Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Last week we started looking at the sermon series. Look, want to look at what happened to the disciples from the time of Jesus resurrection to the time of Pentecost, it's 50 days later.
[00:00:14] Pentecost was a, it was one of the three big Jewish festivals that they had throughout the year.
[00:00:21] They commemorated the law of God, they commemorated the, the harvest.
[00:00:28] And a lot of people would have stayed in Jerusalem from the time of Passover to the time of Pentecost. This is where a lot of stuff for Christians took place. This is where Jesus's death took place, where his resurrection takes place, where his ascension takes place, and where the origin of the start of the church takes place. In Acts chapter two. All of that happens during this 50 week period.
[00:00:51] In that time, a lot happened in the life of the disciples, preparing them, getting them ready to be the people that could enter into the world in a way that they could start the church, they could begin to evangelize the world to come to see Jesus Christ as the Messiah. And I just want to look at that. I've been wanting to look at that movement that happened in their hearts. Last week we looked at at Easter Sunday morning, which for us is a big celebration. You know, it's like, it's like Jesus is like, you know, triumphal defeat of death.
[00:01:30] But that's not the way it actually takes place for the disciples. Initially Jesus was resurrected, but they, a few ladies come to the tomb and they don't know what's going on. They bring back, first of all, everyone that follows Christ is just devastated. As far as they know, on Easter Sunday morning, he's dead.
[00:01:50] They come to the tomb.
[00:01:53] An angel, they can't find Jesus body. But an angel or a person that's radiant tells the ladies that went there. He's no longer. Why are you looking for him among the dead? They go back to the disciples. Most of the disciples don't even do anything about it.
[00:02:10] They're like, I don't know what's going on with this vision these women are having. But Peter and apparently John run to the tomb. They find an empty tomb, but they don't, they can't find Jesus. They see that his garments are still left there, which is odd. Why would you steal his body and leave the garments there? But they're kind of confused. The whole, the whole thing is compared to the way we celebrate Easter Sunday morning. It's kind of a letdown when you look at the way, what it was like for them. Easter Sunday morning, it started off very brutal and it ends confusing.
[00:02:46] They're not sure what's going on.
[00:02:49] But in Luke, the rest of Easter picks up. Now, this next story only takes place in Luke. In the other three gospels, they don't include it. But I really like this story. There's so many little details in the story that happens later in the day on Easter that I think says a lot about things that really matter to God and I think inform us about the change, what's really essential in us to be the kind of disciples that God can use.
[00:03:22] So this comes again from Luke, chapter four. Just like last week, Luke says.
[00:03:28] Now, that same day, Easter, there were two disciples who were on their way to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem.
[00:03:35] They were talking to each other about all the things that had happened.
[00:03:39] While they were talking and debating these things, Jesus himself approached and began to accompany them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him.
[00:03:49] Then after a while, he says to them, what are these matters that you're discussing so intently as you walk along?
[00:03:55] And they stood still, looking sad.
[00:03:59] Then one of them named Cleopas, answered, are you the only visitor to Jerusalem that doesn't know the things that have happened these last few days?
[00:04:07] Says, tell me what things?
[00:04:09] This is hilarious to me. Like, can you. It's one of those, like.
[00:04:13] Like, if you're watching. If this is a movie and you're watching it, you're like, the character says something that you know is stupid that the character doesn't know. Stupid. That's what just happened here.
[00:04:22] Cleopas turns to the only one that did know what had happened in Jerusalem the last two days and said, do you not know anything? Jesus is like, yeah, try me. We'll.
[00:04:34] Let's see if you know what just happened, Right?
[00:04:37] There's this interaction between these disciples that are shocked that this guy doesn't know what's going on.
[00:04:44] We don't know exactly what's happening with these two disciples. We knew that they're heading to.
[00:04:49] They're heading to Emmaus, which is on the way.
[00:04:53] Emmaus Way station was a stop on the way to Tyre, which was along the Mediterranean Sea. It was a major thoroughfare that the Romans built and kept up.
