WEBVTT 00:00:00.480 --> 00:00:09.540 Our scripture reading today is from the New Testament, from Luke chapter 24, verses 13 down to 35. 00:00:11.640 --> 00:00:14.419 ! And we'll read together. It's also printed in your bulletins. 00:00:14.419 --> 00:00:18.080 ! And let me ask Jean to come and help us as we read. 00:00:21.440 --> 00:00:27.859 That very day, two of them were going to the village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, 00:00:27.859 --> 00:00:32.460 and they were talking with each other about all these things that had happened. 00:00:33.039 --> 00:00:38.879 While they were talking and discussing together, Jesus himself drew near and went with them, 00:00:38.960 --> 00:00:44.239 but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. And he said to them, 00:00:44.560 --> 00:00:51.299 what is this conversation that you're holding with each other as you walk? And they stood still, 00:00:51.299 --> 00:00:59.319 looking sad. Then one of them, Cleopas, answered him, are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does 00:00:59.319 --> 00:01:05.359 not know the things that have happened there in these days? And he said to them, what things? 00:01:05.840 --> 00:01:13.099 And they said to him, concerning Jesus of Nazareth, a man who was a prophet, mighty in deed and word 00:01:13.099 --> 00:01:19.700 before God and all the people. And how our chief priests and rulers delivered him up to be condemned 00:01:19.700 --> 00:01:28.340 to death and crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all 00:01:28.340 --> 00:01:35.600 this, it is now the third day since these things happened. Moreover, some of our women amazed us. 00:01:35.800 --> 00:01:43.180 They were at the tomb early in the morning, and when they did not find his body, they came back saying 00:01:43.180 --> 00:01:52.120 that they had seen a vision of angels who said he was alive. Some of those who were with us went to 00:01:52.120 --> 00:01:59.860 the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but him they did not see. And he said to them, 00:02:00.040 --> 00:02:06.700 oh foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken. Was it not necessary 00:02:06.700 --> 00:02:14.300 that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory? And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, 00:02:14.500 --> 00:02:19.920 he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself. 00:02:20.759 --> 00:02:29.180 So they drew near to the village to which they were going. He acted as if he was going further, but they urged him 00:02:29.180 --> 00:02:37.980 strongly saying, stay with us, for it is towards evening and the day is now far spent. So he went in to stay with them. 00:02:38.620 --> 00:02:45.439 When he was at table with them, he took bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them. And their eyes 00:02:45.439 --> 00:02:53.140 were opened and they recognized him. And he vanished from their sight. And they said to each other, did not our 00:02:53.139 --> 00:03:00.639 hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the scriptures. And they 00:03:00.639 --> 00:03:07.059 rose that same hour and returned to Jerusalem. And they found the 12 and those who were with him gathered 00:03:07.059 --> 00:03:14.439 together saying, the Lord has risen indeed and has appeared to Simon. Then they told what had happened 00:03:14.439 --> 00:03:19.400 on the road and how he was known to them in the breaking of the bread. 00:03:22.780 --> 00:03:23.419 Let's pray. 00:03:24.319 --> 00:03:30.319 Lord, we ask now as we come and think about this passage for a little while that you would draw near to us. 00:03:30.460 --> 00:03:35.319 We long to draw near to you. So open our hearts to see what you have to say to us here. 00:03:35.719 --> 00:03:40.680 We need your help. We know that we have spiritual blindness. And so we ask, Lord, that you would remove scales 00:03:40.680 --> 00:03:46.819 and help us to understand and to believe what you teach here. And so we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. 00:03:48.319 --> 00:03:55.000 We are in a topical series called Wonderful Counselor, and it's referring to Jesus as our 00:03:55.000 --> 00:04:00.280 Wonderful Counselor, which the Old Testament does. So Isaiah chapter 9 says, the people were walking in 00:04:00.280 --> 00:04:07.200 darkness, in grief and anguish, and then a great light appeared. So a light, it's a prophecy of the 00:04:07.199 --> 00:04:13.539 light that was to come at Christmas, a light shone into the world, upon the world from the outside. 00:04:14.199 --> 00:04:21.519 And that light is called in Isaiah 9, the Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, and many other titles that 00:04:21.519 --> 00:04:27.680 are given there. Now that means that Jesus comes at Christmas as our Wonderful Counselor. That means 00:04:27.680 --> 00:04:33.659 so many things. Two of the things that it means, one is what B.B. Warfield pointed out. B.B. Warfield 00:04:33.660 --> 00:04:39.600 was a theologian at Princeton in the 19th century, and he wrote a little book called The Emotional Life 00:04:39.600 --> 00:04:46.740 of Our Lord. And the opening line of that book says this, it belongs to the truth of our Lord's humanity 00:04:46.740 --> 00:04:54.920 that He was subject to all sinless human emotions. So Warfield says that when you read the Gospels, 00:04:54.920 --> 00:05:01.060 you realize that because Jesus is truly human, He experienced the full range of human emotions, 00:05:01.060 --> 00:05:06.839 yet never did so with any sin. So we look to Jesus as the Wonderful Counselor to learn 00:05:06.839 --> 00:05:12.620 how to feel as a human being. He teaches us how to be fully human, fully emotional, 00:05:13.500 --> 00:05:19.319 yet without any sin. The second thing that He helps so much with as Wonderful Counselor is that 00:05:19.319 --> 00:05:25.340 all across the Gospels, He encounters people who are struggling with negative emotions because of so 00:05:25.339 --> 00:05:32.219 many experiences in their life. And He, we might say, is the most compassionate and understanding 00:05:32.219 --> 00:05:39.060 person that has ever been in all the universe. He's gentle, lowly, meek, and mild. He, with a bruised 00:05:39.060 --> 00:05:45.120 reed, He will not break them. And so He comes and He treats, encounters people with negative emotions. 