Luke 24:1-53 - Hope Is Temporary - Love is Eternal

Church Luke 24, the last chapter of Luke.

We've been going through Luke since 2024, December of 2024 we began.

And it's been wonderful as we've kept following this theme of Luke, as Luke writes right away in chapter one, that he's writing to Theophilus so he would know, so that he would have an accurate account of the scriptures, of the life of Christ.

And he would know who Jesus really is and what he's really done.

And now as Luke is concluding this narrative, he's calling this pattern that we see all through the scriptures, or through Luke, he's doing the same thing.

He's saying, remember what the Lord has done.

So the title on the bulletin is not, I've changed the title.

Here's the new title.

Came up with this just the other day, actually.

So that you might remember.

Luke, written, given to us, so that you might remember.

And what chapter 24 is telling us is that Christ died.

Excuse me, Christ did everything he said he was going to do.

Christ did everything he said he was going to do.

When he said it in Moses, he fulfilled it.

When he said it in the Psalms, he fulfilled it.

When he said it in the prophets, he fulfilled it.

It's telling us that.

Chapter 24.

And it's also telling us that people like us were forgetful.

People are forgetful.

Even after Jesus is raised from the dead, people doubt.

They're still doubt.

The greatest miracle has happened.

Someone, a perfect one, who bore the wrath of the sins of the world, died, and now he's been resurrected, but yet people still doubt.

They are not convinced by what they see right away.

It's actually the scriptures that convince them.

They're not convinced when they see Jesus.

They're convinced when they see Jesus in the scriptures.

So Jesus calls them to remember.

And just a couple chapters earlier, when we were in Luke 22, and Jesus is instituting the Lord's Supper at Passover, and it's about remembrance is the command.

Remember these things.

And remembrance, so we talked about then, requires effort.

It requires intentionality to remember.

Remembering special dates, remembering names, that takes effort.

Takes some intentionality.

And here the resurrection is the single greatest event in human history.

And you might think, well, we don't need to really put a lot of effort into remembering the resurrection.

It's the greatest event in human history.

We're going to remember that.

But how often do we forget what it means?

How often do we forget what it means for us?

As uh we're looking back in Luke 23, and I said that remember we read Romans chapter 6, verse 23, which says, For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 6:23

Well, see, this eternal life that we're promised, this eternal life only works if death is defeated.

Right?

Jesus paid the price for our sins so that we could be made right with God, we could be justified before God, which is good and necessary.

But then something else happened.

Death was destroyed, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 26.

Excuse me, 1 Corinthians chapter 15, verse 26.

1 Corinthians 15:26

The last enemy to be destroyed is death.

So we're living, you and I, in this kind of in-between where he has defeated death.

No longer is there spiritual death for those who are in Christ.

We're now made alive, and our souls are made alive in him.

It will never die, but the body still endures a physical death.

But one day, Jesus, who has defeated death, will destroy death.

Amen.

And we need to remember this, church.

As we die, as we bury one another, that this thing, this last enemy, it is an enemy, will be destroyed.

And even in the resurrection of Christ, we see the foreshadowing.

Because Christ defeated it, and then he will destroy it.

So we need to know that.

And we need to remember that.

And that's what Christ has come in part to do.

So let's remember.

First, let's remember that he was crucified and raised on the third day.

This first set of verses, looking at verses 1 through 12, says, scene at the temple.

Excuse me, the tomb.

They go the first day of the week, right?

So the Sabbath has ended.

They were preparing the things to go and involve the body, and they go to the tomb, taking the things they prepared, the ladies, the women, and they found what?

It's empty.

There's nothing there.

They're perplexed.

Two angels then ask them, powerful question.

Why do you seek the living among the dead?

Why do you seek the living among the dead?

And they remembered his words.

And then they run back and they tell the eleven apostles and the rest, and then they kind of don't believe them.

They almost do dismiss them.

And then Peter runs and looks.

See the empty tomb, and I'll just say this isn't a sermon, an apologetic sermon on the resurrection, although that's wonderful and good.

But the empty tomb does prove that everything else was true.

Everything Jesus said he was going to do, he's done.

