[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching from God's Word you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to Him. If you're ever in the Madison, Alabama area, we'd love for you to worship with us on Sundays at 8:30 or 10:30am if you have any other questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison Church, find
[email protected] Be sure to also check out our Bible study podcast, Madison Church of Christ Bible Studies. Thanks again for stopping by.
[00:00:37] Speaker B: I don't know if any of you are like me in this, but this is kind of a recent thing for me.
I like going on walks as of recently, and my kids would call it a wog, which is like a half walk, half jog, but to me it's still walking. And one of the things that they've said is that I guess the reason why I like to walk a little bit more now than I used to is because I'm getting old.
And I do think that is part of it, that age has kind of made me enjoy just sometimes slowing down a little bit. In fact, I told some of you this, that when we found out that we were expecting, and I know I'm gonna be 40 next month, one of the things that one of my kids said is like, dad, just think about this when he's able to play T ball, you'll be the baldest dad out there. I was like, well, thank you.
But I do really think that age does have a little bit to do with it. But I will say more than age is probably circumstance.
And in fact, even just recently, one of the things that I have really enjoyed is even though it's like not really far, but Lorianne and I will actually just walk back and forth like on the street in front of our house.
And for those of you that are married, I think you can maybe sympathize or understand this, that you can be in the same house, you can see each other all the time.
But one of the things, if you're not careful, you can just kind of exist together but not actually take time together.
And so when we go on those walks, it almost kind of like recalibrates us in our marriage and our relationship and the things around us, the pressures and different things that we think about, they don't necessarily change, but because we've walked together, it's given us this fresh perspective Another person near to me that really loved to walk was my granddad. And I've shared this with you before that. He was a farmer. And one of my dad's core memories from my granddad was that granddad liked to walk up and down every row of the farm. And they had this massive window in their farmhouse. And. And he remembers as a kid seeing him walk. But granddad wasn't just walking. He could see him talking.
And so when he would come back inside, one of the things my dad would ask is like, dad, like, what were you doing out there? Who were you talking to?
He's like, well, I was talking to God.
You know, we haven't had rain in a while, and this is part of how I feed you guys.
I was walking down every row, begging God, asking God for rain.
I was walking around the perimeter of that farm, asking him for his wisdom to help me as a father. He had seven kids. He needs some wisdom, right?
And what was interesting is maybe the situation didn't necessarily change, but here's what changed.
His perspective changed because of who he walked with.
And the reason why I say that today is there are two people in this text, in Luke chapter 24, that are so much like all of us.
They are at a place where we've all been, where they had hoped something, but those hopes came crashing down, in their opinion, they had expected. At this point in life, I really expect to be here. But we find ourselves here.
And so, because of those, like, crushed hopes and those expectations that were not meeting what they had expected, the Bible says that these two people were downcast.
But here's what I love.
Jesus met them on that road.
And if you've been with us over the past few weeks, Brandon and I have been doing this series that you can see on the screen behind me called the Ways of Jesus.
And if you've been a part of this series or if you haven't, the whole goal is this, is that we want to go through Scripture and see, all right, what are Jesus ways? Not just so we could admire the ways of Jesus, but so that his ways can become our ways. And so I think on two different levels, what this text can do is this. It will encourage us to know who Jesus is with us on the road on those detours.
But I think the other thing is this. It will remind us that when we see people that are going through detours, that their hopes have been crushed, their expectations have not been met.
Who is Jesus in those moments? And as we think about this together, I want to Give you a little bit of context.
What has just happened in Luke chapter 24 is setting the stage for this, that Jesus Christ has risen from the dead.
Jesus has given Satan a black eye.
And we would think that because the greatest moment in human history has just happened, Jesus rose from the dead.
We would think that probably what Jesus would do, if you were like, his international liaison, you would say, all right, we're going to pack out an arena. We're going to rent out this huge room.
We might even put on, like, a resurrection reenactment event or have, like, some fireworks.
But yet what we see is something that is so consistent with Jesus and his ministry.
Of all the things that he chooses to do, he chooses to meet two people that we hardly know anything about that are frustrated and sad on their way to a town that to this day, nobody really knows anything about.
And I want us to think about that from this perspective, that if Jesus Christ just rose from the dead and they really believed that and knew that, where should they be?
Well, in Jerusalem.
But yet they're walking away and the Savior of the world decides to meet them on that detour.
