Easter 2022 3

his life, his word, our reaction

easter 2022

(luke 24.13-35)

Today’s passage is one of my favorite passages in the whole Bible. It’s going to seem a little weird, because we’re going to skip ahead a few hours after the resurrection. But we’re seeing this passage because of everything we see in the gospels concerning the story we celebrate today, this is the one, in my opinion, where we best see what this wonderful news is meant to produce in us.

So in case you’re new here, let me just give you a brief overview of what’s happened so far.

We see Jesus Christ, the Son of God, God himself, come to earth in human form. He lives a perfect life, teaches and proclaims the kingdom of God all over Israel. His disciples believe, that he is the Messiah—the King whom God had promised through the prophets to send, to save his people (they think, from the occupation of the Roman Empire). He is accused of blasphemy by the religious authorities in Israel and arrested, put on trial, and condemned to die. He is crucified outside of Jerusalem, and he dies, and is buried. His disciples are huddled together in confusion, because their Messiah, their promised King, is now dead—so he must not have been who he said he was.

Now it’s the third day after his burial. And no one in the story has seen Jesus yet. A group of women come to the tomb in the morning and find it empty: the stone has been rolled away, and Jesus is gone. The women see two angels sitting there who tell them that Jesus is risen; they run back and tell the disciples, who think they’re nuts—all except Peter, who runs to the tomb and finds it empty himself.

At this point in the story, that’s all we know: Jesus was dead, and now his tomb is empty.

And that’s where we pick it up again today, in Luke 24.13.

We find two "of them” (two of the disciples) walking toward a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, Luke says. And Jesus—who, it won’t be a surprise to learn, is good and well raised from the dead—appears to them on the road.

So first of all, who were these two people? They were two of the “all the rest” Luke mentioned in v. 9. All we know is one of them is named Cleopas—that’s it. (They are often described as two men, but they could well have been a man and a woman, maybe a husband and wife; the Greek is ambiguous.) 

At any rate, they were two unknown people in this story; they weren’t among the apostles, they weren’t leaders. They were just two people who had followed Jesus along with everyone else.

So they’re going to Emmaus, and they’re talking about everything that had happened, and along the way Jesus joins them on the road. But Luke tells us (v. 16) that their eyes were kept from recognizing him.

Now some people will imagine that’s because Jesus’s physical appearance has changed—and that may be true. We know that now that he has been raised, his body has been glorified—made perfect, freed from the effects of sin in this world. So he may have looked a little different.

But Luke’s language is more specific than that: he describes a kind of blindness that God sends on these two so that they don’t know it’s Jesus they’re walking with. I think there’s a reason for that, which we’ll see a little later.

So (v. 17) Jesus basically walks up and asks them, “What are you guys talking about?”

They obviously presumed everyone knew about Jesus, so when he seems to be ignorant of the situation, they explain to him about Jesus of Nazareth, a man who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people.

I don’t think this means they misunderstood whom Jesus had claimed to be. I think they call him “a prophet” because they had hoped he was the Messiah whom God had promised, the one to redeem Israel; but he died, so he couldn’t possibly be the Savior they thought he was.

They explain how Jesus was crucified, and then in v. 21-24, they basically give a recap of everything we saw last week: how the women went to the tomb and found it empty and claimed to have seen angels, saying he was alive. But clearly these two weren’t entirely convinced by the women’s story: they say the women saw “a vision” of angels, and they specify that the women did not see Jesus.

And this is where we get to the heart of the passage, which we’ll come back to more than once. 

V. 25-27:  

25 And he said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! 26 Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” 27 And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself. 

In these verses, we see a pattern that actually occurred before, with the women at the tomb, and which will happen again in the following passage, when Jesus appears to the disciples.

The first thing we’ve already seen, and it’s simple bewilderment. They don’t understand what’s going on. Jesus couldn’t have been the Messiah, because he died. That’s what they’re talking about.

Next, we see a rebuke. 

Jesus says (v. 25):  O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?

There are a few things here worth noting.

The first is that these two, apparently, should have known better. Like the angels said to the women in last week’s text, Jesus seems surprised at their bewilderment. Haven’t you read the Scriptures? Don’t you remember that it was NECESSARY for the Christ to suffer these things and enter into his glory?

