15. Impression of Grace May Be Stronger Afterwards
15
Impression of Grace May Be Stronger Afterwards1
Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the scriptures?
—Luke 24:32
Their hearts burn while Christ speaks. These men had a cooling before, though they were believing disciples. But observe here that they feel the burning of heart not so [much] while Christ spoke to them as afterward. In verse 31, Christ vanished out of their sight and was gone, and now they take special notice, in a feeling way, of the warmness of heart they felt while He opened the Scriptures to them. The Lord preaches in a ladder reaching from earth to heaven, and Jacob sleeps and can give no judgment while he dreams. But in Genesis 28:16, when the sweet vision and preaching were ended, Jacob awakened from his sleep and said, “Surely the LORD is in this place, and I knew it not.” A strong impression of the presence and glory of God sometimes comes on after the Lord is away. David desires and thirsts (he says in the wilderness of Judah), “to see thy power and thy glory, so as I have seen thee” (Ps. 63:2). The enjoying of Zion and Zion’s songs while the people are at home in their own land does not have such influence on their spirit as when the sanctuary’s glory is removed. Then we find in Psalm 137:1: “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.”
While one has a fever, he may be ignorant that he has a fever, but when the cooling of health comes, then he well remembers he was sick of a fever. When there is a fever of glory on Peter, he does not know what to say, yet afterwards he makes sweet comfortable life of that glory of Christ on the mount (Mark 9:6; 2 Peter 1:16–17). When the Lord waters the sown seed and sends down new influences of grace, then it does appear what warming has been in the soul.
“Did not our hearts burn?” The godly reprove their own not knowing and not discerning of Christ in His heart-flamings of love; godly and spiritual sense challenges self-dullness.2 “I opened to my beloved; but my beloved had withdrawn himself, and was gone” (Song 5:6). This is a fruit of Christ’s withdrawing, with a challenge here of refusing to open. Ah! Why did I not open while He did lovingly stand and knock and lovingly speak, “Open to me, my sister, my dove” (Song 5:2)?
1. Influences, 253–54.
2. self-dullness: sluggish laziness of the flesh