Consequences

Let us now look at the consequences of this for a moment. There are two things that are perfectly beautiful here. "They said one to another, Did not our heart burn within us, while He talked with us by the way, and while He opened to us the Scriptures?" v. 32. Now I do not think we ought to depreciate that. We ought not to make little of it, and yet we ought not to make everything of it. What was it that made their heart burn while He talked with them and while He opened the Scriptures to them? Was it not Himself? Do not suppose that anything He does is small or trifling. It was He that did it. It was He that lighted that fire, He that kindled that flame. It was His love that struck, as it were, the match in their souls.
All these exercises, under the Lord's blessed hand, lead to that which next comes before us— communion. But you must have burning to lead to communion; you must have burning of heart to lead to communion of heart. That is the road to communion. The heart is set on fire by the kindling’s of the love of Christ; the heart is delighted as the word comes from His own blessed lips, and He leads on to this moment. He Himself is before us, really and literally back from the dead, a living Person. That is just what it was with them. What made all the difference now was that He was there before them. It was not merely Himself in Scripture, although He had been before them in Scripture, in His own interpretation of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms. And what a wonderful interpretation of Scripture that must have been! Not a flaw in it. Oh, what divine harmony and perfectness as He conducted them through the Scriptures, and said, as it were, I am there, and I am there, and I am there! There was not a scene that He did not fill, not an event of which He was not the crowning figure, not a circumstance that did not revolve around Him.
He, in His own blessed person, was now a reality before their eyes. It was more than report, it was reality now. He was there present to the gaze as alive from the dead, alive out of the death which He had undergone in the deep, eternal love of His heart for them. He Himself had changed everything, altered everything, and brought in an entirely new order of things. Then it was they rose up the same hour of the night. Farewell now to weariness! It did not matter that the day was far spent, that the shadows of the evening were cast upon their path: they rose up the same hour to go to the very place to which He was going. That is communion. They have gotten into communion now with His own thoughts. He brings them to the place where He Himself was going. W. Turpin