This is important to see, because all of us can understand these two guys. Jesus had warned everyone about what was going to happen to him. But he was so clearly an amazing man, so clearly a brilliant teacher, and a healer at that… Surely of all people, he wouldn’t come to that end!

So Jesus rebukes them, but he does it out of love. He knows they aren’t looking for power or position, but that they genuinely don’t understand—indeed, he knows they can’t understand without his help.

So he teaches them—which is the next step in the pattern. We have bewilderment, then rebuke, then teaching. 

V. 27:  

27 And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself. 

This is just wonderful. How often do we say that all of Scripture is about Jesus? That isn’t just a catchy phrase to say, to get people to read their Bibles.

When Jesus teaches them in order to convince them that these things had to happen, he doesn’t use his own teaching; he doesn’t use his own powers of persuasion. 

He uses the Old Testament—the first half of the Bible (because at this point, the New Testament hasn’t been written yet). He went to the Bible, and he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.

He begins with Moses—Israel’s first “Savior,” deliverer sent to rescue them from slavery in Egypt, through whom God communicated his will by means of the law.

Then he goes to the Prophets—for example, Isaiah 53.5-7, 9-10:   

5  But he was pierced for our transgressions; 

he was crushed for our iniquities; 

upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, 

and with his wounds we are healed. 

6  All we like sheep have gone astray; 

we have turned—every one—to his own way; 

and the Lord has laid on him 

the iniquity of us all…  

9  And they made his grave with the wicked 

and with a rich man in his death, 

although he had done no violence, 

and there was no deceit in his mouth. 

10  Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him; 

he has put him to grief; 

when his soul makes an offering for guilt, 

he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; 

the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. 

All of Scripture tells the story of Jesus Christ. 

All of the Old Testament either explicitly looks forward to him, or builds the story which would culminate in him. You cannot understand the story of the gospel if you don’t understand the story which led up to it—clearly. These people—the scribes and the Pharisees, the disciples who don’t believe, and these two on the road to Emmaüs—prove that fact.

When Jesus wants to convince them of what he came to do, he uses the Scriptures to do it.

He walks these two through the biblical story, showing how every step of the way, Scripture was pointing toward Jesus. 

(Remember, at this point they didn’t know it was him.)

So what happens next? They “persuade” him to come eat dinner with them. This respected the rules of Jewish decorum, but there was more to it than that. Imagine these men, who had seen their hopes dashed that Jesus was the Messiah, suddenly being shown in all of Scripture that this was no accident—no fluke of disobedient men—no defeat. 

Imagine what it must have been like to realize that everything they had seen happen to Jesus had been predicted. These people are the first whom Luke records as fully understanding that the cross wasn’t a defeat, but the means by which he entered into his glory.

So he comes to dinner, and at the end of the dinner, the most extraordinary thing happens—v. 30:  

30 When he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them. 31 And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. And he vanished from their sight.

OK, at the risk of belaboring the point, take a minute to picture this moment.

Your Messiah is dead. Your hopes are shattered.

And then someone comes along, someone who is clearly a genius in regards to Holy Scripture, and as he’s speaking, you begin to realize little by little that maybe you had it wrong. It seems like your hopes may not be dead after all. This is how it was supposed to happen; what seemed to be defeat wasn’t defeat at all.

And then, as you’re thinking these things over, you realize that the guy you’ve been speaking to all this time actually is Christ.

And then he disappears. (I’m reading between the lines, but I have a hard time not imagining Jesus winking just before he disappears.)

Finally, at that point, we see the last element… We’ve seen bewilderment, then rebuke, then teaching… And now, we see their reaction.

What would you do in that moment?

You’d turn to your friend and say, “IT WAS HIM!!! It was him this whole time! Can you believe it? And did you see that? He gave us the bread, he winked at us, and then he just DISAPPEARED!”

That’s what I’d say—but that’s not what these two say.

V. 32 is an absolute bomb of a verse:  

32 They said to each other, “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?”

This is incredible. The most extraordinary part of this exchange, for these two, was not taking the bread and realizing they’d been talking to Christ all along. It wasn’t him disappearing right before their eyes. Once they’re alone again, they don’t talk about these things; they talk about what he taught them.

Did not our hearts burn within us…while he opened to us the Scriptures?

That’s why I think God didn’t let them see they were speaking to Jesus before the moment when he broke the bread. I think he wanted to let the Scriptures convince them rather than a visible miracle. 