I love what Adam shared because it really fits so well with our lesson this morning, that when we think about God, we oftentimes just think about God in the destination, himself itself. But God is also the God of the detour. That it's in that detour that we learn a lot, yes, about ourselves.
But even more so, it's in those detours that we learn more about Him. You know, we kind of think of God as, like, he's going to be in those places that, you know, where everybody sees him, everybody recognizes, and sometimes he is. But have you noticed through script scripture, like, Jesus one time went 25 miles out of the way, in other people's opinion, to meet this one woman in a city called Nain that nobody had hardly heard about because this woman had lost her son.
We see Jesus in John 4. It says, Go way out of his way to meet a woman at a well that had several husbands that she was living with, and one of them was not her husband. And we're going to see in this text that Jesus travels seven miles out of the way to meet these men. Or possibly some people believe it could be a husband and wife. We don't know that are downcast, that are frustrated because their hopes have been crushed.
And so what I want us to do is I want us to do two things. Number one, ask ourselves, could it possibly be that we've been so focused on the destination mindset that we forget that God is also on those detours.
But the other thing that I want us to do, because to me this is like the big question Luke 24 is asking. And it's this, who is Jesus? Who is Jesus on those detours? And what I love is the genius of Jesus in these moments of how he handles crushed hopes and expectations that have not been met.
So let's dig into the text together.
It says this in chapter 24, verse 13.
That very day there were two of them.
They were going to this village called Emmaus. In fact, what's really interesting, a lot of archaeological studies and geographical studies. They don't know much about this area. It was kind of like a no name town, basically.
And this was seven miles away from Jerusalem. They were talking with each other about all these things that had happened. Well, what things, Andrew? Well, they. The fact that Jesus Christ just, you know, is, in their opinion, is not what he's doing that they thought he would do.
They had heard rumors that he rose from the dead. And they're kind of trying to process it all.
It says while they were talking and discussing these things together, Jesus actually draws near and goes to them.
Now here's what's really neat, is that what you're gonna see Jesus do at the very beginning is he just ask them like one question that uncovers how their hopes have been crushed.
And this is really neat because one of the things that if you've ever been in like a group therapy situation or maybe you've met with a counselor before, one of the things that they will tell you is to do literally what Jesus is trying to do here. Listen, I want to help you, but you also have to confess something. We have to like, we have to operate from a place of truth.
And that should always remind every single one of us in this room that if we ever need. And when. Excuse me, let me rephrase that. When we need to confess something, that confession is freedom and that confession is healing.
But in order to experience the freedom and the healing, we have to uncover some stuff.
But notice what he does as he uncovers it.
He chooses to listen. The one that has the answer chooses to listen. Notice what it says in this text.
It says at this time their eyes were kept from recognizing him, so, like, they couldn't see that this was actually Jesus.
There are a lot of theories and thoughts why. In fact, one of the things I got sucked into was like all these different commentators and podcasts giving their reasoning and we could do a whole lesson on that. But one of the common themes of all of this is really that Jesus and God was maybe not letting them quite see it was Jesus because maybe he was ministering to their grief, that in order for them to be able to understand the power of the resurrection, they first needed to understand that he sees them. It's kind of like what happened when Jesus went to, you know, Lazarus post death, that he goes and he's first with the people before he eventually says, lazarus, arise. Like, maybe that's part of it. We don't really know. But here's what we do know is what he chooses to do.
He says, well, can you guys tell me, like, what kind of conversation are you having as you walk?
And here's what's funny. This tells me that they were walking, and then Jesus like, hey, what are y' all talking about? And they're like, skirt. And they stopped and like. And it says they stood still, looking sad.
And then the guy named Cleopas said, are you, like, the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know what's been happening these past days? He's like, are you.
Where have you been, man?
And he probably was like, in the tomb, you know, But. But he. And by the way, I love this because I've told y' all before, I'm one of those kind of people. Probably, like a lot of us, we like to get to the destination. I would be saying, like, it's me, surprise.
All your problems are fixed.
But he is giving us an example of what I love in the Book of James that shows us how you really minister to people.
Do you remember in the Book of James that it says that we need to be very slow to what speak and very quick to listen?
That even the savior of the world that had the answer to their problem decided to give a listening ear before he gave an answer.
And isn't that a reminder for all of us of how we minister to people when their hopes have been crushed? That we approach it from the standpoint of not trying to give them the answer because we don't have the answer to their problem, but just listening and. And so notice what he does.
He just says, well, what things?
