After two days will He revive us: in the third day He will raise us up, and we shall live in His sight.
Death the gate of life
Letus look, not on the dying side, but on the living side. Each shadow has its light; each valley its height; each night its dawn; each wound of the oyster-shell its pearl; each kind of death its counterpart of life. To have the one is to have both. It is, therefore, a mistake to be ever thinking of what you must give up. Think rather of what you must take in. Follow hard after Christ, to be with Him, for Him, like Him. Let your intimacy with Him be like those closely pointed stones in the old buildings of Thebes, between which it is impossible to insert even a sheet of writing-paper. Obey Him up to the hilt. So will ever new blessings disclose themselves to you; and as you climb to them you will be insensibly drawn away from things that fascinated and injured you. Preaching out after a fuller measure of life, you will hardly realise the cost by which alone you can enter upon its enjoyment. The wrench of death will be less perceptible amid the joy which sheds its light on your face, and the warm glow into your heart.
1. Above all, trust the lead of Jesus. “He will revive us; He will raise us up; and we shall live in His sight.” He knows every step of the way through the dark valley; because, as the Captain of salvation, He has been obliged to traverse it with each son whom He has brought to glory. He is with you, feeling for you infinitely, though you cannot see Him. It is impossible for Him to take one false step, or inflict one needless stab of pain. Out of your suffering He is going to bring glory to Himself and blessedness to you. He sometimes seems to tarry. His stages of redemption are so slow; but His love is dealing more wisely with thee in its delays, impetuous spirit, than it could in haste! It is hard to wait when heart and flesh are failing; but thy God will be the strength of thy life, and thy portion for ever. He knows the nearest path that will lead thee to it. Trust His hand and purpose running through the circumstances of thy life.
2. And out of all this will come the more abundant life. Suffering at first isolates us;: but afterwards it links us in the closest bonds with all who are sitting on the hard benches of the school of sorrow. We learn to comfort them with the comfort with which we have ourselves been comforted of God. The water streams from the smitten rock. The flower springs from the dead seed. The crystal river flows from the melting glacier. The bright gold emerges from the dark mine and the cleansing fires. When you are sure that Jesus asks aught of you, yield up your will to Him; ask Him to come, and take it and blend it with His own. Be willing to be made willing. Wait for Him. Trust Him. Do not be afraid. He will gently open the door of life, through which you will pass out of the vale of death into wider and more abundant blessedness. And, in the end, when the lesson is fully mastered, we shall find that His going forth has been prepared as the morning; and He will come unto us as the rain, as the latter and former rain, unto the earth. Abraham shall take his Isaac from off the altar and lead him home; Joseph shall weep tears of welcome on his father’s neck; Job shall have more prosperity than before his trial; the young confessors shall emerge from the fire without their bonds; flowers shall grow where the black cinders lay; and where the body was buried in the sepulchre amid tears of hopeless sorrow, there shall be a joyous resurrection. We shall live again, and shall know the Lord as never before. Wait to see the end of the Lord; He is very pitiful; He is human in His tenderness. (F. B. Meyer, B. A.)
Christ and His people
I.The connection of Christ with His people. The head and the members. “We are made alive in Christ.” His victory over death is ours. He who had life in Himself quickens whom He will.
1. The power manifested on the third day was a type of the power to be manifested at the general resurrection.
2. Christ’s resurrection not only a type of a physical but of a spiritual resurrection. The soul is quickened together with Christ.
II. The presence of Christ realised by His people. The risen life is spent in the sight of the Lord. Before the crucifixion the apostles had the bodily presence of the Lord, subject to time and place, e.g., Christ was not with the dying Lazarus, because He was in Peroea. After the resurrection they lived in His presence as they had never lived before. Stephen saw Him standing in the ready attitude of help. He stood by St. Paul; His eye was on His faithful martyr, Antipas. All the disciples went about with a constant sense of Christ’s oversight, working under the King’s eye. The soul risen with Christ believes that it lives in His sight. Faith in this promised presence will be a source of strength and patience. Remember how Christ’s eye is on His servants at their work, in their sufferings, and during their worship. (W. Watters, M. A.)
The third day
In shadow, the prophecy was never fulfilled to Israel at all. The Ten Tribes were never restored. Unto the Two Tribes what a mere shadow was the restoration from Babylon, that it should be spoken of as the gift of life, or of resurrection! The strictest explanation is the truest. The “two days” and the “third day” have nothing in history to correspond with them, except that in which they were fulfilled, when Christ, “rising on the third day from the grave, raised with Him the whole human race.” (E. B. Pusey, D. D.)
