you'll turn in your Bibles to
Luke's Gospel. We've been looking at Mark's
summary and then looking at the extended passages of Mark's summary
in the other Gospels. Last week we followed the Lord
Jesus on the road to Emmaus and a remarkable meeting of those
men that hiding of the Lord Jesus from them and that revealing
of Himself to them. And now in Luke 24.33 we actually
have what followed from there. These men had walked seven miles
to Emmaus and immediately they turned around and walked seven
miles back again. And so they rose up at that very
hour, and returned to Jerusalem, and found the eleven, and those
who were with them gathered together, saying, The Lord is risen indeed,
and has appeared to Simon. And they told about the things
that had happened on the road and how he was known to them
in the breaking of bread. Now as they said these things,
Jesus himself stood in the midst of them and said to them, peace
to you. But they were terrified and frightened,
and supposed they had seen a spirit. And he said to them, Why are
you troubled? And why do doubts arise in your
hearts? Behold my hands and my feet,
that it is I myself. Handle me and see, for a spirit
does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have. When he said
this, he showed them his hands and his feet. But while they
still did not believe for joy and marveled, he said to them,
Have you any food here? So they gave him a piece of broil
fish and some honeycomb, and he took it and ate in their presence. Then he said to them, These are
the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that
all things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law
of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning me. And
he opened their understanding that they might comprehend the
Scriptures. Mark's summary account says in
verse 13 of chapter 16, they went and told it to the rest,
but they did not believe them either. Later he appeared to
the eleven as they sat at table, and he rebuked their unbelief
and hardness of heart, because they did not believe those who
had seen him after he had risen. Let's pray. Our Father in heaven,
as we come to your word, we pray that you would cause us to see
the Lord Jesus. And in seeing him, we would see
ourselves as we really are, heavenly Father. And by your grace, that
we might see ourselves in him. who is our peace, who is our
righteousness, who is our wisdom, who is our sanctification, who
is all, Heavenly Father. We pray that you would bless
us by opening our understanding to your words this morning, Heavenly
Father. May they be living words from heaven and not the words
of many. We pray in Jesus' name, Amen. What a remarkable word, peace.
It was bandied about and is bandied about so much. I grew up in the
flower power generation of Woodstock and all of those things and peace
signs proliferated everywhere and we thought that we would
find peace in all sorts of things. In music, in enjoying the pleasures
of the flesh, enjoying the pleasures of the flesh enhanced by drugs,
doing all of those things, we sought to find peace. And yet
we, as a generation, have become the most selfish, self-centered,
possibly the most idolatrous and wicked generation this world
has ever seen. It is just a mirage, isn't it? It's a wonderful word. Peace. Tranquility. Comfort. Rest. All those words which are
so symbolic and say so much to us. In fact, Many of us, many of
us spend so much of our time and exert so much of our energies
because we think that when we finally get to this stage in
our life, we finally reach some plateau, on that plateau will
be peace. And it just is as much a mirage
as the peace that we talked about in that flower of power generation. I love the way Robert Walker
finishes his Old Testament commentary before he begins his new, and
he says, I'm about to enter my 60th year, 60 years of sin and
vanity. Life without the Lord Jesus. Life in this flesh is a place
where there is very, very little peace. And God has so ordained
it that for His people they will have no peace in the things of
this world. We do not belong here. It is not our home. It is not
our place of comfort and how how much and how often do we
long to hear those words of the Lord Jesus spoken to our hearts. Peace to you. Peace to you. Peace in the midst
of life's storms. Peace in the midst of sin that
indwells us and entangles us. Peace from the fiery darts of
Satan. Peace from the temptations and
the lusts of this world. This passage before us is remarkable,
isn't it? It's a divinely arranged gathering
of the Lord's family. It's a divinely arranged gathering
that has a divine visitor, who has a divine word, who has the
power to give a divine enlightening and a divine understanding. Before we delve into the passage,
it's good for us to be reminded again of what is happening here. As I said earlier, the things
that happen for the first time in the scriptures are symbolic
and emblematic of big things. This is the first church gathering
after the resurrection. And the wonderful thing for these
disciples that day was that Jesus visited with them as they gathered. And Jesus spoke to them as they
gathered. And here we are in 2013, and
what's happening? According to God's Word, what
is happening right here where we sit? Turn in your Bibles to
Acts chapter 3 and we'll just have a look at two remarkable
verses. You can read more at your leisure. Again, it's a reminder that the gospel
these apostles preached in verse 18 are the things from the Scriptures
which God foretold by the mouth of all his prophets, that the
Christ would suffer. He has thus fulfilled. Repent,
therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted
out, so that the times of refreshing may come from the presence of
the Lord. And then what will he do? that he may send Jesus Christ
who was preached to you before. See, times of refreshing come
from God, and he sends Jesus Christ. We can't see him by the
eyes of flesh, and we're better off that we don't. But through
the eyes of faith, he is present. in the preaching of his gospel.