Again, he doesn't say, I'm the answer. He said, well, just tell me about what these things are.
I want you to think in your own life, though, what at times in your detours has caused you to maybe miss that Jesus was doing something.
Maybe for some of us, it's this. That we have what we call ordinary moments, but we rob ourselves of experiencing what God, I think, wants us to experience when he says, hey, there's really with me no ordinary moment. We have these, like, what we think of as mundane times at work, maybe in between drives with kids in the car, but not sometimes miss the value of what that moment is.
Maybe because we're too focused on anything else to recognize him in that car, in that office place.
Maybe for some of us is this that we're so concerned that, you know, I've got all this mess.
That we actually miss the awesome moments of what God is doing in the mess.
Maybe for some of us is this that we're so nervous about letting go of something, sacrificing something, because we're so centered on ourselves. And we miss what God could do if we were a little bit more sacrificial.
And just a few days ago, I added this one on there that even maybe, like with our kids, that we get so much in a hurry of things that we forget, maybe not just how they're growing up so fast, but to also make time to actually be with them. We could put so many things on this list. But what is it that's maybe keeping you from seeing God in those moments? Well, I think for some of us, it might be what these people dealt with. And it's this. I think they had very unrealistic expectations. And let's read about those, because I started in verse 18 here, but I want to actually skip. Let's just Skip to verse 19.
You know, right after he said, well, can you tell me about these things?
And they said to him, well, concerning Jesus of Nazareth, a man who was a prophet, mighty indeed, and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and rulers delivered him up to be condemned to death and crucified him. And notice what it says here, by the way.
You know, we had hoped.
There's certain kind of verses sometimes I miss, like, notice that we had hoped. Like, so that means they had hope at one time, but now they no longer have hope. Well, why do they. But we had hoped.
Well, one of the things that we know from the context is they were expecting a political deliverance.
They had this picture that in order for me to really believe that God is doing something, I gotta see it politically, I gotta see it physically.
And do you think sometimes we can kind of fall into that same boat that really, God, if you're doing something, it's gotta be something that I can see that impacts me and my fortunes. And it has to be something that you're doing in the political realm. Or whatever it might be. But what, in reality, what he's trying to do is not deliver us from something politically. It's not that he's trying to help our fortunes on this earth, but he knows the greatest thing we need more than anything is actual restoration with God. Not a restored government, not a restored fortune, not a restored 401k, a restored relationship with God.
But for them, it's hard to see that because of their expectations.
And so I think we all have to ask ourselves, like, what are our expectations of what we see God as, but also what we want him to do?
And notice a little bit of, like, the maybe misconception and unbelief that then led to. It goes on to say this. You know, some of the women of our company were amazed.
I mean, they were at the tomb early that morning and they didn't find his body. And so they came back saying that they had seen a vision of angels who had said that he was alive.
So, like, they are saying, like, we heard the testimony of this person and these groups of people.
And so some of those who are with us, they're like, hey, let's go find out if this really happened. And we found it just like the women said, but we didn't see it.
And the reason why I want to stop here for just a second is it is really good to learn from people's stories and like these women, their testimonies. But what can happen is, is we can center it more on what someone else says, more than what has actually happened. And so we have to be careful there.
But notice what Jesus does in the middle of their struggle of belief and their struggle of expectation.
The first thing that he does after he listens, he leads them through some scriptures.
But I do want you to notice that they still don't see him yet.
But the Scriptures played a role. Look what it says. He said to them, o foolish ones, O slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken.
Was it not necessary that Christ would suffer these things and enter into his glory?
And beginning with Moses and the prophets, he interpreted to them all the scriptures concerning himself. Think about how amazing this is.
The Son of God is exegeting scripture for you about himself right in front of you. I mean, that is remarkable, but they didn't recognize it.
But again, to me, this is part of the genius of Jesus he's showing us. Listen, I think that we can give people all the scriptures we want, but we also have to give them a listening ear. We can give them all the scriptures we want, but we also have to sit across from the table. The scripture is going to play a role. Love also is going to play a role. When both of those things come together, some powerful things happen.
I want to give you a little bit of background on this. There was a guy named Michael Byrd. Some of you might have heard of him. He actually grew up in Australia.
And if you don't know anything about Australia, it's from what I understand as a country, the least religious, like as a percentage of a country than anywhere in the world.
And he grew up in a very house with parents that he said were atheists.
And whenever, like a religious person did come by the door and knock on that door, as he put it, he put it as several ways, but he put it, his mother would deliver some expletives to those people that would show up at that door. And so that's what he grew up with.