And the greatest thing he said he was going to do is pay the price for our sin, die, be buried, and then resurrect, come back to life.

And it's happened.

J.C.

Rile, speaking of this, says, let us cling firmly to the resurrection of Christ as one of the pillars of the gospel.

It ought to produce in our minds a settled conviction of the truth of Christianity.

Our faith does not depend merely on a set of texts and doctrines.

It is founded on a mighty fact.

Fact which the skeptics have never been able to overturn.

It ought to assure us of the certainty of the resurrection of our own bodies after death.

See, this is the amazing thing of the gospel.

It just kind of keeps blessing us.

It keeps going.

Not only, not only are you dead in your sin, and you're slave to sin and you can't free yourself.

So Jesus Christ comes to you, even when your heart is against him, as Ephesians says, and he brings you from death to life.

He says, I will pay the price for all the wages of your sin.

It's death.

I'll pay that for you.

And I'm going to do that, and then I'm going to bring you into my family.

Jesus is going to make us co-heirs with him.

A co-heir.

This isn't just like a friend or a best friend or a buddy or a stepchild.

This is now a co-heir to the throne with Christ.

And he says, the consequences of sin is death.

But even that I'm going to take care of.

You will be resurrected like me.

Yes, your physical body will die, but you will be resurrected to eternal life.

And this is our hope in Christ.

Yes, the wages of our sin is death.

It's been paid for.

We're no longer slaves to sin.

Yes, we still struggle with sin.

We're growing in our holiness, our understanding of who God is, our love for Him, and walking in obedience out of love for Him.

We're growing in that.

And brothers and sisters, if you're in Christ, there is yet a resurrection that awaits us.

That just as Jesus promised to the thief on the cross, when this physical body is, Paul calls it our tent, perishes, when it's done, we will behold not just the resurrected Son, but we will be in glory with him forever and ever and ever.

And all of our hopes and all of our dreams will be satisfied in that moment.

And all the brokenness and all of the suffering here in this life will be gone.

Be over.

This is the hope, and this is what we're called to remember.

Some of us are not in a season where it feels joyful to remember.

You might be suffering.

You might be in a season of apathy, dryness, and yet you are called to remember.

Look at what Christ has done for us.

See, our hope is not in ourselves anymore, it is in Christ.

Peter, the one who was so boastful in chapter 22, the one who didn't believe Jesus' prophecies that he would also deny Jesus.

Peter's response here in chapter 24 is beautiful.

He runs to see.

He runs to see.

No longer counting or trusting on his own wisdom, his own thinking, he goes to see Jesus.

It's interesting how often we agree to the things, the teachings of Christianity in the Bible, but then we kind of overlap that with our own kind of worldly wisdom.

Jesus teaches that we're to be sacrificial and forgive our enemies.

I'm willing to do that, but I'm not going to sacrifice everything.

And I'm definitely not going to forgive my friends or my family members.

Sure, I could love my enemies, but don't call me to love those in the church who annoy me.

And what have we just done?

We've forgotten what God has taught us in his word.

You might twist the scripture and say, Well, surely I'm going to be faithful to my spouse.

I'm not going to have an affair.

But it's okay if I look lustfully for a moment.

I don't go onto those really dirty websites.

I just watch dirty TV shows or movies.

So we justify our slight little changes of behavior and we forget.

We forget the commands of Scripture.

We forget the glory of obedience, the joy that comes when we walk in the ways of the Lord.

We are a forgetful people.

This is a long quote I want to read to you from a commentator.

Perhaps we marvel, and he's speaking about the unbelief of these followers of Jesus.

Perhaps we marvel at their unbelief.

No doubt it seems at first sight most senseless, most unreasonable, most provoking, most unaccountable.

But shall we not do well to look at home and ourselves?

Do we not see around us in the Christian churches a mass of unbelief far more unreasonable and far more blameworthy than that of the apostles?

Do we not see, after 18 centuries of additional proofs that Christ has risen from the dead, a general want or lack of faith, which is truly deplorable?

Do we not see myriads of professing Christians who seem to not believe that Jesus died and rose again and is coming to judge the world?

These are painful questions.

Strong faith is indeed a rare thing.

