Now we're turning back to Luke
chapter 24. Verse 40, And when he had thus
spoken, he showed them his hands and
his feet. I think it's useless And I suppose that's the right
word to use for a mere mortal to try to describe the sufferings
of Christ. I think we ought to make an attempt
at it, but it's an attempt that can
never succeed fully. I can't describe the sufferings
of our Master. To begin with, his sufferings
were silent, and that's a most difficult part of suffering. To be wronged, to be lied upon
and lied about, to be innocently beaten, to be
spit upon by the lowest of low, the outcasts, to have a mere mortal like Herod,
Pontius Pilate, and a paperweight high priest
to stand you up before a multitude of your own creatures and try
you in a mock court, and yet not to open your mouth. The Scripture
says our Lord was led as a lamb to the slaughter. As a sheep
before his shearers is dumb, he opened not his mouth. They
brought false witnesses to lie on him, and Christ never uttered
a word. That's one thing we won't stand for. If anyone lies about
us, we're going to quickly come to our defense, and I feel that
we're justified in doing so. If anyone strikes us, and we
do not deserve it, we're going to retaliate. But our Lord neither
cried out nor lifted up his voice. He answered not a word, so much
so that Pilate was amazed. He said, Don't you know that
I have the power to set you free or crucify you and you answer
me not a word?" And in the midst of all this
agony and suffering, our Lord never spoke a word. He said to
his disciples, no man takes my life from me. I have the power.
I have the power to lay it down. I have the power to take it up.
Nobody takes it from me. Yet throughout Pilate's hall
and throughout the dungeon experiences in Herod's palace and throughout
the agony and suffering and lies and accusations in the hall of
Caiaphas, the high priest, he never said a word. He suffered
silently. And then our Lord's sufferings
were soul sufferings. Scripture said he made his soul
an offering for sin. When we look at Calvary, we think
a great deal of the physical agony, the natural blood that
was shed, and the sweat that poured forth, and the humiliation,
and the pricking, burning, thirsting fever. We don't think too much
about the soul suffering. I believe that our Lord's soul
agony was far greater than his physical agony. It started back
yonder in intensity in the Garden of Gethsemane, when he left his
disciples and went a little farther and fell on his face before the
Father. And he cried, O God, not what
my will, but thy will be done, but if it be thy will, let this
cup pass from me And in his awful agony and wrestling, the blood
poured from his pores as great drops of sweat. Then our Lord, bearing the shame
and sin, to Golgotha's hill, where he was made sin for us,
and the Heavenly Father turned his back upon him, and the Master
cried, My God, why hast thou forsaken me? I don't know whether you've ever
experienced real, unadulterated, plain shame or not. The utter shame. Probably you
never have. But our Lord experienced the
shame of sin, the guilt of sin, the agony of sin. And there never
has lived a creature on this earth that hated it and despised
it and abhorred it quite like he did. And there's never been
a creature on this earth that understood it quite like he did.
And there's never been a creature on this earth that avoided it
quite like he did. And yet all of the sin and shame
of all of the believers of all generations were laid on him. And our Lord was made an offering
for sin, and his soul suffered. And then the Master suffered
physical torture. He was beaten. The Scripture
says they beat him with their fist. The Scripture says that
they scourged him with a cat of nine tails. That's thirty-nine
stripes. They spit upon him, they plucked
out his beard, they put a black mask over his face so that he
couldn't see, and then the soldiers walked by one by one and slapped
his face and said, you're a prophet, tell us who hit you. The Scripture
says his face was so marred that he didn't even look like a man.
Bloodied mass is what it was. a swollen, purple, black, bloody
mass. And then they took him out to
Calvary and made him bear his own heavy wooden cross from the
courtyard to the place of crucifixion. He fell under the weight of the
cross. They pressed a crown of thorns into his brow, piercing
his brow as the blood spurted forth. Then when they took him
out there, having refused him food and water, they stripped
him naked and stretched him out on a rough, splintered, covered wooden cross. And there they drove spikes into
his hands and into his feet, and lifted him up in the air
and dropped the cross down into the ground in a hole prepared
for us. hanging there on that cross in
the middle of the day from 9 a.m. to 3 in the afternoon. Our Lord
suffered under the burning sun, under the fever-festering wounds,
the blood pouring forth, the throbbing in His head and His
breast and His wounds and His back rubbing against that cruel
tree, and He suffered. Oh, how He agonized with no relief. suffering between two thieves. And when he was buried, he spent
three days in the tomb, and he came forth from the grave. It says here with the print of
those nails in his hands and in his feet. They were still
there. Now if he had pleased There's
no question about this, he could have easily, he could easily
have removed the scars from those nails, no problem there. He corrected a withered hand,
he straightened up a bent back, he gave sight to blind eyes,
he remade deaf ears, he caused lame legs that had never walked
to walk again. And if he had pleased, been pleased,
he could easily have removed the scars from his hands and
from his feet. He could have removed any trace
of the suffering, any trace of this horrible experience. His body otherwise was perfect. His body otherwise was without
a mark, without a blemish, without a spot. His body was a glorified,
incorruptible, immortal, eternal body. But in that spotless, perfect,
holy, glorified body were nail prints. What was the reason? Why did
Christ keep those scars in His hands and His feet? Now, I want us In answering that
question, I want to give you three things. First of all, why
did he show them his wounds? Why did he show them to the disciples? The first thing, I think, is
that they were infallible proof that he was the same person.