00:05:45.779 --> 00:05:51.579 Last week we looked at shame. This week we look at disappointment in this story. And so let's think 00:05:51.579 --> 00:05:59.479 about it. The fact of disappointment, and then three ways Jesus walks with us when we're disappointed. 00:06:00.180 --> 00:06:07.819 So first, the fact of disappointment. Now, you will have noticed that Luke 24 is very far away from a 00:06:07.819 --> 00:06:13.919 Christmas story. It's the opposite end, so all the way from the incarnation to post-resurrection. So this is 00:06:13.919 --> 00:06:20.860 one of Jesus's three post-resurrection appearances that shows up in Luke. So this chapter contains those 00:06:20.860 --> 00:06:28.720 three, and one of the things that's striking is that Luke wrote the Gospel of Luke, and he also wrote 00:06:28.720 --> 00:06:34.379 the book of Acts. And in the book of Acts, at the beginning, we learned that there were 40 days 00:06:34.379 --> 00:06:41.100 between the resurrection and Jesus's ascension. 40 days, probably 40 of the most important days in world 00:06:41.100 --> 00:06:50.340 history. And Luke only gives you three encounters, three scenes of his post-resurrection appearances, 00:06:50.339 --> 00:06:56.519 of those 40 days. And this is one of them. And that's striking, because when you read this story, 00:06:57.199 --> 00:07:03.479 you may notice that at first the characters, the two men, they're nameless. And then we learn the name 00:07:03.479 --> 00:07:08.379 of one of them is Cleopas. And who is Cleopas? And if you're struggling to come up with an answer, 00:07:08.439 --> 00:07:14.939 it's because we don't know. He's not anybody. He's Cleopas, but he's a minor character. He doesn't play a 00:07:14.939 --> 00:07:21.860 role at all anywhere else in the Bible. Jesus Christ shows up here to one nameless man, one 00:07:21.860 --> 00:07:26.879 man named Cleopas. We don't know anything about them. And then where is he? It points out in the 00:07:26.879 --> 00:07:34.220 text, he is seven miles from the center of Jerusalem. The Greek, you might say, there's got 00:07:34.220 --> 00:07:40.139 to be something to that number seven. There's not, because it's actually in Greek says that he was 00:07:40.139 --> 00:07:46.719 60 stadia away from the city of Jerusalem. Stadia is a Roman measurement that's 605 feet. So he's 00:07:46.719 --> 00:07:53.819 60 times 605 feet away from Jerusalem, which is about 11,000 meters, 6.874 miles, in fact. 00:07:54.919 --> 00:08:02.800 And not quite seven. That's where he is. The point is, why is he there? He's on a dusty road on the way 00:08:02.800 --> 00:08:08.180 to Emmaus, which also is a minor village. It doesn't play a major role in any way in the story. 00:08:08.180 --> 00:08:14.900 And he's there. It would be like after the resurrection, instead of Jesus going out to 00:08:14.900 --> 00:08:21.740 the royal mile right out our doors and announcing, look at me, I'm alive. It would be like we find him 00:08:21.740 --> 00:08:27.699 walking the Glencourse Reservoir walking path out at the Pentlands, that's about seven miles away, 00:08:28.319 --> 00:08:33.000 where you're only going to see five people the whole time. That's where he is. And so you say, 00:08:33.000 --> 00:08:40.159 if Luke's going to choose just three scenes to show us why this tiny little thing to two people 00:08:40.159 --> 00:08:45.039 on a dusty road way away from the urban center, where all the people are, where you could really 00:08:45.039 --> 00:08:50.659 make something of the resurrection. And I think the reason for that is found in the details of the text. 00:08:50.779 --> 00:08:57.000 And if you look at verse 17, Jesus walks up to them and he says, what are you talking about? What are you 00:08:57.000 --> 00:09:04.860 discussing with each other? And then this little note, Luke writes, they stood still, looking sad. 00:09:06.240 --> 00:09:12.279 And then we wonder, well, what is it that's making them so sad? Gloomy, despairing is the word that's 00:09:12.279 --> 00:09:20.080 used here. And in verse 21, they say, we had hoped Jesus the Messiah would have redeemed Israel. 00:09:20.419 --> 00:09:25.259 We had hoped he was going to redeem Israel. And of course, they're implying there, but he did not. 00:09:25.259 --> 00:09:30.100 And so they're incredibly sad. And what we're reading about is two disciples that are disappointed. 