Luke 24:36-43
Please remain standing and turn
in your copy of the scriptures to Luke chapter 24. Our reading
will be verses 36 to 43. As you’re making your way there,
we have maybe two Sundays left in the gospel of Luke. Next week,
we’ll see Jesus preparing through Bible school, if you will, his
disciples to go into the world and preach the gospel. And then
two weeks from today, the week after next, we’ll see Jesus ascended
into heaven. Many of you are aware that Luke
also wrote the book of Acts and Luke wrote it to Theophilus to
carry on his writing of giving an orderly account so that the
things he was taught might be confirmed in his mind and heart.
He continues on in the book of Acts to show the work of Jesus
through his apostles, building his church. And so in three weeks,
we’ll take up a study of Luke’s gospel. Let’s give our attention
now to today’s passage, Luke 24, beginning at verse 36. Speaking
of Jesus’ disciples gathered together in the upper room, it
says, as they were talking about these things, Jesus himself stood
among them and said to them, peace to you. But they were startled,
they were frightened, and they thought they had saw a spirit. And he said to them, why are
you troubled? And why do doubts arise in your hearts? See my
hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me and see, for
a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.”
And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his
feet. And while they still disbelieved for joy and were marveling, he
said to them, have you anything here to eat? And they gave him
a piece of broiled fish and he took it and he ate it before
them. Pray with me. Lord, we know without your spirit’s
help that we cannot see, we cannot hear. Our hearts cannot receive
your word of grace, and so give us your help. May your word enlighten
sinners in need of your grace, and may it strengthen your saints
who need their faith fortified this day. Do both mighty works,
we pray, in the name of Christ, amen. You may be seated. Well, it’s still the first day
of the week in our study of Luke. It’s still Sunday. It’s still
the day of resurrection. It’s the day that would become
for Christians for the last 2000 years, the Lord’s day. It’s the day we worship every
single Sunday. We observe the great resurrection
of our Lord Jesus Christ. And we find again our disciples
in the upper room. We find them in the upper room
and we want to come back to them in just a few moments. But let’s
think for a moment. Let’s imagine for a moment, uh,
maybe a little sanctified wondering what’s going on in the other
upper room. Well, it’s not an upper room.
It’s a chamber. What’s going on in the place
of the Sanhedrin? What’s going on in the minds
and the hearts of the Pharisees and the scribes, the elders of
the people? What’s going on in their little
world? News of Jesus’ resurrection,
word of the empty tomb surely has reached them. But you know,
they’ve been dusting off their hands and they’ve been saying,
we’re rid of this teacher. We’re rid of this Jesus. We have stopped his insurrection
in Jerusalem. We have put a halt to his teaching
in the temple and his popularity among the people. No more are
we under the influence of the one who cleansed the temple.
No more are we under the influence of him who healed the sick or
taught with great amazement from the crowds. Don’t you know they
spoke of in their upper room and post resurrection discussion
of the whip and the crown and the sword and the nails and the
cross and the cries of agony and the death and the tomb. And can’t you imagine from their
wickedness, which was on display on that Thursday and Friday of
Jesus passion week. Can’t you imagine in their evil
hearts, they were rejoicing. We would say in our day and age,
they were tap dancing on Jesus’ headstone. They were full of
glee, full of joy. All the problem of Jesus has
been wrapped up neatly and we can move on in our religious
exercises. We can imagine also that the
Roman authorities must have thought the same. For Rome, the week
of Passover was a busy time in Jerusalem. Think of Greensboro
when the ACC tournament comes to town. More people. Hotels
are full. The restaurants are full. If
you live in Greensboro, you stay home. Maybe some of you have
lived in a city or town where there was a NASCAR track and
150,000 people converge on your town. You stay home. It’s a massive
undertaking to host. this number of people. And so
Rome was happy. The Passover crowds were disappearing. People were going home, going
back to work. The sanitation department was
cleaning up the city and the streets from all the hullabaloo
from the recent days. Now back to the upper room. Back
to the meeting place of the disciples, the place where the 11, well,
the 12 less Judas were gathered. Probably in attendance were the
women and some of the other disciples close to Jesus. When we see the
word disciples, it can mean the 12 or the 11, but it can mean
also those who follow after Jesus. teaching, they adhere to his
gospel call in their lives. And as they’re in this upper
room, they’re discussing the Jesus sightings. If you take
the gospels and you look at all the post-resurrection appearances
of Jesus, there were five. And we know that Luke takes a
little bit different angle than the other gospel writers. So
we’re on our third post-resurrection experience with Jesus. He appeared
to Mary, he appeared to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus,
and now he appears to the eleven and their entourage. But they’re
discussing all of the Jesus sightings, including the ones not in Luke. They’re saying, you know, is
this real? Mary, did you really see him?
