“Resurrection Fire”
(Luke 24:13-35)
Series: Encounters with Christ (The Two on the Road to Emmaus)
Rev. Todd A. Linn, PhD
Henderson’s First Baptist Church, Henderson
Take your Bibles and join me this morning in Luke’s Gospel, chapter 24 (page 712; YouVersion).
We are celebrating Easter Sunday by looking at one of my favorite resurrection appearances of the Lord Jesus Christ. Our study this morning fits nicely with our current series, “Encounters with Christ,” how an encounter with Jesus changes everything.
Luke opens the 24th chapter by writing about what happened on the third day following Christ’s crucifixion. He says on the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women came bringing spices to the tomb. But when they got to the tomb they found the stone rolled away. And they went in but did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. And they were greatly perplexed. Then two men—angels—appeared by them in shining garments. And they asked the women, “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen!”
And this is what we celebrate not just on Easter Sunday, but on every Sunday, because every Sunday is a celebration of Christ’s rising from the dead.
Billy Graham, in his book, World Aflame, writes about one pastor’s (Charles Reynolds Brown) telling of a conversation between Auguste Comte, the French philosopher, and Thomas Carlyle, philosopher and writer. Comte stated his intention of starting a new religion that would replace Christianity. Carlyle replied:
“Very good, Mr. Comte, very good. All you will need to do will be to speak as never a man spake, and live as never a man lived, and be crucified, and rise again the third day, and get the world to believe that you are still alive.” He said, “Then your [new] religion may have a chance to [catch] on.”—World Aflame, page 133.
Christ is risen! And yet when Jesus Christ rose from the dead 2,000 years ago most of His followers failed to understand what had happened. They weren’t expecting resurrection. And two of these fellas, in particular, are walking a 7-mile journey home from Jerusalem. They were in Jerusalem and they had witnessed the things that had taken place regarding Christ’s arrest, beating, and crucifixion. They heard about His rising from the dead, but it didn’t make sense to them. And as they are walking along, Jesus appears to them. Let’s read it in Luke’s Gospel, beginning in verse 13.
Please stand in honor of the Word of God.
13 Now behold, two of them were traveling that same day to a village called Emmaus, which was seven miles from Jerusalem.
14 And they talked together of all these things which had happened.
15 So it was, while they conversed and reasoned, that Jesus Himself drew near and went with them.
16 But their eyes were restrained, so that they did not know Him.
Pray
It’s really quite fascinating to me. The Bible says that Jesus appeared to these two men who are walking along the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus and when He appears they do not recognize Him because, verse 16, “their eyes were restrained.” In others words, God deliberately kept them from recognizing Himself in Christ.
And that intrigues me. There is truth that jumps up out of the pages of our Bibles as we consider that these guys’ eyes were kept from recognizing Him. One thing we may know for certain is that just because we do not see God, doesn’t mean He isn’t there. God is everywhere. We see Him by grace through faith. We see Him with spiritual eyes, the eyes of faith. As Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:7, “We walk by faith, not by sight.” But He is there. He is always there.
So this truth is connected to another. Our ability to see Christ at all is a gift from God. Our ability to see Jesus by faith is entirely owing to God’s grace. God must disclose Himself to us for us to see Him. Without His disclosing Himself we are spiritually dead and spiritually blind. As John Newton wrote in “Amazing Grace,” I once was blind, but now I see. It was grace that taught my heart to fear. Our ability to see Christ is a gift from God, the One who opens our eyes to see Him.
God has a purpose here in keeping these two fellas from recognizing Him. Jesus has a plan here. And we read on to discover what that plan is. Now Jesus talks to them:
17 And He said to them, “What kind of conversation is this that you have with one another as you walk and are sad?” (Why the long faces, guys?!)
You know, “Why the long faces, guys?!” And some of the translations have here that the two of them suddenly stood still, as if in shock at what seemed to be a very ignorant question.
18 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?”
These two can’t believe what they are hearing from this stranger, Jesus incognito. How can you not know all the things that have been going on in the last several days?! Everyone’s been talking about it, you know.