00:09:30.799 --> 00:09:37.120 They had big hope in Jesus and they believe that he's dead. And so they're disappointed. Jesus is 00:09:37.120 --> 00:09:43.360 encountering two men on this dusty road, a long way from the city center that have no names really in 00:09:43.360 --> 00:09:48.179 the gospel stories. And I think he's encountering them because they are disappointed people, because 00:09:48.179 --> 00:09:54.939 they're sad people. And that makes sense to us when we think about how God speaks to disappointment 00:09:54.940 --> 00:10:02.600 all across the Bible. What is the Bible? One helpful question to ask is, what is the Bible? And the 00:10:02.600 --> 00:10:10.920 Bible, we say one way to say it is, the Bible is actually God's interpretation of God's actions 00:10:10.920 --> 00:10:17.980 in history. So God has worked all sorts of things throughout history, and then he turned and he wrote 00:10:17.980 --> 00:10:23.360 it down for us. And what we have in the Bible is actually God interpreting for us what he's done, 00:10:23.360 --> 00:10:28.039 how we should think about it, how we should receive it. And when you realize that, that you open the 00:10:28.039 --> 00:10:34.600 Bible and it's God's own word about what God has done, it's striking, it's astonishing really how many 00:10:34.600 --> 00:10:42.820 times the Bible shows believers expressing disappointment towards God. And you can just, 00:10:42.919 --> 00:10:48.980 you can go back early. We'll have a list here that's too long to read, but Abraham's frustrations 00:10:48.980 --> 00:10:57.039 at 99 years old. Where is the child that you had promised me, Lord? Or God brings Israel out of 00:10:57.039 --> 00:11:02.740 Egypt in a miraculous way, and then they get into the wandering section of the story, and they, every 00:11:02.740 --> 00:11:06.700 story is basically about a different way of how they figure out to complain and grumble, and are 00:11:06.700 --> 00:11:14.019 frustrated with God. Why did you bring us out? And think about Elijah on top of the mountain, when he 00:11:14.019 --> 00:11:19.439 sees this miraculous act, a sign of the fire come down, and he's faithful. In the very next chapter, 00:11:19.519 --> 00:11:26.100 he said, I was so faithful, you didn't bring the revival. Nobody believed. And if you just, if you 00:11:26.100 --> 00:11:32.460 walk through the Psalms, listen to the language of the Psalms over and over again, it says things like 00:11:32.460 --> 00:11:40.279 this. Why are you so far, God, from saving me? How long, O Lord? Why are you silent? Awake, Lord, 00:11:40.279 --> 00:11:47.600 why do you sleep? Has his unfailing love vanished? Will the Lord reject us forever? Has God forgotten 00:11:47.600 --> 00:11:54.480 to be merciful? Why, Lord, do you reject me and hide your face from me? John 11, Mary and Martha both 00:11:54.480 --> 00:12:01.100 come to Jesus separately, and they say, Lord, if you would have been here on time, our brother would not 00:12:01.100 --> 00:12:08.139 have died. A constant expression of disappointment with the way life is actually going based on the 00:12:08.139 --> 00:12:12.100 expectations we have of what it means to be a believer in this life and walk through this life 00:12:12.100 --> 00:12:20.480 with God. Why does, you know, 40 days, some of the most important 40 days of human history here between 00:12:20.480 --> 00:12:25.559 the resurrection and the ascension, and I think the reason Luke shows us this scene is because he wants 00:12:25.559 --> 00:12:33.019 to really cement to us a consistent pattern across the Bible, and that's that God allows the disappointed 00:12:33.019 --> 00:12:42.059 to express themselves to him, and God gives permission, we might say, to lament toward him, and that's really 00:12:42.059 --> 00:12:47.480 the category of expressing disappointment towards God. We call it lament all across the Bible. So 00:12:47.480 --> 00:12:55.079 disappointment, what is that? It's the gap between the expectations we have in life and the circumstances 00:12:55.079 --> 00:13:02.960 we actually receive, and then there's oftentimes a grief and a sorrow of what we had hoped for, what 00:13:02.960 --> 00:13:07.840 we had desired but yet has never come to pass or did not happen or happened in exactly the opposite way 00:13:07.840 --> 00:13:14.879 we hoped for. In a bruised and broken world like we have, a very sinful world, there is a sort of good 00:13:14.879 --> 00:13:20.700 disappointment. It is right to be disappointed so often because we have good desires in our life. When 00:13:20.700 --> 00:13:25.680 you're walking with the Lord, you're following Jesus in your life as a believer, and there are good 00:13:25.680 --> 00:13:31.379 things that God created for us to provide a good life, and we don't get them. There's good 00:13:31.379 --> 00:13:38.360 disappointment. It's right. Unmet expectation of what is good, but we don't get it in this bruised, 00:13:38.419 --> 00:13:44.120 broken, and fallen world, and so it makes sense so often to be disappointed. I think one of the ways 00:13:44.120 --> 00:13:51.120 this comes out for us in normal life is through the experience of unanswered prayer, and we can think 00:13:51.120 --> 00:13:57.740 about wondering, have my prayers been answered? And there are many of us in this room who have prayed 00:13:57.740 --> 00:14:06.240 for years about a marriage that we had hoped for or a relationship that's not yet healed or about 00:14:06.240 --> 00:14:12.379 children that haven't come or a job that never came in life or that we lost or a relationship 00:14:12.379 --> 00:14:19.500 that really needs mending or economic struggle. We've never been able to have enough money to really 00:14:19.500 --> 00:14:26.600 be settled or prodigal children that we've prayed for or loneliness. Lord, when are you going to bring me 00:14:26.600 --> 00:14:32.659 out of my loneliness or seemingly senseless loss? How could you take this person away from me like that, 00:14:33.000 --> 00:14:37.200 right? Or the mental health struggle that just