PUBLIC-DOMAIN CHRISTIAN BOOK
Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. Luke
Alexander Maclaren, 1826-1910 · 253,509 words · 356 reading sections
Christ'S Look
And now, let us turn to the second point that I suggested. II. What the look did. First, it tore away the veil that hid Peter's sin from himself. He had not thought that he was doing anything wrong when he denied. He had not thought about anything but saving his own skin. If he had reflected for a moment no doubt he …
707 wordsSECTION 302Christ'S Look
And there was another thing that the look did. It tore away the veil from the sin; it made rivers of water flow from the melted heart in sorrow of true repentance; and it kept the sorrow from turning into despair. Judas 'went out and hanged himself.' Peter 'went out and wept bitterly.' What made the one the victim of r…
250 wordsSECTION 303'The Rulers Take Counsel Together'
'And the whole multitude of them arose, and led Him unto Pilate. 2. And they began to accuse Him, saying, We found this fellow perverting the nation, and forbidding to give tribute to Caesar, saying that He Himself is Christ a King. 3. And Pilate asked Him, saying, Art thou the King of the Jews? And He answered h…
762 wordsSECTION 304'The Rulers Take Counsel Together'
These Jewish rulers were men like ourselves. Instead of shuddering at their crime, as if it were something far outside of anything possible for us, we do better if we learn from it the terrible depths of hostility to Jesus, the tragic blindness to His character and love, and the degradation of submission to usurpers, w…
679 wordsSECTION 305'The Rulers Take Counsel Together'
The relations between Antipas and him were necessarily delicate, like those between the English officials and the rajahs of native states in India; and there had been some friction, perhaps about 'the Galileans, whose blood' he 'had mingled with their sacrifices.' If there had been difficulties in connection with such …
699 wordsSECTION 306A Soul'S Tragedy
But how the loud laugh would have fallen silent if some flash had told who Jesus was! Is there any of our mirth, perhaps at some of His servants, or at some phase of His gospel, which would in like manner stick in our throats if His judgment throne blazed above us? Ridicule is a dangerous weapon. It does more harm to t…
694 wordsSECTION 307A Soul'S Tragedy
That is a picture for which in its essence many a man and woman among us might have sat. For I suppose that there is nothing more common than these half-and-half convictions which, like inefficient bullets, get part way through the armoured shell of a ship, and there stick harmless. Many of us have the clearest convict…
710 wordsSECTION 308A Soul'S Tragedy
But out of that jumble of lust and blood I desire to gather one lesson. There you have--in an extreme form, it is true--a tremendous illustration of what half-and-half convictions may come to. Whether or no we ever get anything like as far on the road as this man did matters very little. The process which brought him t…
875 wordsSECTION 309A Soul'S Tragedy
That is what we all shall have to do some day, in this world possibly, in the next certainly. Men sophisticate themselves with talk about palliations, and excuses, and temptations, and companions and the like. And philosophers sophisticate themselves nowadays with a great many learned explanations, which tend to show t…
767 wordsSECTION 310Jesus And Pilate
'There is a tide in the affairs of men Which, taken at the flood,' would lead us into the haven of rest in Christ; and, if allowed to pass, may leave us, stranded and shipwrecked, among the rocks. 'And Pilate, when he had called together the chief priests and the rulers and the people, 14. Said unto them, Ye have …
676 wordsSECTION 311Jesus And Pilate
What for? The only course for a judge convinced of a prisoner's innocence is to set him free. But this was a bribe to the accusers, offered in hope that the smaller punishment would content them. Pilate knew that he was perpetrating flagrant injustice in such a suggestion, and he tried to hide it by using a gentle word…
673 wordsSECTION 312Jesus And Pilate
III. The final yielding. It is to Pilate's credit that he kept up his efforts so long. Luke wishes to impress us with his persistency, as well as with the fixed determination of the Jews, by his note of 'the third time.' Thrice was the choice offered to them, and thrice did they put away the possibility of averting th…
338 wordsSECTION 313Words From The Cross
'And when they were come to the place which is called Calvary, there they crucified Him, and the malefactors, one on the right hand, and the other on the left. 34. Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do. And they parted His raiment, and cast lots. 35. And the people stood beholding. …
762 wordsSECTION 314Words From The Cross
The bitter hatred of the rulers, and their inhuman glee at getting rid of a heretic, gave them bad preeminence in sin. Their scoff acknowledged that He had 'saved others,' and their hate had so blinded their eyes that they could not see how manifestly His refusal to use His power to save Himself proved Him the Son of G…
