Dennis Tuuri

# Road to Emmaus Sermon Transcript

We return to Luke 24 for the sermon text and once more, as last week, we actually have it in the handout for today on page two of the text as I’ll be speaking of it. So please stand for the reading of Luke 24:13-35.

Luke 24 beginning at verse 13: Now behold, two of them were traveling the same day to a village called Emmaus, which was seven miles from Jerusalem. And they talked together of all these things which had happened.

So it was when they conversed and reasoned that Jesus himself drew near and went with them, but their eyes were restrained so that they did not know him. And he said to them, “What kind of conversation is this that you have with one another as you walk and are sad?” Then the one whose name was Cleopas answered and said to him, “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem? And have you not known the things which happened there in these days?” And he said to them, “What things?” So they said to him, “The things concerning Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people.

And now the chief priests and our rulers delivered him to be condemned to death and crucified him. But we were hoping that it was he who was going to redeem Israel. Indeed, besides all this, today is the third day since these things happened. Yes. And certain women of our company who arrived at the tomb early astonished us when they did not find his body. They came, saying that they had also seen a vision of angels who said he was alive.

And certain of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but him they did not see. Then he said to them, “Oh foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken. Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into his glory? And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.

Then they drew near to the village where they were going, and he indicated that he would have gone further, but they constrained him, saying, “Abide with us, for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent.” And he went in to stay with them. Now it came to pass as he sat at the table with them that he took bread, blessed, and broke it and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they knew him and he vanished from their sight.

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?” So they rose up that very hour and returned to Jerusalem and found the 11 and those who were with them gathered together, saying, “The Lord is risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon. And they told about the things that had happened to them on the road and how he was known to them in the breaking of bread.

Let’s pray. Lord God, we thank you for this text. We thank you for the beauty of this story and the profundity to it. Bless us now as we seek for Jesus to abide with us by means of his word and his sacrament. May he be known amongst us and may we be filled with joy as these people were. In Jesus name we ask. Amen. Please be seated.

On June 18th, 1815, the Battle of Waterloo occurred. And this was the battle between Napoleon and on the side of the British, Dutch, and Germans, the commander was a man named Wellington.

So you’ve got Wellington versus Napoleon. Now, in those days, communication was not via Twitter or email or cable TV. Communication was difficult in a city. People of England were depending upon this battle, knew that it was coming and were very interested in its outcome. It would have tremendous ramifications for their lives as a result. The Tower of Winchester Cathedral was the place where the cable news network or Twitter went out from.

A series of semaphore flags were used to communicate in code to the people of the whole population of the city what had happened in events. So the message starts coming across the flags are held up and the message, you know, it’s spelling out the letters: W-E-L-L-I-N-G-T-O-N, Wellington, and then the next word is defeated. And at that point a heavy fog comes over the city. So the population has heard that Wellington has been defeated at Waterloo and this is very bad, sad news for them. A pall falls over the city even as the fog had descended over the city.

But a short while later the fog lifted and the message continued and the message said: Wellington defeated T-H-E-E-N-E-M-Y. Wellington defeated the enemy. So they went from great sadness, of course, to great joy. That’s the movement of these narratives at the end of Luke’s gospel. That’s the movement today as well. Jesus converses with them and says, “Why are you sad? What are you talking about that you’re so sad?”

The women at the grave were sad. They thought grave robbers had come. They thought that Jesus was defeated. But what Luke 24 says in a series of four narratives is that Jesus has defeated the enemy. Jesus has risen from the dead.

And so as we tarry during the Sundays of Easter, we’ll be looking at these narratives from Luke 24 that we began last week. Today we’ll look at the second one, the so-called road to Emmaus narrative.

And next week continuing on with the next section as the two disciples return to Jerusalem and we have Jesus appearing to a group there as well. And then finally a couple weeks after that, we’ll finish up Luke 24 and complete essentially the Gospel of Luke by looking at these last four narratives. Now it’s defeat to joy. It’s sadness turned to great joy and the movement is toward eternal praise for God.

Lots of continual praising going on in the temple for the great things that have happened. And in a way, the very first verse here, they leave Jerusalem. They head to Emmaus. Emmaus—its location is still uncertain. It’s seven miles indicated how far it was from Jerusalem. Could have been one way or it could have been both ways. Could have been a roundtrip thing and they’re actually villages or cities located both three and a half and seven miles outside of Jerusalem that have been identified as it. So nobody’s really sure where it’s at, but the name is given to us. It doesn’t say that we’re traveling to some vision, to some particular city or village. It says a specific named village is given, and Emmaus goes back to a Hebrew word—at least this is the belief of what it means—and the Hebrew word is the word for sea, S-E-A, like ocean, big body of water. And then there’s a related word to sea that’s used in the Old Testament about describing a place where a spring of waters was found. And this, and specifically in the context of the verse in the Old Testament, it is a spring of waters in wilderness.

So you know, as they leave Jerusalem, they’re in the wilderness and at Emmaus when the Savior breaks bread with them, water and springs and the sea has come to their wilderness. And that’s the movement. The very movement of the text is given to us right in the first verse of the text as well. That reference by the way is Genesis 36:24: “These were the sons of Zibeon both Aiah and Anah. This was the Anah who found the water in the wilderness as he pastured the donkeys of his father Zibeon.”

