0:0 - Lord, we feel your presence here with us this morning.
0:4 - It's great to be able to worship you in song and to praise you with so many voices lifted up, and to partake in the meal that you have given us, the sacrament.
0:16 - Lord, this is truly a blessed service on a blessed day.
0:18 - We pray now that, I pray that your spirit would be on me, that I would speak the message faithfully.
0:26 - I pray for all of us as we dig into your word that you would make clear to us what you have us to take from today's passage.
0:36 - In Christ's name, amen.
0:40 - So, yeah, this is where we decided to preach on the road to Emmaus.
0:45 - This is what the drawing close, the Sunday school kids are doing today.
0:48 - And so it seemed like a good text.
0:50 - It was kind of connected to Easter, not your classic sort of Easter morning, but this is still Easter day.
0:54 - And something that maybe I haven't heard preached on quite so much in terms of an Easter.
0:59 - So let's see what the Lord has for us.
1:3 - So Luke 24 verse 13 to 35.
1:7 - Now that same day, two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem.
1:13 - They were talking with each other about everything that had happened.
1:16 - As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them, but they were kept from recognizing him.
1:25 - He asked them, what are you discussing together as you walk along?
1:28 - They stood still, their faces downcast.
1:31 - One of them, named Cleopas, asked him, are you the only one visiting Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?
1:40 - What things?
1:41 - he asked.
1:42 - About Jesus of Nazareth, they replied, he was a prophet, powerful in word and deed before God and all the people.
1:49 - The chief priests and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him.
1:54 - But we had hoped he was to be the one who was going to redeem Israel.
1:58 - And what is more, it's the third day since all this took place.
2:1 - In addition, some of our women amazed us.
2:4 - They went to the tomb early this morning, but they didn't find his body.
2:9 - They came and told us that they'd seen a vision of angels who said he was alive.
2:13 - Then some of our companions went to the tomb and found it, just as the women had said, but they did not see Jesus.
2:20 - He said to them, how foolish you are and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken.
2:25 - Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?
2:29 - And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the scriptures concerning himself.
2:37 - As they approached the village to which they were going, Jesus continued on as if he were going further, but they urged him strongly, stay with us for it's nearly evening.
2:44 - The day is almost over.
2:46 - So we went in to stay with them.
2:48 - When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them.
2:55 - Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him and he disappeared from their sight.
3:0 - They asked each other, were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened their scriptures to us?
3:7 - They get up and returned at once to Jerusalem and there they found the 11 and those with them assembled together and saying, it's true.
3:14 - The Lord has risen and has appeared to Simon.
3:17 - Then the two told what had happened on the way and how Jesus was recognized by them when he broke the bread.
3:24 - This is the word of the Lord.
3:28 - Okay, so our theme today of this sermon is about walking with Jesus.
3:35 - And so there's three parts as usual.
3:37 - First part is about Jesus walking with us, walking with the disciples.
3:41 - So a lot of you may know I have an electric car and I like this car.
3:46 - I feel I could probably get a t-shirt that says like ask me about my electric car.
3:51 - On the back it could say and my solar panels.
3:55 - One thing that's pretty cool about the electric car is like you come home and you go to park and you look at the range and say I might as well top it up and you take this plug and you just plug it in.
4:4 - The car charges up.
4:6 - And recently I was kind of thinking about how that's the way I think a lot of people tend to view our relationship with God, right?
4:13 - Some people plug in once a week.
4:16 - You come to church, you kind of plug in and we sing and we pray together and hear a sermon.
4:21 - We kind of get charged up for the week and then sometimes people kind of go through the week and that charge kind of gets you through the week.
4:28 - And some of the people may charge up once a day.
4:31 - Every morning you kind of get the Bible and you do a quiet time, you read scripture, you spend some time in prayer and you figure you're charged up for the day.
4:40 - And then you kind of go through your day and maybe don't really think about Jesus quite so much and then at the end of the day you kind of check in, how did the day go Lord?
4:48 - And I think that's not the metaphor that Jesus really wants for us.
4:54 - Plugging in and charging up and saying good, I think I'm good to go, I should have this day kind of figured out.
4:58 - Jesus instead doesn't want to think of us plugging in and charging.
5:2 - He wants to walk alongside us the whole day.
5:7 - We see in this passage Jesus himself came up and walked along with them.
5:12 - Jesus wants to walk with us and not just on dusty country roads.
