Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1254
“Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst, and said unto them, Peace be with you.” John 20:19.
WE do not wonder that when certain devout Greeks came up to keep the feast at Jerusalem they said to Philip, “Sir, we would see Jesus.” Who would not want to see Him? Who that has been redeemed by His precious blood does not long to behold Him? As a child pines for its mother, so have we been sick with strong desire to behold our Lord! Yet to see the King in His beauty with these eyes of ours is denied to us for the present. But the reasons for delay are so gracious that we are well content to tarry. It is better for us that the bodily Presence of our Lord should be withdrawn, for otherwise the Comforter would not come unto us and the Comforter, even the blessed Spirit, brings us richer gifts than even the personal Presence of Christ could have conferred!
Still, reasons cannot utterly remove longings, and we would still be glad to behold our Lord. Is it not natural that a soldier should wish to hear his Captain’s voice? At least there is something excusable about it, if, every now and then, we dare to wish that we could have a glimpse, even if it were ever so short, of our own Well-Beloved, altogether lovely Lord. If we could but catch a glimpse of that face whose brightness outshines the sun, how it would stimulate us! But, Brothers and Sisters, it must not be. Until He, Himself, shall come, or till He shall take us up to be with Him where He is, we must be content with faith and postpone our desires for sight.
So far as the needs of the Gospel kingdom are concerned, the need for eye-witnesses is over. Apostles who had seen the Lord are required no more. Forty days of our Savior’s tarrying here below sufficed to let a sufficient number of persons fully assure themselves that He had actually risen from the dead. And Jesus took great care that there should be left behind a body of evidence concerning the actual resurrection of His body which would render that fact indisputably certain to all candid minds. Probably there is no statement of human history which is better sustained by evidence than this fact—that Jesus of Nazareth who hung upon the Cross and died, did afterwards rise again from the dead!
The time of eye-witnesses is now over. More evidence would be superfluous and we are now in the mid-ocean of faith. The Lord knows that sight interferes with faith, and, therefore, He does not give us a mixture of the two. We do not walk by sight and faith, but, “we walk by faith, not by sight.” To let us occasionally see, would, in fact, remove us out of the realm of faith and bring us down from the high position of Believers to the low platform of sightseers. Adieu, therefore, for a while, O Sight! Yet, dear Brothers and Sisters, there are spiritual visits from Jesus which are more than sufficient substitutes for His bodily Presence and these we may still desire and expect.
Christ may be really present where He is not materially present! There is a discerning of the Presence of Christ which we must all have, especially when we come to the communion table, for we are told that he who there discerns not the Lord’s body eats and drinks unworthily. There is a discerning of the Lord’s Presence in the midst of His people which is essential to the power of our assemblies. I pray that we may have this, even now, and if we do, we shall not be a whit behind those who saw Jesus with their eyes and heard Him with their ears! I do not think there is any privilege which the actual bodily Presence of Christ could bestow which we may not obtain at this moment by the actual spiritual Presence of Christ, if we do but exercise faith in Him as being in the midst of us.
He has said, “Lo, I am with you always,” and this is the pledge of every conceivable good. Concerning this Presence I shall speak, using the story as told by the Evangelists as a sort of type of that spiritual communion which I hope we may now realize.
I. Our first point this morning shall be, THERE IS A PECULIAR MANNER IN OUR LORD’S COMING TO HIS DISCIPLES. You will see, first, that He comes gladly to them. I am sure He came gladly, for He came so soon and so often. First, He appeared to Mary Magdalene, then to Simon, then to the two at Emmaus and then to the 11 at Jerusalem. There are at least four times in a day in which the Risen One seeks His Brethren. These visits of His were in different places, somewhat remote from each other. It was a busy day with Him, this first day after He had risen from the dead! How true it was after His Resurrection, even as it was in ages long ago, that His delights were with the sons of men.
He evidently loved to be where His people were. He might have gone away and spent the 40 days in the desert, triumphing on the scene of His former conflict. Or He might have surveyed the earth in lonely travel, but instead He spent His sacred leisure with His people. And on the first day after He had risen from the grave we have record of no less than four interviews which He had with His disciples. Remember that on each occasion He came right willingly and showed Himself freely. Magdalene, it is true, went to the tomb seeking Him, but He might readily have remained unknown had He so desired.