And that waters in the wilderness is this word that they think is the origin of the term for Emmaus. So waters in the wilderness, either by way of knowing the origins of the name or just by the very nature of the story.

And of course, as I said last week, you know, we have wildernesses and we go through dry periods of life or places that we travel to and we go to places that seem to be saying Wellington has been defeated rather than that Wellington defeated the enemy.

And so as we read these stories, you know, it fills us with great hope. We understand the reversals that life brings as we understand the rest of the story, as Paul Harvey would say.

I want to talk a little bit first about the big picture here. Since we’re going to tarry in Luke for these resurrection narratives, I want us to remind ourselves that there’s a kind of a big picture. Now, ultimately, there’s a much bigger picture.

We’ll talk about a narrative of the whole Bible that comes to its conclusion or at least a culmination point in the narrative today. We’ll talk about that at the table. But Luke’s gospel specifically has this kind of movement, has a movement or arc to it that goes from the womb—Mary’s, you know, child in the womb—to the tomb. So from womb to tomb is what the gospel of Luke covers. And it’s an empty tomb.

There are two Josephs, right? There’s a Joseph at the beginning, the father—not biological but the legal father of Jesus—and then there’s a Joseph at the end. In chapter 23 we learn that the tomb has been provided by Joseph of Arimathea. There are Marys, you know, Marys at the beginning and there’s a Mary—actually two Marys as we saw last week in the narrative in Luke 24—and so there’s this movement. There’s a multiplication of Marys we could say. And you know, there’s women who are disbelieved.

We find out from the rest of the gospels that Joseph doesn’t really believe, isn’t buying Mary’s story about why she’s pregnant and he has to be told by an angel, you know, the truth of the matter. And the men don’t believe the narrative of the women in terms of the angels in Luke 24 and they have to actually see more evidence than what the women’s report was.

There’s two angelic appearances. There’s also, as we saw in the triumphal entry message from earlier in Luke’s gospel, there’s the Gloria in Excelsis at the beginning of the book is kind of mirrored at the end of the book.

And very interestingly, the Gloria in Excelsis is sung by angels at the beginning. And the same basic message with a little different twist on it is sung by men at the conclusion of the book. Now, that movement from angels to men is significant. And we see that very movement in the text. These four narratives are linked together. Rather, the narratives are, and what an angel tells the women and Jesus tells the men, they’ll tell to other men, and so angelic narratives are replaced by human narratives and the angelic song by the end of Luke’s gospel is replaced by a human song.

And this is the great reversal of the fall of Adam, with the angels running things because of sin—and actually because of the primitiveness of the early creation but certainly after sin—with the angels guarding. We’re moving toward Pentecost here and we know that the tongues of fire remind us of those angels guarding the garden, and now God gives those responsibilities to men.

So this movement from angels to men—there’s a movement in the clothing of Jesus. We have swaddling clothes in the gospel of Luke at the beginning and at the end the linen that’s described as fine rich linen. He’s laid in a rich tomb. He’s not in an inexpensive manger anymore. He has humility, but we also see the glory. And so the humility of swaddling clothes moves to the glory of nice good linen.

There’s a very marked change. The gospel of Luke kind of begins and ends in the temple. At the beginning of the Gospel of Luke, Zechariah gets the notification that John the Baptist is going to be born and he’ll bring—he’s the herald of Christ. Zechariah doesn’t believe it and so he’s mute in the temple. And by the end of this gospel of Luke, we’ll see in the concluding narrative that the disciples are continually praising God in the temple.

So there’s it begins and ends in temple and it moves us from muteness to continual praise. And these narratives and the good news that’s proclaimed in them is the basis why we come together in the temple of the church, so to speak, and why songs should be upon our lips as we approach the Lord in his supper, the Lord in his word. We should have that same continual praising of God going on in the context of the worship of the church. And that movement is described for us here.

There’s another interesting connection we could make: that in the early accounts of Luke’s narrative, Jesus goes missing. And if we actually look closely at the narrative, it’s three days his parents have left him behind and they can’t find him. They don’t know what’s going on. And then they’re reunited to him. And Jesus goes missing for three days in the tomb. And in both cases, he of course is, as he said in the first missing narrative, he’s doing the father’s business. And so the father’s business has an arc to it as well. And this arc is described for us as we understand the movement of the book of Luke. It’s a tremendous beautiful picture.

Tightening the focus then to the chapter we’re dealing with now in Luke 24.

We have, as I said here, four narratives. In the first two, you know, these are connected. In the road to Emmaus, they talk about what the women said. And then in the third narrative, we’ll see that they go and report the things that happened to them on their route. And so these stories are linked together. And then the last story is the ascension narrative that culminates all of this. And so these are linked together.

And these first two narratives, there’s almost kind of a spiraling effect, right? There’s kind of a story that goes on in the first narrative that we talked about last week in the morning. And then in the afternoon, it’s a little longer account. But it’s the same sort of event going on, right? We’ve got mournful women at the beginning—Wellington is defeated—becoming, you know, greatly overjoyed with hearing the message that Jesus is alive.

And here we have mournful disciples who can’t figure things out. And at the very center of the narrative, the way I’ve laid it out, is the record of the angels visit to the women saying that Jesus is alive. And their mourning is turned to joy ultimately through that message and then their awareness of it as Jesus breaks bread with them.