Now look at verse 37. When our Lord appeared to the
disciples, it says in verse 37, they were terrified and frightened,
and supposed that they'd seen a spirit. Now, you and I would have reacted
the same way, no question about it. If we watched a person die,
especially in such a brutal manner, we knew he was dead, dead, dead,
and we buried him. They'd never seen this before.
And he was buried. And three days later you were
sitting around in a room with some friends who all, all of
whom witnessed the crucifixion, witnessed the burial, the death
and the burial. You're sitting around and suddenly
there he stands. Now you'd be startled. You'd
be frightened to a certain extent. You'd be troubled. And our Lord
said, why are you troubled and why do thoughts arise in your
hearts? Here's proof that I'm the same person that you saw
die. Behold my hands and my feet. Well, everybody has hands and
feet. But there's something significant and particular about his hands
and feet. They've got scars where the nails
were driven. You behold my hands and my feet.
It is I myself. It is not another. It is I myself. The last time they saw Him, He
was beaten to a pulp. You say, why did these men who
knew Christ, why didn't they recognize Him here? Here are
these two men walking to Emmaus and Christ walking beside them.
Well, there are one or two reasons why they didn't recognize Him.
The first reason, it says, and their eyes were holding that
they should not know Him. But I think the second reason
is this. Have you ever known, had a friend who got real sick,
real sick, and you went to the hospital to see him or to the
home, and you came away saying, well, I wouldn't have recognized
him. I had a friend who was killed in an automobile accident. I
went right down here to the funeral home, and I walked in, and I
walked into the room where a casket was laying, where a person was
laying in a casket. Casket was standing there. I
walked in and I looked down at the man and I turned and walked
through the room and found Bill Steen. I said, where's Mr. So-and-so?
He said, you were just looking at him. I said, that's not him.
Yes, he said it is. I turned around, walked right
back in and stood there and did not recognize the man. Now when
our Lord Jesus Christ was battered and bruised and tortured and
hanging on that cross, broken. He looked, I suppose,
a hundred years old, and then disfigured, stained, beaten to
a pulp. Three days later he appears in
their midst, perfect, without a blemish, without a wrinkle,
glorious hair, perfect face, perfect figure in every respect,
why it's no doubt the disciples didn't know Him. It's no doubt
to my mind that they thought this is another, someone who
greatly resembles Him. But our Lord kept these scars, these marks on His hands and
feet that the disciples saw put there by the Roman soldiers,
and he said, all right, now look at them. Behold my hands and
my feet. Put your hand here and touch
them. Put your hand here in my side and feel where the spear
went in. I kept these scars just to prove
to you beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is I myself. He laid
in a barred tomb because he didn't intend to keep it. He was buried
where no man had ever laid. that they couldn't say someone
else arose. The angels of God themselves
came down to this earth and made a divine, heavenly announcement
that he wasn't in that tomb anymore. And he appeared to his disciples
and held out his hands and said, look at them, it is I myself. I think the second reason why
he kept these scars and why he showed them to the disciples
is found in 1 John chapter 3. that we might, and I don't know
exactly how to handle this, so you pardon me if you will, that
we might have some idea of the close relationship between the
body we have now and the body we're going to have. It says in 1 John 3, verse 2, Are we the sons of God? It does
not yet appear what we shall be. I'm not certain. I don't
know a great deal. I do know this. I do know that
the body we have now, marked by sin, scarred by sin, bent
by sin, troubled and pained by sin, is not is not the body we're
going to have eternally, though it greatly resembles it. And when God created Adam and
Eve, they must have been beautiful. Adam must have been a beautiful
specimen of man, with his clear, piercing eyes and hair and face
and figure and body. He was made in the image of God.