694 wordsSECTION 315Words From The Cross
III. The third word from the Cross, as recorded by Luke, reveals Jesus as, in the act of dying, the Master of death, and its Transformer for all who trust Him into a peaceful surrender of themselves into the Father's hands. The circumstances grouped round the act of His death bring out various aspects of its significan…
350 wordsSECTION 316The Dying Thief
'And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when Thou comest into Thy kingdom.'--LUKE xxiii, 42. There is an old and true division of the work of Christ into three parts--prophet, priest, and king. Such a distinction manifestly exists, though it may be overestimated, or rather, the statement of it may be exaggerated, …
1,056 wordsSECTION 317The Dying Thief
And now, there is another consideration. If we look at this man, this penitent thief, and contrast him, his previous history, and his present feelings, with the people that stood around, and rejected and scoffed, we get some light as to the sort of thing that unfits men for perceiving and accepting the Gospel when it i…
1,143 wordsSECTION 318The Dying Thief
And then (and but a word) we see here, too, the elements of which acceptable faith consists. One does not exactly know by what steps or through what process this poor dying thief passed, which issued in faith--whether it was an impression from Christ's presence, whether it was that he had ever heard anything about Him …
850 wordsSECTION 319The Dying Thief
Finally. Here is the Cross as revealing and opening the true Paradise.--'This day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise.' We have no concern at present with the many subtle inferences as to the state of the dead, and as to the condition of our Lord's human spirit before the Resurrection, which have been drawn from these wo…
622 wordsSECTION 320The First Easter Sunrise
'Now, upon the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they came onto the sepulchre, bringing the spices which they had prepared, and certain others with them. 2. And they found the stone rolled away from the sepulchre. 3. And they entered in, and found not the body of the Lord Jesus. 4. And it came to p…
785 wordsSECTION 321The First Easter Sunrise
Luke marks the appearance of the angels as sudden by that 'behold.' They were not seen approaching, but at one moment the bewildered women were alone, looking at each other with faces of dreary wonder, and the next, 'two men' were standing beside them, and the tomb was lighted by the sheen of their dazzling robes. Much…
822 wordsSECTION 322The Living Dead
'Why seek ye the living among the dead! 6. He is not here, but is risen.'--LUKE xxiv. 5,6. We can never understand the utter desolation of the days that lay betwixt Christ's Death and His Resurrection. Our faith rests on centuries. We know that that grave was not even an interruption to the progress of His work, but …
784 wordsSECTION 323The Living Dead
Such a conviction has as a matter of fact been firmly grasped as an unquestionable truth and a familiar operative belief only within the sphere of the Christian revelation. From the natural point of view the whole region of the dead is 'a land of darkness, without any order, where the light is as darkness.' The usual s…
684 wordsSECTION 324The Living Dead
Touching but a part of the being, and touching that but for a moment, death is no state, it is an act. It is not a condition, it is a transition. Men speak about life as 'a narrow neck of land, betwixt two unbounded seas': they had better speak about death as that. It is an isthmus, narrow and almost impalpable, on whi…
747 wordsSECTION 325The Living Dead
Then, secondly, this text, indeed the whole incident, may set before us the other consideration that since they have died, they live a better life than ours. I am not going to enter here, at any length, or very particularly, into what seem to me to be the irrefragable scriptural grounds for holding the complete, unint…
662 wordsSECTION 326The Living Dead
No wonder that one aspect of that blessedness--the '_sleeping_ in Jesus'--has been the one that the weary have laid hold of at all times; but do not let us forget what lies even in that figure of sleep, or distort it as if it meant to express a less vivid life than that here below. I think we sometimes misunderstand wh…
807 wordsSECTION 327The Living Dead
We have nothing to say, now and here, about what that bodily condition may be--about the differences and the identities between it and our present earthly house of this tabernacle. Only _this_ we know-reverse all the weakness of flesh, and you get some faint notion of the glorious body. It is sown in corruption, dishon…
325 wordsSECTION 328The Risen Lord'S Self-Revelation To Wavering Disciples
'And, behold, two of them went that same day to a village called Emmaus, which was from Jerusalem about threescore furlongs. 14. And they talked together of all these things which had happened. 15. And it came to pass, that, while they communed together and reasoned, Jesus Himself drew near, and went with them. 1…
804 wordsSECTION 329The Risen Lord'S Self-Revelation To Wavering Disciples
