WWUTT 2531 Jesus Appears to His Disciples (Luke 24:36-43)

Jesus was able to do some pretty amazing things after he rose from the dead in his physical body. He could even appear and disappear from rooms at will, but he is still the God-man who brings us to the Father when we understand the text.

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Jesus Appears to His Disciples and Proves He Has a Physical Body

Thank you, Becky. In our study of the gospel of Luke, I think we're going to finish up our study of this gospel this week. We have the remainder of chapter 24 to finish with Jesus revealing himself to his disciples, opening their minds to understanding the scriptures, and then ascending from them back to his Father in heaven.

Let me begin reading in verse 36. We'll go to the end of the chapter. Hear the word of the Lord. As they were talking about these things, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, peace to you.

But they were startled and frightened and thought they 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?

They gave him a piece of broiled fish and he took it and ate before them. Then he said to them, these are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.

Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures and said to them, thus it is written that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.

You are witnesses of these things and behold, I am sending the promise of my father upon you, but stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high. And he led them out as far as Bethany and lifting up his hands, he blessed them.

While he blessed them, he parted from them and was carried up into heaven. And they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy and were continually in the temple blessing God. So as we finish our study of the gospel of Luke this week, we'll break this up into three parts and look at it between today, tomorrow and Wednesday, Wednesday being Christmas Eve, the day that this podcast or the last podcast in the gospel of Luke will drop.

It'll be on Christmas Eve, 2025. So looking today at Jesus' appearance to his disciples, showing them that he is Jesus risen from the dead. He's not a spirit. He has a glorified body that they can see and touch for themselves.

So that's in verses 40, or sorry, 36 to 43. That's what we'll be looking at today. Then tomorrow, his opening their minds to understand the scriptures. That's in verses 44 to 49. And then finally his ascending up into heaven, away from them and back to the father.

That's in verses 50 to 53. So back to verse 36, it begins with saying as they were talking about these things, how did we end what we were reading about last week? So remember Jesus appears with a couple of the disciples who are walking on the way to Emmaus.

He talks with them for hours and shows them how the Christ was to suffer and then die and rise again and points them to Moses and the prophets, how all of this pointed to Christ. Verse 27 said, in beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures, the things concerning himself.

Well, then the disciples get to where they're going. Jesus comes in with them. He sits down to eat with them. And when he breaks the bread, must've been some way that he broke bread or that was just a very intimate personal moment for the disciples that they spent with their teacher, remembering that.

And then when he breaks the bread, their eyes are open. And as I had pointed out to you, this was a spiritual blindness, not a spiritual blindness in the sense that they were unbelievers because certainly everyone who is not a believer or a follower of Jesus Christ is spiritually blind, but they were blinded in their senses, in their spiritual senses to keep them from recognizing Jesus while they were on the road.

And so it must've been when Jesus broke the bread that that blindness was lifted and they recognized him and suddenly knew who he was. And the moment that they recognized him, he vanished from their sight.

So it says then that at that very hour, they rose and returned to Jerusalem and they found the 11. So the 11 apostles are still there in Jerusalem. These disciples who were meeting in Emmaus, they come all the way back to Jerusalem to meet with those disciples.

And when they come in to the apostles, the apostles are saying to them, verse 34, the Lord has risen and indeed has appeared to Simon. So while these disciples are talking about, we saw him, he came in and ate with us, and then he vanished, the apostles are responding to them going, we've seen him too.

He has appeared to us. So somewhere in that trip, after the disciples, the two disciples are on the way to Emmaus, Jesus goes with them, he vanishes from their sight. And then in the amount of time it took for them to go from Emmaus back to Jerusalem, Jesus apparently appeared to the apostles in that point in time, especially to Simon.

The Lord has risen indeed, he has appeared to Simon. Then he appears to all of them. So I take it that verse 34 is he just appeared to Simon, but the apostles are saying, hey, we believe you, we get it, we understand.

Yes, you heard these things from the women, but now you're hearing it from us. There's others than just the women who have now seen Jesus risen. And as they were talking about these things, so now the disciples from Emmaus, they're sharing their experience.

The apostles are talking about what they saw. And as they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said, peace to you. Now, even though Jesus has a glorified body and it is a physical body, one that he even encourages his disciples to touch and see for themselves, I am me.

I am the same Jesus who was with you, teaching with you, who called you, who ate with you, who died before you. And now I have risen from the dead. So he's showing them his body that it really is him.

But even though he has a physical body that they can see and touch, he is not limited by physical constraints. So apparently he can just come and go as he pleases. He walked with his disciples on the way to Emmaus, never wearied him, never got tired on that journey, even though he had just been crucified a couple of days before.

So now he's sitting with them in the room, breaks the bread with them. So he's physically picking up bread and breaking it. He's not a spirit. He's not floating through tables and walls and whatever else.