Did he speak to you? Was it his voice? Peter, what
did you see when you went in the tomb? Was it really empty?
Are you sure those were his folded grave cloths? And then the two
who were on the way to Emmaus and Jesus walked with them and
they knew it not until he showed himself in the breaking of the
bread that night at supper. Those two had just appeared and
they’re discussing these things our passage tells us. Is the
resurrection real? Is it not real? Is this an apparition? Is this a ghost? What what are
we to believe? How do we explain what has taken
place in Jerusalem and now on this resurrection morning? And you see, there’s a there’s
a waffling between faith and doubt. There’s a waffling between
unbelief and belief. There’s a. a failure on the one
hand to remember all that God had said in his word to these
disciples from the lips of Jesus. They sat in synagogue when he
read from the scroll in Isaiah, they saw literally the, the greater
Elijah serving and teaching and making miracles before their
very eyes. And yet they doubted. But then
there’s faith on the other hand, And isn’t that the way it is
sometimes in our Christian living? We come to Jesus for the first
time and we, we, we know of our sin. We know of our need of a
savior. We hear the gospel and we hear the truth and we say,
yes, Lord, that’s what I want. But then we get in the rut of
living. We forget to take up our Bibles
and read. We get busy with life. And so
we miss a few Sundays and then we miss a few more Sundays. And
then we, we, we, we’ve missed a few Lord’s suppers. We’re busy. Our calendar has more time for
worldly things than it does eternal things. And so we don’t feed
our souls. And life happens. And we doubt. Our faith hasn’t been strengthened.
The truth hasn’t been poured into our hearts. Lord’s Day,
the first day of the week, is a special day in the life of
Christians. In fact, it’s so special that
the Puritans used to call it the market day of the soul. Now,
I know the way you shop because it’s the way I shop. We Amazon
things to the front porch. And it’s amazing how yesterday
you could order something, you’ll return home from church and there’ll
be two or three envelopes on the porch. You order your groceries
at Walmart or Harris Teeter, you pull up and they stick it
in the back. You can market any day of the week. That’s the point,
right? But back in the days of the Puritans, when they spoke
of the market day of the soul, there was only one market day
for the town. And that was the day everyone
brought their wares and their produce to sell and to barter
and to trade. And so you went to market day
if you wanted to live. And if you really want to live,
you went to the market day of the soul, which was God’s house.
And so one of the things you’ll often hear us say and pray in
this congregation is, Lord, fill us full this Lord’s day with
the good stores from the riches of your heavenly provisions in
order that we might live another week by your grace, for your
glory and for the good of our neighbor. And so you skip market
day on Thursday. You’ve got no fruits and veggies.
You’ve got no milk. You’ve got no eggs. You’ve got
no chicken or poultry or whatever. But you skip the market day of
the soul and you begin to dry up. And so when life comes your
way, it’s easy to be like our disciples and to doubt and to
wonder. You know, the old picture of
the young girl who wonders if Billy loves her. So she picks
a daisy. He loves me. He loves me not. And he or she
picks through the daisy until she gets to the last petal. And
what is her hope? That she lands on he loves me.
And so many Christians live that way. God loves me. God loves
me not. And it does not have to be that
way. God shows us himself clearly in his word. And as we’ll see
when we come to the Lord’s table, he shows himself to us clearly
in his sacraments. And so dear brothers and sisters,
if you come to the market day of the soul, week by week, year
by year, throughout your lifetime, oh yes, you’ll have doubts, you’ll
have struggles, you’ll have hardships, you’ll have things that rock
your personal and family life. But they’re more easily handled
when you keep your eye on the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. And so we see in the life of
the disciples, oh, it’s easy to follow him. Look at the miracles.
Yes, Lord. Look at the healings. Yes, Lord.