It is profoundly interesting and instructive to note the characteristics of the favoured ones who first saw the risen Lord. They were Mary, whose heart was an altar of flaming and fragrant love; Peter, the penitent denier; and these two, absorbed in meditation on the facts of the death and burial. What attracts Jesus? …
686 wordsSECTION 330The Risen Lord'S Self-Revelation To Wavering Disciples
The whole speech shows how complete was the collapse of the disciples' Messianic hopes, how slowly their minds opened to admit the possibility of Resurrection, and how exacting they were in the matter of evidence for it, even to the point of hesitating to accept angelic announcements. Such a state of mind is not the so…
685 wordsSECTION 331Detaining Christ
If we are sure that He has risen and lives for ever, we have a better presence than that. He is gone from our sight that He may be seen by our faith. That 'now we see Him not' is advance on the position of His first disciples, not retrogression. Let us strive to possess the blessing of 'those who have not seen, and yet…
821 wordsSECTION 332Detaining Christ
And you and I, dear brethren, both as members of a Christian community and in our individual capacity, have our religious blessings on the same conditions as Ephesus and Constantinople had theirs, and may fling them away by the same negligence as has ruined large tracts of the world through long ages of time. Christ wi…
652 wordsSECTION 333Detaining Christ
'They _constrained_': a very strong word, kindred to the other one which our Lord Himself employs when He speaks about the 'kingdom of heaven suffering violence, and the violent taking it by force.' That bold expression gives emphatic utterance to the truth that there is a real power lodged in the desires of humble hea…
462 wordsSECTION 334The Meal At Emmaus
'And it came to pass, as He sat at meat with them, He took bread, and blessed it, and brake, and gave to them. 31. And their eyes were opened, and they knew Him; and He vanished out of their sight.'--LUKE xxiv. 30, 31. Perhaps the most striking characteristic of the Gospel accounts of our Lord's intercourse with Hi…
656 wordsSECTION 335The Meal At Emmaus
'He took bread and blessed it, and brake and gave to them, and their eyes were opened, and they knew Him; and He vanished out of their sight.' I. Look, then, for a moment or two at the thoughts which I think are intended to be conveyed to us by that first point--the action of breaking and distributing the bread. I ha…
813 wordsSECTION 336The Meal At Emmaus
Thus, heavy with meaning and full of immortal hope may be the simplest act wrought with the simplest materials, when the dead Christ who lives takes His old place in the midst of His disciples, and once again as He used to do, parts the bread between them. And, dear brethren, though it has nothing to do with my present…
679 wordsSECTION 337The Meal At Emmaus
And you and I, Christian men and women, if we come and sit at that table of our Lord, let us remember that we thereby declare, not only for ourselves that we enter into individual relations of reliance upon Him, and draw our life from Him, but that we pledge ourselves to the family bond, to be true to the brotherhood, …
926 wordsSECTION 338The Meal At Emmaus
But, passing by that, which has nothing to do with my main present purpose, I may notice just one or two considerations in reference to this discovery of our Lord. And the first and main one that I would suggest is this--Where Christ is loved and desired, the veriest trifles of common life may be the means of His disco…
700 wordsSECTION 339The Meal At Emmaus
IV. And then there is the final consideration here upon which I touch but for a moment. The distribution and the discovery are followed by the disappearance of the Lord, 'They knew Him, and'--and what? And He let their hearts run over in thankful words? No. 'They knew Him,' and so they all went back to Jerusalem happy …
770 wordsSECTION 340Peter Alone With Jesus
'The Lord is risen indeed, and hath appeared to Simon.' --LUKE xxiv. 34. The other appearances of the risen Lord to individuals on the day of Resurrection are narrated with much particularity, and at considerable length. John gives us the lovely account of our Lord's conversation with Mary Magdalene, Luke gives us in…
690 wordsSECTION 341Peter Alone With Jesus
What did that appearance say to the penitent man? Of course, it said to him what it said to all the rest, that death was conquered. It lifted his thoughts of his Master. It changed his whole atmosphere from gloom to sunshine, but it had a special message for him. It said that no fault, no denial, bars or diverts Christ…
723 wordsSECTION 342Peter Alone With Jesus
One is that the consciousness of Christ's love, uninterrupted by our transgression, is the mightiest power to deepen penitence and the consciousness of unworthiness. Do you not think that when the Apostle saw in Christ's face, and heard from His lips, the full assurance of forgiveness, he was far more ashamed of himsel…
662 wordsSECTION 343Peter Alone With Jesus