seems, I don't want this in my life. I want you 00:14:37.200 --> 00:14:43.019 to take it away from me, Lord. I don't want these struggles in my mind. Weighs out of a thousand 00:14:43.019 --> 00:14:48.139 situations. Maybe for some of us, it's struggling with doubt. We want to be past doubt. Maybe for some 00:14:48.139 --> 00:14:53.759 of us, it's wrestling with the problem of evil. It really overwhelms us, and it overcomes us in this 00:14:53.759 --> 00:15:00.960 life, and we pray, and we pray, and we pray, and we feel God's perceived absence, and we say, why are you 00:15:00.960 --> 00:15:09.980 silent? How long are you going to be silent? In the Bible, the Bible says lament like that toward God, 00:15:10.139 --> 00:15:16.779 and I think this passage is here because it cements the reality of that permission that the Lord loves 00:15:16.779 --> 00:15:22.559 to walk with and listen to the disappointed and to ask them to bring their disappointments to Him and 00:15:22.559 --> 00:15:28.559 towards Him. It's such a counter-cultural. It's probably something that's counter to our instincts 00:15:28.559 --> 00:15:36.439 to speak like that to God, but boy, the Psalms do it all the time. One-third of the book of Psalms is 00:15:36.439 --> 00:15:41.859 lament Psalms towards God. This is what one scholar, Walter Brueggemann, says about it. He says, 00:15:42.039 --> 00:15:49.779 the lament Psalms are a candid, even aggressive petition that makes an urgent demand of God. The speech of 00:15:49.779 --> 00:15:58.059 lament is a bold, nagging insistence that things are not right here on earth. The Bible says, 00:15:58.379 --> 00:16:04.579 do not pretend everything is okay. Disappointment is normal in a fallen world. Don't pretend everything's 00:16:04.579 --> 00:16:10.860 okay. Bring it to the Lord. It's cement. Jesus coming to meet with the disappointed cements that invitation 00:16:10.860 --> 00:16:20.460 that God gives us. Now, secondly, and I say finally, but of course, the second point is three ways Jesus 00:16:20.460 --> 00:16:27.879 walks with the disappointed. So now I get to start the three-point sermon. Look, there's so much to say 00:16:27.879 --> 00:16:34.899 about how the Bible treats this issue of disappointment in our lives and lament, and what all I can do is be 00:16:34.899 --> 00:16:39.899 confined to a few of the ways that Jesus treats it here in this passage. And so let me give you the 00:16:39.899 --> 00:16:45.720 most important first in case I run out of time. And that's the most important way he addresses 00:16:45.720 --> 00:16:53.480 disappointment and lament in these men's lives is that he speaks so clearly to the main issue 00:16:53.480 --> 00:16:58.679 underneath their disappointment. And what is that main issue? And the main issue is that they 00:16:58.679 --> 00:17:06.919 believe that death is the end. The main issue is that they do not believe in the resurrection. 00:17:07.980 --> 00:17:12.419 They are walking down this road believing that death is the end of everything. 00:17:13.700 --> 00:17:18.919 And that's really what is getting them down so much. They don't have a worldview in which resurrection 00:17:18.919 --> 00:17:25.319 is the answer. You can look down at the story in verse 20, 21, 22. 00:17:25.319 --> 00:17:32.159 They say to Jesus, you must have not been around. You must have just arrived at the city to not know 00:17:32.159 --> 00:17:38.819 all the things that have taken place, how Jesus was crucified. They killed him. And then in verse 22, 00:17:39.259 --> 00:17:45.779 and it's been three, sorry, verse 21, it's been three days. And then the women amazed us because they 00:17:45.779 --> 00:17:50.559 went to the tomb, and they came back, and they said that the tomb was empty. But then they say, 00:17:50.559 --> 00:17:57.220 but basically they're suggesting we haven't seen him. So they don't believe in the testimony that he 00:17:57.220 --> 00:18:02.099 could actually be alive. And so here, they are not gullible men. By the way, a side note, they are not 00:18:02.099 --> 00:18:08.539 gullible people. First century people were not gullible people. And in some sense, it was less 00:18:08.539 --> 00:18:14.119 likely for a Jewish believer in the first century to believe a man could be God and that a man could rise 00:18:14.119 --> 00:18:20.019 from the dead than it is for us today. And so they were resistant to this idea that the tomb was empty, 00:18:20.139 --> 00:18:25.019 therefore he must be alive. They don't believe it. And so they think basically that he's still dead. 00:18:26.079 --> 00:18:32.219 Now, in a city like ours, in a culture like ours, in a secular pluralist environment like we have, 00:18:32.919 --> 00:18:38.819 most people, and maybe some of us here today, believe that you die and then you rot. 00:18:38.819 --> 00:18:46.639 That death really is the end of everything, that there's a finality about it. And we could say, 00:18:47.159 --> 00:18:51.500 do we have the courage to say that if we believe that, we have to be willing to admit that our life 00:18:51.500 --> 00:18:58.299 is not very much different than a midge. Why? Because a midge comes into this world, and scientifically, 00:18:58.639 --> 00:19:02.939 scientifically, you cannot say that you are any more valuable than they are. 00:19:02.940 --> 00:19:11.759 And scientifically, you say you began by chance, and you're going to end with the type of finality 00:19:11.759 --> 00:19:16.799 that means your origin is meaningless, your destiny is meaningless, you will be forgotten, 00:19:17.039 --> 00:19:22.799 and therefore your life is meaningless. And