All right, this morning we have a kind of a guest speaker because he's here and most of you guys already know him, Pastor Aaron. He was, him and his family was down here for Becky and Sung's wedding yesterday and so we thought we'd take advantage of him and I know how much we enjoy and are blessed by his ministry.

He used to be our associate pastor here. He was our college pastor about four or five years ago and they took a team up and planted a church up in Millbrae and it's a growing church. They have about 140, 150 members and again it's growing and thriving and so we're blessed by their ministry.

It's our sister church. If you have anybody up in the Bay Area looking for a church, I strongly encourage you guys to look up that church, Berean Mission Church up at Millbrae. So again, he was down here so I thought it'd be a great opportunity for us to be blessed through his ministry.

So let's ask and welcome Pastor Aaron up here. All right, well good morning to all of you. I got a few comments from people as I was walking in. Did we see you a couple weeks ago? And the answer is yes, we were here for another wedding. But yeah, if I have to preach every time I'm down here, then I'm going to stop coming.

So no, I'm just kidding. I'm kind of kidding. Now it is a joy to be here and a joy to fellowship with all of you. I was hoping that we could explore a topic and subject this morning that a lot of times in the church we only give attention to just for a few days out of the year, namely during Holy Week and during Easter and that's the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

This is a subject matter that really is central to our faith and yet oftentimes it kind of takes a back seat. And so hopefully as we turn our attention to God's Word this morning, God would speak to us and really impress upon us again just the importance and how significant it is that Christ has resurrected from the dead.

And so on that note, if you would turn with me in your Bibles to Luke chapter 24. This morning we're going to be reading from verse 13 through verse 35. Luke 24 verses 13 through 35. This is God's holy and inerrant Word. That very day, two of them were going to a village named Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem and they were talking with each other about all these things that had happened.

While they were talking and discussing together, Jesus himself drew near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. And he said to them, "What is this conversation that you are holding with each other as you walk?" And they stood still looking sad. Then one of them named Cleopas answered him, "Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?" And he said to them, "What things?" And they said to him, "Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, a man who was a prophet, mighty in deed 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.

But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things happened." Moreover, some women of our company amazed us. They were at the tomb early in the morning and when they did not find his body, they came back saying they had even seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive.

Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the woman had said, but him they did not see. And he said to them, "O foolish ones and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken, was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?" And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.

So they drew near to the village to which they were going. He acted as if he were going farther, but they urged him strongly saying, "Stay with us, for it is toward evening and the day is now far spent." So he went in to stay with them. When he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them.

And their eyes were opened and they recognized him and he vanished from their sight. They said to each other, "Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the scriptures?" And they arose that same hour and returned to Jerusalem.

And they found the eleven and those who were with them gathered together saying, "The Lord has risen indeed and has appeared to Simon." Then they told what had happened on the road and how he was known to them in the breaking of the bread. Let's bow our heads in prayer.

Our Heavenly Father, with your Word before us, we do ask that you would find us humble and teachable in your sight. We pray, Lord God, that we will be challenged and equipped this morning through the scriptures and that, Lord, through our lives, we might seek to give honor and glory to Christ, in whose name we pray.

Amen. All right. Well, just to set up a little bit of context for us, as you guys can tell, this is a long passage. The preceding passage, so basically the first twelve verses of Luke chapter 24, features a number of different reactions that various people had to the empty tomb.

You have a group of women, you have a pair of angels, and then you have the eleven remaining apostles. You might think of these individuals like supporting actors in a movie or film. The stone had been rolled away, the body of Jesus was nowhere to be found, and everyone was astonished and perplexed as to what was going on.

Well, in this morning's passage, the supporting cast will be joined by the main lead, Jesus Christ, who all of a sudden is thrust back into the spotlight, even though he had been crucified just three days before. Now Luke, our gospel writer, he approaches his account of Jesus' resurrection slightly differently compared to the other gospel writers.

You see, Matthew and Mark, they only provide for us very short snippets of what took place after Jesus was resurrected, while John describes the risen Christ through a series of vignettes. By comparison, Luke here, he takes a much more focused, a much more in-depth approach. First, Luke's account is much more focused in that instead of describing a bunch of different resurrection appearances, what Luke does is he elects to zero in on a single story in particular, which is the subject of our study this morning.