Then there is one other thought that I would suggest, viz., that the man who is led through consciousness of sin and experience of uninterrupted love which is forgiveness, is thereby led into a higher and a nobler life. Peter's bitter fall, Peter's gracious restoration, were no small part of the equipment which made hi…
845 wordsSECTION 344The Triumphant End
Now, dear brethren, have you ever gone apart with Jesus Christ, as if He and you were alone in the world? Have you ever spread out all your denials and faults before Him? Have you ever felt the swift assurance of His forgiving love, covering over the whole heap, which dwindles as His hand lies upon it? Have you ever fe…
727 wordsSECTION 345The Triumphant End
I. The proofs of the Resurrection graciously granted to incredulous love (vs. 36-43). The disciples were probably assembled in the upper room, where the Lord's Supper had been instituted, and which became their ordinary meeting-place (Acts i.) up till Pentecost. What sights that room saw! There, when night had come, th…
700 wordsSECTION 346The Triumphant End
Another stage is marked by that remarkable expression, 'He opened their mind.' His teaching was not, like ours, from without only. He gave not merely instruction, but inspiration. It was not enough to spread truth before the disciples. He did more; He made them able to receive it. He gives no lesser gifts from the thro…
751 wordsSECTION 347Christ'S Witnesses
The hands remained in the attitude of benediction while He ascended, and the last sight of Him, as the cloud wrapped Him round, showed Him shedding blessing from them. He continues that attitude and act till He comes again. Two separate motions are described in verse 51. He was parted from them,--that is, withdrew some…
730 wordsSECTION 348Christ'S Witnesses
These early Christians were witnesses in another sense. The very existence of the Church at all was a testimony to that supernatural fact without which it could not have been. We are often told in recent years that the belief in the Resurrection grew slowly up amongst the early Christians. What became of the Church whi…
793 wordsSECTION 349Christ'S Witnesses
May I say a word here about the grounds on which this obligation to witness rests for us? If Jesus Christ had never said, 'Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature,' it would not have made a bit of difference as to the imperative duty that is laid upon all Christian men; for that arises, not fro…
777 wordsSECTION 350Christ'S Witnesses
Nor need I do more than remind you of the highest of all blessed issues which is yet to come. 'Be thou faithful unto death and I will give thee a crown of life.' Alas! alas! how many of us professing Christians will have to stand at last without that 'crown of rejoicing' which they wear who, by their poor work and witn…
653 wordsSECTION 351Christ'S Witnesses
One word more and I have done. This clothing with the Spirit, which is the only fitness of the Church for its witnessing work, is only to be won by much solitary waiting. 'Tarry ye,' or as in the original it stands even more vividly, _'Sit ye still_ in the city ... till ye be clothed.' It is because so many Christian w…
279 wordsSECTION 352The Ascension
'And He led them out as far as to Bethany, and He lifted up His hands, and blessed them. 51. And it came to pass, while He blessed them, He was parted from them, and carried up into heaven.' --LUKE xxiv. 50, 51. 'And when He had spoken these things, while they beheld, He was taken up; and a cloud received Him ou…
802 wordsSECTION 353The Ascension
So the aspect of the Ascension thus presented is that of a tender farewell; the pathetic conclusion of three long, blessed years. And yet that is not all, for the Evangelist adds a very enigmatic word: 'They returned to Jerusalem with great joy.' Glad because He had gone? No. Glad merely because He had gone up? No. The…
908 wordsSECTION 354The Ascension
And then, again, I might suggest that, regarded in its aspect as an end, this Ascension is also the culmination and the natural conclusion of the Resurrection. As I have said, the Scripture point of view with reference to these two is not that they are two, but that the one is the starting point of the line of which th…
772 wordsSECTION 355The Ascension
So we, too, have to look to that risen Lord as being the power by which alone any of us can do either great or small work in His Church. That Ascension is symbolically put as being to 'the right hand of God.' What is the right hand of God? The divine omnipotence. Where is it? Everywhere. What does sitting at the right …
680 wordsSECTION 356*** End Of The Project Gutenberg Ebook Expositions Of Holy Scripture: St. Luke ***
The world has not seen the last of Jesus Christ. Such an Ascension, after such a life, cannot be the end of Him. 'As it is appointed unto all men once to die, and after death the Judgment, so Christ also, having been once offered to bear the sins of many, shall appear the second time, without sin unto salvation.' As in…
352 wordsSource & rights
Public domain in the USA; original historical text digitized by Project Gutenberg.
Project Gutenberg source record →
Historical Christian writing; not Scripture.