Verse 26, you can read the rest of it at your leisure. But to
you, first God, having raised up his servant Jesus, sent him
to bless you. You see, the Lord Jesus comes
personally in the preaching of the gospel to refresh, to bless,
to bless you in turning every one of you from your iniquities. It's so easy for us to think
so lightly of church. May God protect us. This is the household of God. It's a dwelling place of God
in the Spirit. So the experience that we're
going to look at today of these apostles is the experience of
God's church for this last 2,000 years, and it is the experience
of God's church here and now in this world. It's not that
I said it, God said it. God said that he comes and visits. So let's look at these remarkable
events. Here we have the 11, which is
a description of the apostles minus Judas. They were there,
gathered in this room. John says in John 19, they were
assembled for fear of the Jews. In fact, for these disciples,
the stories of the resurrection rather than, in some sense, bringing
comfort at this stage, brought even more dangers. Here you have
stories being paraded around Jerusalem to a mob of people
who had just killed the Lord Jesus, saying that this very
group who's gathered here were the ones who stole the body of
the Lord Jesus from under the very noses of sleeping soldiers. They had reason to fear the Jews.
If they can do that to the Lord Jesus, they can do that to these
men so, so easily. But Jesus has gathered them. They have reason to fear the
Jews. They had very good reason to
have great hope. That day, He had met with Mary. That very day he had met with
two women who had held him. That very day he had met with
these two men on the road to Emmaus. That very day he had
met with Peter. They have reason from the scriptures. They have reason from the voice
of the angels to believe the testimony. And yet, there they
were, as a fearful group, gathered for fear. And how must those
words of the Lord Jesus, that he promised them those few nights
beforehand, what did he say in John 14, 27? Peace I leave with
you. My peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give
to you. Let not your heart be troubled,
neither let it be afraid. Every single circumstance they'd
experienced in those past couple of days had made those words
of the Lord Jesus seem very, very hollow indeed. Peace I leave with you. and he
gets hung on a cross. Peace I leave with you. And he's
buried in a tomb. Peace I leave with you. And they've
all, each one, gone his own way, trying to protect himself, trying
to escape what almost inevitably lay before them. Peace I give
to you, not as the world gives do I give to you. The world gives
a mirage of peace and then takes it away in a flash. Just go to nursing homes and
see the old people and see what's happened to all those years of
dreams and aspiration. says it gives peace, but it's
not the peace of God. But is the Lord Jesus true to
his word? Of course he is. And so he comes,
he comes in the midst of them. And he comes and he speaks these
amazing words in Luke 24, 36. He stood in the midst of them. He stood
amongst them and he said to them, peace to you. These men had three days to contemplate
their Saviour's death. They had three long days to contemplate
their cowardice. They had these days to contemplate
the promises they'd made. especially Peter who had three
days to contemplate those remarkable promises that he made. Even if
all these other weak ones fail you, Jesus, I'll be there. I'll
be there to the death, don't you worry. John might be weak,
but I'm strong. All of them had this time of
darkness. And their darkness is made even
darker by the fact that they had reason to believe. They had reason from the Lord
Jesus to believe what He had written, and they had reason
to believe the witnesses. Jeremiah calls us, so rightly
doesn't he, he calls us backsliding children. It's wonderful that
the scriptures talk about how weak our flesh is. Backsliding
children. That's a great word for us, isn't
it? We'd like to be strong. We'd like to be faithful. Backsliding
children. Then he says that amazing word
in Hosea 14 verse 4. He says, I will heal their backsliding. And why does he heal our backsliding? Because he says, I will love
them freely. Beautiful word, isn't it? He
loves them freely. In the New Testament that word
means without any cause in them at all. They hated Jesus without
a cause. He loves them freely. The cause
is not in his disciples at all. We have a divine visit and a
divine word. And this word peace means so
many things, doesn't it? It means tranquility. It means
to be at rest. It means to be reconciled. And the whole notion of peace demands that there was a time
in which reconciliation had existed and peace had existed, and this
state was interrupted. And instead of a state of peace
and reconciliation, there was a state of enmity, a state of
hostility, and something has to be done. something has to
be done to restore peace with God. That's the grand declaration
of the Gospel. It's the grand object of the
Gospel, isn't it? To bring together those who were
at enmity. It's to bring together those
who were at peace and are now at war. You see, we were all
together at peace and united with our Saviour, one with Him
in eternity. And then at the fall, hostility
came in and fear and enmity, which is in our hearts. And it's
not for nothing that in the New Testament, Peace and grace are
linked together again and again. As you open your New Testament
letters, you will find that grace and peace and mercy are mentioned
over and over again. In Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians,
Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, Thessalonians, Timothy,
Titus, Philemon, Peter, 2 John and Jude, it's always mentioned. And the Bible writers can't write
any more than a sentence or two before they have to mention it.