But then when he graduated high school, what he decided to do, he said, you know what? I'm going to just read the New Testament for myself, and I want you guys to read here with me. What he picked up on when he read the New Testament with fresh eyes.
It says this. The Jesus I encountered was far different from the deluded, radical, even mythical character described to me.
This Jesus, the Jesus of history, was real.
He touched upon things that cut close to my heart, especially as I pondered even the meaning of human existence.
I was struck by the early church's testimony to Jesus in Christ. Death. God had vanquished evil.
And by his resurrection, he has brought life and hope to all.
When you go through scripture, it's easy, if we're not careful, to only see scripture as a bunch of rules. And by the way, there are rules there. And God has put those rules in place for our freedom.
But it's not just a bunch of rules. Kind of like Michael, if we approach scripture with these kinds of fresh eyes, what can happen? We'll see that it's not just a bunch of rules alone, but what we hopefully will uncover is a person.
And like, if you take scripture from Genesis through revelation, from like a holistic narrative standpoint and notice something, you'll see common themes with God.
Like, for instance, do you remember when it says in Genesis at creation there was chaos, but in the middle of that chaos, God created something.
And then you fast forward over to the New Testament, you see that same God in Emmanuel, Jesus, when he starts things and stops things. There's a woman that had an issue with blood for 30 years. He stopped her blood issue. Same Chapter there was a girl that her blood stopped. He started hers. That the God that stopped things and started things all throughout Scripture is stopping and starting things. And that's such good news for us. We serve a God that can stop stuff and he can start stuff.
But then you see after Adam and Eve sinned, that it says they hid in. One of my favorite parts in scripture is when it says this, that God was walking in the garden.
They heard him.
I mean, that is incredible. That number one, that they knew that. But that also tells us they were what they were walking together.
And of all the things we fast forward here, what is Jesus doing to a group of people that were downcast? Walks with them.
We see there again in name. He walks 25 miles out of his way to find them. We see the woman at the well. He walks to meet them there. He passed all these people during a time of a feast of celebration in Jerusalem to find one man at a pool.
If we view scripture from that. That standpoint, we don't just see rules alone. We also see a person that can stop stuff, start stuff, and meet us on roads.
But here's one of the parts that I love so much about this text. And what I did is I kind of highlighted all the. To me, what are some of the more important parts of the text?
And so if you're a highlighter, I encourage you to do this. It says this. They drew near to the village. And by the way, keep in mind, they still have not recognized that this is Jesus. Okay?
He acted as if he were going further, which I love the humor of Scripture, if you kind of read behind it. He was like, all right, I'm leaving. It was kind of like, are you going to invite me? And then it was like, yeah. Hey. It says, by the way, they urged him strongly, hey, stay with us.
I mean, it's evening and the day is now far spent.
So he decided to stay with them.
It says that when he was at the table with them, he took the bread, he blessed it, he broke it, and he gave it to them.
And notice when he gave them the bread and blessed it, their eyes were opened, and then they recognized him.
You know, I know this is. I think two things can be true. I don't think it is maybe necessarily communion, but I do think it is communion with God. But I also think it's symbolic that whenever we take the bread and eat the cup, do you feel like sometimes your eyes are opened?
And maybe if they're not, we need to make sure that when we do take Communion. It's not mundane that it's not routine.
It says, their eyes were open, they recognized him. This would have been cool to see. He vanished from their sight.
They said to each other, like, did our hearts not burn within us while he talked to us on the road? The way, like, I read this, I was like, man, we had the perfect opportunity to have a Bible study with Jesus, and we missed it. Like, that's kind of what I would have taken from this moment.
But it's the next few verses that I want you to notice. In your Bible, it says this.
In verse 34, it says, the Lord has risen indeed.
And then I love this next verse so much. And I told you all this two years ago at service Sunday, our outdoor worship, that one of you that has, like, a contact with the one person that keeps making those signs at Hobby Lobby from, you know, particle wood with words on it that people put in their kitchens.
This needs to be on one of them.
Then they told him what had happened on the road. And this is the part I love.
Jesus was known to them in the breaking of the bread.
Wouldn't that be like a cool thing, a little sign to have above our kitchen tables? Jesus was known to them in the breaking of bread. He had listened, he had opened the door for conversation.
He even went through and interpreted Scripture. But it wasn't until the breaking of bread that they recognized that it was him.