[00:05:04] Why would these disciples have been leaving Jerusalem just a few days after Jesus death?
[00:05:11] It's possible that they were, you know, afraid for their life. It's possible that the disciples, some of the disciples, you know, there were. Besides the 12, there were a lot of people that were following Jesus. It's possible that a lot of them started thinking, like, it might be time to head home.
[00:05:26] Before what happens to Jesus happens to us. It's time to start scattering, make ourselves scarce.
[00:05:32] As they're walking along, they're clearly.
[00:05:35] They're clearly sad. When they're stopped and asked about what's happening, they just. They stop and they just look down, like, sad, just remembering what happened. But before that, they were arguing about it. We have no idea what they were. It says that they were. That they were debating that word. Like it's arguing. They were. Like they were in this heated argument over what was going on. Now, I can only assume that the argument had something to do with, like, how was he not who we thought he was? Like, a week ago, a triumphal entry. Like, we came.
[00:06:08] We saw him come into Jerusalem. He was fulfilling everything that we knew that the Messiah was supposed to do. That Messiah was supposed to redeem Israel. That means he was supposed to turn the tables on all of Israel's oppressors. Rome, who is currently oppressing us, would feel the weight of the strength of the people of God as a result of the Messiah. They would.
[00:06:30] We would be thrust into the. Into the dominant position. We would take over our land. We would throw off the oppressors.
[00:06:37] Israel would be redeemed, would be made whole, made right.
[00:06:43] He entered into that.
[00:06:45] Really kind of the way Easter Sunday morning feels for us was the way that triumphal entry felt for the disciples. That was that, like, that excitement of this thing that's just happened, right? The Messiah has entered Jerusalem.
[00:07:00] How could it have gone so poorly in just a week? I can imagine them arguing and discussing, like, what just happened there. How did we get it wrong? No, we didn't get it wrong. We saw. We saw him do these miracles.
[00:07:14] It was the Pharisee. Like, you know, there's so much to, like, work through, and they're just.
[00:07:21] The dissension and the division that it's causing among them at this point is brutal. Jesus shows up, but they don't know it's him. Now I look at this, and I don't know how. Like, I don't know how he's hiding himself. Like, I'm imagining that. It's not like the glasses with the nose or whatever, like. But there's some way that he's, like, made himself unrecognizable to his disciples. He's Jesus. I'm sure he can do that. But in terms of why he did it, I'm confident that he did that for them.
[00:07:55] They needed him at this time not to recognize who he was.
[00:08:01] As they're arguing about who the Messiah was and why the Messiah didn't work out, how they killed the Messiah. And they're. Their frustration that's going over, going through all this. At this point.
[00:08:13] They don't need to know that Jesus is alive. It's good for them in this mindset to not understand that they were wrong about his death because they're still currently wrong about who he was.
[00:08:28] He doesn't reveal himself as who he is until he's explained who the Messiah was, what the Messiah is, Then he reveals that he's alive.
[00:08:38] So I think a lot about this, the hiddenness of God. Like, how much does God reveal about Himself to us?
[00:08:47] I don't.
[00:08:51] Some people, some people I talk to are very frustrated by that. Very frustrated that, why doesn't God do this more? Why doesn't God do that? Like, why doesn't God do whatever?
[00:09:01] I am confident that he reveals Himself to us to the degree that it's good for us to be present to him.
[00:09:12] I think we very often want him to be more present to us, to rescue us from things that we've decided that the Messiah should be rescuing us from.
[00:09:21] We've decided that the Messiah is supposed to redeem Israel. We've decided that this injustice in the world needs to be fixed. Why doesn't God fix this injustice that's happening in the world? Why is God allowing this thing? Why doesn't he show up and fix this thing?
[00:09:35] And as long as we need the Messiah to be something that he's not, I'm not sure that it's good that he's more revealed than he is.