19 And He said to them, “What things?”
So they said to Him, “The things concerning Jesus of Nazareth, who was a Prophet (past tense; He was a prophet) mighty in deed and word before God and all the people,
20 and how the chief priests and our rulers delivered Him to be condemned to death, and crucified Him.
21 But we were hoping that it was He who was going to redeem Israel (past tense again). Indeed, besides all this, today is the third day since these things happened.
So the two men are telling Jesus that they were in Jerusalem for the grand event of all time, the Messiah’s entrance into Jerusalem and how they were looking forward to His reign as Redeemer and King and hoping he would deliver them over from Roman oppression, and so on. But now it was all over—He’s gone. Past tense. The big event has happened and didn’t end as they had hoped. Like a party suddenly over. The band has stopped playing. The streamers have come down, the promotional billboards removed. And these two are walking home, dejectedly. The one disciple continues in verse 22:
22 Yes, and certain women of our company, who arrived at the tomb early, astonished us.
23 When they did not find His body, they came saying that they had also seen a vision of angels who said He was alive.
24 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.”
Now it is Jesus’ turn to speak. Verse 25:
25 Then He said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken!
26 Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory?”
27 And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.
Jesus takes these two disciples to the Scriptures to help them understand how the entire Bible points to Jesus. Beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, Jesus led the two in a 7-mile long Sunday school lesson! I would love to have been there, wouldn’t you?!
So Jesus helps these two guys by leading them to see the bigger picture of the Bible. They were looking trough the wrong end of the telescope. They couldn’t see the forest for looking too closely at the trees. They missed the bigger picture.
You can know a lot of Bible stories, but miss the story of the Bible. The Bible is a “Him-book,” a book about Him, it’s a book about Jesus. So Jesus teaches them, “beginning at Moses and all the Prophets,” and, “He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.” If we had time this morning we’d talk about how we can see Jesus in every book of the Bible. He’s there because He is not just “one of the stories” in the Bible, but “The story of the Bible.”
God created all things. Sin entered the world. God came to fix the sin problem and He came in the flesh, He came and clothed Himself in human flesh, the incarnation; Jesus Christ, deity clothed in humanity. And God fixed our sin problem in Christ by living perfectly and dying a for our sin. His rising from the dead on the third day completed our need to be justified by faith in Him, to be no longer “guilty” of our sin. God the Father’s raising His Son Jesus from the grave was His way of saying, “I am satisfied with the death of Christ on your behalf.” The resurrection is God’s “stamp of approval” on all that Jesus did for you and me.
Well again, I would love to have been there for that 7-mile Sunday school lesson! Luke writes what happens when the lesson is over, verse 28:
28 Then they drew near to the village where they were going (Emmaus), and He (Jesus) indicated that He would have gone farther (a polite Middle Eastern custom, not presuming upon the kindness of one’s guests).
29 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.
30 Now it came to pass, as He sat at the table with them (they’re having a meal together now), that He (Jesus) took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them.
31 Then their eyes were opened and they knew Him; and He vanished from their sight.
That is just too cool, isn’t it?! Jesus just vanishes. He opens their eyes so they now recognize Him and He’s gone. Now verse 32 is essential to our understanding of what’s going on here:
32 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?”
Was not our heart on fire as Jesus walked with us and talked with us on the road as He opened up the Bible to our understanding?! Resurrection fire! So these two are now, “fired up,” and verse 33:
33 So they rose up that very hour and returned to Jerusalem (and remember, they had just walked 7 miles, now they are headed back at the same hour, so 14 miles of walking), and found the eleven and those who were with them gathered together,
34 saying, “The Lord is risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon!”
35 And they (the two men from Emmaus) told about the things that had happened on the road, and how He was known to them in the breaking of bread (that is, when Jesus opened their eyes).
Have you ever wondered why Jesus didn’t just reveal Himself to them earlier? Like back up in verse 19 where Jesus asks, “What things are you talking about that make you so sad?” And then the two men tell Him about this prophet named Jesus and how they hoped He would redeem Israel, but now He’s dead and they don’t know what’s going on and everything.
Why didn’t Jesus right there just go, “Hey, guys! Here I am! It is I! I’m alive!!” I mean, He could have done that, right? But He doesn’t. Instead, to help them see with the eyes of faith, He takes them to the Bible. Jesus guides them to the Scriptures and in so doing, He helps us understand that the way we have an experience with Jesus today and come to know Him as our Lord and Savior today is by means of the Scriptures.