There's a few things that I want to point out. Number one, that when you are walking with Jesus, it's not always easy, but that's why I put up here that it's kind of a time of discovery. You discover things about yourself, but most importantly, you discover a lot of things about him.
And you'll probably find that there was areas in your life that you ended up growing in that you didn't even know you needed to grow in.
Have you noticed that? How oftentimes detours will do that?
Not that this is me, but I've thought before. You know, I'm a very patient person.
And then I go through some. Well, it turns out I'm not as patient as I thought.
You know, life has a way of doing that, but also it's a time of discovery.
The other thing that I want you to think about here is, yes, there's a role that Jesus played, but there's also a role that every single one of us play. Because notice, Jesus kind of hung around.
He was like, hey, I hope they invite me in. But they eventually had to make the decision themselves, right? To invite him in. Maybe that's part of the issue.
I mean, he's here, he's given the opportunity, the invitation.
We also have a responsibility.
So one of the simple ways I think we can do this, and if you're a guest with us, we try to give Brandon and I do every week, like an action step is. This week's action step is this. I want you just to go on a walk with Jesus.
It could be you and a friend, it can be you and a spouse. It could just be you.
I encourage you just to go walk.
And as you walk, I just want you to simply talk with Him.
Your neighbors can think you're nuts as you're talking to yourself. That's fine.
It might be a good conversation starter. But just walk and talk with Jesus.
And what you're going to find at the end of that walk, you're going to be in a completely different place.
Here's the next thing I want to encourage you with.
It's kind of to what Adam alluded to this morning is that it's really easy to kind of judge the journey just while we're in it.
And I think there are some that falsely take scripture and say things like, well, you can find the meaning and the purpose in this. And so I want to tell you guys that scripture paints a picture that sometimes we will understand why things are the way they are on this side of heaven. Sometimes we won't, and sometimes it's on the other side.
But do you remember what it said in First Peter that we talked about this morning when we started worship?
Is that part of the reason why we still sing is because of that hope that we have of things eternal.
The final thing that I want to encourage you with is because comparison is something that is so detrimental that it's easy to compare people, and in that comparison can just kill our contentment.
But also we can be so busy, focused, being focused on what God is doing in other people's journey, that we forget what he's doing in ours.
I guess what I want to encourage you to do is not to miss what God is doing. So like I told you at the very beginning of the lesson today that there's two approaches I think God always wants us to take with Scripture.
One of those is, what does this teach us about God?
The other thing is, what am I going to do with this? And what does this teach me about me?
So for, like, a very specific invitation, maybe for some of you, what you need is this. Every single Sunday, we have shepherds at the back doors. But we also, Brandon and or I stand up here, you can walk to one of them, or you can come up here. And maybe part of what you want help for is this, that you want to be more like Jesus because you have somebody right now that is going through a time of, like, crushed hope, and you maybe didn't handle it well, or you just need wisdom on how to better handle it that is so worthy of being prayed for.
Maybe part of what you need prayer for is this, that your hopes have been crushed.
And part of what has happened is you've been so focused on maybe the end result that you forgot maybe what God is doing. We've all been there.
Maybe part of it is that some of us just want to let Jesus ways become our ways.
Maybe for some of you in this room that you have thought about giving your life to Jesus, you've never made that decision to leave a life of sin, which is one of the most freeing things ever. That is what we call what God calls repentance.
Repentance is not just a change of direction per se. It's a change of your heart.
It's not just, I don't want to get caught anymore. It's, I don't want to hurt God, and I don't want to have to live in the pain of that hurt. I want to be free. And so that is repentance.
But maybe some of you have not made that next decision to give your life to him in baptism, just as what happened with Noah when God used that water to wipe away all the sin that was on the face of the earth.
You can go into this watery grave of baptism, all those sins washed away.
And I love the fact that, like, you know, back in the Old Testament, every year on the day of atonement, they had to offer a sacrifice.
He was that one sacrifice for all time.
So you don't have to get baptized each year.
You just give your life to him. He washes your sins away and he gives you the gift of the Holy Spirit.
And so maybe you're. I hope you are. You're comfortable enough to walk forward or to maybe to go to one of these doors and to ask to talk with one of the shepherds about that. I really hope you are. If you're not, and maybe you want to have breakfast one morning or just meet up here and talk one afternoon, we would love that, too. Please find me or one of our shepherds and let us know. So whatever it is that you have a need of today, please come while we stand and we sing this song together.