[00:09:43] I think that the full revelation of who he is is contingent on us wanting him to be who. Like when we are prepared to accept him for who he is, he is more free to reveal Himself to us.
[00:09:55] Something like that.
[00:09:59] I know, just to be less cryptic about it, like, when I pray, hearing from God for myself is very contingent on me not demanding anything of God. Like when I.
[00:10:16] When I pray, When I pray for God to do something, it's not.
[00:10:23] I don't find myself hearing from God that much. When I am directive in my prayer, when I'm more curious in my prayer, when I'm spending more time asking God to show me, what does he want in the world? What is he seeing in the world?
[00:10:38] What does he want for the world?
[00:10:41] That's when my prayers are more productive.
[00:10:46] Personally, when I read the story and I see him reveal Himself later, when they were prepared to receive him for who he was, that. That feels very familiar to me.
[00:10:56] All right, let's move on with the story. Are you the only one that doesn't know what's going on? Yeah, maybe. Maybe I know what's going on, but let's. Let's talk about it. So the disciples explain everything that we've already heard earlier in the story.
[00:11:10] Well, the thing. What we're arguing about is all the stuff concerning Jesus of Nazareth. They replied, a man who, with his powerful deeds and words, proved to be a prophet. And before God and all the people.
[00:11:23] But our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him.
[00:11:30] We had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel. Now, I have to tell you, when I get to that point, it's like a dagger for me. Like, we had hoped that he was the Messiah.
[00:11:49] A lot died on that cross.
[00:11:51] You know, When you hope. When you.
[00:12:02] When you really need something to happen, you know, it's not just like, oh, I hope. You know, I hope my car lasts another month, you know? You know, I hope my car lasts another. I hope I don't have to get it. I hope I don't have to buy a new car till my daughter's out of college and I can afford it, or something like that. It's like, yeah, that'd be nice, you know, but, like, the closest I can get to this. The closest I can get to it was when it was several years ago. They thought that I had cancer.
[00:12:36] It turned out I just had. I had something else called sarcoidosis, and it caused a lot of stuff that looked like cancer. I went to the cancer doctor, and she's like, yep, you got lymphedema. Like, it's lymphoma or whatever it is. You're gonna have to.
[00:12:50] But they did a biopsy, and it turned out it wasn't that. But in the meantime, my girls were pretty young, and Rachel, specifically was going through a hard time. And I remember just praying, like.
[00:13:03] Like, I remember just praying like, God, I.
[00:13:06] I trust you, but I really think, like, I need to live right now. Like, I need to not.
[00:13:13] I need to be there for my daughters. You know, like, that was like a hope. You see what I'm saying? Like, that was different for me than any other hope I'd had.
[00:13:25] I didn't. It's like, you know, I didn't want to leave Allison. I didn't want to. I didn't want to die. I'm not afraid of dying. But the idea of leaving my daughters in the lurch like, that was really hard for me.
[00:13:37] And as I was praying, I was really hoping. You know, I had a hopefulness in my prayer that I hadn't had normally.
[00:13:47] Now, that's the most intense hopeful time that I've had. And when we say hopeful, sometimes we think like we're hoping for something great to happen. I was just hoping not to die. You know what I mean? Hope isn't like you're hoping for fireworks. It's this thing that needs to happen.
[00:14:10] They needed Jesus to be the Messiah. They needed to be rescued, they needed to be saved, right? Like, what was going on was. What is going on is terrible, and this needs to end.
[00:14:23] And we had this deep hope in Jesus. We saw him perform miracles. We heard the words that he had to say.
[00:14:29] Everything about him told us that he was the Messiah. And we had this hope, and we don't anymore.
[00:14:37] They had lost hope.
[00:14:38] So when I read. I get to this point, we had hoped that he was the one that was going to redeem Israel. That's just like a.
[00:14:48] That, to me, encapsulates where the disciples are at this point.
