The Two on the Road to Emmaus

Why do I call Romans 8 the best chapter in the Bible?

Because it is. Christians for centuries, I think, have turned to Romans 8 because it gives us the gospel. In one chapter, it talks about the doctrine of the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And I had a deacon one time saying to me that this was in some way calling into question the inspiration of all of Scripture. And isn't all of Scripture? Great and the greatest.

And I said, well, just answer this question. If you've got two minutes to live, do I read the first few chapters of Chronicles, which is a list of names, or do I read Romans 8? And I think the answer is always going to be Romans 8, because it says everything that needs to be said about the gospel in one chapter. On the road to Emmaus, two men encountered the resurrected Christ. Now remember, Jesus notices that the countenance of these men was sad. They were not leaping for joy as they made their way back to Emmaus. Obviously, they had not yet been persuaded of the truth and the reality of the resurrection. But their sorrow would soon turn to joy. What did Jesus say that changed their countenance? Today on Renewing Your Mind, R.C.

Sproul continues his look at those who came face to face with Jesus, and he's going to point out one of the most important things we could ever know about our Savior. I love knock-knock jokes. I love knock-knock jokes. Knock-knock, who's there? Oswald, Oswald who?

Oswald and my gum. You all know the knock-knock jokes. Well, during the trial of the century, a new knock-knock joke was created. I don't know who thought it up, but the knock-knock joke went something like this. Knock-knock, who's there? O.J., O.J.

who? You're on the jury. The idea was that everybody in America had heard of O.J. Simpson and was aware of all of the publicity surrounding the murder of his ex-wife and Ronald Goldman.

We couldn't imagine finding somebody in America who hadn't heard all of the news of that particular incident. We read in the 24th chapter of the Gospel according to St. Luke this following account. And so it was while they conversed and reasoned that Jesus Himself drew near and went with them, but their eyes were restrained so that they did not know Him.

Now, you get the picture. These are two men who are leaving Jerusalem right after all of the events surrounding the crucifixion of Christ and His subsequent resurrection, and they're busily engaged, listening, reasoning, talking about all of the reports that they were hearing and the latest news bulletins from CNN at the time. And while they are so engaged in this conversation, Jesus Himself draws near, but He comes incognito.

We don't know whether it was something about Him that made Him unrecognizable, but the text would indicate something else, namely that God, for one reason or another, had kept their eyes from seeing Him as He was and concealed His identity from them. Boy, if you ever were a fly in the wall in a scene of history, wouldn't you have loved to have been there on this occasion and just watch the events unfold as Jesus comes up and joins in kind of eavesdropping on their animated discussion about what had just so recently taken place? And so Jesus said to them, what kind of conversation is this that you have with one another as you walk and are sad? And then the one whose name was Cleopas answered and said to him, are you the only stranger in Jerusalem, and have you not known the things which happened there in these days? It's as though Cleopas turned to Jesus and said, knock, knock.

Is anybody home? Where have you been? Haven't you heard what has taken place here? Now Jesus doesn't lie at this moment. He doesn't say, no, I don't. He simply evades their question and answers their question with a question, playing dumb like a fox for a moment, saying, what things? I mean, that's where I would love to be the fly in the wall and watch these guys having this conversation. I mean, that's where I would love to be the fly in the wall and watch these guys having this conversation with Jesus himself, and Jesus is playing like Lieutenant Colombo.

He's playing dumb when he, more than anybody, knew exactly what had taken place, but he wants their view of the matter. He wants to hear how they understood what had taken place in the previous hours and where their heads were about His death and resurrection. And so our Lord said to these two men, what things?

What things? So they said to Him, the things concerning Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet, mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how the chief priests and our rulers delivered Him to be condemned to death and crucified Him. But we were hoping that it was He who was going to redeem Israel, indeed, besides all this, today is the third day since these things happened. Yes, and certain women of our company who arrived at the tomb early astonished us. When they did not find His body, they came saying that they had also seen a vision of angels who said He was alive. And then certain of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said. But Him they didn't see. He notices that the countenance of these men was sad.

They were not leaping for joy as they made their way back to Emmaus. Obviously, they had not yet been persuaded of the truth and the reality of the resurrection. Mary had come to the tomb in the morning hours. And she saw someone appear to her there that at first in her own grief she thought was the gardener until she heard His voice speaking softly to her saying her name, Mary. Now when Mary Magdalene heard that, there was instant recognition of that voice.