At the very same time, Luke's portrayal of Christ on the Emmaus Road is described at length and in great detail, which is why I say that his version is a bit more in-depth when we compare it to the other gospel writers. And so it's important that we read and study through Luke's account carefully if we want to fully appreciate everything that's happening here.

And so to that end, we're going to be breaking up our study by going through it in three parts if you guys are taking notes. The first part is this, the risen Christ concealed. We begin in verse 13. That very day, two of them were going to a village named Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem.

And they were talking with each other about all these things that had happened. In very typical Luke fashion, Luke sets up the scene for us with a number of important details. And here's what we know. It's still Easter Sunday. There are two individuals and they're on a road outside of Jerusalem headed toward a little village called Emmaus.

What else do we know? Well, there's a couple of things that we know for sure, a couple more things that we can deduce based on context, and a couple more things that we can try to guess and speculate upon if we want to understand anything beyond what Luke provides for us here.

Now it's certain that the two people we see in this scene are followers of Christ. One of them is named Cleopas, the other is left unidentified. It's probable that they're on their way home, returning from all the Passover festivities that had taken place in Jerusalem just the weekend before.

And finally, it's possible that Luke mentions and highlights that there are two of them because you see, ancient Jews required the presence of at least two witnesses whenever they were trying to establish the credibility or veracity of eyewitness testimony. Now one kind of interesting tidbit that I came across as I was studying through this passage was in learning that the prevailing scholarly opinion seems to point to the Cleopas, who's mentioned here in Luke 24, as being the same person as the Clopas who's mentioned in John 19.25.

Here in John 19.25 it says this, "Standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother's sister Mary, the wife of Clopas." Now if it's true that Cleopas and Clopas are the same individual, that would mean that Cleopas is the uncle of Jesus, which might also lead us to speculate that the other individual who's left unnamed in this passage is Cleopas' wife, Jesus' aunt Mary.

At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter because it doesn't affect our interpretation of this text, but I still thought it was kind of interesting to point out because if you're anything like me, you've long assumed that these disciples were not related to Jesus, and much less that they were a man and woman who were a married couple.

At any rate, whoever they were, what we know for sure is that these two disciples were in a daze. They're shocked, traumatized, still reeling from the whirlwind of events that had transpired over the previous weekend. It's written all over their faces, and in their body language as well. We're told at the end of verse 17, "They stood still looking sad." Why were they sad?

Unfulfilled hopes, unrealized expectations, that's why they were so sad. You see, like so many others, they had banked on the hope that Jesus was the long-awaited Messiah. They believed that Jesus had come to rule and reign over them as king, and that as Messiah, he would conquer over Caesar, and he would free them from the yoke of Roman rule.

But instead of doing any of those things, Jesus had been crucified. He'd been executed like a common criminal, and they still could not believe what had happened. You see, when Jesus died, all their hopes that he might be their Messiah also died with him. And so disoriented and distraught, their hearts heavy with pain and grief, they walk around in this fog of despair.

But then seemingly out of nowhere, a stranger appears. Look at verse 15. "While they were talking and discussing together, Jesus himself drew near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him." Why do you think they were unable to recognize Jesus? It's kind of strange, right?

It's not as if he were a ghost or an apparition, because if you notice, they're talking to him. They're relating to him. They're interacting with him like he's a normal human being, like an average pastor by. So why is it that these two disciples fail to recognize Jesus? Well, perhaps in their distress, they simply were not in their right minds.

Maybe they were so emotionally affected, so traumatized by Jesus's death that it somehow short-circuited their brains so they were no longer able to see or perceive things properly. Maybe this was a form of PTSD that they were experiencing. Or maybe Jesus's physical appearance had changed or been altered in some way following his resurrection.

Mark 16, verse 12 actually tells us that the risen Christ appeared in another form, whatever that means. In fact, these two disciples, you know, they're hardly alone in their inability to recognize Jesus after he was raised from the dead. One of the things that you'll notice when you read through the resurrection accounts is that people don't seem to discern when they're standing before the risen Christ.

In fact, Mary Magdalene mistakens Jesus to be a gardener in John chapter 20. We also know that Jesus's glorified body was somehow different than it was prior to his resurrection. In other words, his body was no longer normal, at least in the way that you and I would think of it.