you see, the reason that these men are so down is because 00:19:22.799 --> 00:19:29.539 they believe death is the end. That's what they're so disappointed about. And if it's true, 00:19:29.539 --> 00:19:35.159 if what so much of our culture believes about death really is the end, then death really does get the 00:19:35.159 --> 00:19:40.819 last word, and every disappointment that we're walking through in our life will actually get the 00:19:40.819 --> 00:19:48.139 last word. Disappointment will be the end of our lives. And if Jesus stayed dead, you know, we had, 00:19:48.259 --> 00:19:55.480 they say, we had hoped He would redeem Israel. They're saying, if Jesus really is dead, then the one 00:19:55.480 --> 00:20:01.980 person we thought that could have fixed everything, that hope is gone. And this really is the end of 00:20:01.980 --> 00:20:07.740 everything. And Jesus comes, how does He answer it? He comes and He says, oh foolish ones, slow to 00:20:07.740 --> 00:20:15.259 believe. And that line from Jesus is not, it's not a harsh judgment, it is a gentle rebuke. And just like 00:20:15.259 --> 00:20:21.140 the Bible cements all throughout this reality of God inviting you to bring your disappointments to Him 00:20:21.140 --> 00:20:26.960 and to lament towards Him. So we see the same pattern here, where in the lament, He says, oh foolish 00:20:26.960 --> 00:20:33.220 one, slow to believe. It's like it's a father getting on his knees, putting his hand on the shoulder 00:20:33.220 --> 00:20:39.880 of a child. Oh foolish one, slow to believe. That's the tone of this language. Just think about it in the 00:20:39.880 --> 00:20:46.080 rest of the Bible. In the rest of the Bible, what does God do? The entire book of Job is complaint, 00:20:46.079 --> 00:20:51.559 it's lament, it's struggle with disappointment, circumstance. And then God comes to Him and walks 00:20:51.559 --> 00:20:57.159 with Him. And God says, now Job, like a dad getting down on his knee to put his hand on Job's shoulder, 00:20:57.539 --> 00:21:04.359 where were you? Where were you when I set the foundations of the world? Gentle rebuke. And what 00:21:04.359 --> 00:21:11.220 is Jesus saying? He's saying, you do not, you don't see the whole story yet because you have yet to 00:21:11.220 --> 00:21:16.940 realize that He is not dead. He is risen. And in verse 31, their eyes are going to be open and 00:21:16.940 --> 00:21:22.000 they're going to see He's alive. And He's going to invite them to re-situate their entire worldview 00:21:22.000 --> 00:21:28.279 within the reality of the hope of the resurrection. And the most important thing that Jesus gives us in 00:21:28.279 --> 00:21:35.220 the normal disappointments of life is a hope, a stubborn hope really, in the reality of resurrection 00:21:35.220 --> 00:21:44.680 life. And to be able to say, the lower my disappointments in life take me, the higher 00:21:44.680 --> 00:21:49.799 He's going to raise me. The deeper they take me into the valley, the higher up He's going to take 00:21:49.799 --> 00:21:54.640 me up the mountain. The resurrection, it's true, it's history. You see, at Christmas time, 00:21:54.920 --> 00:22:00.500 you've got to believe, you've got to believe that God became a human, and you've got to believe that 00:22:00.500 --> 00:22:05.759 that human died and rose again. That's the core of the message of Christmas, and it really is the 00:22:05.759 --> 00:22:13.000 most important thing here. In Psalm 27, David, King David, is discouraged and he's disappointed. 00:22:13.140 --> 00:22:18.500 He says things like, an army is encamping against me. They're going to take my life away. And he says, 00:22:18.680 --> 00:22:25.539 at the end, my mother and my father have forsaken me. Boy, that's disappointment. And then he says, 00:22:25.640 --> 00:22:29.740 how does he address it? What does he do to his heart? He turns to his heart and he says, 00:22:29.740 --> 00:22:37.220 I believe I shall look upon the face of the Lord in the land of the living. He turns to the resurrection. 00:22:37.880 --> 00:22:43.839 He's not seen it yet, but he hopes in it. He takes his disappointment and situates it with inside 00:22:43.839 --> 00:22:49.759 a worldview of resurrection, and that's the most important thing. George MacDonald, the Scottish 00:22:49.759 --> 00:22:55.039 author, the novelist, the fairy tale writer, there's a story, I'm not sure if it's apocryphal, 00:22:55.039 --> 00:23:00.819 but it gets said. I hope it's true, about him chatting with his son. And he was explaining 00:23:00.819 --> 00:23:06.920 resurrection life and eternal life to his son. And his young son apparently replied, 00:23:08.019 --> 00:23:15.519 heaven, dad, heaven seems too good to be true. And George famously said, nay, it is so good that 00:23:15.519 --> 00:23:20.680 it must be true. And then George goes on to write all these fairy tales. And what do they say? The 00:23:20.680 --> 00:23:25.299 wicked witch will die and the brave children will find rescue. They'll find redemption. They'll find 00:23:25.299 --> 00:23:30.340 resurrection. They'll find real life. They'll find the way of escape. He situated his entire worldview 00:23:30.340 --> 00:23:36.620 in the stubborn hope of the resurrection. That's the first thing Jesus gives us, the most important. 00:23:36.799 --> 00:23:42.160 Secondly, Jesus also comes to these men and he gives them, I think he gives to us today, 00:23:42.560 --> 00:23:45.320 an invitation to recognize our own blindness. 