[00:14:54] But it's now the third day since things had happened. He's been dead for three days. This isn't just like, he didn't just appear dead, he's been dead.
[00:15:03] But then some of the women from our group amazed us, shocked us, amazed, like, we don't know what to do with this information.
[00:15:14] They were at the tomb early this morning, and when they didn't find his body, they came back and said that they had seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive.
[00:15:26] Then some of those who were with us went to the tomb and they found just the women that said that he wasn't there, but they didn't see him.
[00:15:33] Now you get the impression that they're not sure.
[00:15:37] They're sure that the ladies that went to the tomb saw something. They saw a vision of angels.
[00:15:42] They clearly don't believe that he's alive because they're still, like, they're still. They're still sad. They look at him. They're sad, they're arguing, they're frustrated.
[00:15:53] They don't know what to think of it. Just like Peter did when he went to the tomb. But all of this is left in a state not just of hopelessness, hopelessness, confusion, and just, I imagine, kind of a malaise, like we just don't understand what's going on.
[00:16:12] He tells. They. They tell Jesus all this. This person that they think doesn't know anything. Are you the only one that doesn't Know anything. Well, here we have the inside scoop. We're his disciples. We not only know what happened to Jesus publicly, but we know what happened this morning. We'll tell you everything.
[00:16:28] Jesus response is great.
[00:16:31] He says, you foolish people.
[00:16:35] I love that.
[00:16:37] Like, gentle Jesus, meek and like, these people are hurting. These people are, like. These people are, like, really at a bad spot, right? And you think, like, Jesus might say, like, oh, this must be really bad for you. Like, this is.
[00:16:51] He's like, you're being foolish. Like, you have how slow of heart to believe that. How slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken that phrase. Slow of heart is like, you literally saw everything that the prophets had talked about. You saw it happen on the cross, but you couldn't believe it. Because what you needed, your heart couldn't allow you to process what you saw because you needed Jesus to be redeeming Israel the way you needed him to redeem Israel. And so what you saw took place couldn't correspond to you with what's in Scripture because your heart wouldn't allow it.
[00:17:30] Wasn't it necessary for Christ to suffer those things and to enter into his glory?
[00:17:35] Then, beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things written about himself in all the scriptures. We talked about this in my small group. Anne was like, oh, gosh, I wish I knew. Like, I wish he had said. I wish Luke had recorded. Like, he went to this path. He went to this story and this story and this story. Like, what are all the stories that Jesus talked about when he was telling the disciples to go back in the Old Testament and look at himself? You know, there's like a list of those things. There's, like, lots of stuff in Isaiah prophesying about his resurrection and all that stuff. Jesus himself is. In John, chapter three. He points back to Moses lifting the snake up on the desert. And anyone that looks in the snake won't get bit by serpents and die. Which is not a passage I would go to to think of. I would not have thought of that passage in the Old Testament referring to Jesus, but Jesus himself did in John. So he may have done it here. You know, he's going back through the Scriptures and he's like, showing them things that they didn't.
[00:18:35] Probably some of it, they were like, oh, yeah, of course I knew that. Some of it was like, I never would have thought that. Like, he's building him. He's. He's building for them a new way to see the Scriptures in light of who he is and what happened to him and I.
[00:18:51] And if I'm them, I might not appreciate that this rando dude, this guy, like, who didn't even know a minute ago what happened in Jerusalem, is now telling me, a disciple of Jesus, who Jesus really is and what the Messiah was really about, and that I didn't understand what was going on with Jesus, that he figured it out and we didn't. To me, this all feels a little bit, like, pretty presumptuous. You know, if it's Jesus, it's not presumptuous, but if it's some rando guy, it sounds pretty presumptuous to me, right? Like, if I'm them, I'm like, who are you again?
[00:19:30] I might be happy for this guy to move along.
[00:19:34] Okay? I'm busy being sad right now. You trying to fix things like you don't know.
[00:19:41] You see what I'm saying? That's kind of what's going on.