For one thing, this body had the ability to disappear and then to reappear. In fact, we see him doing this later on in this passage. Jesus is even able in his glorified state to pass through locked doors as he does in John 20, verses 19 and 26. But you know, as compelling as those theories might be, I actually believe that the real reason why these Emmaus disciples were unable to recognize Jesus is far more simple because the reason is actually laid out for us right there in the text itself.

Look at verse 16. Their eyes were kept from recognizing him. Their eyes were kept from recognizing him. This is what theologians and commentators refer to as a divine passive. This is in the passive voice in the Greek text. In other words, God was keeping them from seeing and recognizing Jesus.

And why exactly would he want to do that? God was doing that because he wanted to illustrate for them the reality of their spiritual blindness. In other words, God had temporarily veiled Jesus from their sight so that he could prove a point. Namely, that their inability to see and understand who Jesus was was much more of a faith issue and much more of a heart issue than it was a physical one.

As a matter of fact, Jesus himself later rebukes these disciples in verse 25, not because they had poor eyesight. He rebukes them because they were slow of heart. Slow of heart to believe all that the prophets had spoken. Which leads us to a really important point, and the point is this.

Only God. God and God alone is capable of opening up our eyes so that we might see the beauty and the glory of Christ. Without him, we remain in complete spiritual darkness. Even if Jesus were to come here to Berean this morning and stand here in this room at this very moment, not a single one of us would be able to recognize him as Savior and Lord unless God, by his grace, willed for it to happen.

See the hardness and the blindness of the human heart, that is symptomatic of our fallen condition. Our inability to see things spiritually is a result of our sin. So apart from God intervening by his grace, sin and unbelief, it renders us completely blind to the things of God. So how then can you and I see and behold Christ in a saving way?

That's an important question to consider, especially if there are any of you who are really doing your best to reach out to loved ones in your lives. You're doing everything you can to convince them that the gospel is true. How can we get those people, and maybe even for ourselves, how can we get ourselves to see and behold Christ in a saving way?

Well, we need new eyes. We need a new heart. Or as the Bible puts it, we need to be born again. But being born again is something that cannot and will not ever happen because of our choice. The sad fact that we are spiritually blind means that on our own we are absolutely and completely unable to see or recognize Jesus.

God by his grace, God by his mercy, needs to come and do something. He needs to grant us saving faith. And that is why Christians rejoice in the fact that salvation is a free gift. It's not earned or attained by our merit, our worthiness. No, salvation is totally owing to God, sovereignly moving within our hearts by the power of his Holy Spirit so that we might have saving faith.

So then I want to ask you this morning, have you asked God for the eyes of faith? If you're not a Christian this morning, it's great that you're here, but my encouragement to you is don't be satisfied with simply coming to church. Ask God for eyes to see, for the spiritual vision to see and behold Christ so that you might understand who he is.

And if you are a Christian this morning, then we praise God. We praise God that we have received this spiritual vision that we're talking about. But it's all the more reason why you and I should be eager to dedicate and devote our entire lives to giving God glory, honor, and praise.

Picking it back up, beginning from verse 17. And he said to them, "What is this conversation that you are holding with each other as you walk?" And they stood still looking sad. Then one of them named Cleopas answered him, "Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?" And he said to them, "What things?" And they said to him, "Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, a man who was a prophet, mighty in deed 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.

But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things happened." Such as he did throughout the time when he was alive. When Jesus died, it generated great buzz throughout ancient Palestine. It was headline news, which is why Cleopas is so taken aback by Jesus' question here.

He reacts to this stranger on the road. "Have you been living under a rock? How do you not know what's going on? Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who is unaware of the things that have happened here?" In the Greek text, the word "you" in Cleopas' reply in verse 18 is actually placed at the head of the sentence, which means that it's in the emphatic position.

So it's as if Cleopas is pointing his finger at the stranger who stands before him, and he's calling him out. He's incredulous that he somehow remains uninformed about Jesus' crucifixion. Now, of course, the great irony of this entire situation is that what Cleopas says is the exact opposite of what's actually taking place.

He's claiming that the man he speaks to is the only one who does not understand the things that happen in Jerusalem, when the reality is the man he speaks to is the only one who understands what happened in Jerusalem. Jesus died, but it wasn't just that. For everybody else, they assume that's where the story ended.