No wonder that the Lord said in Luke 18, 8, when the Son of Man comes, shall he find faith on the earth?

It's easy to look at these apostles and these followers and think, how did you doubt?

Like how many more things does Jesus need to do to help you remember?

But yet we see in our own lives.

It's easy for us to look around and say, Oh, that's true.

I see that in churches all over the place.

I see that in these people and those people.

But do you see it in yourself?

I promise you it's there.

This lack of fully living in light of the resurrection.

Fully understanding the mercy and grace that God has lavished on us.

There's hints of that in our own lives.

We need to repent of and enjoy the mercies of Christ.

So we're to remember what Jesus said.

To remember that He said he would be crucified and raised the third day.

And to remember that all of Scripture points to Jesus.

We're to remember that all of Scripture points to Jesus.

So this is now this scene on the road to Emmaus.

You know, this is another thing where it kind of boggles the mind.

These two guys are talking about everything that's happened.

Jesus kind of comes along, he's listening, and he starts asking questions, and they're just dumbfounded.

How do you not know about this?

It would seem, though, that there's some kind of the scripture says that their eyes were shut.

They're kept from seeing Jesus at first.

But it's also interesting this timing.

It says that very day, so we're all the same day.

Luke 24 is the same day.

It's the third day.

They go to the tomb, that scene happens, and now these brothers, it would seem, still early in the day, are now headed to Emmaus.

Right?

Some commentators point out that maybe this is revealing the kind of the fracturing of the apostles and those who are followers of Jesus, as Jesus has not been resurrected, to their understanding, and so now they're heading back to another city, about seven miles from Jerusalem.

They're heading over there.

Jesus comes and he's talking with them, and their eyes are shut, they're kept by God from seeing that this is the resurrected Christ.

They reveal, they share some of their disappointment, right?

What was their hope?

Well, their hope was that the kingdom would be restored.

And all through the Gospels, all through Luke, we, this similar theme comes up again and again that they're waiting for the Messiah so that the kingdom would be restored.

But they had a different view of what the kingdom was and what it meant for the kingdom to be restored.

But this is their hope.

And now not only was the kingdom not restored, the one who was powerful, right?

Who did all these mighty things, he's been crucified, he's dead.

The one who was supposed to be the king of the Jews, was just killed by the high priests and the Romans and the crowd.

No doubt their frustration and their disappointment.

But even in all of that, they didn't fully understand who he was, did they?

Here in this in chapter 24.

They're saying, listen, he was this mighty, this mighty man who did all these things.

What happened in verse 20?

Condemned to death and crucified.

All their hopes, all that they were looking for.

But in some ways they were looking for a redemption of a kingdom.

In some ways, they came to the Messiah, to Jesus, saying, Listen, I understand that you're the one who can kind of give me what I want.

A restored Israel.

We want our nation's glory back.

And he wasn't, he didn't do it.

You can understand their disappointment.

Jesus is going to reveal to them that he isn't just a prophet.

He isn't just a mighty man of God.

He is the Messiah.

And he's going to do that with the scriptures.

R.

C.

Sproull says the problem was not their rationality, their thinking, but their hearts.

They were still cold to the truth of God.

They did not see him as the Messiah.

So often we think that there's an information issue.

If I can just articulate enough things convincingly, then they'll believe.

And listen, I'm all for apologetics.

I think it's a wonderful thing to use logic and reason and fact and explain our convictions, and I think it's helpful and good and right.

And the Lord uses that.

But just as the story in Luke 16, we have the rich man, and you have Abraham, and the rich man's now in hell, and he's talking to Abraham, and he's saying, Can you go warn my brothers about this?

Verse 16, verse 29 of Luke 16, but Abraham said, They have Moses and the prophets, let them hear them.

And he said to them, No, Father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.

He said to them, If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.

What does Jesus do?

He begins to explain to him, to these brothers who he is from Moses and the prophets and the Psalms and how all of Scripture is pointing to the Messiah, to Jesus Christ.

This was not an afterthought, this was the plan all along.

This was the hope of Moses.

This was the hope of Abraham.

This was the hope of David.

This was the hope of Israel.

And they had forgotten there was a promised Messiah.