So Luke 24 has this kind of movement as well. There’s a pairing up of the two narratives here. They’re both moved to joy and they’re both moved to mission, you know. So maybe the title of the sermon, you know, he is alive. That’s the center of the narrative. And we’re commissioned. The women are moved to mission and the women tell the disciples and apostles that they’re moved to mission. And here we got two disciples. We don’t know if they’re men, by the way. One’s name, Cleopas—uh that’s the male version, I think, of Cleopatra, by the way.

Cleopatra means daddy’s little darling, the glory of the father—and patra obviously the father part. So Cleopas is the glory of the father. He’s the delighted one of the father. And of course, he’s moved to that delight and joy through the events of the day. But we’re not told the name of the disciple. Some people think it was his wife. We just don’t know. It is interesting that the only one named is Cleopas.

And so we know one was male. But there’s no reason to assume, as most of the drawings that we collected for the coloring page today or the front of the order of worship—you know, most of the drawings, the depictions of this—show them as two men. There’s nothing to necessarily say that’s the case. But in any event, these two disciples are moved to mission to run back to Jerusalem and report, and to have that mission included.

There is on your outline a brief overview of the structure of Luke 24. We have angels announcing that Jesus is risen at the beginning of the narrative. We talked about that last week. And Jesus departs from the 11 at the conclusion. The last scene in Luke 24 is the ascension scene. Jesus instructs the two disciples on the road to Emmaus in today’s narrative. And as we’ll see in the next narrative, Jesus instructs the 11.

So Jesus comes with instruction first to the two and then to the 11. And moving closer to the center, Jesus breaks bread with the two disciples. But then in the third narrative, he has fish. He has another meal with the 11 disciples. So there’s food in both those two accounts that kind of center us then in the middle where the disciples return to Jerusalem and announce that Jesus is risen.

So overall, if you take the entire chapter, you know, as a narrative, it seems like perhaps the center of that is mission, and so this idea that Jesus is alive, this fact becomes the source of great mission for them.

So 24 has its own particular thing and now let’s continue to bring the focus in a little bit more and now let’s talk specifically about the road to Emmaus.

Now on the first page of your handout at the bottom—don’t worry about that yet. That’s an expansion of one of the sections of the second page, the same way we did last week. We took one of the sections and blew it up a little bit and saw another chiastic structure in the context of that.

So we’ll talk about that in a couple of minutes. But if you turn now to the second page of the handouts, just look—we’ll just look at the parallel accounts and explain why I think they are parallel. Then we’ll go back over them and draw out some application just like we did last week.

So in verse 13, we’ve got the same day going on, right? So that means it places us at the first day, the day of resurrection.

And in the matching there, it’s the same hour—that very hour they return to Jerusalem. So time sequences of similarity: the same day, same hour. They start moving away from Jerusalem and by the end of the narrative in the A prime section in verses 33 and following they return to Jerusalem and so these things seem to match up. They move away confused and not really having a mission. We don’t know why they’re walking away, right?

But when they return, we know a very specific, specifically why they’re doing it and they found their mission. They found the reason for their movements now in the proclamation of the good news that Jesus Christ is risen.

Note in the A prime section by the way in verse 34 they hear this. This narrative recounts what has now become a liturgical sentence for us. The Lord is risen indeed. Many communions on Easter Sunday and for the Sundays in Easter the typical greeting at worship is he is risen. He is risen indeed. Or the Lord is risen. The Lord is risen indeed. And so we have this echo that concludes the narrative on the road to Emmaus. This echo: yes, he is risen. He’s risen indeed.

So as well, of course, this narrative sort of helps us to realize that there’s a center but it’s also there’s a climactic sense of it as well in verse 35 that Jesus—they tell the disciples in Jerusalem about the things that had happened. That’s their conversation on the road. And then they tell them about how Jesus was made known in the breaking of the bread. So the narrative culminates in the revelation of Christ both on the road and his instruction and with the breaking of bread.

So if we see this kind of movement again and this matching up, we see that’s the way we’re moved toward mission is the preaching of the word and the partaking of the supper with Jesus.

So the A sections match up that way. The B sections match up. It says they talked together. And in the B prime section, verse 32, they’re saying to one another. So they’re talking about the things that had happened, but by the end of the narrative, they’re talking about the instruction, the Bible study that Jesus Christ led them in at the end of the narrative. But they’re internal conversation is the inner brackets having moved in from receding from Jerusalem and then processing back into Jerusalem.

In the C and C prime sections, the C and the C prime section are I think a match as well. In the C section, we read that they conversed and reasoned about Jesus and their eyes are restrained. They didn’t know him. And the C prime section matching with that Jesus himself goes through what seems like obviously written as a liturgical action where he takes the bread, blesses it, breaks it, gives it to them, and they then have their eyes opened and they know him.

So at the beginning, Jesus appears, but they don’t know him. Their eyes are restrained. In the matching section of the narrative, they do know him because of the liturgical action of the breaking of bread with them. And God links this to them having their eyes open now to see their savior.