The way we know God today through Jesus Christ is by going to the Bible and reading how all the Bible points to Him. Powerful life transformation hinges not upon some kind of special appearance from heaven, but upon the Bible, rightly interpreted. Our salvation and growth in Christ is informed by a proper understanding of the Bible, and a confident assurance in the sufficiency of Scripture to teach us all we need to know for life and godliness.
I am struck by the fact that these two disciples who were previously dejected and downcast, are now full of hope and joy. And their joy is restored by a correct understanding of the Word of God, the Scriptures. Their joy is restored by understanding that all of the Bible points to Jesus.
This is especially evidenced in verse 32 where they say, “Did not our heart burn within us while He talked with us on the road, and while He opened the Scriptures to us?”
There is power in the Word of God. And the reason there is power in the Word of God is because the Word of God points to the God of the Word. The Word of God points to the God of the Word. The Bible points to our all-powerful, all-loving, all-forgiving, all-satisfying Lord Jesus Christ.
There is power in the Word of God! The Bible changes lives every single day.
My older son Matthew shared a news story with me last week. There’s a missional organization that goes to the border of North and South Korea and airlifts Bibles from South Korea into North Korea.
In North Korea it’s illegal to be a Christian, it’s illegal to own a Bible. Yet the some 100,000 Christians worshiping Christ secretly want copies of the Word of God. So there’s this missional outfit that does this a couple times a year. Here’s a picture.
Pic 1
Here they are preparing to launch the Bibles with a 40-foot balloon made of some kind of farm plastic.
Pic 2
Here’s a picture where they are attaching a sack of Bibles. The balloon is filled with hydrogen and it carries Bibles and testimonials written by persecuted Christians. They’re attached at the bottom inside a sack or box. And the group prays before each launch.
Pic 3
So here’s a balloon making its way from South Korea into North Korea. Timers are used to release the materials in stages. They also use GPS technology to help direct where the Bibles land. They drop tens of thousands of these each year into North Korea.
Pretty cool, huh? There’s power in the Word of God. The Word of God points to the God of the Word. People are hungry for the Word and when it is unleashed God works mightily through it.
When we were in Thailand we met a fella in one of the villages whose name is Budsta.
Here’s a picture of him:
Pic of Budsta
Budsta lives in a village where there were no Christians, not a single one. Michael and Lori Floyd, who are part of our Thailand partnership—and visited our church back in the fall—moved into this village to reach people like Budsta, who is Isaan, the Isaan people group. Budsta is 73 years old and he said when he was very small, a foreigner had visited his school and taught a bit from the Bible. And he had not heard about it since.
So that seed that was planted over 60 years ago is now beginning to sprout by our missional partnership there in Thailand. Lori gave Budsta an MP3 player with the Bible on it. Budsta listened to the whole thing and said that he had shared the MP3 player with some 30 other people in the village and that they were listening with him. He says he is excited to start a disciple-making group and plans to invite everyone he knows. He added that listening to God’s Word “makes his heart satisfied and he knows it’s the truth.” And he wants to share it with everyone. Amen! There’s power in the Word of God, because the Word of God points to the God of the Word.
Let me share one other story that’s happening in another one of our missional partnerships in Central Asia. Many of you know of a family with which we are partnered, a family from our church serving in Central Asia. There was a bomb that exploded very close to them a little over a week ago. In a prayer gathering Monday at our house, and in our staff meeting Wednesday, we prayed specifically for this family and for their larger team as they were trying to figure out what to do next. And God is working through that bombing to create a hunger for Himself and for His Word.
Just yesterday, the father of this team texted our Minister of Missional Outreach, Brother Matt McCraw, this text:
Pic 5
Because of security concerns, some of the words are different than the way we would talk here. Matt asked how things are going and he replied, “Father is working. We saw 6 people believe just last night. Probably 15-20 so far this week. Literally men sitting in the room pouring over the Word cover to cover like a novel.” Matt replies, “Wow. Great!” And the father replies, “Far more than we could ask or imagine.”
