09 Apr 26 | Wait for What the Father Promised
The risen Jesus gives the disciples everything they need to understand what has happened and then tells them not to move until the Spirit comes.
The Gospel: Luke 24:36-49
³⁶ While they were still speaking about this, he stood in their midst and said to them, “Peace be with you.” ³⁷ But they were startled and terrified and thought that they were seeing a ghost. ³⁸ Then he said to them, “Why are you troubled? And why do questions arise in your hearts? ³⁹ Look at my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me and see, because a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you can see I have.” ⁴⁰ And as he said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. ⁴¹ While they were still incredulous for joy and were amazed, he asked them, “Have you anything here to eat?” ⁴² They gave him a piece of baked fish; ⁴³ he took it and ate it in front of them.
⁴⁴ 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 in the prophets and psalms must be fulfilled.” ⁴⁵ Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures. ⁴⁶ And he said to them, “Thus it is written that the Messiah would suffer and rise from the dead on the third day ⁴⁷ and that repentance, for the forgiveness of sins, would be preached in his name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem. ⁴⁸ You are witnesses of these things. ⁴⁹ 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.”
Today’s Focus
He appeared in the room without entering it, spoke peace into a space still processing the Emmaus testimony, and then spent the rest of the evening dismantling every objection. He showed the wounds. He ate the fish. He opened their minds to read the scriptures the way the scriptures had always been meant to be read. He gave them a commission that reached back to Abraham and forward to every nation. And then he told them to stay in the city and wait. They had seen everything. They had the words. They did not yet have what was needed to carry any of it. The Spirit is not optional enhancement. It is the equipment without which the mission cannot begin. The instruction to wait is not a delay. It is the shape of obedience before the movement starts.
In the Margins
The Emmaus disciples have just finished recounting their encounter when Jesus appears in the room. The testimony is still fresh, the room is still processing it and Jesus arrives before anyone can debate or dismiss what has been said. He does not enter through a door, He is simply present. This is in keeping with His appearance and disappearance at other points throughout the resurrection story.
His first words are peace be with you, and in this moment those words carry more weight than the standard Hebrew greeting they resemble. Isaiah 52 announces the messenger who proclaims peace and declares that God reigns. Isaiah 53 says the punishment that brought us peace was upon the servant. The risen Jesus speaking peace into that room is the announcement that what Isaiah’s servant died to accomplish has been achieved.
The disciples assume they are seeing a ghost, He has just appeared after all. The ghost interpretation is their minds producing the most rational explanation available for what they are witnessing, but it is wrong. This Gospel shows us that from the beginning, the resurrection was not the product of people who were already convinced. It was an encounter that caught them entirely off guard.
Jesus addresses the assumption directly with three forms of evidence. He shows them His hands and feet, He invites them to touch Him, and then He asks for something to eat. The piece of baked fish consumed in front of the disciples is Luke’s most concrete argument for bodily resurrection. Ghosts or visions do not eat. The request for food is not incidental. Acts 10:41 specifies that the apostolic witnesses ate and drank with Jesus after He rose from the dead, and those shared meals as part of the testimony itself, not background detail. The note that the disciples were incredulous for joy is one of the most precise psychological observations. They are not disbelieving out of hostility or skepticism. The experience is simply too large for their frameworks to absorb. It is too good to be true in the most literal sense.
When Jesus opens their minds to understand the scriptures, Luke uses the same verb he used twice in the Emmaus account, dianoigo, to open. He used it when the disciples’ eyes were opened at the breaking of the bread, and when they described how Jesus opened the scriptures to them on the road. Three uses of the same word in the same chapter, each describing the same divine act. The disciples had read the scriptures before the resurrection. They could not read them in a way that made sense of what had just happened until the risen Jesus opened their minds. The resurrection is the interpretive key that unlocks what the entire canon was pointing toward. Without it, the scriptures are a collection of promises without a fulfillment. With it, they become a single coherent narrative.
Jesus identifies all three divisions of the Hebrew canon, the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms as the writings, the full Tanakh, and says all of it was pointing to what has occurred. The pattern of the Messiah suffering and rising on the third day is not drawn from a single text. It is embedded across the whole. Hosea 6 speaks of being raised up on the third day. Psalm 16 says God will not let His holy one see corruption. Isaiah 53 promises that the servant who makes his life an offering will see his offspring and prolong his days. Jonah’s three days in the depths is the sign Jesus Himself cited in Matthew 12. The third day is the fulfillment of a pattern the scriptures had been building for centuries.
The commission Jesus gives reaches back further than the resurrection. When He says repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached to all nations, He is placing that commission inside the promise God made to Abraham in Genesis 12, that in him all the families of the earth would be blessed, and the commission Isaiah gave the servant in chapter 49, to be a light to the nations so that God’s salvation would reach the ends of the earth. The universal scope of the mission is not a new development. It is the fulfillment of what God announced to Abraham and what the prophets had been carrying ever since.
The instruction to stay in the city is as important as the commission to go. The disciples are witnesses. They have seen everything. They have the commission. But they do not yet have what they need to carry it out. The Spirit is the equipment for the mission, not an optional enhancement, and it has not yet come. Joel 2 promised that God would pour out His Spirit on all flesh, and Peter will stand up at Pentecost and announce that what Joel described is what is currently happening. The risen Jesus is pointing forward to that day as the necessary next event. The mission cannot begin in human effort. It waits for what the Father promised, and then it goes to every nation.
This is an important part of discernment for ourselves and something we saw in the Old Testament between David and Saul. We must remember that we are called to do the will of God. Even something we may personally feel is furthering the Word may not be what we are called to do at the time. David was called to be King, but not to remove Saul to make that happen. He knew his place, but that it was to be done according to God’s will. The disciples were called to go forth and do great things, but to have restraint, only going once the spirit came to them – on the timeline of God, not themselves.
Reflection Question
Is there something God has commissioned you to do that you are hesitating on? Is there something you are doing that He is not calling you to do?
A Small Invitation
If this reflection helped you, consider sharing it with someone who may benefit from hearing this message.