5:17 - He wants to walk with you while you're having breakfast.
5:20 - He wants to be right beside you while you're commuting to work, while you're in your conversations and the good things that happened during the day, and the bad things that happened during the day.
5:29 - He wants to be beside you in your conversations.
5:33 - He wants to be beside you in everything that's going on.
5:36 - Jesus wants to walk with us and not just sort of like, good, I checked in in the morning, now I kind of got the day, but it's so easy to kind of forget.
5:45 - And just the stuff that happens during a daytime, that Jesus is right there offering to walk beside us and go through everything that we go through along with us, just as he walks along beside these guys.
5:58 - He wants to walk with us through the whole day.
6:2 - Another thing that's kind of interesting with this passage is Jesus comes up and walks beside them.
6:7 - Now, who were these two guys by the way?
6:9 - Cleopas is the only one that's mentioned, but these are obviously not some of the 12 disciples.
6:13 - But there was a whole bunch of other people that had been following Jesus right from the very beginning, right from Nazareth.
6:19 - At one point he sends out 72, and these are probably two guys that were part of that 72.
6:25 - But there was a bunch of people outside of the 12 that were part of Jesus' sort of outer circle.
6:30 - And they would definitely have known Jesus.
6:33 - But it's interesting how when Jesus is calling the first disciples, what does he call them to?
6:37 - He doesn't say, hey, come walk with me.
6:39 - At first it's, follow me.
6:42 - He tells them when they're fishing by the lake and stuff, follow me.
6:45 - And after his resurrection, we see a slightly different way of looking at things.
6:49 - Jesus comes up and walks beside them.
6:53 - And of course, for every service, we know how things are going to end here.
6:56 - We know what Pastor Brad is going to say.
7:0 - May Jesus walk beside you, to befriend you.
7:3 - We see this in this passage here.
7:4 - Jesus wants to no longer saying like, this is a thing where I'm following.
7:9 - I want to go through life with you.
7:12 - And this is what he's offering us.
7:16 - He asks them, what are you discussing as you walk along?
7:18 - And it's interesting in the passage, they both stopped dead and just kind of look at him.
7:22 - If this was the early 80s, Gen-Xers may remember this, what are you talking about, Willis?
7:28 - What do you mean, what are we talking about?
7:30 - It's almost like somebody had dropped into New York City on September 12th, 2001, and said, hey, what are you guys talking about?
7:39 - There's only one subject of conversation, and we see in our answer the despair these guys have.
7:47 - They don't understand.
7:48 - Nobody understood all of the, whether it's the women that go to the tomb first, Peter and John come later, none of them get it.
7:55 - None of them are happy.
7:56 - They're just confused or sad.
7:59 - And these guys, obviously later in the day, they've heard these reports, they've heard about angels, but that doesn't lift their spirits.
8:4 - You see the depths of despair that they're in.
8:8 - We put our faith and trust in Jesus, but I guess that wasn't right.
8:14 - Probably the best news in history.
8:18 - These guys still don't get it, right?
8:20 - They went to the tomb early this morning and they didn't find his body.
8:23 - The tomb was empty, his body was not there, and therein lies our entire faith and our entire hope.
8:30 - That they went to the tomb and they didn't find his body.
8:35 - And how does Jesus respond?
8:38 - How foolish you are.
8:40 - The word foolish in Greek, if I can just geek out a little bit, that doesn't mean like silly.
8:45 - This is not a word you'd use in polite company.
8:47 - This is the kind of thing, like that's the kind of Greek word that if a kid used that, the parent would be like, get me a bar of soap and a toothbrush.
8:53 - Don't say this in front of, so anyway, I'm not going to give examples, but you can probably imagine words that mean that somebody is really not very smart.
9:1 - And Jesus basically just unloads in these guys.
9:3 - You think actually this is where they might have recognized him.
9:6 - I've heard this before.
9:7 - Like, are you still so dull?
9:9 - Like you get the impression if the Apostle Peter was there, he would have been like, it's the Lord.
9:13 - He's the only one that does this to us.
9:15 - But of course, it's not just that they don't recognize him.
9:17 - They're kept from recognizing him.
9:20 - And so Jesus, as they walk along, you know, Maus is 11 kilometers, probably about a two and a half hour walk, according to the Google.
9:28 - So it's a time for a long conversation.
9:30 - And Jesus then explains the entire thing about prophecies from the Old Testament.
9:37 - Wouldn't that be awesome?