And it was promised that he would suffer, that he would die, that he would be counted among the unrighteous.

And that he would be resurrected again.

That was promised.

And so we remember that.

Again, looking at ourselves, it's so easy for us to forget.

So easy for us.

And we do this several ways.

We can say, yeah, we believe all the all the scriptures pointing to Jesus.

And what that, when we really do that, when we like live like that, we preach like that, we we teach the Bible one to another like that.

We read the Psalms looking for Jesus.

We're reading the Old Testament saying, how is this pointing to Jesus?

What that does is it drives away our little hobby theologies.

Our little kind of thing, the theology things that we love and we love to talk about it, read books about it, which are fine.

But when it's all about Jesus, you get there, it's about Him.

It drives us to see Scripture as so much more rich and more meaningful.

When you're reading through the Old Testament and you can know and say, Man, this is actually in some way, and I don't even know how yet, but I Knows this about Jesus, I don't want to figure that out.

It enriches the Bible for us.

Can you see so much more?

It makes it come alive.

When we understand that the Bible's all pointing to Jesus, it drives us to grace and love rather than to law and pride.

You understand that?

When it's all about Jesus, it drives away the pride in our own hearts in the lawmaking that we want to do.

And it drives us to grace and to love.

But Jesus has come to reveal to us.

No longer are we looking for rules to keep us behaving the right way.

Rules never change the heart.

Rules never keep the heart in a state of worship.

Love does that.

When you understand your sin and the grace that's been poured out onto you, you worship and you obey out of love for the Lord.

Christ has come to do that for us.

This is what happens when we keep Jesus at the center of our theology.

We see all of Scripture driving to Jesus.

And then thirdly, we remember the mission that we are called on.

We remember the mission that we are called on.

So Jesus then reveals himself to the apostles and to those who are gathered.

Jesus, these two brothers, they realize who Jesus is.

They're saying, didn't our hearts burn within us?

And they run back to tell the others.

And they get there, they tell them, hey, we've seen him.

Simon Peter has seen him.

And then Jesus appears to them.

And he says to them, peace to you.

They're startled.

They think maybe it's a spirit.

And he says, Why are you troubled?

Why do doubts arise in your hearts?

This wasn't a question where Jesus was like, Man, I really don't have the answers.

Why are you doubting?

But he's speaking to them about the emotions of their own heart.

He's saying, This is how you're feeling.

There's doubts.

Why are you feeling those things?

And he reveals to them his body.

See my hands, my feet, and his eye myself, touch me and see.

For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.

Ate some fish right there in front of him.

And he says, These are my words that I spoke to you, verse 44.

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.

And then what's he do?

He opened their minds to understand the scriptures.

He opened their minds to understand the scriptures.

Your mind must be opened to understand the scriptures.

That is something you cannot do.

You cannot open your own mind to the scriptures.

And how do we know this?

Well, we've just read all the the the Luke's account of the life of Christ.

And what happened again and again and again and again and again.

And so what this should create in us is a tremendous amount of humility and thanks that the Lord has opened our eyes, opened our minds to the scriptures.

And what it should keep from us is any kind of pride, any kind of identity that, well, it's a good thing I understood the scriptures.

At least I have the intellect to understand the scriptures.

It should kill all of the pride in your life that you want to identify anything in you that contributes to you understanding the scriptures.

He opened their minds to understand the scriptures.

Thus it is written that Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead.

And that repentance for the forgiveness of sin should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.

And you are witnesses of these things.

Behold, I am sending the promise of my Father upon you, but stay in the city until you are clothed with the power from on high.

And he leads them out and some time later and ascends into glory.

There was a church, there's a bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Wasn't a spirit, wasn't a vision.

Bodily, physical, resurrected Jesus.

Again, all of scriptures pointing to this, that he would suffer.

That he would suffer.

Isaiah declares that he will suffer.

Psalms says he will be suffered, that he will be killed and raised on the third day.

Not that he would disappear because he didn't really die, or his body would be taken captive and stolen and buried by the apostles, and then they would go then and die for a buried and dead Jesus.

That he would rise from the dead.

That repentance for forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed.

What is that?

That's the new covenant.

That's the new covenant.

