ON THE ROAD TO EMMAUS

Too often the forty-day period between the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ and His ascension is overlooked because of its brevity. Yet more is recorded in Scripture concerning these forty days than is written of the life of our Lord from His birth to the time He was thirty years old. These forty days, moreover, are far more significant to us than those early years before His public ministry. We rob ourselves of exceeding riches of His grace by not laying hold of the things revealed to us by Him during this important period.

There are at least two reasons for the importance of the post-resurrection ministry of Christ. First, these forty days were a continuing witness of His resurrection from the dead —a tangible demonstration so stated in Acts 1:3: "To whom also he showed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days."

The number forty is in itself significant to those Who take note of numbers in Scripture. It is the number of full probation, of ample demonstration, of complete testing. God kept Israel in the wilderness forty years. Elijah hungered and fasted for forty days, and the Lord Jesus Christ fasted for forty days. Thus before Christ entered on His earthly ministry He was tested forty days, and before He entered upon His heavenly ministry, He was demonstrated forty days. A second reason for the importance of our Lord's post-resurrection ministry is that we are more vitally related to the life of Christ after His resurrection than before. Too many people put a wrong emphasis upon the life of the Lord Jesus: they continually speak of the Carpenter of Nazareth, the Man of Galilee, and the One who walked the dusty roads. AU that is fine, but it is to the living Christ that we are related. "Though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more" (II Cor. 5:16).

When Paul wrote in Galatians 2:20, "I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me, what Christ did He mean? Clearly he was speaking of the resurrected Christ who today is at God's right hand. Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me."

Again we read in II Corinthians 5:17: "Therefore if any man be m Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new." What is meant by that? Simply that Believers are no longer related to the first Adam, but to the resurrected Christ. How important!

In these messages we shall confine ourselves to five conspicuous incidents in which our Lord revealed Himself and taught things essential for us today— situations in which we see Him on the road to Emmaus, on the Sea of Galilee on the shore of Galilee, on the Mount of Olives and at the right hand of God.

Notice at the outset that our Lord identified Himself after His resurrection with four geographical locations which you can find on the map and to which you can go. If we may make use reverently of the words of a well-known organization, we may say that He revealed Himself on the land, on the sea, and in the air.

First, we see Him on the road to Emmaus. This road was not as famous as the Jericho road; however, for me it has more meaning, for I read that on the Jericho road a man fell among thieves, but on the Emmaus road two humble unknown disciples met the living Christ face to face.

"Unknown!" someone may say. "One of them was named Cleopas."

True, but we do not know who Cleopas was. He is an unknown disciple— a John Doe. Whoever they may have been, Cleopas and his companion were on a little-frequented road — a path just six and one-half miles long. It was not a super-highway, just a narrow, dusty roadway. Yet it was here that Christ made His first public appearance. He had appeared privately to the women in the cemetery, but He chose an unknown road and unknown men for His first appearance in a place frequented by the general public. There followed one of the most remarkable appearances of the living Christ — an interview in which the sublime touched the simple, when the supernatural acted in a natural way.

Let this scene become alive to you. Two unknown men have left Jerusalem late in the afternoon following the resurrection, after having heard startling things. They are talking excitedly and frankly, and are so interested in their conversation that they do not, at first, notice a stranger who joins them Finally He interrupts to say, "What manner of communications are these that ye have one to another, as ye walk and are sad?"

"Communications" as used here means "discussions. Actually, these two men were trying to agree on some reasonable explanation as to why the Lord's body had disappeared. A prophet had been crucified, placed in a conspicuous new tomb, sealed and guarded by Roman soldiers. But now no one could find the body. This news had electrified Jerusalem. Look boldly at this fact: had the enemy been able to produce the body, Christianity would have been sealed forever in that tomb! All His adversaries needed were the earthly remains -but they could not find them. Mr. Unbeliever, tell us where the body was!

As others of the disciples, the two men on the road to Emmaus did not believe that Christ had risen Let those who have at one time or another been assailed by doubts or uncertainty concerning the resurrection keep this fact m mind: the followers of Jesus at first were doubters, too, but before the post-resurrection ministry of our Lord was ended these eyewitnesses were thoroughly, joyously convinced that theirs was a risen, living Saviour!

"Art thou only a stranger in Jerusalem? we hear Cleopas exclaim in answer to the question of the unknown Traveler (Luke 24:18). In colloquial language, Cleopas and his companion were actually saying, "Is there anybody who can be so far behind the tunes that he doesn't know what s happened here during the last three days? Brother, you are the only man in Jerusalem who doesn't know these things!"

To this, however, the Lord -still unrecognized simply answered, "What things?"

I think when He said this there was a note of humor in His voice, a twinkle in His eye. Certainly He knew all that was on their hearts, but He was drawing them out.

"Have you not heard about Jesus of Nazareth?" is their incredulous reply. Death had not destroyed the love of these men for Christ, but it revealed how limited was their faith.

Then they spoke of "Jesus of Nazareth, which was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people."

Note they said He was a prophet — they thought He was dead. Then a glimmer of hope lighted their faces: "But we trusted that it had been he Which should have redeemed Israel . . . today is the third day since these things were done. Yea, and certain women also of our company made us astonished, which were early at the sepulchre."

The other facts soon follow — how the women "when they found not his body . . . came, saying, that they had also seen a vision of angels, which said that he was alive. And certain of them which were with us went to the sepulchre, and found it even so as the women had said: but him they saw not." One can see the depths into which they went. They had loved Him; they had pinned their hopes on Him; but they failed to comprehend the resurrection.

No longer is there a twinkle in His eye; there is a flash now, almost — but not quite — of anger. Listen to Him as He speaks: "O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken: ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory?" And with this He begins to open the Word of God to them with respect to Its many references to Himself.

How I should love to have been there when He took the Scriptures and "beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself." A correct creed is essential today. We need to have the faith which was once for all delivered unto the saints. The resurrected Christ is still the great Teacher, and His program for the present hour is that the Holy Spirit whom He sent into this world, will take the Word of God and make Jesus Christ real. This is His program for the Church.

You can have a faith -a living faith -as these men came to possess, because the same Lord lives today to grip your heart with the truth of the Gospel. It was when He opened the Scriptures to them that they said, "Did not our heart bum within us, while he talked with us by the way and while he opened to us the scriptures?" (Luke 24-32)

Do you have a real and abiding faith? "God cannot be worshiped in doubt," said John Calvin. Patrick Hamilton, that great protomartyr of the Scottish reformation, said, "Faith is a certainty." And Dr. Thornwell, the great preacher of the South during the Civil War, said, "No authority can be higher than the direct testimony of God, and no certainty can be greater than that imparted by the Spirit shining on the Word."

Gregory Nazianzen, one of the early saints of the Church, said, "I love God, because I know Him. I adore Him, because I cannot comprehend Him." Paul speaks of the fact that he prayed for the Ephesians and Colossians that they might be filled with the knowledge, the epignosis, of the will of God, that the Spirit of God shining on the Word of God might make Jesus Christ real to them.

Jesus Christ lives today. His program for today is that the great truths concerning His death and resurrection shall be held high to all men. They are statements of fact which can be demonstrated. But most important, the Spirit of God can make the Lord Jesus Christ living and real to anyone who, with humble heart and honest mind, desires to know Him!

If Christ is not real to you and your faith is not vital, the difficulty does not lie in Him; for God says that if we will bring an humble mind and an honest heart to His Word, His Holy Spirit will reveal Jesus Christ to us. He will give us a burning heart. God forbid that we should fail to believe His Holy Word. "O foolish men, and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken!"