Look at his teaching and how the crowds wonder at him. Yes,
Lord. But when it comes to his arrest,
no, Lord. When it comes to his trial, no,
Lord, when it comes to his his sufferings and the cross and
the darkness and the earthquakes, it’s at a distance, Lord. And so now we have these disciples
gathered in the upper room, reeling, reeling in agony and in doubt
and in turmoil in their souls. And so what is needed? Well,
Jesus provides for them exactly what is needed. Assurance is
needed. Evidence is provided, and then
their hearts are settled by the grace of God. Think with me just
a moment about assurance needed. This morning, about 7.30, we
had a thunderstorm. Most of you live in this area,
so it probably came your way. And if some of your little ones
were still in bed and those loud cracks of thunder, which by my
1,001 and 1,002 and all the rest count, They were pretty close. You can look on your weather
app and it will tell you exactly how close, but they were scary
close. And if you had a puppy dog or
a child in your house, they came running for comfort. And that’s
exactly what Jesus means to provide. Just as children need comfort
for their parents in a thunderstorm or in another difficult situation
in life, God’s children need comfort and he means to provide
it. There was a storm in their life. They witnessed the terrible things
in Jerusalem over the past days, and they needed assurance desperately. They needed to be embraced by
Christ. And one of the great blessings
we have as Christians is Christ meets us in his house week by
week. We heard this morning in our
Sunday school lesson on the life of Samson, we heard that in the
old covenant, The people of God had the sacrifices. They had
the outward workings of the temple. They had the feast and the festivals
and its outward glory was grand and wonderful. And especially
as Solomon built his temple or as the Romans improved upon the
second temple rebuilt by the returnees from Babylon, the temple
was a grand structure. Some of us. are like that in
the world today. We want to be in a grand place
with a grand structure. We want the outward to be huge. But in this new covenant era,
we have the foolishness of preaching. We have the simplicity of the
word read and explained generally by some middle aged, overweight,
semi bald fellow, right? But if you go down the street
in the American church, it’s gotta be big, it’s gotta be glamorous,
there’s gotta be hair gel, there’s gotta be skinny jeans, there
has to be pomp and circumstance, or there has to be smoke machines
and all the rest. No, God means to make himself
known to you. He means to assure you with the
assurance needed by his word and by his spirit. And people
say, that’s not big enough, that’s not grand enough, that’s not
good enough. Well, guess what? It’s what God
has provided. Maybe you wrestled with your
mother in your childhood. She said, eat your green beans,
eat your corn, eat your potatoes. And usually there was the threat,
eat it or else it’ll be served for breakfast. No corn flakes. You’ll be eating the green beans
and corn. And we need to submit ourselves not to only to our
mother’s good diet. She knows best. but to Jesus
diet. And he has provided simply his
word and spirit. He has provided a sacrament in
the Lord’s supper. And so when assurance is needed,
Christ comes, but do you go to Christ? In this passage, he appears
in the room. He comes through the door. He’s,
he’s, he’s just there. He scares the wits out of these
disciples, but he’s coming to provide evidence. Now we don’t
live in a day where if we’re sitting at home on a Sunday morning,
having our coffee, watching whatever cable news morning show or leftover
Hallmark channel, maybe there is, God doesn’t say to himself
in Christ, you know, Susie didn’t go to church today. I’m going
to send Jesus right into her room. It doesn’t work that way. No, you come to church, you open
your Bible, you be open to the work of the spirit. So when assurance
is needed, Christ is ready for us. Well, assurance is needed
and evidence is provided. How does Jesus provide evidence
of his resurrection? Well, he pops right in the room
and what does he say? Hey, you bunch of doubters, what’s
wrong with you people, right? That’s how we would do it. Oh,
he says, peace. Peace, I’m here, it’s me. And so in the midst of their
discussions and their doubts, their ruminations of the awful
events of recent days in Jerusalem, Jesus comes to assure them. And how does he do so? He gives
them evidence. He says, look, it’s me. Here
are my hands. Here are my feet. The radio in the car this morning
was on the Bluegrass station. And on Sunday mornings on the
Bluegrass station, at least the channel that was on in my vehicle,
it’s Gospel Bluegrass. Let me make a recommendation
to you. Listen to Bluegrass. Don’t get your theology from
Gospel Bluegrass. There was a song about the three
rusty nails. And the child with me in the
car said, how did they know they were rusty? And so we had this
wonderful little discussion of maybe it was Roman tradition
to actually polish the nails first, right? Or maybe only use
brand new ones or whatever. We need to be careful that the
evidence provided to us is not sentimentalism. Oh, maybe they
were rusty. Oh, and then it got worse. It
was three rusty nails on a dogwood tree. How do we know that it
was a dogwood tree? It could have been oak. It could
have been, Terebinth, it could have been a cedar of Lebanon,
who knows, but we need to be sure that the evidence provided
are the holes in the hands and not some wonderful rosy feeling
about the oxidization of Roman spikes. Does that prove it to
you that three nails were found outside Jerusalem? Does that
prove it to you that, um, We know everything from excavating
this site and that cider from the annals of Roman history that
Jesus really was crucified. And this is how it went down.
No, it’s, it’s his nails. It’s, it’s his scars. We sing
of the five bleeding wounds he bears for me on Calvary. Jesus shows them his hands and
his feet, but, but, but what else does he say? He shows us
in the table, not just through his word, not just through preaching.