There is power in the Word of God. It points to the God of the Word.
In this passage, the disciples’ joy is restored by the Word of God, by the Scriptures, by a correct understanding of the Bible.
32 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?”
Resurrection fire burns within our hearts when we walk with Jesus and read His Word. Jesus continues to invite us today to walk with Him. We refer to the Christian life as a “Walk.” It is a daily activity. We walk with Christ by turning to Him and listening to Him in His Word, the Bible.
I wrote down in my notes this week the phrase:
**Walking with Christ Means…
And then two blessings that are the result of a daily walk with Christ. The first blessing is:
1) We Enjoy God’s Power
God’s power comes by way of the Gospel, the good news we must accept and believe in order to have life.
If we admit we are sinners, that we make mistakes, that we are not perfect, and that we have nothing to offer a holy God but our sin, then we are in a position to be forgiven. God’s power of forgiveness.
God wants to save us from the penalty of our sin, which is death. If we believe in Christ, believing what all the Scriptures teach about Christ, believing all that the Word of God teaches us about the God of the Word, then we can be forgiven of our sin.
Paul writes in Romans 8 and Ephesians 1 the truth that the kiddos sang last Sunday evening: the same power that raised Jesus Christ from the dead is the same power that works in you. God’s power of forgiveness.
This is the hope of Easter! Jesus died and rose again. We are connected to Jesus by glorious union with Christ. So if we believe, then we also have died and have risen from the dead. This is pictured in our water baptism—buried with Christ, death to the old us, and rising in Christ to walk in newness of life. The same power that raised Jesus from the dead works in us.
Easter means that when we have breathed our last breath of air here, we awake immediately in the paradise of heaven. Absent from the body, present with the Lord. This is what the Scriptures teach. This is what we discover when we walk with Jesus and read His Word.
And if we believe in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior then God forever accepts us in His Son Jesus Christ. We talked about this Wednesday in our theology study here in the sanctuary. Union with Christ means that we are forever connected, joined, united with Christ. God the Father sees us completely covered in Christ’s righteousness.
So if we are in Christ we are always perfectly loved and accepted by Him. Always. We may make mistakes as Christians. We may do things we regret. But God continues to love us and accept us in Christ Jesus. God always accepts us not on the basis of our pathetic performance, but on the basis of Christ’s perfect righteousness applied to us.
We enjoy God’s power. The same power that raised Jesus from the dead works in us. So by the same power that brings forgiveness of our sin, we are enabled to forgive those who sin against us.
That’s what Paul teaches in Ephesians 4:32, “And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you.”
We enjoy God’s power. Power of forgiveness and power over sin in this life. In Christ we can conquer the power of addiction—drugs, drinking, sexual immorality, pornography—all of these sins conquered by the power of God as we walk with Him daily and listen to Him in His Word. There is power in the Word!
Someone said, “The task ahead of us is never as great as the Power behind us.” There is power in the Word of God.
Remember that the joy of the disciples was restored when the Scriptures were opened up to them.
The Word of God points us to the God of the Word, the very One in whom you will find satisfaction for your soul.
Timothy Paul Jones, “Purity flows from a heart that recognizes the joy of God’s salvation as a gift more satisfying than any competing pleasure the world can provide.”
So walking with Christ means we enjoy God’s power and, secondly, walking with Christ means:
2) We Enjoy God’s Presence
We enjoy the presence of the Lord, the One who said He is with us always and would never leave us nor forsake us. The disciples’ joy was restored when they came to understand that the Word of God pointed them to the God of the Word, the One with whom they were walking.
Our Lord is always there and He always sees what we are doing. So there is a sense of joyful accountability there.
Pastor Tim Keller tells of some years ago when he had counseled a man who’d had an affair, who had cheated on his wife. Keller said:
He told me that the two times when his wife was away on a trip, he had brought his mistress to his home. And one of the things he had to do was turn all of his wife’s pictures over, turn them over, flip them over, because neither his mistress nor he himself could bear to see her face. And that was just photography. Do you know what it means to walk with God? Not just believe in Him, but walk with Him? To walk with Him is to have a moment-by-moment awareness of His awareness of you. It’s to be moment-by-moment aware of His awareness with you. You sense Him there and you know what that does? That accountability is scary, but it’s wonderful because it creates integrity.
