Luke 24:32 “And they said to one another, "Did not our heart burn within us while He talked with us on the road, and while He opened the Scriptures to us?”
Our spirits can and should burn. The context of the above quoted account in scripture is that two of the Lord’s disciples were walking from Jerusalem to Emmaus, on the day the Lord Jesus was raised from the dead. And so our Lord joined them as a fellow traveller, but hid His identity from them during this encounter. As the Lord walked with them, He explained the scriptures to them concerning His death, burial and resurrection. That evening as He broke bread with them, He was revealed to them and then He disappeared from their sight. But I want you to notice their reaction afterwards when they realized that they had been speaking to Jesus. Their spirits were burning the whole time that Jesus was speaking to them.
Jeremiah 20:9 “Then I said, "I will not make mention of Him, nor speak anymore in His name." But His word was in my heart like a burning fire shut up in my bones; I was weary of holding it back, And I could not.”
The prophet Jeremiah had a similar experience when it came to the word of God burning within him. In the above quoted passage of scripture we see that when he tried to hold back from prophesying because of all the trouble that he was getting into, the word of God would burn hot within him. And the only relief he could get was to speak out that which the Lord had placed upon him.
Psalms 39:3 “My heart was hot within me; while I was musing, the fire burned.”
Both the Spirit of God and the word of God are given to the saints to guide them in life. That same truth was applicable to the Lord Jesus when He walked in the flesh, for the Lord said of God’s word, that His word was a lamp to His feet and a light to His path (Psalm 119:105). And so the scripture reveals to us that when our Lord Jesus walked on the earth He would meditate constantly on the word of God (Psalm 119:97). As He did so, His spirit constantly burned within Him. This truth is revealed to us in the above quoted passage of scripture.
Psalms 18:28 “For You will light My lamp; The Lord My God will enlighten My darkness.”
Psalm eighteen is an account of what took place when our Lord Jesus went into Hades to pay the price for our sins, and His subsequent triumph over Satan and his angels, after God our Father made Christ the firstborn from the dead (Colossians 1:18). In the above quoted passage of scripture our Lord Jesus gave us some insight into what took place at that time, for He tells us that the Father set His lamp alight. The lamp that our Lord is referring to in this passage is the lamp of His Spirit. And so the phrase “You will light My lamp”, can be more correctly translated “You will set My Spirit on fire”. Christ Jesus was not only the first to be raised from the dead, but He was also the first to be born from the dead. And so when Christ died for our sins, the fire of His spirit was extinguished as He became separated from God the Father. Nevertheless after the sins of the world had been paid for, the fire of our Lord’s Spirit was reignited once again when God made His Son alive once again.
Michael E.B. Maher
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