And the D sections are a little more convoluted. There’s kind of a back and forth that goes on in both of the D sections, kind of a narrative or a dialogue back and forth between Jesus and them. He says, you know, what are you talking about? And they say, well, Cleopas is now named here. And it’s kind of ironic. Cleopas says, well, you must be the only stranger in Jerusalem, and you do not—you have not—who, and have not—you have not known the things which happened.

So it’s kind of ironic because the text has just told us that their eyes are closed, that they don’t know Jesus, and their first interaction with him is they’re saying, “Well, you apparently don’t know what happened.” So it’s kind of ironic. They’re the ones who really don’t know what’s going on, but they think they do. And that’s a good lesson in humility for us. We frequently speak the same way, talking to people that may have quite a bit of knowledge about things, assuming that they don’t know anything.

So there’s this back and forth. And then he asks them what things. And then at the end of the narrative, after the central section, they draw near to the village. He’s going to go further. They say, “No, please stay with us.” And he does. He stays with them. So those sections seem to match up because there’s an interaction back and forth between Jesus and the two disciples.

And then the E and E prime sections, I think, match up because they say something to him and they describe the events of Jesus’s ministry and his death and then their dashed hopes. We thought he was going to redeem Israel and today’s the third day. And then in matching up with that, he then tells them, he explains the events for them based upon the word of God.

And it’s interesting because the Bible lesson begins with rebuke. Foolish ones, slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken. Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into his glory? And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he begins to explain these things to them.

So these things seem to match up as well. And we could look very briefly back on page one. And the second, the E prime section, I’ve kind of put into a structure as well. He says to them, and then at the end he’s saying things concerning himself. He says they’re foolish but he expounds to them the truth. So Jesus both shows us our weakness and then moves to fill that weakness with strength and knowledge.

He tells them they’re foolish to believe in all the prophets have foretold. And he begins at Moses and the prophets. So the prophets match up, the foolishness not to know things matching up with his expounding them to him. And these are things concerning himself and he’s the one talking to them. And then that makes the very center of this little section. Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into his glory.

Now see, he could have laid that little section out—okay, so they didn’t know anything. He tells them things and what he tells them is this. But it lays it out in a particular structure that draws our attention to the center, the important message, what he’s expounding to them, the content of the Bible lesson. Now it’s much richer than this. But the summary statement is given to us in the middle. Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into his glory.

So the E prime section has a little bit more of a expansion we could do, as some of these others do too, but that one I thought it’d be good to talk about.

And then we have the matching F brackets at the center which are quite obvious. A matchup: women and the tomb, they can’t find his body. And then in verse 24, you’ve got the tomb and women and they don’t see him. So you’ve got women in the empty tomb and not finding Jesus around the very center of the narrative.

The center of the narrative, of course, is what we would sort of expect to find at the center of the narrative. They came saying that they had seen a vision of angels who said he was alive. So the revelation that Jesus Christ is alive, he is risen indeed, which they will echo back, this is the center of the narrative. It’s a great gospel Easter text, the center of which is the tremendous message that Jesus Christ is alive.

And the text helps us to see that. It draws us in. And then it changes as it moves out. And so they’re, you know, they’re moved from being confused and not knowing Jesus. They’re moved then because he is alive. He’s given them a Bible lesson. They have a meal with him. They move toward commission. So the central message of the aliveness of Jesus Christ yields mission for him.

All right. Now, let’s talk a little bit about some practical applications of this wonderful and beautiful narrative that’s given to us. We can look at these sections and draw out some practical application from them, I think quite readily.

You know, part of it is what’s happening. Well, first of all, we would say they’re moving in the context of we don’t know why. We don’t know why they’re leaving Jerusalem. It could be fear. They’ve killed the leader. They’re going to kill everybody else. If so, we have movement from fear to courage. It could just be they were going away because that’s where they stayed during this crowded season in Jerusalem.

So we’re not really given the reason why, but we know that their mental state isn’t good. And so the application to us is immediately to us when we have times when we’re sad, when we doubt, when we have difficulties. And we can enter into this story of the road to Emmaus and we can kind of remind ourselves how Jesus worked then with his church and members of his church to bring them to commission and bring them out of sadness into the context of joy and mission.

You know, the facts haven’t changed, but the interpretation of the facts change as a result of interaction with Jesus. And there’s a very real sense in this—is what happens every Lord’s day liturgically. We ascend to heaven. Why? Because we need a heavenly perspective of the facts. The facts are what they are out there. Now, a lot of them we don’t necessarily know all of it. There’s a humility factor we have to bring to it.

But you know, it’s not through changing the facts that we’re moved from depression to joy, that we’re moved from being out of the game, away from Jerusalem, to being back in the game and serving Jesus in some form of ministry. The way that transition happens according to this text, given to us as kind of an archetypical I think picture of life in the early church, the way it happens is through interpretation of those facts.

When uh the first half of the church year is over, when we get to the other side of Pentecost and Trinity Sunday, I plan as we move into the summer season to go over the Ten Words from the book of Deuteronomy. I promised this a year or so ago. This is what children were supposed to be taught. It’s the core of knowledge. It’s what our children should know: is how to take the Ten Words and apply them in our lives.

And we’ll talk about a lot of interpretation of the facts around us. The political facts are fascinating. They’ve been seen many, many times in the history of the world. Don’t freak out. This is what unbelieving men do. They attempt to manipulate, control, power. That control of power and authority is usually accompanied by some form of control of economic matters, your money, debt, whatever it might be.