9:38 - Two and a half hours of walking along the road while Jesus explains the Bible to you.
9:44 - And I'm sure there's things in there that they had never thought of before.
9:47 - There's a bunch of prophecies that we now see as being messianic, that the Jews didn't see as being messianic prophecies at all.
9:54 - And if you want to talk about this a little bit more after the service, I'm happy to share some of these with you, but probably not appropriate to go into the list right now.
10:1 - This is where the church probably hears about these things for the very first time.
10:5 - Oh, that suffering servant, that was also the Messiah.
10:9 - I didn't know that.
10:10 - And here is the word of God explaining the word to them as they walk along the road.
10:14 - And they say afterwards, like, yeah, didn't it just feel like, weren't we just sort of vibrating with excitement while we're hearing this, didn't realize it?
10:22 - So they walk along, Jesus explains, and it's the end of the day.
10:27 - So Jesus wants to be invited in.
10:30 - Now, I have a student a few years ago at school.
10:33 - His dad was pretty famous.
10:34 - Well, he was PEI famous.
10:37 - So, you know, PEI famous, like nobody off the on has ever heard of you, but if you go to the Canadian Tire, people are going to stop and talk to you and stuff.
10:44 - So that's what this guy's dad was.
10:46 - And the man was fairly gracious.
10:48 - He would usually stop and have time and talk to people and stuff.
10:51 - But his son said that quite often he would know that his dad had no idea who he was talking to.
10:56 - That someone, of course, everybody knew him.
10:58 - This guy didn't know everybody.
11:0 - And kids, teenagers, you've probably been there, right?
11:3 - Your parents are yacking away at some other adult.
11:6 - And you're like, when are we going to go?
11:8 - When are we going to leave?
11:9 - Come on, seriously.
11:10 - And you're tugging on your parents' sleeve and stuff.
11:12 - So this guy, sometimes when he could fail, his dad didn't know who this guy was.
11:17 - And his dad had just kind of ignored him.
11:19 - He'd just say, hey, dad, who's this?
11:21 - Are you going to introduce me?
11:24 - Which he got a discussion with that in the car on the way home.
11:29 - But in this case, these guys are kept from recognizing Jesus.
11:33 - They don't know who he is.
11:35 - But it's just about to happen.
11:37 - And so they urge him strongly, stay with us.
11:39 - It's nearly evening.
11:39 - The day is almost over.
11:41 - It's also significant what's going to happen next too.
11:43 - Like you can't go anywhere now.
11:44 - And Jesus pretends like he's going to keep going.
11:46 - It's like, okay, you've talked me into it.
11:48 - Jesus lets himself to be invited in.
11:51 - Jesus, just as he likes to walk with us, he wants us to invite him in.
11:58 - Think about passages and Jesus responds to our invitations.
12:3 - Think about a passage like Revelation 3 20.
12:5 - Here I am, I stand at the door and knock.
12:7 - If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I'll come in and eat with that person and they with me.
12:14 - Now, in a reform way of thinking, we really don't put a lot of emphasis on sort of like personal decisions and altar calls and that kind of stuff.
12:23 - We like to think of covenants and what God has done for us and how God calls us and we are given the faith to respond.
12:31 - And I think that's all really good.
12:34 - But at the same point, as that faith enables us, there's a door knob that we can open, that with God's grace, we can open that door and invite Jesus in.
12:46 - Jesus wants us to invite him in.
12:49 - Jesus is hoping we're going to invite him in and he likes to respond to these invitations.
12:53 - He's pretending he's going to keep going with these guys and they urge him strongly.
12:56 - I don't think Jesus needs to be urged strongly, by the way, to come in to your life in a more profound way.
13:2 - He's very happy to be right there and come in with you.
13:6 - And now here comes the key part.
13:8 - They still don't recognize who he is.
13:10 - He picks up the bread and give thanks and broke it.
13:15 - And poof, it's like time just stops.
13:18 - You had one of those moments where you look back, it's like that must have been a half a second long.
13:23 - How did I have time to think that many thoughts in a half a second?
13:26 - You know, sometimes whether you're in an accident or something big happens, your mind just goes, shh.
13:31 - You know, the camera kind of zooms in on your eye.
13:33 - You know, like, oh.
13:35 - And these guys, there's so many levels of stuff happening here.
13:39 - Are they picturing Jesus feeding 5,000?