[00:19:46] But it said. But it says this.
[00:19:52] When they approached the village, when they approached Emmaus, where they were going, he acted as though he was going to walk a little bit further.
[00:20:00] But they urged him, stay with us.
[00:20:03] Because it's getting towards evening and the day is almost done.
[00:20:08] So he went in to stay with them. Now, I want just.
[00:20:11] If it were me, I would probably have been happy for Jesus to move along.
[00:20:18] I would probably been happy to continue to make my own assumptions about the Messiah, to have them left there and not to be challenged by this guy.
[00:20:30] Only because they really listened to what Jesus had to say did they have the thought to say, I want you to stay with us. And to eventually see him.
[00:20:41] They got to see Jesus because they weren't as arrogant as I think maybe I would have been in this situation.
[00:20:48] They got to see Jesus because they were humble enough to listen to who Jesus really was instead of who they assumed him to be.
[00:21:00] Stay with us. Have dinner with us.
[00:21:05] When he had taken his place at the table with him. Now, this is like. This is later. This is dinner. This is like seven miles away from Jerusalem, getting on nighttime. So this is late that night. These people are.
[00:21:20] I don't know where they are at this point.
[00:21:22] They're clearly okay with being around this person who's explaining these things to them, telling them that they've misunderstood what's happened these last few days.
[00:21:32] When he'd taken his place at the table with them, he took the bread, blessed it and broke it and gave it to them. And at this point, as he breaks the bread, their eyes were opened and they recognized him. Somebody in our link group, I'm not sure who was talking about, like, I want. Oh, was it Rob was talking about, like, I wonder if he had this, like, way that he broke bread that was like, you know, like, when he broke the loaves and fishes, he had this certain way that he did it. And then when he. At the. At the Last Supper, he had this certain way that he did it. Like, there was a certain way he did it. And they were like, ooh, that.
[00:22:06] That's what Jesus does. You know, like, maybe it was something like that. I don't know. But, like, as. As he was doing this thing that he had done several times with them before they recognized him. And at that point, he vanishes out of their sight.
[00:22:20] And they say, didn't our hearts burn within us while he was speaking with us on the road?
[00:22:29] I like this definition of hope.
[00:22:34] We had hope that he was the Messiah. We had lost hope. We'd gotten to the point that we didn't hope anymore.
[00:22:41] When we met this guy and he asked us what happened, we just stopped cold. We looked down. We were sad. Just the fact we were even gonna have to, like, talk about this with somebody saddened us.
[00:22:53] And then as he was talking to us about who the Messiah was, in light of the prophets, something like our hearts sort of burning. We got this, like, sensation of, like, yes, like an agreement with what he was saying about who the Messiah was, that maybe the Messiah wasn't here. Maybe we thought the Messiah was coming to make Israel powerful to defeat Rome, but maybe Israel. Maybe the Messiah was coming to defeat death and to make us powerful.
[00:23:25] Maybe. Maybe the Messiah wasn't for Israel against Rome, but he was for humanity against Satan.
[00:23:33] Maybe we had misidentified who he was for and who he was against.
[00:23:37] And maybe the Messiah was a lot more than we imagined him to be in the first place. As he's uncovering. As he's explaining all this stuff about his Messiahs, their hearts burn inside of them, and they get this.
[00:23:52] This, like. It's like their heart starts, like, beating again. It's like they flatlined for three days. And then it's like they get a pulse again. You know, it's starting to. Ugh, you know.
[00:24:05] So they got up that very hour and returned to Jerusalem. Now, this is. Again. This is seven miles away. Nighttime. You don't.
[00:24:12] You get someplace and you chill out at nighttime. Because the roads can be full of bandits. Maybe not this road. As many as some of the others, because it's a.
