Just a brief word, dear friends, at this point.
You will please turn to the familiar twenty-fourth chapter of the Gospel by Luke.
Luke 24, at verse 16:
But their eyes were holden that they should not know Him.
Verse 31:
And their eyes were opened, and they knew Him.
I would first like you to notice the exact way in which these things are said: “Their eyes were holden, that they should not know Him,” and, “Their eyes were opened.”
Notice that in both places it is as though something deliberately happened to them. It is as though there were an act on the part of Someone that made them unable to know Him.
It is as though Someone had put a veil over their eyes deliberately—just deliberately—that they should not know Him. Then it was as though that veil was just as deliberately removed, and they were not merely open, but opened: an act in the removing of that blindness. And they knew Him by the act.
You may not agree with me. I do not mind if you do not. But I believe that from the time of the resurrection to the day of Pentecost, the disciples were in a state of parenthesis. Everything was parenthetical.
That parenthesis was gathered up and culminated in the forty days after the resurrection. So that what was happening in that parenthetical period was incidental—that is, a number of incidents without any finality. Something happened, and another thing happened, but it never went through. It just happened.
On the day of Pentecost, the incidents were gathered together and made the permanent, normal Christian life—the continuous thing.
This was something happening now, and He vanished. It had not gone through; it had not been established. Nothing positive remained. Another thing would happen like that—happen in a moment, and then vanish. It was an incident, and then another incident.
When you come to the day of Pentecost, all the incidents are gathered together into one basis of life for the whole dispensation. And that, I believe, is the meaning here.
This particular incident at Emmaus, on the road to Emmaus and at Emmaus—do you notice? In that walk, and at the table—wait a minute. It is not going to be a long address. It is a focal point that I feel is central to this whole conference.
On the way to Emmaus, these two walked and were sad. They were in despondency and despair. Their hearts were down, as we say, in their boots.
Everything had gone. Nothing left.
They were dwelling upon the cross from the purely natural side—on the death side of the cross.
The death side of the cross. If you stay there, that is where you will be.
Well, I have been in a time in my life there: the message of the cross, yes, the message of the cross, but always the death side. It is as though one were standing over a corpse and dissecting it, bit by bit by bit—taking this corpse to pieces, exposing it, dwelling upon it, examining it: the self, the self.
All occupied with this wretched dead corpse. And that was the interpretation of the message of the cross: the death, the death, the death. And, you know, it got nowhere. It led to a lot of confusion and a lot of contradiction.
And this is where these two were: just on the death side of the cross, from the natural standpoint. “We trusted that it had been He which should redeem Israel.” But three days had elapsed, and so on.
They were sad and miserable, perplexed and wretched, because they were on the death side only.
The Lord Jesus, incognito, came alongside, took up the Bible, and went through the Bible, showing that although the cross was constituent in the purpose, work, and plan of God, the cross was not an end.
The cross was not an end—only of the natural. The cross really was intended to be an open door to a new hope.
Blessed be God! Peter, who was one of those men out there in Jerusalem, very miserable, eventually came to see and said:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy begat us again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
The Lord Jesus, on that walk, opened the Scriptures, and He opened, so to speak, the cross into a new life, a new realm—not an end in death.
Not an end in death, but a beginning in life.
And you notice what a change took place. At the end of the day, at the end of the journey, they had said, “The day is far spent. It is dangerous to be on the road now. Night is coming; the brigands are on the road. It is dangerous. Well, we are tired.”
But brigands or no brigands, tiredness or no tiredness, they went back to Jerusalem at the double.
Because He had shown that the cross, while it was in the plan of God for a purpose, really was not an end but a beginning.
Now then, to our words: their eyes were deliberately holden that they should not know Him. But after He had expounded the true meaning of the cross—“Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into His glory?”—the full meaning of the cross, the life side, the glorious side, their eyes were opened.
Deliberately opened.
What I am saying is this, dear friends: there is a divine fiat which should take place when the cross has had its place, done its work, and been accepted for its own meaning, but we have moved on onto resurrection ground—onto the life side.
Then our eyes are opened.
And to focus on this, I feel to be so important. Oh, I cannot tell you how important I know it to be.
The real issue of the right apprehension of the cross and entering into its meaning is that a spiritual faculty inside is created for spiritual understanding.
Let me explain it in this way. For years, for years, I was a Christian. Yes, I knew I belonged to the Lord. I was a preacher of the gospel. I was an expounder of the Scriptures.
Yes, I could take you through all the Scriptures and find Christ in all the Scriptures. I could do it all: expound the Scriptures, analyse the books of the Bible, and give it to you all like that.
Then there came a crisis—a deep crisis, a crisis of the cross. Yes, for an end; an end has its place, an essential place. But the crisis of the cross, or the climax of the cross, brought me into a new position.
A new position.
And what was the chief mark of that new position? It is what I have always called—many of you have heard me speak of it—my open heaven.
An open heaven: a faculty, a spiritual faculty, so to speak, born within.
Whereas before, all this work on the Scriptures was hard work—having to get the latest books on the doctrine of the cross, accumulating all the works, belonging to theological libraries—my word, it was hard work.
I have said, “Finding the straw myself for making the bricks.” Oh, years of it.
The crisis, the turning point—now that is, shall I say, forty-seven years ago. From that day to this, I have never had to put in any laborious work to get a message.
