And He said to them, Why are you disturbed? and why do reasonings arise in your heart? Behold My hands and My feet, that I am He; handle Me, and see; because a spirit does not have flesh and bones, as you see Me having.” When Omnipotence comes to the solution of all difficulties, faith should have complete swing. Christ appeared to Nebuchadnezzar in the fiery furnace with the Hebrew children nearly six hundred years before His incarnation, and actually visited Abraham at Mamre and ate with him, 1900 B. C., in both cases exhibiting a physical body so far as human senses could apprehend. Hence e need not conclude from this Scripture that His glorification was postponed till His ascension, as the facts are rather preponderant in favor of the conclusion that He was glorified when He arose from the dead. During the forty days, we read of His appearing to them but eleven times:

1. To the women.

2. To Mary Magdalene, and doubtless other women.

3. To Peter.

4. To Cleopas and his comrade at Emmaus.

5. To the twelve apostles.

6. On Sunday night, to the apostles and saints in their meeting.

7. On the Monday night a week following.

8. At the Sea of Galilee.

9. To the apostles and five hundred brethren in a Galilean mountain.

10. To James.

11. To all the apostles.

We are assured that He never lodged with them, and did not habitually eat with them after the resurrection; doubtless spending the nights and, so far as the record extends, at least nine-tenths of the day-time, in heaven.

Doubtless we have in the life of our Lord during these forty days a beautiful photograph of His millennial reign, when He will doubtless appear and disappear, ever and anon, in different parts of the world, and, I trow, much of the time will be absent in heaven. In a similar manner, the transfigured saints, who shall rule the world as the subordinates of Christ, since they will no longer need mortal food nor sleep, will ever and anon appear at their posts of duty during the day, disappearing ad libitum, and spending the night in heaven.

“ And they, still disbelieving and wondering from joy, He said to them, Have you here any food? And they gave Him a piece of baked fish; and taking it, He ate in their presence.” You see here the terrible struggle of their faith to apprehend and appropriate clearly and unequivocally the grand and paradoxical fact of His resurrection from the dead, and at the same time the conflict of overwhelming joy, inundating them with transporting rapture, thus the excitement antagonizing the necessary deliberation for faith to appropriate the glorious reality. This appeal to their senses by eating in their presence, we are to regard as a miracle for their conviction and the establishment of their faith, as we have no account of His eating except in this instance.

John 20:20. “ Saying this, He showed them His hands and His side, and His disciples rejoiced, seeing the Lord.” These appeals to their physical senses do not prove anything physical on His part, as you see He did the same to Abraham and Nebuchadnezzar, and even on a grander scale, long before His incarnation. We must not get so critical as to lay embargoes on Omnipotence.

Luke 24:44-45 : “ And He said to them, These are My words which I spoke to you, being yet with you, That it behooveth all things which have been written in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the Psalms, concerning Me, to be fulfilled. Then He opened their mind, that they might understand the Scriptures.” Lord, help us to learn the indisputable fact that if Thou dost not open our minds, we will never understand the Scriptures. Preachers study till their heads are gray, and know so little about the Scriptures that an illiterate, sanctified Ethiopian would be an exceedingly profitable teacher. We must learn how to sit meek and lowly, like little children, at the feet of Jesus, trusting Him to open our minds, so we can understand His precious Word. The carnal wisdom of colleges will never reach the emergency.

“ And He said to them, that it has been thus written that Christ is to suffer, and rise from the dead on the third day; and that repentance unto the remission of sins is to be preached among all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.” We here have the commission of our Lord, as given by Luke, in which repentance is the salient grace conducive to the remission of sins. The E. V. here omits eis, “unto,” much to the weakening of this wonderful passage, which Luke, in his Acts 2:38, parallels, “ Repent, and be baptized unto the remission of your sins;” the baptism being ceremonial and symbolic of the spiritual realities revealed in these two passages, in both of which Luke formulates repentance the condition and antecedent of remission, in the one, Peter, on the day of Pentecost, using the verb; while here, in the commission, our Lord uses the noun, and commands His apostles and their successors to preach it to all nations; i. e., “repentance unto remission of sins.” This is in perfect harmony with Paul's commission (Acts 18:26), in which he offers remission of sins and sanctification through faith alone. These two commissions are in perfect harmony, as repentance breaks off the yoke of Satan, and faith receives that of Christ, these two fundamental graces constituting the positive and negative poles of the salvation battery, the one always including the other.

“ You are witnesses of these things. And I send upon you the promise of the Father; and you abide in the city until you may be endued with dynamite from on high.” There are two Greek words prominently used and translated “power.” Here rite word is dunamis, Anglicized “dynamite.” This is certainly very significant of the wonderful blessing they received at Pentecost; i. e., the dynamite of heaven, which blows all inbred sin out of us. How dares any Church to send out a preacher before he has complied with this great commandment of the Infallible! You see plainly that our Lord provides for the sanctification of all his preachers before they go out to battle with the world, the flesh, and the devil. The only reason why we have not conquered the world long ago, and brought back the Lord in his millennial victory and glory to transform the world into a paradise, is because of the departure from the Divine order, preachers and elders having the audacity to take the management of the Church into their own hands and run it to suit themselves, actually treating with contempt the positive and unequivocal commandment of our Savior requiring every preacher, in prayer and humiliation, to await the heavenly enduement of Pentecostal dynamite; i. e., the baptism of the Holy Ghost and fire.

John 20:21-22. “ Then Jesus said to them again, Peace be unto you; as the Father hath sent Me, I also send you.” O the transcendent honor and the momentous responsibility of going in the room of Jesus, by Him invested and endued, as He was by His Father when He came on the earth, preaching the everlasting gospel! “ Saying this, He breathed on them, and says to them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost.” We must not conclude that people do not receive the Holy Ghost in the regenerated experience. They do receive Him in a measure; while in sanctification He comes in His fullness to abide in the heart. You must remember that these apostles had all stumbled during that dark period from the Gethsemane midnight till the resurrection morn. He said to them, “You will all be offended in Me this night.” They were offended i. e., stumbled actually giving up their faith in His Christhood, and simply believed on Him as the greatest prophet the world had seen. Hence they needed the enduement of the Holy Ghost to restore and reestablish them in the faith of His Christhood.

“ Whosesoever sins you may remit, are remitted unto them; whosesoever sins you may retain, have been retained.” This passage has, by the Romanists, been pressed far into ritualism and priestcraft. The apostles and their successors, as He here says, were invested with the gospel commission to preach and work for Jesus till He returns in His glory. The Word is our authority. Hence, in the application of God's revealed truth, there is a sense in which the called and sent minister, as the substitute and subordinate of Christ, does remit or retain sins. It is the key-power (Matthew 16) which Jesus committed to Peter and all the apostles, and to their successors to the end of time.