[00:24:20] It was a Roman road, but still, you didn't travel out at nighttime. It would have been unsafe. Certainly animals and all kinds of stuff. They booked it. They run straight back to Jerusalem. They can't waste any time. They need to go report back what happened. But they found the 11 and those with them. So all the disciples gathered together and saying, this isn't the two disciples saying this. They bust into the door where the disciples are, and they hear this being said.
[00:24:49] The Lord has really risen. He's appeared to Simon. That's Peter. Simon Peter. He's appeared to Simon. Then the two that busted in the door with this great news that they're going to tell everybody. They're like, okay, well, us too. He's like, then he told them what happened on the road and how they recognized him when he broke bread with them.
[00:25:11] I love that Luke doesn't even share the account of what happened. Peter, like, apparently Jesus is going around. Jesus is. Jesus is bringing hope. The first thing that he does is he brings hope back to these.
[00:25:24] These. These people that had lost hope. And he's. He did it with these two, and he did it with Peter. And if I'm Luke, I'm thinking like, well, certainly we gotta share the story of how it happened with Peter. Peter's important. Nope. Luke shared the story with two randos that we don't even know. Like, we. We think, like, there's like, maybe the guy that's named. We can. And there's like, guesses. And, you know, certainly the early disciples would have known the name of this one guy. The other guy doesn't get mentioned. But we don't know. He's not a major player. Apparently, he doesn't show up anywhere else in the Bible.
[00:25:55] This is the account that Luke brings to us as he's revealing that the first thing that God does is he's bringing these disciples, like, remaking these disciples like they died and they're being reborn into these new men in these new people.
[00:26:13] The first thing that he does is he brings hope. And he brings it to people that we don't even hear about ever again.
[00:26:19] I wonder how much of this was going on that the hope of these disciples is told through the story of people that we don't even think of as, like, a big deal.
[00:26:35] You know, we make so much of.
[00:26:45] You know, we. We want God to do with us what he did with, like, why doesn't God do this? Why doesn't. Why doesn't God do that?
[00:26:55] I have seen my experiences with God have happened most powerfully in smaller situations that are not Kind of not repeatable. Like, you don't. Things that you don't go around, kind of tender situations you don't go around sharing. And oftentimes with people that you don't think of as like, important or like big Christian. Like the people following Christ that I see doing it simply and humbly that go overlooked because we have eyes to see leadership or to see strength the way the world sees it.
[00:27:40] God doesn't at all.
[00:27:44] These stories are the ones that I think inhabit God, God's life continuously.
[00:27:51] The small details of individuals being really good friends, being good parents. Like when things in those moments where it's like, I just want to go to bed, yeah, I'll read one more story. Like all these small things that add up to build love for one another.
[00:28:13] I think these are the equivalent to what Luke is doing here.
[00:28:18] Luke brings hope back into the story through these two people that don't really even seem like a big deal to us.
[00:28:27] The story will end in Acts 2 with the church exploding, like in Peter at the heart of that and all that kind of stuff. And that's great, but the story of the church is a lot of little choices made by people following Christ and choosing not to be arrogant and not to say, I know more than you do, and inviting Jesus to come in and to have that meal with him, even when they're not sure to be humble enough to see the hope when he shares it.
[00:29:00] To me, this story is.
[00:29:03] It's this tender moment in the middle of this very powerful narrative.
[00:29:10] And I'm glad that this is where I see the revitalization of hope in the disciples showing up in this tender moment.
[00:29:18] Let's pray, Father. God, this hope that you have given us, Lord, a hope in you. Not some false, not some, Not a salvation that we would think of, Lord, or that we would want for ourselves, but a salvation that's better.
[00:29:45] A salvation that's a lot more encompassing, holistic.
[00:29:53] Lord, we appreciate that you have brought this hope into our life.
[00:29:57] Lord, you have stripped us away from a lot of other hopes that we might have had, a lot of other good ideas that we had.
[00:30:08] And, Lord, we have come to see that you are the one who gets to define what's really good. We trust and we submit to you and to your hope and to you as Lord our Messiah.
[00:30:20] We love you. Amen.