It seems like just a common greeting. It's much, much more than a common
greeting. All of God's words, all of them,
are full of huge symbolism. And this peace is a peace, as
you read in Psalm 85. It's a peace that God must work. It's a peace that must come from
God. It's a reconciliation that must
come from God. And it's a peace that comes from
God through His Word because the character of God is necessarily
upheld if he's going to bring reconciliation, if he's going
to bring peace and speak peace. Mercy and truth have met together. Righteousness and peace have
kissed. Truth shall spring out of the
earth. What a remarkable thing happened
on that resurrection day. truth sprang from the earth. He was put to death because of
our sins, and He was raised because of our righteousness, because
we are declared righteous by God. And now, says 2 Corinthians,
We are ambassadors of God. That God was in Christ, reconciling
the world to himself. If anyone thinks the world means
everyone in all of the world there, the next words make it
very clear that the word world is defined. Reconciling the world
to himself, not imputing their trespasses to them. They are imputed to someone else. God's holiness and God's justice
are required for the redemption of God's people. We implore you
on Christ's behalf, be reconciled to God. For God made him who
knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become. We might
be made the righteousness of God in him. This is what the gospel declares
the Lord Jesus to have done. This is what the gospel shows
us. And I think this short story
shows us wonderfully that this is all of God's work. You see, where did God, in love
and providence, take these apostles? He's taken them to a place of
desperation. He's taken them to a place where
they have nothing to bring to God. He's taken them to a place
where they have nothing to boast in. What works do those eleven
apostles have to bring to God that day? What righteousness
do they have? What mighty deeds can they bring
before God? that day. God alone is the one with the
power, the resources and the means. There is absolutely nothing
in these disciples' lives and there is nothing in our lives
that can in any way be helpful for God to achieve this great
end. In fact, until God has taken
people to a place where they see they have absolutely no righteousness,
they have done nothing good and they can do nothing good, and
they have no power of their own and they have no works of their
own that merit anything at all, until that time, They won't see
their need of a saviour and the glories of a saviour who does
absolutely everything. The glories of a saviour who
is our righteousness. The glories of a saviour who
is our sanctification. The glories of a saviour who
alone must bring peace to us. We're blind. My friend, we are
blind until God shows us what we are. And that, I believe, is why these
apostles were taken to this place. To make them realise again and
again that salvation is God's activity. Salvation is the Lord
Jesus' work and it's Him alone. We must be brought to a place
by God where His peace must come to us because of who He is, who
He really is, and what He has really done. See, the words spoken to those
apostles are the same words that he speaks to his people who are
like them in this world today. When we have nothing, he becomes
everything. When we are in desperate need,
he becomes everything that fulfills it. He does something remarkable
to these apostles as well. See, peace as a word might be
helpful, but peace experienced and peace that's bound and tied
to historic realities that God has written in his word and God
has fulfilled in the life of his son is a peace that God's
children can lay hold of again and again and again. In verse
37, they were terrified and frightened and supposed they'd seen a spirit. God was honest about their emotions
and he said to them, why are you troubled? Why do doubts arise
in your heart? Is that not true of you? It's true of me. The solution ways to the fears
and doubts of God's people is for us to look away to look away
from ourselves to look away from the circumstances around us verse
39 he says behold my hands and my feet that it is I myself those same hands that John had
seen nailed to that cross, those same feet that shed that precious
blood were there before them. They were there for them to touch
and to feel, to know the reality of resurrection. But it is I
myself, it's not another, It is really Him. Then he says,
handle me and see. I've often wondered about 1 John
and what he is referring to. I think at the beginning of his
letter he's actually referring to the resurrected Christ. Just
listen to the way he begins. That which was from the beginning,
which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which
we have looked upon our hands of handle concerning the word
of life, the life was manifested. And we have seen and bear witness
and declare to you that eternal life which was with the Father
and was manifested to us. I think he's talking about the
resurrected Lord Jesus. That which we have seen and heard,
we declare to you, that you may have fellowship with us. You