He can actually pick up the food and break it and hand it to them. So they know he's physically there. He has a physical body, but yet, as I said, not constrained by spaces or physical limitations. Since after breaking the bread, he just vanishes from them, just disappears.

And now here in verse 44, he just appears before them. I'm sorry, verse 36. In verse 36, he just appears to them. What is Jesus doing? Like, where is he going in this period of time? How is he just able to appear and disappear like this?

Well, he's going back to his father. He is in heaven, comes back to earth, goes back to heaven with the father and so on and so forth in all these occasions that he appears to the disciples. So if this is the way that Jesus is doing this, then what's the big deal about Jesus ascending into heaven, which we're going to get to on Wednesday?

I'm going to wait until then to answer that question. But just to kind of put that before you, Jesus is clearly able to come and go as he wants. Even when the doors are shut, he can just appear right there in the room.

And that is certainly going to scare people because verse 37 says they were startled and frightened and thought they saw a spirit. Now, angels are able to do the same thing. We read about this in the Old Testament, angels appearing, disappearing.

Seems like the room is all shut up and secure. And suddenly there's another being in here with me. If you'll remember back to the start of the Gospel of Luke in chapter one, Zechariah is in the temple and he is burning incense at the hour of prayer.

And then suddenly Gabriel is right there. Gabriel appears with him in the room, which startles him because of course, there's nobody else in here. And suddenly there's another man standing with me. So this is the same with the angels.

They're able to operate outside of physical constraints. And yet there can be something that is obviously physical about them. So however they're able to move to and fro, however Jesus is able to do this even here with his disciples, there's still something physical about them.

I think back to Genesis when the angels and Yahweh appear with Abraham at the Oaks of Mamre. And they come up, they're there at the tent and they come up and Abraham says to them, we'll stay, I'm gonna feed you.

And he has Sarah prepare some food. They sit together under the tree and they're talking. And of course the conversation eventually leads to Yahweh revealing to Abraham that he's going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, but he'll save his nephew Lot and his family out of it.

But they're all sitting there eating. So this is obviously God in some sort of manifestation before him, but physical. He's not appearing as a spirit. He is in the appearance of a man, not incarnate though, but still physically there in present because he eats and dines with Abraham and those other two angels that are with Yahweh as well.

Those angels end up being the ones that go to Sodom and Gomorrah, find the place overrun with evil and say that that punishment, that fire from heaven is gonna come down upon it. First, they've got to get Lot and his family out of there.

But anyway, all that to say that that appearance to Abraham was Yahweh and two angels that physically interacted with Abraham. So even here, Jesus has a real body and the body that Jesus has is not like the way that Yahweh appeared to Abraham because the body of Jesus has experienced the entire human life cycle from conception to even his natural death.

He verifies and sanctifies every aspect of human life because he was born of woman. So different than other occasions, other theophanies, appearances of God, like we have in the Old Testament where he may appear as a man or an angel appears as a man, Jesus is not just appearing as a man here.

He actually is a man. And 1 Timothy 2, verse five says, there is one mediator between God and man, and that is the man Christ Jesus. So Jesus is still the God man. He became incarnate 2000 years ago when he was born in a manger in Bethlehem, conceived in the womb of the Virgin Mary by the Holy Spirit.

Jesus was certainly human then, but he is still a man even now. Scripture still describes him that way, even though he has ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of God. As we've seen Jesus rise from the dead, so the promises for all of us who are in Christ Jesus, believing that he died on the cross for our sins and rose from the grave, that he was seen by all these disciples, they see him here, he's eating with them, he's talking with them, interacting with them.

They see and know this is Jesus who is risen from the dead. He still has the body of a human. He was not in humanity prior to the conception in the womb of the Virgin Mary. It's because he was born of woman because he's conceived with a human body that he is incarnate, but he was not incarnate.

He was not God become man prior to him being born in Bethlehem. He was the son of God, or as many have argued out of the Old Testament, references to the angel of the Lord, are references to the pre-incarnate Christ.

But now having come in this body for us, dying on the cross for our sins and rising physically even from the dead, having accomplished all of these things for us, Jesus is still the God-man who is interceding on our behalf at the right hand of the Father.

Or as 1 John 2 ,1 describes him, he is our advocate before the Father. He is speaking favorably on our behalf before God for all those who are in Christ Jesus. He is still the one who fixes the gap between God and man.

The God-man does that. And he is our access into God. Our fellowship with God is through Jesus Christ. So born with a human body, died in a human body, buried his human body, and it was his human body that rose from the dead.

It's even his human body when we get to the end of this chapter that ascends into heaven to be seated at the right hand of God. So how this goes and how this is gonna be like, well, we won't know all of it now, but we will know what this is supposed to mean to us someday that just as Jesus' body was raised from the dead and raised new, glorified, imperishable, and incorruptible.