I mean, this is just what men do. So we’re going to interpret some of these facts that we read about in our papers and on TV with the Ten Words later on. But the point is that this is how you move—this story. We can join these disciples. We have times—whether it’s the big stuff going on in the nation, the small stuff going on in our family with some of our children or with our parents, the things that go on with our friends—we don’t understand how to interpret the facts of what’s happening in those relationships, husband, wives, right? The whole thing.

When we have sadness, when we have—we’re being taken out of the game, the way we move back into the game is laid out for us here. And it’s word and sacrament. Word and sacrament helps to interpret and enliven the Christian for mission and to move him away from being out emotionally and volitionally and move him back in.

So you know the very opening narrative and then its conclusion, this movement you know to commissioning, that happens based upon the resurrection of Christ, this is the movement of our lives as well.

And notice, not belaboring the point, but notice that it culminates in this account that he was known in the breaking of bread. So what do we have in the road to Emmaus? We have Bible study the likes of which we’ve never seen and the likes of which we hope to hear, and we probably do get a glimpse of it as the scriptures are brought in the Lord’s day worship service.

We get a glimpse of it as people teaching in the power of the Holy Spirit expound and open the scriptures to us. But it’s word and sacrament at the center of this narrative that moves the disciples along. So you know if you need ministry and you need encouragement and you need vitality, don’t neglect the means. And the means are word and sacrament.

So that’s given to us here and it’s very important.

There are other things given as well though. It isn’t—doesn’t this stuff doesn’t fall like you know manna from the heavens, unsought of.

In the B sections and the B prime sections they’re trying to decipher the facts. They’re talking together and they’re not just conversing, they’re reasoning, right? So conversation, dialogue. A man who separates himself does so to his own hurt and foolishness. He’s not going to interpret things correctly in isolation.

So it’s dialogue and it’s dialogue mixed with rationality. They’re reasoning. You know, the ditch we could fall into is a ritualism that says that we’ll be able to interpret the facts if just eat dinner with Jesus every Sunday. But that’s not what the text tells us. The text tells us that Jesus comes to us as we’re dealing with our facts, trying to interpret our realities, reasoning, and we’re doing that in community.

So very importantly, the story again, I think it’s given as an archetypical sort of picture of what life in the church is 2,000 years ago and today. And what it is we’re supposed to have conversations and we’re supposed to try to reason through things to a correct interpretation of events. And afterwards, after Jesus instructs them, they’re no more individualized than they were at the beginning. They’re still in community.

In the matching B prime section, they say, “Didn’t our hearts burn communally?” In other words, and they’re talking to each other now that they figured things out because of what Jesus did. He showed them how to interpret things. So again, community is important. Dialogue, reasoning, layering in the word and sacrament, and then a joyous conversation ensuing about our understanding of the world around about us and the things that trouble us.

So you know, there’s direct application to us.

So the C narrative tells us, you know, that they’re reasoning together and Jesus comes and goes with them and their eyes are restrained. So the matching C prime sections are that their eyes are restrained and then their eyes are open. Now, whether we like it or not, we have to deal with the fact, and it’s a glorious fact if you think about it, that God is sovereign.

That there’ll come a time at which God opens your eyes. But there are times when he closes our eyes. Now, there’s a meta-narrative going on here about the fall and about recreation in Christ, which we’ll talk about at the table. But there’s very practical stuff going on, too. We can’t get it without God. Rationality is good. It’s not condemned by the text. Conversation is good but it’s inadequate. Apart from the presence of Christ brought to us now in the context of the Holy Spirit who brings us things of Jesus, our eyes will remain shut.

So to try to get somebody else to figure out what’s going on in their marriage or their life or their world without them being in submission to God is really a rather pointless exercise for the counselor because the eyes of such people are shut. God may open them through your interaction with them, only because they’ve had an encounter with Jesus. So there’s this supernatural movement of eyes tightly shut to eyes wide open through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The D narratives quite importantly are our conversation includes the presence of Christ. So Cleopas, you know, Cleopas is willing. He doesn’t know who Jesus is. Has no idea. And he’s willing to talk to Jesus about Jesus of Nazareth. So he may not feel like he’s on mission, but he sort of is already. He is ready to talk to a complete stranger and confess the mighty deeds of Jesus Christ. So there’s a little picture of the evangelistic mission of the church here.

Now, he’s evangelizing Jesus, which is a little silly. But still, you know, if we’re before we put these disciples down for being so stupid and foolish, at least they’re doing what most of us don’t do. They’re willing to talk to a perfect stranger about Jesus of Nazareth, a historic person, and really kind of get the details of the gospel, the basics of the gospel down here.

Cleopas says, you know, the things which happened there in these days are what we’re talking about. And then in the next section as he moves into it, he tells them specifically about the mission of the Lord Jesus Christ. So they’re willing to talk to a complete stranger. He says in the E section, the things concerning Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet, mighty in deed and word before God and all the people. So it talks about the work of Jesus Christ.

They do in their evangelism. And then how he was delivered and condemned to death, crucified, and what he’s supposed to do, what we thought he was going to do was to redeem Israel. This is the gospel message, right? And the third day is referenced. So at least they’re willing to do what most of us don’t want to do, which is to talk to complete strangers about Jesus.