And Adam would be such a great improvement upon our bodies today,
I'm sure, and on the various parts of the body. And when he
sinned, this death and disease and wrinkles and problems and
sickness and all came upon this body. When Christ arose, he had
a body that could eat, though it didn't have to. He sat down
and ate with the disciples. He had a body that could offer
any more. He had a body that could not
die. It was flesh and bone. Flesh,
I think, like this flesh. He kept these scars. Touch this
flesh. Feel these scars. They're there. It's flesh. He had a body that
could be touched, that could be felt. He had a body that appeared,
though it was perfect and without blemish, it could be mistaken
in the dimness of the early morning by the woman in the garden for
a man, another, an earthbound creature. She thought it was
the gardener. When he spoke to her, when Christ spoke to her
in the garden, she turned and said, Where have you laid my
Lord? My Lord is not in the tomb. Where
have you put him? She thought it was the gardener,
and he said, Mary. She recognized him. And he walked
along with these men, and they said, Are you a stranger here?
Now brethren, it does not appear what we shall be. I don't know
a great deal about the body that we shall have when we come forth
from the grave. I do know this, look at the next
line, but we know this. It does not appear what we shall
be, but we do know this, that when he shall appear, we'll be
like him. for we shall see him as he is."
Now, if you want to know something about the body that you'll have
in the resurrection, then you go through all these scriptures
in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and read about the resurrection
of Christ, his various appearances to the disciples, what he did,
what he said, what he ate, where he went. And you'll have an idea
of the body which you're going to have in the resurrection,
for it's going to be like This body shall be raised in glory,
as our Lord was raised in glory. It shall be raised in power.
It shall be raised immortal. It shall be raised in strength.
It will be a body that cannot suffer, cannot die, cannot be
troubled. It's going to be a body like
the Lord's body. And I believe that's the second
reason why he showed them his hands, is the close significance,
or close union or close resemblance of the glorified man and the
natural man. I don't know how much. I don't
know how much. I do know it's going to be awfully
close. Now then, the second thing that
I wish to point out is why does Christ wear these wounds in heaven? He still has them. Christ still
has these wounds in His hands, these scars in His hands. He
kept them. When He was buried and came out of the tomb, He
kept these wounds. Why does He wear them in heaven? Well, first of all, they are
trophies of His victory over death, over sin, over hell, and
over the grave. They are memorials of the battle.
They are trophies of victory. When sin, death, and hell met
Christ on the cross, the archenemies of mankind ran into something
they'd never run into before. First of all, they met innocence.
When they converged on Christ at the cross, they met innocence.
As long as man was innocent, he couldn't die. Death had no
dominion over him. Sin had no power over him. Hell had no claim on him as long
as he had not sinned. Adam couldn't be touched. But
when Adam fell, he was no longer innocent. And when he fell, death
won the victory over him. You can't stay the hand of death,
you can't stop the hand of death, you can't ward off the hand of
death, you're powerless against it. Because you're a sinner,
and the soul that's in it, it shall die. But when death met
Christ, death met innocence, and could not conquer it. Though
it could bruise him, though it could bend him, though it could
give him pain and agony, it could not slay him. These are the trophies
of his victory. When death met Christ, when sin
met Christ on the cross, it met us. Every man that death had
met before was a sinner. Every man that the law had met
before was under condemnation and guilt, and therefore the
law and sin and death conquered. But when sin and the law and
death met Christ at the cross, it met holiness. It met holiness. And death was slain itself. It went down to defeat. Another
thing that death and sin met at the cross, life itself. These
enemies had never met a man who had life in himself. He had life
that was given to him, life which was loaned to him. But when they
met Christ, they met the fountain of life. And they could not,
with all of their errors and all of their poison, kill the
life that was in him, because he was the fountain of life.
He is the giver of life. And when they drank his blood,
they drank life. So his scars in heaven are trophies
of his victory. And secondly, they're the advocate
of his people. In the book of Isaiah, Isaiah
said, He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. We did
esteem Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. He was
wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities.
The chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and with His scars
we're healed. And when our Master rises at
the right hand of the Heavenly Father to pray for a believer,
He doesn't have to say a word. He just raises his hand. Here
are the advocates of the people. Here is the power of intercession. Here is the proof of deliverance.
Here is the results of the battle. Here are the reasons for forgiveness. Not your money you bring to the
altar. Not bread that you eat at the
table. not the good deeds that you do.