So we are likewise gonna receive the same reward for all of those who are in Christ. And apparently we will be outside of these physical limitations as well. An ability to just appear in a room and then appear in another one.

Jesus apparently can do that because here he is standing among his disciples and they're frightened and they think they saw a spirit. But he says to them, verse 38, why are you troubled and why do doubts arise in your hearts?

Now, you may think this question is kind of astonishing. Like Jesus just appeared to us. He died, he was buried in a tomb. We saw him dead. We know where his body was laid. And now suddenly he's just appearing to us in a room, doesn't walk through the door.

He's just there and he's speaking to us. I mean, why are you asking us, why are you troubled? Is it not obvious why we're troubled? But it is supposed to be upon them to know these things because Jesus had explained it to them before he died.

We have that recorded in all three gospels we've read so far, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Jesus tells them he's gonna go into Jerusalem. He's going to be arrested by the chief priests, the scribes and the Pharisees.

He will even be put to death, but he says to them, take heart for I'm coming back. On the third day, I will rise again. They should have understood this. So now seeing him risen should not trouble their hearts, should not make them doubt.

Why would they be seeing the risen Christ and still have doubts? But Jesus being merciful to them says in verse 39, see my hands and my feet, that it is myself. Touch me and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.

Now, the interesting thing about Mormonism is they use this verse to justify the teaching of Joseph Smith, who said that God, the father is an exalted man himself. He had a father before him who had a father before him.

And just as we have bodies that look like these, the human body that you know because you live in one, just as we have these bodies, so God the father also has a human body that is like ours. Now, when I have contended with Mormons about that, when I've talked with them about that, I've said Jesus explicitly says in John 4 that God is spirit.

And Jesus says here in Luke 24, 39, a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have. So the father cannot be an exalted man. He cannot have a body like ours because as a spirit, he does not have any kind of physical form.

When we read in Genesis chapter one, that God made man and woman in his image, that doesn't mean that he made Adam and Eve to look exactly like he looks. That isn't what that means. But that in imaging God, we are intended, we are made to glorify God.

We are supposed to be imitators of God. Even now in Christ Jesus, which is the only way that we can be imitators of God is if we have the savior, the Holy Spirit living within us. Mormons do not think, they're unable to think in spiritual ways.

So they try to quantify or qualify God in very human ways. He has a body. He has a body like mine. He has eyes like I do. He talks to me. He appeared to Joseph Smith and you've probably seen the posters or the paintings that have been done that show the son and the father appearing to Joseph Smith at the same time.

But they are ignorant of what the scripture says about this. God is spirit. And Jesus says, a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have. Jesus certainly has these things because he has a human body risen from the dead.

The father and the Holy Spirit do not have that. Verse 40, when Jesus 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 ate before them. Why did he do that? Because spirits can't eat. They can't grasp things and hold them. They can't consume food and it actually stay inside of them.

A spirit is just some sort of ethereal form. It would pass right through them. But Jesus is showing to them that he has an actual human body with which that he can even eat food. He is the same Christ who had sat at table with them and eaten before so that they would see that he was risen and believe.

Now, at least at this part of the narrative toward the end of the gospel of Luke, it says that they don't believe. They disbelieve for joy and were marveling. Some of them still had their doubts, but it's coming as we will get to tomorrow that Jesus opened their minds to understand the scriptures.

Now, it is said to us in Romans 10 and in 1 Corinthians 15, what is the significance of this? The apostle Paul said in Romans 10, 9, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

For with the heart one believes and is justified and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. For the scriptures say, everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame. In verse 13, everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

In verse Corinthians 15, beginning in verse one, Paul says, now, I would remind you brothers of the gospel that I preached to you, which you received in which you stand and by which you are being saved.

If you hold fast to the word I preached to you, unless you believed it in vain. For I delivered to you as a first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried and he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures.

And now this goes along with Luke 24 and that he appeared to Cephas to Peter, just as the disciples are testifying here, he's appeared to Simon. He appeared to Cephas, then to the 12, then he appeared to more than 500 brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.

And we're gonna read about that when we get to Acts chapter one, but it is necessary for us to know Christ who has risen from the dead and by believing in him, our sins are forgiven and we have eternal life.

This is the gospel message. And it gives us strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow. As we sing in the old hymn, great is thy faithfulness, that we would know through Christ, our sins are forgiven and though we will die, yet we will live forevermore with him in glory.

We will be raised as he was raised and dwell with God in his eternal kingdom. We'll stop there and come back to Jesus opening their minds to understand the scriptures tomorrow. Heavenly father, as we finish this up, I pray this is an incredible story to us, but amazing in the sense that it transforms and changes us.

We see you in an amazing and mighty way who gave your son for us to die for us, to raise him from the dead so that believing in him, we may have life in his name. Work these things out in us, both to will and to work for your good pleasure.

We ask these things in Jesus name, amen.

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