00:23:45.319 --> 00:23:53.319 So in verse 16, it says, we read this simple fact, their eyes were kept from recognizing him. 00:23:53.720 --> 00:23:59.679 And then in verse 31, their eyes were opened as they ate with him. Now there is so much to say 00:23:59.679 --> 00:24:05.839 about that reality that we can't say today. Other people in the post-resurrection experiences also had 00:24:05.839 --> 00:24:13.599 blinded eyes. They couldn't see Jesus correctly. I think at least part of that is that that physical 00:24:13.599 --> 00:24:21.599 inability to recognize the post-resurrected Messiah, the glorified Redeemer, is a reflection on a 00:24:21.599 --> 00:24:28.240 spiritual reality that even as believers in this sinful world, the text is telling us we can't see 00:24:28.240 --> 00:24:34.500 everything. We've still got a spiritual blindness about us, that even as believers, we struggle with 00:24:34.500 --> 00:24:40.799 spiritual blindness. And I think that fact in the stories is pointing us to that. And when it comes to 00:24:40.799 --> 00:24:45.039 dealing with disappointment, one of the things I think we have to see here is the text is drawing us 00:24:45.039 --> 00:24:52.819 to say, I still have so much spiritual blindness in my life. In other words, I've got things that I know, 00:24:53.000 --> 00:24:56.559 we've got to be willing to say, I've got things in my life I know I can't interpret rightly. 00:24:57.099 --> 00:25:02.159 I can't see rightly. There's a blindness in my life. We don't interpret the events of our lives 00:25:02.159 --> 00:25:09.079 rightly all the time. And some of that could be lingering unhealthy expectations of what life is 00:25:09.079 --> 00:25:14.699 supposed to be like in a fallen world. Lingering unhealthy expectations of what it means to say, 00:25:14.819 --> 00:25:21.460 I have followed Jesus. Now I expect my life to be really easy and healthy and comfortable. Now this 00:25:21.460 --> 00:25:27.119 is exactly what happens. I was reading a book this week about expressing disappointment towards God and 00:25:27.119 --> 00:25:34.319 lament. And the author pointed out two really common things that we do. And one of the things is he 00:25:34.319 --> 00:25:40.200 he said, we express disappointment towards God with misguided expectations for what the Christian 00:25:40.200 --> 00:25:45.159 life and the fallen world we live in should be. Now this is what happens in the passage. In verse 21, 00:25:45.700 --> 00:25:55.000 what do they say? We had hoped he would redeem Israel. And oh boy, when they say that, 00:25:55.059 --> 00:26:01.480 there are so many misguided expectations underneath that line. And if you read into it a little bit, 00:26:01.480 --> 00:26:06.720 what you realize is that what they think redemption means is redemption. The redemption they're looking 00:26:06.720 --> 00:26:11.819 for was redemption from Roman occupation. That's what they're talking about, redeeming Israel from 00:26:11.819 --> 00:26:19.160 Roman occupation. And so they think here that Jesus' redemption is first social, it's political. 00:26:19.620 --> 00:26:25.779 It's about getting the right man in the right political office. And if we were able to do that, 00:26:25.860 --> 00:26:29.039 we would have a life of comfort and ease and wealth and health and prosperity. 00:26:29.039 --> 00:26:36.379 And they think that when Jesus died, that meant the lack of redemption. Because of course, he was 00:26:36.379 --> 00:26:40.740 supposed to come and be this mighty man that would dismiss Roman occupation. And so they have these 00:26:40.740 --> 00:26:46.740 incredibly unhealthy expectations. They don't see through the lens of the Bible rightly. And so they're 00:26:46.740 --> 00:26:51.119 expecting things and being incredibly disappointed when the reader knows what? What do you know as the 00:26:51.119 --> 00:26:57.359 reader? That his death was redemption, is redemption. And that's what they can't see. 00:26:57.359 --> 00:27:02.919 And you know that he's standing there resurrected from the dead, having accomplished redemption. And it's 00:27:02.919 --> 00:27:08.179 the very thing they think was a failure. And so they're unable, because of their expectations, 00:27:08.179 --> 00:27:13.740 to situate their experiences in the whole story. They don't really see what true redemption is. 00:27:14.719 --> 00:27:22.559 What's the difference? And I think we could say it like this. Cleopas did not see that the real 00:27:22.559 --> 00:27:30.099 redemption he needed is redemption from his spiritual blindness. He thought the redemption he needed was 00:27:30.099 --> 00:27:34.759 from Rome. He thought the redemption he needed was from bad circumstances. He thought the redemption he 00:27:34.759 --> 00:27:41.539 needed was from disappointment. And in reality, the redemption he needed, the true problem was the 00:27:41.539 --> 00:27:48.059 spiritual cancer in his heart, his sin. You see, another way we sometimes can be disappointed in unhealthy 00:27:48.059 --> 00:27:53.559 ways is because we've forgotten that the biggest problem we have this Christmas season is our sin. 00:27:53.700 --> 00:27:57.700 It's spiritual blindness. It's spiritual cancer. That's the biggest problem we have. Do you believe 00:27:57.700 --> 00:28:02.720 that? That the biggest problem you have today, no matter what is going on in your life, is your sin. 00:28:04.319 --> 00:28:08.799 And that Christmas really is about the fact that he came to redeem you, redeem Israel, redeem the 00:28:08.799 --> 00:28:15.179 Gentiles from spiritual blindness, the cancer that's deep down within us. The second way that this book 00:28:15.180 --> 00:28:22.820 points out that we can sometimes struggle