Jesus died, but Jesus himself understood that he did not just die, but he died for our sins. In other words, he embraced his role to be our atoning sacrifice. He knew full well all that he would have to endure upon the cross. He said so himself on multiple occasions throughout the gospel accounts.

Repeatedly, again and again, he claimed that it was necessary that the Son of Man suffer and die. He understood. It was everyone else who failed to understand. Well, these disciples, they continue to reveal their ignorance. Look at verse 22. "Moreover, some women of our company amazed us. They were at the tomb early in the morning, and when they did not find his body, they came back saying that they had even seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive.

Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the woman had said, but him they did not see." Him they did not see. These disciples, they're just relaying a report. No one saw when they went to the tomb, no one saw Jesus, but that description might as well have been applicable to themselves.

Him they did not see. The risen Christ remained concealed from their sight. Despite the fact that by this point in time, multiple parties had come forward to testify that Jesus' body was no longer in the tomb, these two individuals simply could not consider even the remote possibility that Jesus might have been resurrected from the dead.

You know, we have this tendency as modern day readers of Scripture to look at the ancients, to look at those who lived in the first century, and to dismiss them as being unintellectual, as being gullible, as being unscientific. But the gospel accounts portray them as being just as skeptical as any of us might be if this were to happen today.

They wanted proof. They wanted to see some evidence. The thing is, God had provided all the proof they should have needed. They were standing before the risen Christ. But again, the problem was not their physical eyes. It was their spiritual eyes. To them, the empty tomb was not good news.

It was troubling news. And so they wondered to themselves, "What happened to Jesus' body? Did the Romans do something to it? Did the Jews come and dispose of it? What happened?" Apparently for them, standing before a resurrected man was not enough. And so Jesus chose to reveal himself in a different, we might even say a more ordinary kind of way, bringing us to our second point this morning.

The risen Christ revealed. Look at verse 25. "And he said to them, 'O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Is it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?' And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself." You know, if there was ever a time where it was okay or appropriate to share the gospel without using the Bible, this would have been it.

Jesus had all the empirical data, all the evidence he needed to convince these disciples of who he was. All he needed to do was point them to his body. "Look! Look at my body, my glorified body, incontrovertible proof that the gospel is true." But notice that instead of pointing to himself, what does our Savior do?

He points them to God's Word. I can't even begin to tell you guys the number of times where I've shared the gospel with someone, where I've been in an evangelistic conversation, where I've wished for the power to perform some sign or do some miracle. Because it would make so many things so much easier in evangelism.

"Oh, you don't believe that the gospel is true? Watch me turn this water into wine." Right? "Oh, you don't believe that Jesus died for your sins on the cross? Watch me as I heal this man of his disease." Bam, like that. There would be converts left and right, or so we would assume.

But notice here, rather than simply pointing these two individuals to the greatest miracle of all human history, the resurrection, his own resurrected body, Jesus directs them to the Bible instead. See, signs and miracles, as great as they might be, they are insufficient grounds for saving faith. First Romans 10.17 explains, "Faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the what?

The Word of Christ." That's the reason why Berean Community Church has always strived to place such a high premium on God's Word. Our leaders know that these days people are very likely to come into the church if there's glitz and flash and well thought out programs and strategies. But what is practical is not always what's biblical.

And so even if people consider it to be boring, even if some of you consider this exercise to be dry, it is every church's responsibility to preach the Word of God. And it's not because the Bible saves people. This is just a book, okay? You can purchase it on Amazon for 20 bucks.

This is just a copy of a translation of some original manuscripts that date back thousands of years. We're not saying that the Word of God is important because this physical book has some sort of magical power. We believe that the Word of God is important because it's Christ who saves, and it is through the written Word that the living Word is revealed.

And that is why we place our confidence and our trust in Scripture. So I want to ask you, Christian, do you know your Bible well enough to explain who Jesus is and why He came? Are you familiar enough with the teachings of Scripture to articulate the gospel clearly? When you evangelize, is your confidence based on your personality, your charisma, your strategy, your knowledge, or is it based upon the sufficiency of Christ and His Word?

Once again, the main thing that keeps people from believing in Jesus, the main thing that keeps people from the kingdom of God has never been a lack or absence of physical proof and evidence. That's never been the issue. Rather, it is the simple fact that we as sinners are spiritually blind.