So they do that and evangelism is commended to us by this text in terms of its application as well and a desire for fellowship. Right at the end, the matching section, he’s going to leave. And they said, “No, no, please stay with us.” They don’t know it’s Jesus, but they want to fellowship with somebody. They want to take opportunity, particularly now that he’s explained to an awful lot about how the Bible relates to their savior. He does this for them. And they want to continue fellowshipping and communing with him. They’re not anxious to run home. They’re anxious to talk.

And the E sections, as I said, they tell him the life of the Lord Jesus Christ. But Jesus then begins to instruct them in the matching E prime section and he says foolish ones, slow to hear, slow to believe. So you know, this is something we’d also don’t want to do typically, you know, is to give each other a mild at least rebuke.

And Jesus doesn’t tell them they’re to receive an understanding and interpret the events based upon ecstatic perspectives of the Holy Spirit. Now it is the work of the Holy Spirit that’s going on here. And it’s being pictured to us that’s how we interpret events of the scriptures. The spirit will, once Jesus departs, the spirit comes in full, brings us things of Jesus. But Jesus says the right way to understand your life is to know the Bible and specifically it’s to know the Old Testament and then more importantly to know that Old Testament as it relates to Messiah.

So first of all this is a stinging rebuke to modern evangelicalism. We are foolish and slow to believe. We have the kind of culture we have here in America—increasingly a satanic control by man culture—because the church has forsaken the very part of the Bible that Jesus says is how you’re supposed to interpret his resurrection. We won’t understand Jesus if we don’t understand the Old Testament. Jesus is not pitting the Old Testament versus the New, law versus grace, Old Testament knowledge versus him.

And we don’t want to do that either. We don’t want to fall off the horse in the other direction where it’s all about understanding the Old Testament but not looking at it typologically about Jesus Christ. That’s why we teach you the way we do in this church because it’s what Jesus did. That’s why we think it’s important for you to understand the Old Testament because Jesus said it was important. And that’s why we want you to understand that the Old Testament, every bit of it is what Jesus says is talking about him. It’s typological. That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. These events today we’re reading about happened, but they’re, you know, little typological of the life of the church and how we grow and understand our lives and how we’re moved from being taken out of the game and being putting back in the game.

Well, the Old Testament’s all about Jesus. And so these gospel accounts are important. They tell us here, we don’t know what. We don’t know the specifics of the instruction that he gave them, but he gave them the whole Bible and he gave it to them about Jesus. So this is a this rebuke to these two disciples is a rebuke to the modern church for not knowing her Old Testament, number one, or number two, knowing it but not allowing themselves, being fearful of a typological understanding of those texts and how they speak to Jesus.

So that’s what Jesus does. He teaches them. He teaches them the way we hope—it’s our goal at least at this church—to teach you. So now, and I said this, this middle focus is important too.

Well, you know, what does it tell us? It says that the E section that we expand out, the very middle of his instruction. What’s the message of the prophets? Well, the specific message he’s bringing them to from the Old Testament concerning him is that he had to die and be raised up. It says he taught them these things, and all the prophets have spoken. Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into his glory? Ought not the Christ to have done this? Yeah. He—that’s how it works.

Now that’s real important for us because again if we understand that these things are typological of Christ and Christ is who we are now. The church is in Christ. We’re united to him. This is saying something about us.

And it’s saying something about these two disciples. They’re moving from suffering and sadness into glory. They’re moving from absence, distance from the city of peace, Jerusalem, with its temple of joy and continual praising. And that’s where they’re going to be moved to at the conclusion of it. That’s the way God works.

When things go bad, when we suffer physically, when we suffer emotionally, when we suffer psychologically, when we suffer sociologically in relationships, when we suffer politically, and we got a lot more of that we’re going to be going through, and economically because of man’s intervention. You know the great message of the text is man—God is sovereign—and the great message of our current rulers is God is not sovereign, so we have to take care of everything. And as a result every time they take care of something it has all these unintended consequences, the loss of liberty happens, but then the problems don’t get fixed, and that becomes an increased application of their ability to tell you what to do.

This is the world we live in now because this is an Arminian world, and the text tells us that God is sovereign. So but we’re going to suffer. There’s no doubt about that. But Jesus says, you know, is the disciple above the master? No. If the master ought to have suffered and entered into his glory, his present resurrection state that he’s meeting with them in the context of, and then being glorified in his ascension, that’s the pattern for us.

We’re going to move, you know, from suffering to glory. Without the cross, there’s no crown. You got to wear the crown of thorns first to get to the regal kingly crown. So the text is a wonderful picture of community, conversing, using rationality, bringing the voice of Christ and the Holy Spirit to interpret the events of our day, looking for his sovereign work as we ritualistically partake of the sacrament, listen to the word preached, applying our conversations and reasoning. And the end result is a movement from sadness to joy.

It’s a movement from no mission to mission. Now, whatever small thing that is to them, their mission, their mission is encouraging other believers. We could sort of see it as some evangelistic stuff with Jesus, but essentially they have the same mission that all of us have by the end of the tale. Their mission is to encourage those in Jerusalem. And what happens when they try to encourage the disciples? They’re encouraged. They hear encouraging things back too.