That is no longer is it go to the temple, which now has a curtain has been torn, go to the temple and offer sacrifice.

Go and keep these statutes and keep these laws.

No, it's that there true forgiveness can be had.

True forgiveness can be had.

Why?

Because the bull's blood was sacrificed?

No.

Because so much wheat and grain was sacrificed?

No.

No.

The only reason true forgiveness of sins can be proclaimed is because Jesus was sacrificed.

It's the only way.

So it's not a message of go and keep the law again.

Go back home and try harder.

This is a sweet display of God's love, but just keep pressing on and try.

But no, in the name of Jesus Christ, there should be repentance.

What is repentance?

It's an acknowledgement of sin.

That sin is real.

Sin is something we do against God.

It's not arbitrary.

It's not just kind of against the powers of some idea.

It's against the Creator God.

And it's so heinous sin is.

The judgment for sin is eternal damnation and hell.

But you can repent.

You can understand sin's bad and it's wrong, and you can look to Jesus and say, Jesus, I'm sorry.

I don't want to do that anymore.

I don't want to be a slave to sin anymore.

I don't want to live that way anymore.

I want to honor you.

I want to stop being against you.

I'm being a rebel and I want to follow you.

There is forgiveness there.

This is a message that from Genesis 3, when Adam and Eve were cast out of the garden, that all of creation has been waiting for this message.

That there is true forgiveness.

True forgiveness.

And it's in Jesus Christ alone.

There is no other name under heaven given by which man can be saved.

There's no other way.

It's only through Jesus Christ.

And so what's that mean?

Well, logically, it means we gotta get that message everywhere.

We've got to send that message all over the world.

That's the mission, that's the great commission that Jesus gives to the church.

Now you might, just finishing Luke here, you might look back, even the last couple chapters, even chapter 24.

These people who are always doubting, they're never understanding, and you would think, is this really God's plan?

He's gonna use these people to carry this most sacred, precious message around the world.

Yep.

This is his plan is to send the Holy Spirit upon his people.

They would take the message of the gospel forth to the ends of the earth.

And this is where we are at.

The ends of the earth portion.

We're believers, we have the Holy Spirit in us, and now we are witnesses.

Not as they were witnesses, right?

Because we didn't see all those things, but nonetheless we're witnesses of the power of Scripture, we're witnesses of the power of Christ in our lives and the good news of the gospel, and we take that forth to the ends of the earth.

Trusting, remembering what Christ has done, remembering the mission that He has put us on.

Luke, the Gospel of Luke, opens with the high priest, Zachariah, doubting God's word.

Doubting him.

But then it's turned into faith.

God fulfills his promises.

Jesus is who he says he is, church.

He's done what he said he would do.

He's given us the Holy Spirit, he's given us a mission, a commission.

And so we remember Christ.

We remember his crucifixion.

We remember the empty tomb.

We remember the love of Christ lavished upon us.

And so we go.

We take the good news of the gospel.

That there is actually true forgiveness in Jesus Christ.

We take it home and we remind ourselves of that on Monday morning.

When the ways of life and the pressures come in, the temptations come in, we remind ourselves of that.

We remind our families of this.

We remind one another as we gather on Sundays, on the Lord's Day, and we gather in homes.

We meet up for coffee.

We remember, we remind each other of these things.

Let's remember who we are in Jesus Christ.

Let's remember what Christ has done for us.

Let's remember we serve and belong to a risen king.

Can we take that to our workplaces?

We take that to our neighbors.

Literally, you go to people, you tell them about Jesus.

This isn't like an idea, like an ethereal thing.

It like has to actually happen.

You're here if you're a Christian, because someone did this.

They used words to communicate to you the reality of who Christ is and what he's done and the life that we have in Christ.

So we take this, we go to the nations.

We remember what Jesus has done.

So that we would know.

So that we would know, and so others would know how much Jesus loves us and what it means to truly, truly belong to Him.

So, church, let us remember there is salvation in Christ, in Christ alone, and that the work is finished.

The work is done.

No more work.

Jesus didn't save you and say, okay, now go do good works and keep your salvation.

He saved you.

Remember that.

Remember that.

Let's pray.