Luke 24:13-35

And um, we're again in Luke 24.

Now that someday two of them were going to a village called Emanus, about seven miles from Jerusalem.

They were talking with each other about everything that had happened.

As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them.

But they were kept from recognizing him.

He asked them, Who are you discussing?

Together as you walk along.

They stood still, their faces downcast.

One of them named Cleopas asked him, Are you the only one visiting Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?

What things?

he asked about Jesus of Nazareth, they replied.

He was a prophet, powerful in the word and deed, before God and all the people, the chief priests, and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him.

But we had hope that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel.

And what is more, it is the third day since all this took place.

In addition, some of our women amazed us.

They went to the tomb early this morning, but didn't find his body.

Then some of our companions went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but they did not see Jesus.

He said to them, How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all the prophets have spoken.

Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?

And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the scriptures concerning himself.

As they approached the village to which they were going, Jesus continued on as if he were going farther.

But they urged him strongly, stay with us, for it is nearly evening, the day is almost over.

So he went in to stay with them.

When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it, and began to give it to them.

Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight.

They asked each other, were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the scriptures to us.

They got up and returned at once to Jerusalem.

There they found the eleven and those with them assembled together and saying, It is true.

Then the two told what had happened on the way and how Jesus was recognized by them when he broke the bread.

Amen.

All right, let's uh let's pray.

Thank you, Albert.

Lord, we do just um want to say thank you that we get to read your word in um in the English language, that we're not having to translate this over from Greek.

Thank you that um we can sit before you and ask you to speak into our lives by your spirit.

And so we we pray, Lord, that um as we are um just looking into this text that you would have um the authority, we want to give you permission to speak to us.

We pray that you would work in our life by your word.

We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

You may be seated.

So here we are, we're coming to the end of Luke 24, and at the end of Luke 24, Luke is over as a book.

Originally, this was written as a scroll that was about 30 um feet, some 30 odd feet long.

And this was written to a man named Theophilus, a wealthy patron, uh, probably a man who was a Gentile, not a Jew.

And he had paid for Luke as a doctor.

He basically sponsored Luke to do this research project and to find out more about Jesus.

From verses one through four of the beginning of this book, it starts with Luke explaining why he wrote this.

And it's literally just written to one person, Theophilus.

And Luke, the the gospel of Luke, this book, is volume one of two, right?

The other book that he wrote after he wrote Luke was the book of what we call Acts or Acts of the Apostles, and it's an overview of the early church, right?

So Luke is a historian, and he goes to great lengths to give Theophilus a um to buttress his faith, right?

To undergird what he believes.

And so we, as you know, 2,000 years here in the future, we've been looking at this book because we believe that it is scripture, right?

It's it's been included in the can.

Now you look at this and it doesn't look like a canon.

No, canon is like a legal term of something being made official, like it's put into law, right?

The book of Luke was included in the canon from the earliest days of the church.

It was thought to be scripture.

And what that means is it's not just a historic account like Plato or Josephus or Philo.

It's actually a book that was inspired by the Holy Spirit to be written by Luke.

So while Luke had an earthly context in his writing, we believe that the Holy Spirit was leading Luke in his writing each and every word.

Um and what that means, when we when you elevate a book to be holy scripture, that means that it serves a role in our life where it's authoritative, it's governing in our life, right?

It's like when a police badge on, when they put a badge on, um, they are all of a sudden taking an authoritative role within society.

Um and we we give that individual respect because they hold that badge.

Well, scripture, when we take a book and we elevate it to the level of scripture, we're saying, you have permission to govern my life.

And that's how we've been reading Luke.

We haven't been reading it as if we're in a um community college trying to get some credits done.

We've actually been reading it as if it were directing us in how to do life, how to be followers of Jesus.

And so in this text, we are um on the day of the resurrection, we're one day into the resurrection, and we've already last week looked at the women who came to the tomb, right?

And the angels meet the women and they say he is risen.

And then we also see Peter runs and he sees that the linens that Jesus were wrapped in are still there in the tomb.

But it's confusing to these individuals.

They're still, you know, where we left off in verse 12 last week, they're still trying to make heads or tails out of what's going on.

The angels told the women, don't you remember that Jesus warned you that this would be the case?

Don't you remember that Jesus said that he was going to Jerusalem, that he would be betrayed, that he would be crucified, and on the third day he would rise?

There was this like disconnect for the disciples.

And that's the case with these two disciples on the road to Emmaus.

Now, Mark chapter 16, which is another gospel account, Mark 16 references these two on the way to Emmaus in just two verses.