The advocates of every believer are the scars of Christ. Sin
has already pierced his body in our place. And then I believe
he wears them in heaven as remembrances of his sacrifice, in order that
throughout eternity we shall never forget what Christ did
us. And I'll tell you another reason
why I think he wears them in glory. When Christ comes again,
One of these days he's coming. The angel said when he ascended
to heaven, this same Jesus which has taken up you in heaven shall
so come in like manner as you've seen him go. The scripture says
the trump of God shall sound, the cloud roll back and Christ
will come again. It says, and they shall look
upon him whom they pierced. They're going to look upon him
whom they pierced. He's going to have those wounds
in his hands. They shall look upon him whom
they pierced. They shall see his wounds, and
they shall mourn for him as one mourns for an only son. Yes,
sir, he was wounded in the house of his friend. Sure, delivered
by the counsel of God, delivered by the determinate counsel of
God. But ye with wicked hands crucified him and slew him. And
when they see him come again, as the disciples who believe
will see his wounds and say, these are the advocates of his
people, these are the trophies of his victory, these are the
murals of his sacrifice, the sinners are going to say, these
are what we did. We drove the nails. We drove
the spear into his side. We pressed the crown of thorns
into his spotless holy brow. We did it! And these scars are
going to be a witness against every human being. Now, last of all, in closing,
what meaneth the nail prints? And when he had spoken, he showed
them his hands and his feet. First of all, he is saying, the
soul that sinneth shall die without the shedding of blood. There's
no remission. But because Jesus took our sin and died under the
curse and the wrath of God's justice, holiness, and righteousness,
and bore the scars that we ought to have borne, the stripes that
we ought to have borne, these are the scars which tell us the
necessity of the sacrifice and the suffering. The necessity
of it. Christ is here. There's no salvation
apart from blood. There's no salvation apart from
death. There's no salvation apart from these nail prayers. The
second thing he is saying is that he's displaying a sympathy
toward those who suffer. The Bible tells us, and let me
speak kindly to you, the Bible tells us that if we suffer with
him, we'll reign with him. The Bible tells us, they that
will live godly in Christ Jesus, shall suffer. But as we suffer, let us remember
that no suffering which we can endure or be called upon to bear
that Christ has not already endured and already borne. For he is
a high priest who can be touched with a feeling of confirmation.
You hurt, he says, I hurt more. You've been wounded, I've been
wounded You know what it is to weep? Jesus wept. You know what
it is to be forsaken? He was forsaken, even of the
Father. That's something you'll never
know. You know what it is to be persecuted and tried falsely? No man's ever been tried more
falsely than our Master. He was tempted in all points,
as we are tempted yet without sin. And these scars show forth
the sympathy of Christ for those that suffer. I read this past
week an illustration I think is very good. It says, come to Calvary and
I'll show you who must suffer. At Calvary there's a believer
and he's suffering and he's dying. At Calvary there's an unbeliever
suffering and he's dying. At Calvary, there's the God-man. Perfect God, perfect man, suffering,
and he's dying. So it does not matter what camp
a man may be in, whether he's a believer or a non-believer,
yea, whether, he's the crowning jewel of glory. In order for
sinners to be redeemed, be brought to Christ, they all must But
Christ has sympathy in his sufferings. Now the third thing, these wounds
are an invitation to all who would come. Our Master is saying
to every young person here tonight, you want forgiveness of sins?
Then you come to me, because I've already paid for your sins.
The feast is prepared, come for all things are ready, the water
of life flows freely. Here are the receipts. Here are
the receipts. God has already stamped it, paid
in full, and these are the receipts. His stripes were healed. It's
finished, it's full, it's complete, it's free, and take it. Now that's
what those scars there are. Mothers and dads and older people
here, the invitation, the scars of our Master are the free invitations
extending to you to come to Him. Place your hand in the nail-scarred
hand. Our Father in Heaven, take the
message tonight and use it to glorify and magnify Him who loves
us. And silently, any body and any
soul, for the agony and guilt and chastisement and punishment
for all our sins. And may it please the Old Father
to reveal to every young person here tonight that salvation is
in Christ, and by Christ, and for the glory of Christ, and
that Christ is salvation. That we have in Him a perfect
substitute, a perfect sacrifice, a perfect Savior. one who cannot
fail, and one whose promises shall all be kept. Come unto
me, all ye that labor late, I will give you rest." And he can give
rest because he's purchased rest, he's paid for it. It's out through
him. Move upon our hearts in thine
own way for thine own glory and for our eternal good. For Christ's
sake, amen.