Why did the disciples not remember his words, when the chief priests did? Firstly because they so loved him. They loved him as he was, as a person with then on earth. They followed him; the women ministered to his needs. They believed he was Messiah, but they had some wrong views about him. They believed he was an earthly political Messiah, who would deliver the nation physically, right now, from Roman occupation. They didn't understand yet that he was a spiritual Messiah, come to make an atonement for sinners. They had been with him nearly three years, most of them. They loved to listen to his preaching. There was nobody to be compared with him. They loved the way he did it, and they loved the content, the profound things that he said. They loved his whole deportment and his character. He had no bad temper, no selfishness, nothing that mars all of us as human beings. He was so kind and so pure and so holy. He could be very firm; he could be very direct, but always in the best possible way. Then there were his miracles and his compassion, and the thousands of people who were healed. He was Messiah. He was God incarnate. He knew his Scriptures. He was the original author of them.. Therefore his every word was marvellous and deep and true. They didn't want to think about him returning to heaven and being absent from them. When he said, ‘I'm going to Jerusalem. I am going to be taken by wicked hands. I shall be slain. I shall be crucified. I will rise again and ascend into heaven’, they didn't take it in. What about us? ‘I will save you’, he says. ‘I will give you new life. I will be your God. I will be near you. I will map out your life, and plan things for you. I will take you to glory. But listen: you will also be my representatives, my people, my disciples. You will speak for me, and you will be persecuted; you will know much temptation and opposition and hostility.’ At that point we are not hearing him. ‘You will know times of great difficulty, but I will be near you. You must trust me.’ We are not hearing any of that. We want to hear the positive things. We don't hear about him as our great supporter and strength and help. We don't hear teaching about the providence of God: that he works all things for the good of his people – even sorrow and suffering, and sickness, and disappointment. He will use these things to coach us and to mould us, and he will strengthen us in our reactions.
The second great problem was that they allowed grief to swamp their faith. The apostle Paul uses a most intriguing expression in writing to the Corinthians, and he says, here is a sinner, and he has done wrong and you have disciplined him. Time has passed and he is very repentant and filled with sorrow, and he is suffering. He is cut off from your companionship and from worship. It is time now to receive him back, ‘Lest’, he says, ‘he be swallowed up by overmuch sorrow.’ That is a danger not only in an extreme case like this. Any grief, any disappointments, any bad treatment by anybody, friend or foe, any unreasonable situation, any hard situation, can bring you sorrow or pain or grief. That can swallow up faith, so that you don't exercise it. Sorrow kills off faith. Does that mean we never sorrow? No, you can't avoid sorrow and grief, and sometimes it's perfectly legitimate. There has been a heavy loss, and you will grieve. But you must always put the promises of God and your prayer life alongside the sorrow. You mustn't allow the sorrow, the anxiety, to overwhelm the faith. That is why we say, faith and dependence are opposite sides of the same coin. If you have faith, you depend upon him. You ration the sorrow. It mustn't be allowed to go round your head all day; it will totally exclude faith. You say, ‘I'm very disturbed about this. I cannot stop thinking about this’, but you can. So much a day is sufficient, and then go to the Lord. The disciples failed to understand the resurrection. They didn't have encouragement from their expectation of the resurrection.
They did not believe because it had never happened before. Nobody had ever risen from the dead; there had never been a resurrection. So they assumed, it seems to many people, that when the Lord predicted his resurrection, he meant his words to be understood figuratively. That is exactly what happens to us. Not with the resurrection. We believe it because we believe the record of it, that it literally happened; that is not our problem. But we explain away various definite promises of God which undermine our spiritual work. ‘The work of the gospel, the conversion of souls: it can't be done without times of revival, times of special outpouring of the Spirit. If I witness to people at work tomorrow or members of my family who seem far away, nothing is going to happen. I believe there are times and seasons and occasions when God does wonderful things but I doubt constant power of the gospel to save, according to God's will.’ We allow our faith to be undermined. They could not believe anybody could be resurrected, so they were crushed by Christ's death. We need to re-enliven our faith perhaps. We must not accommodate the promises of God to our dismal and low expectations.
Then also they forgot the Scripture. The eyes of those two disciples on the Emmaus Road were held from seeing until Christ expounded the Scriptures to them. He pointed out to them through Moses and the prophets all the Scriptures that said that this was exactly what would take place, and they had forgotten them. It is the same with us: keep Scriptures in your mind, exercise your faith, remember God's blessings to you, keep faith alive and strong. Because if you let it run down, then you will have no expectation, no instrumentality.