with disappointment in our lives that Jesus really 00:28:22.820 --> 00:28:31.820 treats here is an unanswered prayer can sometimes develop into an idea where we say, Lord, if you 00:28:31.820 --> 00:28:38.019 would only show up in my life and do something big, then I would finally commit fully to you. Lord, 00:28:38.820 --> 00:28:43.660 I've been praying about this for so long, and I've been so disappointed. And if you would come 00:28:43.660 --> 00:28:50.920 and finally do that thing, show up big, give me a miraculous sign, then I will promise to give my 00:28:50.920 --> 00:28:55.440 life away to you more fully, more completely. That's another really common way we treat it. And 00:28:55.440 --> 00:29:02.600 the gospels alone up to this point show us something really important, and that's that every time Jesus 00:29:02.600 --> 00:29:08.700 did that and did a miraculous sign, it is not that more people came close to him. It's that people 00:29:08.700 --> 00:29:14.200 picked up rocks and wanted to stone him. And if you read that all throughout the Bible, you realize in 00:29:14.200 --> 00:29:21.460 the miraculous seasons of Scripture, people tend to move away from God to hate God more for the big 00:29:21.460 --> 00:29:29.759 things, for the big signs. Fire comes down from the mountain and nobody believes. It just doesn't 00:29:29.759 --> 00:29:37.000 work that way. Why? Same issue. Because the issue is not merely circumstances, not merely needing 00:29:37.000 --> 00:29:42.140 miraculous signs. The issue is spiritual blindness. It's cancer in our lives. That's the real issue. 00:29:43.000 --> 00:29:50.700 Ed Clowney, he was a scholar, theologian at Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia. He writes 00:29:50.700 --> 00:29:59.759 in one of his books, he says, why did Jesus at Christmas not come as a 25 feet, 25 feet, 25 foot, 00:29:59.759 --> 00:30:07.319 there it is, 25 foot tall man. Why did he not just come as a 25 foot tall man? So if Jesus would have 00:30:07.319 --> 00:30:15.599 come as a human at 25 feet tall, wouldn't everybody have said, yes, he must be God? And Clowney says, 00:30:15.740 --> 00:30:23.299 no, they would have killed him faster. Why? Because the big issue is not miraculous signs or God showing 00:30:23.299 --> 00:30:30.639 up in super extraordinary ways in our life. The big issue is our sin. And what Jesus does here, 00:30:30.680 --> 00:30:35.839 if you notice in this passage, through all the little details is he walks up to these men, 00:30:35.839 --> 00:30:42.579 he travels with them, he sits with them at the table. Verse 28, this funny, interesting little detail, 00:30:42.980 --> 00:30:49.039 he pretended as if he was going to walk further than Emmaus. Why? Because he wanted them to invite him 00:30:49.039 --> 00:30:56.399 into their ordinary lives. This passage is incredibly ordinary. Jesus just does ordinary stuff with them. 00:30:57.279 --> 00:31:04.000 And that is exactly how Jesus works in our lives, incredibly ordinarily. 00:31:05.759 --> 00:31:11.159 We oftentimes are saying, Lord, do something huge. And instead we need to get past that. And instead say, 00:31:11.500 --> 00:31:18.799 99.9999% of the time, I expect Jesus to just be with me. That's it. That's all we've 00:31:18.799 --> 00:31:26.819 got to look for. And that's actually what he offers here in this passage. 99% of us in this room came to 00:31:26.819 --> 00:31:31.519 faith. Christians in this room, you came to faith probably not through a dramatic event, 00:31:32.079 --> 00:31:39.559 not through a lightning bolt, not through something big. You probably came through a process. You don't 00:31:39.559 --> 00:31:47.180 know exactly how it happened. That is normal. Sometimes God does big things, but in the midst of 00:31:47.180 --> 00:31:52.000 handling disappointment and in the midst of some of us are not coming to faith, we're not saying, 00:31:52.259 --> 00:31:59.080 I believe Jesus, because we're waiting on drama. And Jesus actually typically works through the 00:31:59.080 --> 00:32:06.900 ordinary. And that's exactly how he treats us in our disappointments. Lastly, briefly, very briefly, 00:32:07.039 --> 00:32:14.220 he gives us, thirdly, he gives them the very same thing that all of us can have today and the thing 00:32:14.220 --> 00:32:20.920 that we do have today. And that's first two things he gives them. Verse 27, what did he do? He sat down 00:32:20.920 --> 00:32:26.319 with them and he opened up the Bible and he explained it to them. That's all. He said, let me situate your 00:32:26.319 --> 00:32:31.960 disappointment by just bringing you back to God's word and helping you understand your life in that 00:32:31.960 --> 00:32:38.319 light. And it says in the text, their hearts burned as he explained it to them. And what did he say 00:32:38.319 --> 00:32:46.599 to them? Notice he said, especially he taught them how the Bible is all about him. So look, as we finish, 00:32:46.740 --> 00:32:54.740 you can come and read the Bible today as a moralist. So we've just finished a Daniel series, not quite. 