You’re going to get most of us getting together today in the third Sunday fellowships which you have a mission today. The mission is Jesus is alive and as a result of that your mission is to remind each other of that, to interpret their sufferings which are real and substantial. Jesus died, but to help them to see that this is how we move, just like the master did, from suffering to glory.

So the text gives us this again, this paradigm of what Christian life is, how we’re moved, and the things that happen to us. And then as we move to the center again, we have this, the women, the women, the women. It seems like these Easter narratives are all about women. By the way, I’m not sure we had women ushers or greeters today, but that’s not because we decided to do something different. It’s just that we’re now having to go through the job description and just clean it up a bit and make sure we know what we’re doing.

But very much so when we read about these women at the tomb, boy, you know, bring back all of that stuff about women ministry and about how you know, we’re supposed to listen to our wives and we’re supposed to listen to the women of the church as well as to the men. They’ve got important things that God has given them that we want to hear from them.

And again, here at the center of this narrative is the fact that they weren’t believed. These guys didn’t believe it. The apostles didn’t believe it. The disciples didn’t believe it. The individual, in this case, maybe married man and wife, they didn’t believe it. It’s just women and babbling.

So we’re reminded of all those things. They’re astonished too, right? In verse 22, certain women at our company who arrived at the tomb early astonished us. Now we remember that the women were astonished, right? They’re astonished. And then at the end of that narrative, Peter was astonished, marveling what was going on. And now we’re told that you know, they, these two disciples are astonished. So I mean we see ourselves everywhere—whether we’re an apostle, an elder, a disciple, just an average lay person, married couple—they’re all covered here. They’re all perplexed. They’re all astonished. And there should always be a bit of that in us.

There should always be an astonishment at the events of our day that looks for explanation coming from God’s heavenly messengers, angels, and then God sends his son himself, Jesus. But then what happens to us is there’s a transition by the end of the narrative to now God is using men and women, and nothing else but that, in your life. That’s who you have to listen to. An angel is not going to appear in all likelihood. You won’t have a vision of Jesus. You don’t need it anymore because mankind has grown up and mankind now has come to maturation and we’ve been moved to mission.

And then the very heart of the narrative, the angel’s message that Jesus Christ is alive. So we should be Christians that are conversible with one another. As Matthew Henry said, we should be like our savior, desiring to enter into conversation, looking for sadness in people’s lives and a desire to help them understand things and interpret them a little bit. Sympathy and empathy with their sadness. Maybe that’s all we can do at certain points in time. But in Jesus’s case, there’s also times when we can bring an interpretation of facts that moves the sadness to great joy.

We should be willing to inform strangers about the life, death, and the third day resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. We should be those who understand something else is kind of obvious in the text here that maybe needs just a bit more of focus. You know, as Cleopas is talking to Jesus, he says, “Everybody knows about this.” It’s interesting because Josephus in his history of the time hardly mentions Jesus.

Now that is an example—one of millions of historical editing of a time and place—because whatever Josephus thought about Jesus, everybody didn’t come to believe, but everybody knew it had happened. Everybody knew it had happened. It was a big deal. And you know what? It’s not that different today. As far as we might think we’ve gotten from Christianity, I heard a statistic that—and this wasn’t some Christian firm, this was the Rasmussen polling agency—79% of people believe that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead. 79% of Americans. You wouldn’t expect that when you read the Newsweek article about the end of Christian America and all this stuff. But the faith is alive and well, you know, in varying sometimes, you know, heretical forms. I suppose Mormons would say they believe in the resurrection of Jesus, et cetera. But you know, the point is the awareness of Christ and the events of his death and resurrection are as widely known almost today as it was then and we should not feel you know reluctant to enter into discussions of those things.

So the events were known then. The events are known now. And as I said, Old Testament—you want to be moved from sadness to joy? Maybe not today but some days—you are like this. You want to be moved from not having ministry to having ministry, and the key given to us is says, “Know your Bibles.” They’re moved that way through the application of word and sacrament. Not sacrament alone without word. Also significantly, not word without sacrament.

The full meal deal happens as they conclude their Lord’s day meeting with Jesus at the table. And that’s the way it is with us. If we, you know, whatever church plant we’re involved with, every Sunday at Lord’s table. Got to have that. Otherwise, the road to Emmaus account becomes a howling indictment against us thinking that somehow we can mess with the formula. We get together just like they did. We’re coming here.

We’re on our way to Jerusalem. Hopefully we come to church. We have that perspective. We may be sad. We may not understand things. Jesus has a talk with us. He explains the scriptures which we’re supposed to know. And then he breaks bread with us at the table.

So again, like last week, you can’t remember the words of Jesus if you haven’t heard them. You don’t have the material in your heart by which the Holy Spirit will work with you if you don’t have God’s word, some knowledge of it. The spirit doesn’t come to move you in ways apart from the word. The spirit ministers the things of Jesus. And Jesus makes clear that his things are recorded in that word. You want spirit-filled empowerment and joy and mission, spirit-filled interpretation of the events?

Give the spirit what he says. He doesn’t need it, but he’s decided this is the way he’s going to work: he’s going to work by taking the word and opening your understanding to that word. As we act in this submissive fashion of knowing that ultimately it’s the sovereignty of God, he opens our eyes at the table.