That's the issue. And so then the only solution to this problem we have of our spiritual blindness is to bring forth the illumination that can only come from God's Spirit working through His Word. Remember what the Savior taught in Luke 16. If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.

And how true that was even here in this passage. So use the Bible. Be a Berean. Trust in Scripture. Here our Lord does exactly that. He reveals Himself by using what the Bible says. Besides the Sermon on the Mount, this sermon that was preached that afternoon on the Emmaus Road is perhaps the most famous message that our Lord ever taught.

As a matter of fact, I would argue that it was the most Christ-centered, Gospel-centered, Word-centered sermon of all time. Because beginning with Moses and all the prophets, He interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself. That phrase, Moses and the prophets, there in verse 27, was just another way that first-century Jews referred to the Hebrew Scriptures, what you and I call today the Old Testament.

And generally speaking, a lot of us have made the mistake of assuming that only the New Testament talks about Jesus, but that the Old Testament never ever speaks about Him at all. The problem with that understanding is that the Old Testament, the first 39 books in your Bibles are fundamentally about Jesus.

The Old Testament is fundamentally about Christ. See, Jesus even rebuked the Pharisees, the so-called experts in the Hebrew Scriptures, precisely because their knowledge and expertise of the Old Testament Scriptures did not yield worship of Christ. So how exactly does Jesus fulfill the Old Testament Scriptures? Well, I'm glad you guys asked the question.

In the book of Genesis, Christ is revealed as the seed of the woman who would one day crush the head of the serpent. In the book of Exodus, Christ is revealed as a Passover lamb. In the book of Leviticus, Christ is revealed as our great high priest. In the book of Numbers, Christ is revealed as our ever-present guide.

In the book of Deuteronomy, Christ is revealed as Moses-like prophet. In Joshua, Christ is revealed as commander of the Lord's army. In Judges, Christ is revealed as our ultimate deliverer. In Ruth, Christ is revealed as kinsman redeemer. In 1 and 2 Samuel, Christ is revealed as trustworthy prophet. In Kings and Chronicles, Christ is revealed as king of all kings.

In Ezra, Christ is revealed as faithful scribe. In Nehemiah, Christ is revealed as rebuilder of the walls. In Esther, Christ is revealed as the advocate of God's people. In Job, Christ is revealed as living redeemer. In Psalms, Christ is revealed as a good shepherd. In Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, Christ is revealed as wisdom from above.

In Song of Solomon, Christ is revealed as loving bridegroom. In Isaiah, Christ is revealed as suffering servant. In Jeremiah, Christ is revealed as a righteous branch. In Lamentations, Christ is revealed as weeping prophet. In Ezekiel, Christ is revealed as shepherd king. In Daniel, Christ is revealed as a son of man.

In Hosea, Christ is revealed as faithful husband. In Joel, Christ is revealed as the sender of the Holy Spirit. In Amos, Christ is revealed as a bearer of our burdens. In Obadiah, Christ is revealed as righteous judge. In Jonah, Christ is revealed as the one who would rise on the third day.

In Micah, Christ is revealed as bearer of good news. In Nahum, Christ is revealed as the avenger of God's elect. In Habakkuk, Christ is revealed as divine watchman. In Zephaniah, Christ is revealed as savior of Israel. In Haggai, Christ is revealed as a restorer of all things. In Zechariah, Christ is revealed as a humble king mounted upon a colt.

In Malachi, Christ is revealed as the son of righteousness. And so you see the entirety of the Old Testament scriptures point to Jesus. He's the linchpin. He's the fulcrum upon which all of redemptive history rests. And therefore, Jesus is the key. He's the key to understanding what the Bible's all about.

That is why Paul said in 2 Corinthians 1:20, "For all the promises of God find their yes in Him." And that is why it is through Him we utter our amen to God for His glory. So you see, Jesus, He's not just the link, okay? He's not just the glue that holds a random assortment of Bible stories together.

Jesus is the story. Christ is the story. Well, as the risen Lord delivers His sermon, how do these disciples respond? Look at verse 32. "They said to each other, 'Did not our hearts burn within us while He talked to us on the road, while He opened to us the scriptures?'" These disciples, they're experiencing what I refer to as a holy heartburn.