He shows us at his table. This is my body. What are these
emblems of his death that we’ll partake of in the Lord’s supper?
It’s his body broken for you. It’s his blood shed for you. Now let’s don’t stop there. Assurance
needed evidence provided. Here’s my body. Here’s my hands.
Here’s my feet. Here’s his Lord’s supper. This
will stretch you a little. But think bigger picture in the
Bible when John, the apostle who is no doubt in this upper
room is an old man and he’s the pastor at the church of Ephesus
and he’s in his 90s and it’s near the turn of the second century
and he’s arrested and placed in prison on the Isle of Patmos
because he had been preaching and ministering in the name of
Christ. And they said, no, don’t do that. Well, he’s in the. on
the Isle of Patmos, a prison island, an island for exiles.
He’s maybe out in the sun. Who knows? It’s the Lord’s day
and he’s caught up in the spirit and he sees into heaven and he
gives the church this gift of the book of Revelation to encourage
saints in the spiritual realities in the heavenly places and the
blessed hope of what’s to come when Jesus returns. And one of
the things that John sees when he’s in the spirit, you can read
of it in chapter five in the book of Revelation. He sees a
lamb looking as though he had been slain. Now in your mind
and in our American perfection, we say, well, when Jesus went
to heaven, the scars went away. When Jesus went to heaven, his
teeth got whitened. Right? When, when Jesus went
to heaven, he wasn’t semi bald or had a bulge or maybe messy
fingernails. He didn’t went to heaven. He’s
perfect. Why is it important that when we get to heaven, we
will gaze upon a lamb looking as though slain. It’s, it’s to
encourage us. This is how much God loves us.
And he alone is the one who is to be worshiped. And so assurance
is needed. Evidence is provided. Well, the third thing we see
in this passage, their hearts are settled. Now we’re gonna
get to the rest of the story next week. We’re gonna see Jesus take them
through Old Testament 101, 102, 103, 104, and 105, and then he’s
gonna give them a New Testament lesson, and he’s gonna say, I’m
outta here, you go be my witnesses, Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, the
ends of the earth, you preach the gospel to the world. And
so why is assurance needed and evidence provided? And why do
we now want to see that their hearts are settled? Friends,
you can’t be a witness if you are not convinced of the eternal
reality of redemption and that Jesus Christ is indeed raised
from the dead. And that, in fact, when our perishable
bodies are inserted into the ground on the day of our funeral. that at the last day when the
trumpet sounds and Christ returns, our bodies will be raised imperishable
and with more outward glory than ever before. And this settles
their hearts as Jesus is in their midst and he ministers to them
that it says they disbelieve for joy. Can you imagine how
giddy they were, how their hearts jittered and how they marveled
at the reality of Jesus’ resurrection. We’ve seen his hands. We’ve seen
his feet. We’ve touched his side. And then
he eats fish. Ghosts don’t eat fish. Apparitions
don’t take bites. Real people eat. Well, Jesus
will spend another 40 days with them. He’ll take them to missionary
school. They’ll be sent. They’ll go. And what will we
find in about 41 days? Jesus goes up to heaven and we’ll
find, instead of Jesus on Solomon’s porch preaching, we’ll find Peter,
the doubting apostle, the denying apostle, there in the temple
of God for weeks to come, preaching boldly, preaching boldly of the
death, the satisfaction, the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Because you see, Jesus wants
to convince us who he is and what he has done is in fact real. Because otherwise, when you go
into the world, Whether you’re a first century apostle or a
21st century witness in the office place or in the home, you need
to have a settled heart, a settled mind, a settled conscience that
indeed Jesus is risen from the dead. Pray with me. Lord, we
ask that you would settle it in our minds and hearts. what
the scriptures teach us, that it was necessary for the Messiah
to suffer and die and to be put into the grave, but on the third
day to be raised from the dead. We know the truth. We know the
reality of the truth, that Jesus was delivered over for our transgressions,
but raised up for our justification. We know that his body was laid
in the ground perishable, but raised up imperishable. And so
his rising not only justifies us, it guarantees us a resurrection
body. But as we go to be missionaries
in our families, in our neighborhoods, our marketplaces and workplaces,
we pray that we would be convinced of what is foolishness to the
world. but a blessing to us by the word and spirit and the promises
of God. So help us to believe, strengthen
our faith now by your sacrament, we pray in the name of Christ,
amen. We want to prepare for the sacrament
of the Lord’s Supper, so we’ll stand together and sing number
453, just as I am without one plea.