One last narrative before we conclude. Look at, well, no—one point before we do that. And I don’t want to make a big deal out of this, but as I said, one of the things that happens in Luke 24 is these—they’re moved from angelic intervention to human interaction. And I’ll talk more about that next week, but I’ll be speaking next week in part from Galatians 3:21-47 if you want to read for that.

One last narrative. Turn if you will to the account of the Ethiopian eunuch written by the same man, Luke, of course. This is in Acts chapter 8. Turn to Acts 8:26-39.

There’s still some miraculous stuff going on here. The spirit now is doing the work, not angels or Jesus directly. He’s using another human person to go about doing the work that is recorded for us in Luke 24. Look at Acts 8:26. An angel of the Lord spoke to Philip saying, “Arise and go toward the south along the road which goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” So we’ve got this event happening on a road away from Jerusalem.

Somebody leaving Jerusalem and now we don’t have an angel. We don’t have Jesus the spirit using an angel of God tells a person to go to this person walking a similar road to Emmaus, a similar place leaving Jerusalem. And here’s here we are. Philip says, “Okay.” He goes and he does that and he sees the man of Ethiopia, Ethiopian eunuch, right? And the Ethiopian eunuch is sitting in his chariot returning from Jerusalem and he’s reading Isaiah the prophet.

So he’s kind of thinking through things as well and he’s thinking through the Old Testament. And then the spirit says to Philip, “Go near and overtake his chariot.” Philip runs to him, hears him reading, hears him reading the prophet Isaiah and he says, “Do you understand what you’re reading?”

Okay, what does Jesus do? He says, “Well, let me help you to understand Isaiah, Moses, other prophets. Let me show you Christ in the scriptures.” So now it’s not Jesus. Now it’s Philip, a man talking to another man moving away from Jerusalem, confused and perplexed by the book of Isaiah. And he says, “Well, how can I understand unless somebody guides me?” And he asked Philip to come and sit with him. The same way the two disciples on the road to Emmaus stay with us, tell us more about this stuff. I’m going to help us to understand these scriptures.

They recognize their need. They recognize that instruction comes in the Ethiopian eunuch. Instruction doesn’t come directly from Jesus. It happens from another Christian. It happens from you or I, right? And this is what we’re supposed to do. And when people can explain things of the scriptures to us we want to tarry with them and understand the more in doing it. And the place in the scriptures, what do we read about? He was led as sheep to the slaughter and as a lamb toward the shear is silent. So he opened not his mouth. In his humiliation his justice was taken away. Who will declare his generation for his life is taken from the earth. What are we reading about? The Suffering Servant.

What did Jesus say the Old Testament said? The Son of God must suffer. He told the disciples on the road to Emmaus. And then enter into his glory. And now Philip, instead of Jesus, and the power of Jesus’s spirit is telling the same message. He’s explaining the prophet on another traveler perplexed, leaving Jerusalem, and he’s explaining to him the Old Testament based upon the suffering and implied the resurrection and glory of the Lord Jesus Christ.

So then the Ethiopian eunuch, what does he do? Well, he likes this. He says, I ask of you, of whom does the prophet say this? Well, what does this say? And Philip opens his mouth and beginning at the scripture, preaches Jesus. Same thing with Jesus. Beginning with Moses, beginning at the scriptures, a definite parallel that Luke is drawing for us, the author of both narratives.

And as they go down the road, they come to some water. What happens? Well, baptism happens. So the way that the road to Emmaus concludes is communion. And the way the road to wherever the Ethiopian eunuch is going concludes is another sacrament of the church, baptism. Now, as soon as communion is over, Jesus vanishes. And as soon as the baptism happens with the Ethiopian eunuch, Philip vanishes too.

So what’s the point? Well, the point is just that this message that I’ve been saying, we can see implicitly in Luke 24. This movement of angels and Christ to us, being now acting in the stead of angels and having the presence of Christ with us through the spirit. This movement of our commissioning in simple ways to come alongside of people to discuss together the things of God’s word and to lead each other to the sacraments. That’s played out in the early life of the church in the go in Acts as well as in the gospel. The gospel gives us a little picture of what the early church life is like and then that’s fleshed out even more and given to us as a second witness in the Ethiopian eunuch story which reminds us again that the road to Emmaus is not about miracles and waiting for miracles.

It’s saying that the miracles are now moved into common life as you and I in the power of the Holy Spirit encourage each other in the resurrection of Jesus Christ that we like him will be moved from suffering to glory and we are moved to ministry as a result of that great Easter message the Lord is risen indeed.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for these wonderful narratives. We thank you for their historical truthfulness. And we thank you also for the beautiful way that they’ve been constructed and written to encourage us at the center of this narrative that Jesus Christ is alive and because of that we’re moved to mission.

Help us, Lord God, to do that this week. Help us not to hold back from talking to people about Jesus. Help us to not hold back from being an encouragement to each other with the good news of joy of the resurrection of our savior. Help us, Father, to be moved ourselves from sadness to joy, from being mute, so to speak, in our sadness to being rejoicing continually in the presence of other Christians.

As Luke’s gospel closes, help us Father this week to apply these lessons to ourselves in Jesus name we ask it. Amen.