The Unknown Companion
“And behold, two of them went that same day to a village called Emmaus, which was from Jerusalem about three-score furlongs” (Luke xxiv: 13).
In the account of the two disciples going to Emmaus you will notice that they were very sorrowful. They ought to have been the happiest mortals on earth. It was the dawn of a new dispensation; it was the first day, you might say, of a new world. Here we have the first sermon that was preached after the resurrection, and it was preached bT the Lord Himself. He found these two disciples very sorrowful; their hopes had all died. They were going back to their home seven or eight miles away. There was great danger, they thought, in Jerusalem. The head of their company had been crucified, and there was a storm rising against His disciples. Over and over again He had told them, before He left them, that on the third day He would rise; and this was the third day, and instead of their having faith to believe that He had risen, when the report came from the very foremost of the disciples, those that stood nearest to Christ, that loved Him perhaps the most, they were so full of unbelief that they doubted the word of the disciples that had brought the message, and they are going back into the country with their hearts crushed, bleeding, broken, and very sad.
There has always been a great discussion as to who the two were. One we know — Cleopas — who was the uncle of Christ. Some have thought that Luke himself was the other, and different ones have been selected as the second. Now, I am inclined to think that instead of being two men these two were a man and his wife. I think it would be interesting to realize that a woman was one of the disciples that went to Emmaus.
In the twenty-fifth verse of the nineteenth chapter of John we read:
“Now there stood by the cross of Jesus, his mother, and His mother’s sister, Mary, the wife of Cleopas, and Mary Magdalene.”
We know, then, that Mary, Cleopas’ wife, was there at the cross, and it wasn’t likely that her husband would go off into the country seven or eight miles awaT when there was so bitter a feeling in the city, and leave his wife in peril. It doesn’t say that these were two men, they were two disciples — and if it was Cleopas and his wife they were uncle and aunt of Jesus Christ.
As they went, and were sad, Christ came along and walked with them. Some one has said that we do not sufficiently realize that if am two of us make Jesus the subject of our conversation He Himself will be of our company. Where two or three are gathered together in His name He is in the midst.
People have often wondered how it could be that Cleopas, one of His disciples, should not have known Him. That is not so strange. You remember that Jehovah appeared to Abraham as a way-faring man; to Jacob as a wrestler; to Joshua as a soldier with a drawn sword; so that He may have appeared to these disciples in a waj?” that they should not know Him until He had gone from them.
They were so taken up with their sorrow that they had forgotten all the sweet promises He had left of what He would do after His resurrection. That seemed to be hid from them.
“When Christ drew near, “He said unto them, What manner of communications are these that ye have one to another, as ye walk, and are sad?” Then He began to unfold to them the Scriptures. Now, do you know, if they had gone to the Scriptures in the time of their trouble, as they ought to have done, they would have lost sight of their trouble? He took them right to the Word of God, where they could get comfort.
There are four things I want to call your attention to:
1. Their minds were opened that they should understand the Scriptures.
2. He caused their hearts to burn within them. When God opens up the mind, and we receive the Word, then the heart begins to bum; and there isn’t anything that will cause the heart to burn with joy and gladness like the Word of the living God.
3. He opened their eyes, that they should know Him.
4. He revealed Himself unto them.
LET US PICTURE THAT SCENE.
This man and his wife are going back from Jerusalem to their home in Emmaus. On the way a stranger joins them, and begins to talk with them. As they draw near the town the day is far spent, and the evening is coming on. And when they get to their home the stranger has made His company so precious, and His word so sweet, that they ask Him to spend the night. And that is another proof to me that it was a man and wife, because “they constrained Him.” A man and wife could constrain a person to stay over night, but two mere friends would hardly do so. It would be just like a man and wife to say: “Come in, we wish y011 would. We have plenty of room.” So they all went in together. I can imagine this woman preparing the evening meal, and as the two men sit there talking together, every once in a while the woman stops and listens. She can’t help it. Oh, those words were so sweet! I wish even- word the Son of God uttered on that occasion had been put on record. What an experience it must have been to hear Christ tell the meaning of the sacrifice of Isaac, and the brazen serpent and the ceremonies of the great day of atonement; to hear Him expound the fifty-third of Isaiah, and the twenty-second Psalm, and the other passages in Moses and the prophets concerning Himself! What an unfolding of Scripture, and how their hearts were thrilled as they learned those blessed truths! Some people say that we have outgrown the Old Testament, that the New Testament is all we need. But Christ used it; it was all He had. He set His seal upon it. It is recorded that He made quotations from at least twenty-two of the thirty-nine books. He referred to them constantly, and said that they7 must be fulfilled. Saphir has said that the gospel narrative is like a high table-land, but we cannot be spared the ascent from Genesis to Malachi. The one theme of the Old Testament is the Messiah, and until 3’ou realize that, 3-011 have not found the key to its treasures.
At last the evening meal is prepared, and they sit down and begin. I can just imagine Cleopas turning to the stranger and saying:
“Will you ask a blessing?”
Then He raised those pierced and wounded hands, and perhaps that is the way He revealed Himself to them. They saw the prints in the palms of His hands, the wounds that had been made at Calvary. And He is gone. Some one has said that now, as at Emmaus, Jesus loves to make Himself known in the breaking of the bread.
I do not believe they touched a morsel of supper, their hearts were so full, but they said:
“We must go back to Jerusalem and take the news.”
They- went back much quicker than they came out, their hearts leaping within them for joy. They found the disciples and brought the glad tidings:
“He is risen! We have seen Him, and He has talked to us.”
To their dying day how they must have told over and over how they saw Him on that journey!
Oh, that Christ might come, and cause our hearts to burn within us. Let us pray that He may open our eyes and our understanding, and that He may just give us a fresh vision of Himself!