00:32:54.819 --> 00:33:00.559 We're coming back to it in January. You can go to the book of Daniel and we could say, dare to be a 00:33:00.559 --> 00:33:05.419 Daniel. Have the courage that Daniel had, the faithfulness that Daniel had. And that's true in a 00:33:05.420 --> 00:33:10.140 way. You could come to the David story and say, you've got to face the giants, the Goliaths in your 00:33:10.140 --> 00:33:15.460 life like David. And sometimes that works okay. But over and over again, what's going to happen is 00:33:15.460 --> 00:33:19.400 you're going to realize at some point that there's disappointment coming in our lives that we cannot 00:33:19.400 --> 00:33:26.860 fix. There's no amount of courage. There's no amount of strength. And what Jesus does in verse 27 00:33:26.860 --> 00:33:31.860 is he explained to them how the whole of the old Testament was about him. It pointed to him. 00:33:31.859 --> 00:33:38.699 And the Bible can give you inspiration, but the Bible is not an inspirational guide. It's not to 00:33:38.699 --> 00:33:43.879 be opened and just looked for verses to find inspiration. It's actually all about Jesus and 00:33:43.879 --> 00:33:49.059 the redemption that he was going to bring to this broken, this dire world that we live in. 00:33:49.859 --> 00:33:56.159 Charles Spurgeon, he famously told a young preacher who he listened to, and he thought that 00:33:56.159 --> 00:34:00.939 the preacher did not preach a good sermon at all. He came to him after the service. And what did he say? 00:34:00.940 --> 00:34:07.860 He said, young man, don't you know that, don't you know that Jesus, finding Jesus in the Bible 00:34:07.860 --> 00:34:14.460 is like London? He said, in England in his time, he said, every, don't you know, young man, 00:34:14.579 --> 00:34:19.440 every single road in England leads to London somehow, some way. And when you open the Bible, 00:34:19.659 --> 00:34:24.260 you got to realize it's the same with Jesus. Every single road, every single passage, 00:34:24.420 --> 00:34:28.900 every single story somehow leads to Jesus. And we could say the same thing about history. 00:34:28.900 --> 00:34:34.360 Our lives, everybody's lives, it comes through him, from him. It returns back to him. It's 00:34:34.360 --> 00:34:39.980 ultimately about him. And this is how the Bible addresses your disappointments. Not by giving you 00:34:39.980 --> 00:34:46.780 five steps, five steps to fix your life, not by teaching you how to be more stoic, how to have 00:34:46.780 --> 00:34:53.840 more resolve, more courage, but by showing you that every single moment in history is ultimately about 00:34:53.840 --> 00:34:59.480 how Jesus is fixing the world. And that every single disappointment, everything we're longing for, 00:34:59.559 --> 00:35:05.260 everything we want that's not met in this life, every loss that we have can become a road, can become 00:35:05.260 --> 00:35:11.160 a road when we situated in the light of the resurrection that leads to him. In other words, 00:35:11.180 --> 00:35:15.920 when you realize the first advent means everything for your life, you're always looking and hoping in 00:35:15.920 --> 00:35:22.280 your disappointments for the second advent. And the last thing he does here, as he does the incredibly 00:35:22.280 --> 00:35:28.320 ordinary thing at the end of the passage of sitting down at a table with them and eating. And what is 00:35:28.320 --> 00:35:38.560 this meal? Verse 35, he says, they go to the others and they say, we experienced the breaking of bread. 00:35:39.560 --> 00:35:46.280 That same line appears in Acts chapter 2 from the same author, Luke, to refer to what? The Lord's 00:35:46.280 --> 00:35:50.540 Supper. What did Jesus do at the end of the story? He celebrated the Lord's Supper with them. 00:35:50.539 --> 00:35:57.380 Physically, he was there. He broke the bread. He gave them the cup. That's what we read about at the 00:35:57.380 --> 00:36:03.480 end of this passage. And that means that how does Jesus deal with our disappointments? Well, we can 00:36:03.480 --> 00:36:08.139 have the very same thing today. We do. We have it today right before us. We're going to celebrate 00:36:08.139 --> 00:36:16.440 communion right now. And our biggest need as we come to the table is to see our lives in the light 00:36:16.440 --> 00:36:22.280 of his life, to see our lives in the light of his body broken, in the light of his bloodshed, 00:36:22.340 --> 00:36:29.440 in the light of the fact of his resurrection. And to realize that you today, no matter what's going on 00:36:29.440 --> 00:36:37.200 in your life, as we come to the table, let me say it like this. The last word, every human counselor 00:36:37.200 --> 00:36:42.840 that we go to, a friend, a family member, a biblical counselor of any kind, they have boundaries, 00:36:42.840 --> 00:36:48.539 right? There are topics that are eventually off limits. There are emotions that are just too much 00:36:48.539 --> 00:36:56.140 to share. There are complaints that other people just cannot handle. Jesus Christ, the wonderful 00:36:56.140 --> 00:37:04.420 counselor, has no limits for that. And that means today you can literally bring anything to him, 00:37:04.539 --> 00:37:10.480 everything to him. There is nothing that he cannot absorb. He absorbed our sin upon the cross. There's 00:37:10.480 --> 00:37:15.159 nothing that he cannot absorb today. And so as we come to the table, he doesn't say, 00:37:15.699 --> 00:37:22.099 come to me, all of you who are doing great. He says, come to me, all of you who are weary 00:37:22.099 --> 00:37:30.699 and heavily burdened and disappointed with so much, because by the death and resurrection I've 00:37:30.699 --> 00:37:38.380 accomplished for you, I promise to bring you rest. Let us pray. Father, we want the wonderful 00:37:38.380 --> 00:37:45.680 counselors touch today, and we come now to the table of our Lord to receive that. And so we pray, 00:37:45.820 --> 00:37:50.860 Lord, that you would speak to us in whatever disappointments and struggles we bring. 00:37:51.440 --> 00:37:55.140 We bring them to you, Lord, and we pray this in Christ's name. Amen.