may be one in community with us. And our fellowship, truly
our fellowship, is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ. And these things we write to
you that your joy may be full. See, it's these wounds. These wounds are the wounds the
Lord Jesus shows his disciples, are the very wounds that are
on that very lamb that is on the throne in heaven right now
that Graham wrote the bread to us. Christ is in heaven to appear
in the presence of God for us, on behalf of us. It's the Lamb,
as we read in Revelation 5-6, the Lamb which has been slain. So before the courts of God,
these hands are spread perpetually before the Father in heaven. Our names are written on his
breastplate as that high priest went into that holy of holies
in heaven. He had the names. He holds his
little ones in his hand. Can anyone take them out of my
hand, he says? Can any one of these little ones
be lost? The Father has given them to
me. They cannot be lost. They can't be taken out of his
hands. If you think about these disciples,
how far from the hands of God must they have felt in those
days. And yet, the Father's eye had
never moved off them for one second. Never for one tiny millisecond
was there anything other than holy love for these disciples. These hands and this blood plead
for us. And they plead for us in heaven
when we have no time or often no inclination to plead for ourselves
or even desire. There is one who perpetually
stands at that throne in heaven. and He pleads for us. He pleads His sacrifice, His
blood. My little children, these things
I write to you so that you may not sin. It would be lovely if
God's children sinned less. And if anyone sins, It's a word
of reality and a word of comfort. And if anyone sins, we have in
our possession, for us, we have an advocate with the Father,
Jesus Christ the righteous. And he is the propitiation for
our sins, and not only ours, but also for the whole world. It's remarkable what verse 39
says. He says, you shall behold my
hands. You shall behold my feet. God's children will lay hold
of that resurrected Christ. We will behold what he's done. For God's children, that blood
that was shed is precious blood. That body that was broken is
a precious, precious body. And the Lord Jesus comes in mercy
which is abundant because he comes to where we are in most
need. These disciples needed the assurance. They had walked with him for
three years. They needed the assurance of
his bodily presence and the reality of his resurrection. And so do
we, and we have it in the fact that the Lord Jesus showed himself.
He stood to meet their needs at the most basic level. He's
gracious. He's always gracious to his own,
and he's especially gracious in our weakness. These men should
have believed They should have believed the scriptures, they
should have believed the witnesses, they should have believed the
Lord himself. But they were weak, just like
us today. And we don't dishonor the fact
that we are weak. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 9.22,
to the weak, I became weak so that I might win the weak. weak in his doctrine or his proclamation,
but he didn't want to appear before men as self-righteous
and more holy than he really was in the Lord Jesus. He wanted
people to know that he was frail. He wanted people to know that
his strength lay in another and not in himself. And he showed them, verse 40,
his hands and his feet. And then he goes on even further
to eat in their presence. Have you any food here? So they
gave him a piece of broil fish and some honeycomb, and he took
it and ate it in their presence. Just a remarkable picture of
resurrection, isn't it? I don't know what heaven holds
for us. But resurrection involves delighting
in the things of God's creation, even simple things like broiled
fish. and honeycomb. Honeycomb is delightful. I haven't had it for years until
I went out to Craig's and had some a little while ago. It is
so beautiful. I don't know whether you've tasted
pure honeycomb straight out of a bee's hive. It is just lovely. Resurrection involves a reality,
a physical reality, but also resurrected life. involves something which is even
more significant for us here now. The Lord Jesus takes them
as he did the men on that road. He takes them to something even
more significant. Verse 44 of Luke 24. He said
to them, These are the words which I spoke
to you while I was still with you. I spoke to these marvellous
words that all things All things must be fulfilled which were
written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms,
all of the Old Testament. All of the Old Testament is about
Him. All of the Old Testament speaks
of Jesus Christ and Him crucified. We spoke a lot about that last
week. But the Lord Jesus must suffer many things, he says in
Mark 8.31. He must suffer. He must be killed. And three days later, he must
rise. The Scriptures must be fulfilled. That word you have before you
is a word from God and every little tiny bit of it is perfectly
true and will be perfectly fulfilled and you and all of creation will
witness the fulfillment of all of it. The death of the Lord
Jesus was according to God, according to the determined counsel, the
determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God. He died in our place. He died as our substitute and
he did it all by the sovereign will and the eternal decree of
God. As Isaiah 53 says, it pleased
the Lord to bruise him. It pleased the Father to crush
him. It was must be fulfilled. His
death was no accident. It was all purposed and this
divine meeting was just the wonderful declaration from heaven that
all of this these amazing promises that he made to David. Blessed
is the man whose sins are forgiven. The Lord doesn't remember the
sins of his people. He's blotted them out. He says,
fury is not in me. He's forgotten them. In Jeremiah
50, he has these remarkable words. on that day, on that great day
when all things are revealed. He says someone's going to search
for the sins of God's people. Jeremiah 50 verse 20. In those
days and at that time, says the Lord, the iniquity of Israel
shall be sought. and there shall be none. They will try and find sin on
Graham Mesner and there'll be none. And the sins of Judah and
they will not, they shall not be found because I will pardon
those whom I preserve. The death of the Lord Jesus is
a fulfilment. It's a declaration of His sovereignty. It's necessary for our salvation. It says that the law is fulfilled. And that mighty law that caused
Israel to tremble is taken out of the way. It's obliterated
and erased against God's people. There is no need for law for
God's children. Divine justice is satisfied. Sin is put away. It was exposed
in all its horrors and it was punished with perfect justice. and now sinners are pardoned,
set free, forgiven, justified. May the righteousness of God. See the peace that the Lord Jesus
brought with these, brought with himself and his presence to these
people is a peace that passes understanding. It's a peace from
God To have peace with God, to be
in perfect peace, you need to be as holy as God. You need to be as free from sin
as God himself. You need to be as perfectly righteous
as God is himself. Otherwise you will never have
peace with God. And if that's not the peace you
have, then the peace you have will be taken away. The greatest
crime in the Old Testament and the greatest crime in the New
Testament is for someone to be in my place and someone to say
to you, peace, peace, when you have no peace. God will give
you peace. And if God gives you peace, it
doesn't matter what happens. It doesn't matter about the circumstances
of your life. It doesn't matter what sins you
might commit. God will restore that peace to
you and man won't take it away. It's a divine word that comes
from a divine visitor. he died, the just for the unjust,
that he might bring us to God. And all of this is according
to the Scriptures. God's children find their peace
in God as he is revealed in the Lord Jesus in the Scriptures. It's extraordinary, isn't it,
how we have so many meetings often with people who claim to
be God's children, just like the Jews outside of this room
that day, claim to be God's elect children. And yet, when the real
Jesus is presented to them, they are in horror about a God who
is absolutely sovereign. who loves his own, and then particular,
with a wholly passionate zeal, who has a gospel which is about
him taking away the sins of his people and his people alone,
and him presenting them perfect before God, holy and righteous. Men love a gospel. in their flesh which allows them
to feel something of their own righteousness. In 1 Corinthians
15 Paul talks about this gospel. The gospel is a person. It's
a person received. It's a person you stand in. It's a person you are saved by. You have peace from God. You
have received this person. You stand with this person are
saved by Him. He died as a volunteer. He died on our behalf. And He
died victoriously. And He reigns victoriously. And
part of His reign is His presence with His people in His gatherings. He comes as a priest and he enters into that holy
place with his own blood, once and for all, having obtained
eternal redemption, once for all. For if the blood of bulls
and goats and the ashes of heifer sprinkled the unclean sanctifies
for the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood
of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself with our
spot to God. What will he do? He'll cleanse
your conscience. That's peace. A clean conscience
before God. A perfect record before God. He'll clean your conscience,
according to Hebrews 9.14, from dead works. What are dead works? Jerusalem was full of works that
weekend. High priests going into the Holy of Holies. Thousands
and thousands of lambs being sacrificed. Hundreds of sermons
being preached. What are dead works? Dead works
are anything that allow us to boast in any way about ourselves. It cleanses our consciences from
works that we have done. Works that we think are meritorious. I want to have a clean conscience.
I want to have peace with God. I hope you want to have peace
with God. I hope that's the desire that
the Lord has laid on your heart. Isaiah says in chapter 26, he
says, I will keep him in perfect peace,
whose mind is fixed on the Lord Jesus.