An open heaven? You do not believe it? Believe me. Remember what I said this morning: I want another whole week just to touch on one aspect of things. You know, it is like that. It is like that.
It is the twelve baskets full over after all the feeding, all the days, and all the hours.
Open heaven: seeing, seeing more and more.
But what was it that I came to see with that new faculty? It is a wonderful faculty. It is not an intellectual ability at all, something like that. I have not got any brains. I am a no-talent man. That is well—no, it is not there.
What did I see? Did I see the cross? No, I did not, in the first place. Did I see the church? Not in the first place.
However much of the cross I have come to see, and however much of the church I have come to see, how did I come to see? I saw the Lord Jesus.
And I came to see that it is the Person that makes the cross. You may have a thousand, a million crosses, without that effect. It is the Person. You have got to interpret the cross in the light of the Person.
Who is it in the cross? That is why Paul said to these very, very intellectual Corinthians:
I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.
No, seeing the Lord Jesus—that alone is the way of seeing the meaning.
The church is a wonderful subject. The church—wonderful subject! You can keep on for years and years talking about the church. How did I come to see the church? I came to see it—and I believe I did—because, when I saw it, it was an emancipating thing from all the imitations, all the imitation, all the tradition.
I saw the church because I saw the Lord Jesus. If you understand the Lord Jesus, you know what the cross is. You know what the church is if you see the Lord Jesus.
Because, after all, what is the church? It is but the embodiment, the corporate embodiment, of Himself.
And this church is a vast thing, because it is as great as Christ. You cannot get the dimensions of Christ. You see the dimensions of it. You see what I am trying to say?
Here, then, everything is gathered into and focused upon one thing. You have heard the exposition.
Perhaps you have been in the despair of death. Perhaps everything has gone. Everything has gone. Or perhaps you have been in confusion.
But you have heard the exposition—Moses and the prophets and all the Scriptures—and yet still your eyes are held. There must be an act of God the Holy Spirit.
Which means your eyes are opened—inward eyes opened. Something has happened.
“Oh, I have known all that.” These men were men of the Bible. They were Hebrews, as far as we can tell. They knew the Scriptures—men of the Bible.
But when they had their eyes opened, it was as though they had never known the Bible at all. It was a new Bible.
You have had all the teaching, the expositions. Dear friends, what we need is this act, this inward act.
Well, I cannot explain it. I have no time even to try to expound it. But it is something infinitely precious, infinitely wonderful. If the eyes are opened, you see—not Zion as a doctrine or teaching, not even the overcomers as some things in the Bible—you see Him.
Oh, I am not thinking about visions, you know. I am not thinking of personal psychic apparitions or visitations. I am thinking of a spiritual seeing of the significance—the significance and implications—of the Son of God.
Vast, eternal, beyond all comprehension—His greatness.
And it is Himself that interprets everything. It touches everything. But the act of the Spirit—that act of the Spirit—has to come upon all Scripture and everything else in our tradition, and open our eyes.
That is what I meant. You see, they had the incident—the incident of the opened eyes—and it meant a lot. They went back to Jerusalem and told them all about it.
But still they had not seen, because presently they would say, “Lord, dost Thou at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” Still in the knot. They had not seen; they had not seen.
But on the day of Pentecost, by the act of the Spirit, there was an entirely new conception, because they had now, by the Spirit, seen the Lord.
God save us from saying, “I say to you, Lord,” with all the teaching, all we have heard, all the Bible before us. Do this inward thing: create this spiritual faculty, able to see what no natural eyes can see.
It will be transforming.
And they went to Jerusalem, and they broke in on the others. What does the chapter say?
They told what things were done in the way, and how He was known of them in the breaking of the bread.
The cross on all its sides: death and life.
Oh, that the Lord would make this simple time, this short, brief time in the breaking of bread, a time when we see Him.
Our eyes are not merely open, but opened. Something happens to us. Ask the Lord to make it like that after this week: opened eyes.
As we approach the Lord’s table by His invitation, the apostle Paul reminds us that there are just three words that picture what we are doing.
It is not a ritual. It is not an empty ceremony. But these three words picture three directions.
First of all, he says, it is a remembrance of Him—the risen, exalted One, all that He has been through. We turn our attention in this direction: there He is.
The second word: this is a proclamation. We turn this way, and through the showing forth of this, we announce to all principalities and powers, to all who look on, the value of the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus.
The third word turns us this way. He says, “We examine ourselves.” And I read just these verses:
The Lord Jesus in the night in which He was betrayed took bread;
and when He had given thanks, He brake it, and said, Take, eat:
this is My body, which is broken for you:
this do in remembrance of Me.
In like manner also the cup, after supper, saying,
This cup is the new covenant in My blood:
this do, as often as ye drink it, in remembrance of Me.
For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink the cup,
ye proclaim the Lord’s death till He come.
Whosoever, therefore, shall eat the bread or drink the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner,
shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord.
But let a man prove himself, and so let him eat of the bread, and drink of the cup.
For he that eateth and drinketh, eateth and drinketh judgment unto himself,
if he discern not the body.
For this cause many among you are weak and sickly,
and not a few sleep.
But if we discerned ourselves, we should not be judged.
But when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord,
that we may not be condemned with the world.
This is our invitation. It is our understanding in this time of gathering this afternoon.