This is a good kind of heartburn. Not the kind of heartburn you experience after eating late night tacos. This is a holy heartburn. And it happens any time anybody is exposed to the truth of God's Word and God's Spirit moves within them to stir up affections and passion and love for Christ.

And that kind of holy heartburn is the best thing that you and I can ever experience. Sadly, however, most of the time when we have God's Word open before us in a sermon, in a Bible study, while we're doing our quiet times, our hearts are not burning. Instead what's happening?

Our eyes are closing, and our heads are bobbing, and our minds are wandering. But if that's the case for you, my encouragement to you is simply this. Keep at it. Keep at it. Keep at God's Word. Don't give up. I firmly, firmly believe, as your leaders do, that when we grow in our love and understanding of Scripture, we grow in our love and understanding of Christ.

Those two things come intertwined. So don't be discouraged. Commit to a reading plan. Ask someone next to you to hold you accountable. Cultivate a habit and spiritual discipline of getting to God's Word on a daily basis because it is primarily through the Word of God that the beauty of Christ is revealed.

Do you want to see Jesus? Look at His Word. Our third and final point for this morning, the risen Christ recognized. Jesus, He wraps up His sermon, and here's what happens next in verse 28. So they drew near to the village to which they were going. He acted as if He were going farther, but they urged Him strongly, saying, "Stay with us, for it is toward evening, and the day is now far spent." The Greek here is very forceful.

In fact, the wording pictures these two individuals basically coercing Jesus to stay with them. So this is not just another example of ancient Near Eastern hospitality at work. This is a desperate, forceful plea by these disciples to get this mysterious stranger to stay with them for just a little while longer.

In other words, they're not just being insistent, okay? They're being persistent. They don't know who this man is, but they're drawn to Him. They're compelled and intrigued by what He has to say. So Luke tells us that He went in to stay with them. Look at verse 30. When He was at table with them, He took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them.

And their eyes were opened, and they recognized Him, and He vanished from their sight. I want you to notice that even though Jesus was invited as a guest, here He becomes the host. Taking the bread, He says a blessing. He starts to serve those who have invited Him into their home.

Do you guys remember it was just a few days before, on the night before He was betrayed, where Christ took bread, He broke it, He said a blessing, and He had what's called the last supper with His disciples. Well here in Luke 24, we have the first supper of the risen Lord.

And it's as they sit around this table that their eyes were opened, verse 31 says. It's a grammatical parallel to what was said in verse 16, that divine passage, their eyes were kept from seeing Christ. Well here their eyes were opened. God reveals. Previously, God concealed. Here God reveals, and as a result, they are able to recognize Jesus.

And then the passage concludes in verse 33. And they arose that same hour and returned to Jerusalem, and they found the eleven and those who were with them, and gathered together, saying, "The Lord has risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon." Then they told what had happened on the road and how He was known to them in the breaking of the bread.

So if you guys have been tracking with me, that's a long passage, but now we've come full circle. The passage began with two disciples looking sad as they walked away from Jerusalem. And now the passage ends with two disciples rejoicing and glad as they run toward Jerusalem. Despite the lateness of the hour, these two disciples, they make that seven-mile journey all the way back to the holy city.

Again, this is a time before Uber. This is a time before Lyft. They're walking on foot back to Jerusalem, even though they had just come from there earlier that same day, but what they had seen and what they had heard was just way too amazing to keep to themselves.

And so they go. They go so they might tell other people, because that's what happens when you encounter the risen Christ in a saving way. You don't go home and plop on the couch and turn on Netflix and waste the remainder of your life away. No, you go and you share the good news that Jesus has risen from the dead.

And when they finally arrive in Jerusalem, no doubt by this time it's very, very late, the two amazed disciples, they burst through the doors and they immediately inform Jesus' 11 remaining disciples that Christ has resurrected from the dead. But as it turns out, the 11, they already know, because the news of Christ's resurrection has already begun to spread.

This must have been kind of disappointing for the two disciples, you know? I mean, that seven-mile journey back, they're like, "Man, they're going to be overjoyed when they hear us deliver this news that they haven't heard." And then so they come through the doors, they're like, "Christ is risen." And the 11 respond, "He is risen indeed." That Paschal greeting, the Easter greeting that we always exchange to one another on Easter morning.

