James Nisbet Commentary - Luke 24:32 - 24:32

Online Resource Library

Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | Download

James Nisbet Commentary - Luke 24:32 - 24:32


(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)

This Chapter Verse Commentaries:

BURNING HEARTS

‘And they said one to another, Did not our heart burn within us, while He talked with us by the way, and while He opened to us the scriptures?’

Luk_24:32

It is surely one of the lessons to be drawn from this narrative of the Self-revelation to Cleopas and his fellow-wayfarer that these fires are not deceptive, but are incentives to advance from the oppressiveness of doubt and uncertainty to an appreciation of the glorious truth. If our natures are burning, is it not because God is inviting us to draw closer to the goal of religious knowledge? Do not let us think that these deeper hopes and sentiments are untrustworthy—that they ‘are such stuff as dreams are made of.’ They are from God, and are His loving discipline and education.

I. Burning hearts!

(a) They are aglow with Divine fire and not with the flames of illusion.

(b) It is not our own wayward imaginations which have kindled them, but the coming nigh to us of Him Who is ‘the Way, the Truth, the Life.’

(c) They are the preparation for the fullness of the Gospel.

II. In Christ incarnate, dead, triumphant, all needs find their full and sufficient satisfaction.—In ‘the Son of Man’ we see the true dignity and calling of humanity. No aspiration, no forecast, no vision, can surpass the revelation of human worth which is granted to us in His sacred person. In Him, too, we have an earnest of the future which awaits all of which He is the appointed Head and Crown. In Him all things—‘the things in the heavens and the things upon the earth’—have been ‘summed up’ by ‘the Father,’ and there is nothing which can be beyond the issues of such a wondrous consummation. In Him not only the individual man but all nature is promised renewal and restoration. ‘And I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth are passed away; and the sea is no more.’ ‘And He that sitteth on the throne said, Behold, I make all things new.’ No interest, no pursuit, no joy, which is capable of receiving consecration, need go unhallowed by such an assurance. Unto the completeness of such assurance may God bring each one of us.

Rev. the Hon. W. E. Bowen.

Illustration

‘Be near me when my light is low,

When the blood creeps and the nerves prick

And tingle; and the heart is sick,

And all the wheels of Being slow.

Be near me when the sensuous frame

Is rack’d with pangs that conquer trust,

And Time, a maniac scattering dust,

And Life, a Fury slinging flame.

Be near me when my faith is dry,

And men the flies of latter spring,

That lay their eggs, and sting and sing,

And weave their petty cells and die.

Be near me when I fade away,

To point the term of human strife,

And on the low dark verge of life

The twilight of eternal day.’

(SECOND OUTLINE)

UNRECOGNISED BLESSINGS

I.—The difficulty we have in understanding the real importance of many incidents in our lives at the time of their occurrence.

II.—It was a question of self-reproach. They were morally and intellectually on fire, and yet it had led to nothing. Ought it not to have led to something?

III.—The duty of making an active effort to understand truth when it is presented to us.

IV.—Our Lord’s Presence with His disciples during the forty days after His resurrection was in many ways an anticipation of His Presence in the Church to the end of time.

Rev. Canon Liddon.