Mark 16 · chapter mention

And the way that we understand the New Testament being written and the order of the Gospels is that Mark was probably the first book that was written.

And then Matthew and Luke use Mark and maybe another foundational text, which we call the Q document, to um compile their own research.

So Mark is very abbreviated, it's a very short gospel, whereas Luke is lengthy, and it's kind of like Luke, the doctor, read Mark, and he's like, I'm gonna go track those people down.

And so again, we get into this story, and rather than two verses, we have um almost two dozen verses that we are looking at.

So it says in verse 13, and we're gonna just walk through this um this morning.

That's gonna be my teaching kind of method for us.

So hopefully you have the text in front of you, you have it in the bulletin or your Bible.

He says, Now the same day, two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and they were talking with each other about everything that had happened.

And as they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them, but they were kept from recognizing him.

So there's this clear reference to the fact that they're they're um they're not allowed to recognize Jesus.

In fact, this word recognize comes up three times in the text.

It's found here in verse 16, and then we also have it down in verse 31 as um recognized, and then again in verse 35 recognized.

It's fascinating the the account the Luke records the inability.

They're they're they're traveling this seven-mile journey, which would have taken 55 hours to walk, and they um do not have the ability to recognize Jesus the person, right?

But yet they're having this engaging conversation with Jesus all the way along.

So um we see in verse 15, we see in verse 15 that they're talking and having a discussion with each other.

The the Greek word there, it's actually a heated argument.

And Jesus comes up and walks alongside of them, but they didn't recognize him.

And then verse 17 says, He asks them, What are you discussing together as you walk along?

Now, because he is prompting them to think further or to reveal their hearts.

I think it's the latter.

Jesus asks them, what are you discussing as you walk along?

Do you see that there?

So, first of all, they're kept from recognizing the physical visage of Jesus, right?

To the fact that it's um just the sun being in their eyes, the direction you would have had to walk to Emmaus, the sun at this time would have been in their eyes.

But I really think that the way that this is written here is that it's clear that they were kept from recognizing, because later on they're gonna be, their eyes are gonna be opened so that they can see Jesus.

So he asked them this question, and they respond.

They stood still, their faces down, and one of them, named Cleopus, said, Are you the only one visiting Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?

Verse 19, he says, What things?

So it's this is a setup, right?

Jesus is drawing out of these two the response that we're going to see here in the rest of verse 19 down through verse 24.

I think my my microphone is having a problem.

Jeff, could you hear me that microphone?

And we'll just thank you.

I appreciate it.

You're the best.

So um that's better.

So let's just look at this section for a section.

In terms of this ability to recognize Jesus, um the question that Jesus is posing to them um is is so is so vital.

So in your in your life and in my life, there are times where we are um just confused.

Have you ever been confused?

Yeah.

Okay, good.

I'm not alone.

And and sometimes God allows us uh to miss the biggest pieces of the puzzle.

And then we're faced with these kind of these probing questions.

You know, tell me more, right?

Um this is one the reason why I want to just stop at this point in the text is I I want you to realize that one of the ways um that we have a relationship with God.

So so we are uh Protestant evangelical Christians, right, as a church.

So what that means, one of the hallmarks of our faith is that we believe that we can have a personal relationship with God because of what Jesus did.

He didn't just die on the cross to forgive us from our sins, but he made it made a way for us to personally relate to him on a daily basis.

And one of the ways that we relate to God is through question and answer.

And so there are times where um there are questions that we have in our life on purpose.

And so you may feel like um there's some missing pieces.

And I just want you to know that that isn't God's cruelty to you, that God wants to engage you in the same way that he engages these travelers, these disciples on their way to Emmaus.

And he will ask you questions.

And so it is so vital for you and I to have a space, uh, room in our life where you're able to be quiet and allow just an internal wrestling.

Now you may feel like your own like mental wrestling with what you're confused over, is just you.

But I just I want you to know that the way that the Holy Spirit works in our life, the Spirit of God who's in us, the way that He works is oftentimes very naturally by questions that kind of arise and that wrestling that's going on.

And I would encourage you to take those questions as an invitation from God to engage him in that relationship and to answer the questions.

And and literally sometimes, at least what I'll do is I'll write out the questions and then the answers and just wrestle through things in a in a written, organized way.

Maybe your your brain is sharp enough where you can just have a uh a logical thread of consciousness without writing it down.

That's not me.

I gotta I gotta think through stuff on paper.

But allow allow God to ask you questions.

Do you this whole setting here is intentional.

They're not allowed to recognize Jesus, they're not permitted to recognize Jesus.

Jesus engages them, asks them an obvious question, and now they're gonna answer the question.