In closing, I just want to ask one final question. Why does a resurrection matter? I know Easter was like last month, so why are we talking about this now? Too often the resurrection is attached as an addendum, a postscript to our faith, as if it's kind of important but not really like something that belongs front and center.

No doubt the cross of Jesus Christ is central. No doubt. But not to diminish the cross, the resurrection is equally important. Why does a resurrection matter? For one, the resurrection matters because it means that Christ has accepted the penalty that Jesus paid for us on the cross. Of course, more than one preacher throughout church history has likened the resurrection of Christ to a receipt.

When you guys walk into Target, you guys walk into Lucky or what do you guys have here? Vons. I'm forgetting the supermarket. Ralph's, okay? And you buy something, you get a receipt. That receipt is proof of payment that you've purchased this thing. Well, when Jesus was raised from the dead, it was as if God himself handed a receipt to the world saying that the penalty that was rendered at Calvary was accepted, which means there's no further penalty for you to pay.

We live at peace with God the Father and we have confidence in coming before him because there's no more penalty to pay. As Jesus cried out from the cross, "It is finished." The resurrection also matters because it means that eschatology has already begun. You guys are currently going through a revelation series during midweeks, am I right?

And hopefully one of the truths that will begin to emerge as you make your way through that book is that eschatology is already here. It's not just for some far off distant future because you see when Jesus was risen from the dead, here's how Paul puts it in 1 Corinthians 15.

He became the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. That's just a euphemism for those who have died. Jesus, the resurrected Christ, is the first fruits for those of us who have died and we will all die. But when Jesus was raised from the dead, that signified to the world a new creation has already begun.

And yet having said that, we take a look at this world around us and we see that it's broken and it's falling apart still. It seems that the old creation is very much in place. So yes, a new creation is already here, but it's not yet here. We live in the already not yet, this weird in between stage.

And so as we look forward to the time where God will finish recreating the world, we look back at the resurrection of Christ to give us a glimpse and a foreshadowing of what things will look like when God has finished making all things new. And when He does, it will be a glorious, glorious day.

Thirdly and finally, the resurrection matters, and this is very simple, because it means that Jesus is alive. Jesus is alive. Far too many of us, we regard Jesus like we regard the historical figures that we studied about or read about in school, Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, Steve Jobs, men who at one point in history had great impact, but quite frankly, who bear little to no relevance to our lives today.

But that's not Jesus, because Jesus is not like them. Jesus is alive, and He's right here, and He's right now present among us. If there are any in this room who feel something akin to what those disciples felt on the Emmaus Road that first Easter afternoon 2,000 years ago, weighed down because of unfulfilled hopes, disheartened and discouraged and wearied because life didn't pan out the way that you had planned, I want you to understand something.

Christ knows and sees and meets you right where you are, because He is alive. He's not some image. He's not some statue. He's not some relic. He's a person to engage with, a person to pray to, a person to have a relationship with. He's actively working in your life right now.

At this very moment, He's indwelling many of your hearts. He can come to your aid. He can intercede for you. He can empower you and strengthen you and encourage you and do any of the things that any of your friends might be able to do, but He can do it better, because He is the risen King.

And if you behold Him with eyes of faith, then you can see Him just as clearly and just as vividly as those two disciples did on the Emmaus Road. So in closing, I want to ask, have you recognized Jesus for who He truly is, the risen one, the living one?

There is hope. There's great hope because of Jesus' resurrection, and that hope means everything. I want to close by reading from one final passage in 1 Peter 1, and then we'll follow with the time of communion. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. According to His great mercy, He has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time.

Let's bow our heads in prayer. Father, we thank you for the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We thank you, Lord God, that through that resurrection, we have the hope of a new life. And we pray, Lord God, that you would remind us and cause us, Lord God, to be encouraged in knowing, Lord God, that the living Christ now empowers us today.

Help us, Lord God, not to hang our heads in despondency or fear. Yes, this world around us is harsh, and yes, life can be very, very difficult, but there is a new age dawning where a new creation, Lord God, will be consummated in the new heavens and the new earth.

We are excited, and we long, Lord God, for that day. But in the meanwhile, Lord, we remember that Christ has already begun that process. So help us, Lord God, to live in light of the new life that we have because of Jesus. And may this church be a place, Lord God, that honors and glorifies you in all that it does.

We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.