13:42 - Breaking the bread and giving thanks, giving out to the crowd.
13:45 - These guys would definitely have been at the feeding of 5,000.
13:48 - They wouldn't have been at the Lord's Supper a couple of nights previously.
13:51 - That was just the 12.
13:53 - But you can bet they'd heard about it.
13:54 - They're obviously in connection with the people that were there.
13:57 - And they would have heard about how Jesus had done, just as we did here this morning, and given them the bread and the wine and said, this is my body, this is my blood.
14:7 - And they probably remembered Jesus saying, I am the bread of life.
14:11 - Whoever comes to me will never go hungry.
14:13 - Whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.
14:16 - And in that split second where they recognize Jesus is there, he disappears.
14:23 - I don't know for sure.
14:25 - I think Jesus was kind of having a good time on this day.
14:28 - He's freshly resurrected, and he comes up to them and calls them foolish on the road, and then spends like two and a half hours.
14:37 - I think Jesus loves teaching people about the word and stuff.
14:40 - I think he's usually enjoying himself.
14:42 - I mean, he could have stayed and talked a bit more instead, just like, Jesus, bye.
14:50 - And this is a key line there.
14:52 - He was made known to them in the breaking of bread.
14:55 - When I was a kid, the church where I grew up, we had lots of stained glass windows, and before the service sometimes, because we always had to get there really early, I look up at these stained glass windows.
15:3 - There was one at the back that I kind of like the most, and it showed Jesus the Lord's Supper, and it has this line in the King James.
15:9 - He was made known to them in the break of bread.
15:12 - And it always kind of resided with me.
15:14 - And so we don't believe, as we celebrate the Lord's Supper here, we don't believe that this bread became the actual physical body of Christ, and that this wine and this cranberry juice does not become the official blood of Christ.
15:31 - And yet this is a sacrament.
15:32 - This is something sacred that we have just partaken.
15:34 - This isn't just a snack that we have here, that we can recognize Christ in this sacrament.
15:43 - And so just as these guys recognize Jesus when he breaks the bread, we also get this really cool opportunity to recognize our resurrected risen Lord when we share this.
15:56 - Some people may have been thinking, Lord's Supper, wouldn't that have been better to do on a Friday, a Good Friday service, or maybe even on a Thursday evening service?
16:3 - Some churches have a Maundy Thursday service, but it fits so well with this story that we are seeing Jesus breaking bread, and here's my body given for you and made known to us in the breaking of the bread.
16:18 - So what do these guys do?
16:19 - How do they respond?
16:22 - Well, they don't spend a long time talking about it.
16:24 - They're just like, that was Jesus.
16:25 - And the first thing they do, like they don't even see it for a conversation, which is get up and they run.
16:29 - Now it's 11 kilometers, probably take you about an hour or so, and they just hoof it all the way back.
16:35 - I don't think they're talking a whole lot on the road on the way back.
16:37 - They're probably out of breath getting there as fast as they can.
16:40 - They have seen the risen Jesus and their immediate response without any thought is, I just got to tell somebody.
16:49 - And so for us, what's our response?
16:53 - We have, as Pastor Brad mentioned earlier, the Apostle Paul was not there during all this stuff.
16:59 - He was in Jerusalem, but he was on the other side.
17:1 - He was probably glad Jesus was crucified.
17:4 - And then Paul says, Christ appeared to me and therefore the church.
17:7 - This is kind of where we come into the story.
17:10 - And through this sacrament, we have participated in the risen Christ.
17:16 - So what's our response?
17:18 - We've got the most exciting news in the whole world.
17:22 - We know about a risen Jesus.
17:24 - We know that we will never really experience death.
17:27 - Death is not something to be afraid of.
17:29 - We will sleep, but we will not die.
17:33 - And so, our response, hopefully, our excitement just bubbles over.
17:38 - And we tell everybody we know, we've got the best news out there.
17:44 - So, yeah, may the Spirit move us and help us as we walk with Jesus, and we're encouraged to share that word with everyone.
17:54 - Amen.
17:55 - Let's pray.
17:59 - Oh, Lord, it is so hard for us to get our head around just how meaningful and how exciting this is that you have risen from the dead, that you have conquered death.
18:12 - Lord, may our hearts burn within us as we think about that great news and think about your invitation to us as we walk along with you.
18:22 - And Lord, guide us, go with us, strengthen us and equip us today and every day.
18:29 - In Christ's name, Amen.