Notice, notice what they say.

Notice what they say in answering this particular uh question.

Starting in verse 19.

Or verse uh 20.

No, kind of middle of nineteen.

He was a prophet, speaking of Jesus, Jesus of Nazareth, he was a prophet, powerful in word and deed, before God and all the people.

The chief priests and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him.

But we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel.

And what is more, it is the third day since all this took place.

In addition, some of our women amazed us.

They went to the tomb early this morning, but didn't find his body.

They came and they told us that they had seen a vision of of angels who said he was alive.

Then some of our companions went to the tomb and found it as Jesus, uh di it just as the women had said, but they did not see Jesus.

So the disciples recount what had happened, what they had hoped for, and the most recent occurrence from earlier this morning.

And the way that they they put it is they say basically, Jesus was great.

Do you see they say he's a prophet of God?

He was mighty in word and deed, right?

Remember the miracles that Jesus did, the powerful preaching that Jesus did.

But he was not great as they had hoped.

They were stuck on the crucifixion, right?

So they got the greatness of Jesus, but then they say that we had hoped we had hoped that he was going to be the one to redeem Israel.

So for those of you that have been with us, you know the context for this statement, but Israel at this time, the nation of Israel, the ethnic Jews, were under the authority of the Roman Empire.

So the Jews did not have the freedom to govern themselves.

They had to basically do their government under the shadow of Rome.

And so the kind of the popular position for the Jews at this time was to long for political liberation.

Imagine a um uh a group of people, you know, you think of um the people that were uh the ethnic groups that were um in Eastern or or Western U Asia, rather, kind of Western Soviet Union, uh Eastern Soviet Union, and those um Baltic states that were not truly Russian people, but they were hoping for a liberation, right?

That's where the Jews were at, longing to be liberated.

And so this prophet comes on the scene and he's preaching more powerfully than anybody else had preached before.

He's doing miracles that were unparalleled, and so the um obvious thought was this is going to be the one who is going to politically liberate us.

Right?

Makes sense.

That's the hope, right?

Now, I'm sure we never put our hope in political parties or political activity, right?

No, never.

Heaven forbid we ever get our hopes up into a politician, right?

No, you can relate in that way that it's just like um and you can relate to the disappointment.

I mean, I I I'm uh disappointed with what's going on politically in Baltimore right now.

And I don't know, and and then I think like, why am I disappointed?

Like, what what was my hope?

Like, what was my hope?

Why do I get my hopes up?

You know?

I think I I get my hopes up because uh Christians are hopeful.

We we hope that governing leaders will reflect the authority of God, that they hold a position that's entrusted to them from God.

And so justice, equity, character, all of those things should be the case because they hold a position that God has granted them, allowed them to hold as stewards.

But anyway, I digress.

So these disciples, they say they had hoped.

Now, here's the thing that's interesting.

Here's what's interesting about their statement.

When they say we had hoped, this is a tremendous this is a A powerful psychological statement because they are saying they're giving a window into their expectations.

They're able to identify their expectations.

So it is a really powerful thing I don't know how many of you have gone through therapy.

Hopefully all of us have.

It's a good thing.

It's a good thing.

But it's it's it's it's one of the things that that is really useful in a counseling setting is the ability to identify hopes, fears, expectations, longings, because those things underlie confusion in our life, right?

And so they are transparent enough with Jesus to say this is what we had hoped for.

And that's powerful, right?

That's powerful because they're revealing their heart.

As we're wrestling with the puzzle pieces, sometimes God is waiting for an introspective comment like this.

I would encourage you, as you're wrestling with your big questions in life, and as you're engaging God with those, that you would be as truthful with God as possible.

If you're angry, you're all it's okay to let God know that you're angry, right?

You know why I know that?

Is because when we read through the Psalms, which is really 150 prayers and songs to God from an anointed king, he tells God that he's upset.

He tells God that he feels separated and far from God.

He feels like God's betrayed him, right?

It is okay to be honest with God.

It's a part of the process of getting to where God wants you to be.

He knows you're screwed up, he knows we're broken, he knows we need a therapist, right?

It's okay.

It's okay.

But allowing allowing God, allowing God to engage you and to be introspective like this is healthy.

Let's go to verse 25 through 27.

He said to them, How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken.

Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?

And beginning from Moses and all the prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the scriptures concerning himself.

We'll stop there.

So he rebukes them.

He says that you are foolish and slow to believe.

Then he asks them a question.

He says, Did not Moses suffer, didn't uh did not Messiah have to suffer these things?