In other words, even before they recognized Jesus, they already had everything they needed to be convinced. The testimony of Scripture alone confirmed their hopes.

They had everything they needed to make them full-fledged believers, before they recognized him for who he was. His appearance to them was icing on the cake. The Scriptures alone were enough.

This may be the most important thing for us to note today. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the most incredible, world-altering event in all of human history. Jesus went to the cross in order to take our sin—our rebellion against God—on himself, and suffer the punishment we deserve, in our place, so we don’t have to suffer it. That was the goal.

And the resurrection proves that it worked. That Jesus took our sin off of us, and put his perfect life on to us. The resurrection means we no longer have to be separated from God because of our sin, but we can be reconciled to God through faith in Jesus Christ. As John wrote in John 3.16, 

God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him would not perish but have everlasting life.

This is the most incredible news of all time…and we don’t believe it. And what do we say to justify our disbelief? “If I could actually see Jesus, physically resurrected…if I could see a miracle that proved his resurrection…then I might believe it.” We don’t believe because we want proof.

The simple fact is that it doesn’t work that way. I love going on YouTube to watch magic tricks be performed. But I’m never convinced it’s actually magic, because I know perfectly well that either it’s a trick by a talented artist, or they used special effects for the video. I think it’s awesome, but I’m not convinced there’s actual wizardry going on.

People have always been like this. We see it in the gospels over and over again—Jesus performs miracles—he heals people and even raises them from the dead…and still people don’t believe. And some people actually saw Jesus after his resurrection, and they still weren’t convinced. 

Seeing isn’t necessarily believing. We could have all the proof we ask for, and still not be convinced it’s true.

And the great thing is that nowhere in the Bible does God ever use “proof” as a crutch. He never promises to convince people through visible proof. He convinces people through his Word, applied to our hearts by the Holy Spirit. These two disciples weren’t convinced because they saw Jesus; they were convinced because God spoke to them through the Scriptures.

Here’s why this is so important: we don’t have Jesus physically present with us today, so we have no visible proof. But the thing that convinced these two disciples that these things are true…we have that. We have the Scriptures. And the Holy Spirit still uses the Scriptures to convince us.

If you thought you would come here today to simply hear a story, you’re wrong. What you’re getting in the words of this book is everything you need to believe that Jesus really and truly is the Son of God, and that he really did die for our sins, and that we really can have eternal life in him. 

Everything we need is right here.

CONCLUSION

I’m going to be very honest with you right now: I thought long and hard about how to end this sermon. Because what I want is for you all to hear what Jesus did, and who he is, and to  go through this same process we’ve seen today. Necessarily, whether we know it or not, we’re all troubled; we all recognize that this world is broken, and that we are broken too—we are not perfect, we don’t know everything, we don’t understand everything. There’s a disconnect between what is and what should be. And if we take even a moment to think about it, that reality troubles us.

Next, we hear Jesus giving us that same kind and gentle rebuke: “Didn’t I already tell you the world was broken, that you were broken? Shouldn’t that fact point you to your need for someone to fix it?”

Next, if we take the time to let him, we hear Jesus teaching us, taking us through the Scriptures, showing us how everything written in the Bible, and everything we see in the world, points us to him.

And finally, if that interaction does its work in our hearts, we will react. We will fall on our faces in worship.

That’s what I want for every person in here, because that’s what he deserves.

But I can’t do that. No one can. I’m not a particularly persuasive person; but no one is persuasive enough to bring another human being to faith in Jesus Christ. 

No one except God himself. 

In the passage which follows the one we read, we see Jesus appear to the eleven disciples: his “inner circle”, those to whom he was closest. And we see that even they don’t entirely get what’s been going on.

But we read (Luke 24.44-48): 

44 Then 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 the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” 45 Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, 46 and said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, 47 and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. 48 You are witnesses of these things.

He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures…and then called them witnesses of these things.

That is what we need, to bring us to the right reaction to this wonderful news.

So all I can do is invite you to pray. If you’re not convinced, ask God to convince you. If you are convinced, but you find yourself indifferent to these things, ask God to bring you to a fresh understanding of these things, so you might say with the two disciples, “Did not our hearts burn within us while he opened to us the Scriptures?” And if you do find your heart burning, if you are properly amazed about these things…fall on your knees and thank the Lord for doing that in you. Because he’s the only one who can.