God intends us to have a joyful sense of His awareness. Joyful accountability and integrity. If we are walking with the Lord and listening to Him in His Word, then we have the joy of God’s presence.
But it takes time. We must read the Word of God daily. You can’t have this incredible spiritual experience all at once that lasts for years. You do it daily. You read His Word daily. You listen to Him daily. You walk with Him and listen to Him.
I was talking to a friend one afternoon last week about this. We were reflecting on the daily feasting upon the Word of God being like the manna that God rained down from heaven in the Book of Exodus. He caused manna to fall in the wilderness and told the people to gather enough for each day. They gathered and ate the manna daily. And that’s the way we feed ourselves upon the heavenly manna of God’s Word. It is daily nutrition.
This is also why our Christian life is a daily discipline. In order to grow, and in order to have the regular joy of walking with Christ, we must be around the Word. Hearing the Word through Christian preaching, teaching, and music. Talking with Christian friends, growing together through regular attendance in worship, Bible study, and Sunday school.
The disciples’ joy was restored when the Word of God was opened and they began to understand rightly the God of the Word.
Walking with Christ means we can enjoy God’s power and enjoy God’s presence.
This is the hope of Easter! This is the reason for resurrection fire! And all this is possible because the tomb is empty. He is risen. There is life in Christ.
I close with this. I read recently a story told by Paul Harvey and recorded in Alice Gray’s, Stories for the Heart. Let me invite you to hear this as we conclude:
He was 9-in a Sunday school class of 8-year-olds. Eight-year-olds can be cruel.
The third-graders did not welcome Philip to their group. Not just because he was older. He was “different.” He suffered from Down’s syndrome and its obvious manifestations: facial characteristics, slow responses, symptoms of retardation.
One Sunday after Easter the Sunday school teacher gathered some of those plastic eggs that pull apart in the middle-the kind in which some ladies’ pantyhose are packaged.
The Sunday school teacher gave one of these plastic eggs to each child.
On that beautiful spring day each child was to go outdoors and discover for himself some symbol of “new life” and place that symbolic seed or leaf or whatever inside his egg.
They would then open their eggs one by one, and each youngster would explain how his find was a symbol of “new life.”
So …
The youngsters gathered ‘round on the appointed day and put their eggs on a table, and the teacher began to open them.
One child had found a flower. All the children “oohed” and “aahed” at the lovely symbol of new life. In another was a butterfly. “Beautiful,” the girls said. And it’s not easy for an 8-year-old to say “beautiful.”
Another egg was opened to reveal a rock. Some of the children laughed. “That’s crazy!” one said. “How’s a rock supposed to be like a ‘new life’?”
Immediately the little boy spoke up and said, “That’s mine. I knew everybody would get flowers and leaves and butterflies and all that stuff, so I got a rock to be different.
Everyone laughed.
The teacher opened the last one, and there was nothing inside.
“That’s not fair,” someone said. “That’s stupid,” said another.
The teacher felt a tug on his shirt. It was Philip. Looking up Philip said, “It’s mine. I did it. It’s empty. [the egg is empty because the tomb is empty]. I have new life because the tomb is empty.”
The class fell silent.
From that day on Philip became part of the group. They welcomed him. Whatever had made him different was never mentioned again.
Philip’s family had known he would not live a long life; just too many things wrong with the tiny body. That summer, overcome with infection, Philip died.
On the day of his funeral nine 8-year-old boys and girls confronted the reality of death and marched up to the altar-not with flowers. Nine children with their Sunday school teacher placed on the casket of their friend their gift of love—an empty egg.—Paul Harvey; Stories for the Heart compiled by Alice Gray (Portland: Multnomah, 1996), p. 15.
Philip said, “The egg is empty because the tomb is empty.” And the tomb is empty because Christ has risen. He has risen indeed!
Stand for prayer.
“Lord Jesus Christ, I admit that I am weaker and more sinful than I ever before believed, but, through you, I am more loved and accepted than I ever dared hope. I thank you for paying my debt, bearing my punishment and offering forgiveness. I turn from my sin and receive you as Savior.”
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