And then he has an explanation, uh, or we're given an explanation, how he goes from Moses through the prophets explaining how these things were about himself, or rather, about the Messiah.

Luke kind of translates the experience for us and says he's explaining them about himself, because we know that he's the Messiah, hidden to these men.

So, two really important things right here in 25 through 27.

The first is that Jesus rebukes these men.

This is harsh.

Do you see that?

I mean, I don't know how you feel when somebody says to you, you are so foolish.

How does that feel when somebody says that to you?

You don't really like that, right?

It's important if you're a follower of Jesus that you give him space to rebuke you.

And you've got to understand that the one here who is rebuking is the one who just went to the cross for these two guys.

So when God rebukes us and says to you, hey, you're being a fool, you're being foolish, it is not a reflection on your value.

He loves you, he cares for you, and we need to give him permission to tell us when we're being foolish, because sometimes we are.

Oftentimes we are.

Weakly we're foolish.

We do dumb stuff, right?

So as a follower of God, right?

One that follows Jesus in the way, please have the humility to let God rebuke you, right?

And know this sometimes, sometimes he does that through the people around us.

Hopefully they're nice.

Hopefully they're nice to you, but we need to operate in the humility that receives a correction.

But the second thing that I really want to hammer here is this idea of the centrality of Christ.

Because Jesus, after he corrects them, he says, Didn't the prophets tell you that the Messiah had to suffer?

These are Jews who, by the age of 12, had memorized the first five books of your Bible.

The first five books.

That's Moses, Torah, right?

By the age of twelve, an average boy had memorized those twelve books.

And then he'd begin to memorize the rest of Scripture, right?

All through the rest of the Old Testament.

And yet Jesus is saying to them, doesn't the scriptures tell us that the Messiah had to suffer?

And then it says that he goes on and he explains to them from Moses through the prophets how the Messiah is found all the way throughout.

So, you know, imagine Jesus explaining the story of Abraham.

Remember, Abraham is told after he has his son Isaac, he says, take your son, your beloved son, and sacrifice him on Mount Moriah.

And you go through this story, and it's it's uh it is very clearly pointing to God providing a future substitutionary sacrifice, right?

Then we get into the story of Egypt for 400 years being under the foot of Pharaoh and being enslaved and then crying out for God to liberate them, and God brings Moses in as a deliverer.

All of this foreshadows God's ability to rescue, God's ability to provide and raise up a leadership that will set people free.

You get into the Psalms and you get into the prophets, and it becomes more and more explicit that the Messiah is to suffer, right?

These individuals, these two, Cleopus and whoever the other individual was, should have known that the Messiah's work, part of his work, was to suffer.

And yet they hadn't missed that part.

So imagine Jesus teaching a Bible study as you're walking with him, just explaining all these Old Testament stories, thousands of years of Israel's history and how it pointed to him.

It pointed to Jesus.

This is the doctrine, what we call the centrality of Christ, that Jesus is at the center.

Now, if you want to kind of dive into that doctrine further, you go to Colossians chapter one, Colossians chapter one, and uh you want to go through that text, it shows how Jesus is the center, right?

Creation is done through and for Jesus.

We're made for Jesus.

He saves us for himself, right?

The world is made for him.

Jesus is what it's all about, right?

We are a church that exists to worship Jesus.

He is at the center.

If you look at 1 Peter 10, 1 Peter 1, 10 through 12, it is a parallel passage to what we've just looked at.

And there it talks about how the prophets would prophesy about the Messiah.

They wouldn't know all the details, but they knew that the Messiah had to suffer.

Literally, Peter, when he writes his letter later on, after kind of what Luke is writing here, he refers to this idea, the suffering of the Messiah that the prophets spoke of.

Isaiah 52 and 53 talk about the suffering servant of Israel.

All of this is so key to our faith.

Let's um let's go on.

Verse 28 through 34.

28 through 34 says this.

So he went in to stay with them.

And when he was at the table with them, he took the bread, gave thanks, broke it, and began to give it to them.

Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight.

They asked each other, Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the scriptures to us?

So you'll notice that Jesus was going to continue on his journey, and uh he wasn't gonna walk with them any further.

Maybe he was gonna go up to Galilee.

We don't know.

But they invite him to dinner, they press on him to come to dinner, and it's when he prays, gives thanks for the food, he breaks the bread, that uh they are their eyes are opened and they recognize Jesus.

Amazing, amazing.

And and this is the picture.

Like you've got to understand, maybe you're new to to the Christian faith and you're you're kind of reading through the Bible, you're trying to understand who Jesus is and what God's about.

God doesn't press himself on us, he lays out like his truth, but he inviting for you to kind of give him permission to do his work in your life.

Like God will let you live your life, God will let you do your thing.

And he's willing to love you and answer your questions and help you and help you deal with your stuff, right?

But he's not gonna press himself on you.

But I'll I will tell you that when you do what these two men did, where you say, Jesus, I want you welcomed into my home.

I want to do life with you, it is at that moment, it is at that moment that you will experience his presence.

And you'll be able to say, Was not our hearts burning within us?

God wants to reveal himself to you.

I hope that if you're here this morning, that you are aware of the fact that Jesus is a historic figure who died on the cross for the sins of humanity, the guilt that we all share.

He died so that we could be forgiven and we could live eternally under that forgiveness in a justified state before God.

And we can now enjoy his eternal blessings because our guilt has been put away by Jesus.

That is not a state for everyone, right?

You don't automatically get the rewards that Jesus purchased on the cross.

There's one way, only one way, to get those rewards, and that is by placing your faith in Jesus Christ, by saying, God, I want to let you do your work in my life.

So if you're at a place maybe in your life where you're considering Christianity, you're like, wow, these are a bunch of weird people, but they do have good food.

If you're coming in this morning and you're kind of like evaluating what's going on, I would just encourage you that the most important thing that you can evaluate is the claims of Scripture and the fact that Jesus has come into the world and he says, He loves you.

He loves you, and he wants you to live eternally in his presence, to enjoy his blessings forever.

I know many of us have made uh that decision, that commitment that we want to follow Jesus and we're what we say born again, but some of you are not.

Some of you are still weighing that decision, and I'm glad you're weighing it.

I'm glad you're considering Jesus as your Lord and Savior because it's an important decision.

He isn't looking to draw a big crowd, he's looking for followers, adherents, people that are deciding, hey, I'm gonna follow Jesus and let him govern my life.

What you'll find, what you find when you do that is that God reveals himself to you.

You're it's it's literally in 2 Corinthians, it's like the light goes on.

It says the eye, the scales come off, the light goes on in our hearts, and all of a sudden we come, we become spiritually alive.

I want that for you.

I want that for you.

But you have to make a personal decision on your own between you and God that you're gonna let him be the Lord of your life.

For the rest of us, let me close by just saying this.

The theme here, the kind of the rebuke that these disciples receive, has been a theme.

This is the third time we've countered it in so many months.

Remember, first it was um Peter.

Peter um is told to um like pray, and he's told that this crucifixion is gonna happen and that he's gonna betray Christ, and then he betrays Christ, and then he remembers everything, right?

And it's like, oh man, the regret that he experienced because he didn't take heed to God's word.

And then last week the women encounter the empty tomb, and the angels speak to the women and say, Don't you remember what he told you?

And it's like, oh yeah, Jesus told us that the resurrection was going to take place after three days.

And now here we have Jesus rebuking the disciples, saying, Didn't you get this from God's word?

And so for those of us that are followers of Jesus, the the kind of the point of the spear into our hearts is for us to know the word and to take to heart, to let this be very close to us in our life, right?

Not just on Sundays, but to be reading it throughout the week, right?

To be memorizing it.

In in Psalm um 119, it says, How can a young man keep his way pure?

But by living according to your word.

God's word is what makes us flourish, it causes us to grow.

It's compared to meat that you chew on, it's compute compared to bread that you eat and nourished by, it's compared to light that guides your path.

So what we've been doing is uh what we do is what Christians have been doing for thousands of years, and that's just spending daily time reading God's word.

I'd encourage you to keep that discipline going in your life, where you're just chewing on a little bit of scripture on a daily basis, letting God speak to you.

Let him let him reveal and open up your eyes to the truth that he has for you.

Amen?

Let's pray.

Lord.

Lord, we thank you for your word that it speaks of Jesus and Jesus that you're you're the center.

You're the center of Scripture.

And Lord, we would just ask that you would um have your way in our life, that we would be a people that are totally surrendered to you.

Lord, for those that may not know you yet, I pray that you would open up their eyes to see you, that they would surrender their life to you as their Lord and Savior.

God, would you um would you make yourself known?

Would you make yourself known in that way this morning?

We pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Just for a second, is there anybody here that has never prayed and asked Jesus to be the Lord of their life?

And is there anybody that wants to do that this morning?

That's fine if you don't.

I just want to give you an opportunity to respond.

If you're considering and you're not sure where you stand in your relationship with God, whether your sins are forgiven or not, talk with me.

Talk with Nick, one of the other leaders.

We'd love to discuss that with you more.

That's the most important decision that you can make today.

All right, let's worship.

Amen.