And she turned and she looked at Him and said, Rabboni, meaning master or teacher. And so this woman was face to face with the risen Christ. And she and her friends ran back to Jerusalem, came to the disciples, and announced to them that they had found the empty tomb, that they had seen angels. And Peter and John raced to the garden tomb. But when they arrived, there was no sign of Christ.

But the tomb was empty, and the grave cloths were folded perfectly on the floor. And we hear the record of angels that were there at the tomb who announced saying, do not look here for the living. Jesus is risen. But until Jesus appeared in the upper room and showed Himself on a couple of occasions to His disciples, they still were not sure. They didn't give a lot of credence to the testimony of the women. They thought the women were just being emotional and being excitable. And now two of the company of followers of Jesus are making their way to Emmaus. They're talking about these things, and they're talking about their broken hearts.

They're talking about their disappointment. And when Jesus said, what things? They said, are you the only one in Jerusalem that doesn't know these things? We're talking about Jesus of Nazareth, a man we all recognize was a prophet mighty in deeds, in acts, and in the Word of God. He was the one we hoped would redeem Israel.

But obviously, they had lost that hope. But they're trying to explain this all to the stranger who was fallen in beside them, and they said, we had eye-ops for Him. We left everything to follow Him. We trusted Him. We watched Him perform miracles, and we invested our souls in Him.

But He allowed Himself to be taken into custody and to be killed. We're trying to figure it out. We're reasoning with each other, and then we hear this incredible story from the women who say that they went to the tomb this morning and that the tomb was empty, and they couldn't find His body. And now they're trying to wonder and figure out what happened to the body. And so Jesus spoke to them, O foolish ones, O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken, Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and enter into His glory? And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself. This stranger appears to them. He listens to their tale of woe and their expression of disappointment and their bewilderment at the tales that they were hearing from the ladies, and they're sort of mocking the women. And all of a sudden this stranger looks at them and says, O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the Scriptures say concerning the Messiah. These things that you've just witnessed didn't spring de nova from the head of Zeus. These things that you've just encountered were predicted over and over and over again on the pages of Scripture.

Here, let me show you. Jesus begins to give them an elementary Bible lesson. He starts in the Pentateuch, probably with Adam and then to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Joseph. Then He goes through the Exodus and the prophecies given by Moses of the prophet who would come, the one like Moses. And He gives a rehearsal of all of the predictions found in the prophets of the Old Testament, all of those statements that God had revealed in the Old Testament that converged on the person of Christ. I'm sure He quoted to them from the prophet Isaiah about the suffering servant of Israel who would be bruised for their iniquities. And He opens up the Word.

It's an incredible thing. Then when Jesus takes the task of being an apologist for the truth claims about His own person and about His own work, He goes to the sacred text and shows that years, centuries, at times millennia before the Messiah ever appeared, there are specific concrete prophecies spelled out about the nature of His mission, of His life, and of His death. I don't remember the number, but I once read a number given by a mathematician who said that the odds against a chance combination of the confluence of all of the specific prophecies about Jesus of Nazareth that they could come to pass and focus on one person accidentally in history were like sixty-four kajillion billion googaplex to one. It was astronomical.

I don't know the number because I don't know what you call a number with that many zeros after it. And so Jesus rebukes them for their unbelief, for how slow they are to wake up and to come to grips with the reality of Christ. Boy wouldn't you have loved to have been in that Bible class and heard that exposition. So then they drew near to the village where they were going. And He indicated that He would have gone farther, but they constrained Him saying, abide with us for it is toward evening and the day is far spent and He went in to stay with them. Now it came to pass as He sat at the table with them that He took bread, blessed and broke it and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they knew Him and He vanished from their sight.

What an incredible account. The seven mile journey is over. They arrive at Emmaus and Jesus indicates that He's going to continue on His journey and He's about to bid them farewell.

But they're so impressed by the teaching that they've just heard from Christ, that they begin to plead with Him. No, no, no. Stay with us a little longer. Have dinner with us.

Stay the night with us, please. Now who knows where Jesus was headed or what His next mission was, but He accedes to their requests and He goes in to an inn perhaps and there He sits down to dinner with these men and continues this face-to-face conversation. And when the bread was served, just as He had done only hours earlier in the upper room, He took this bread and He broke it and He blessed it to those who were at table with Him and He distributed to them. And at that moment their eyes were opened and they knew Him. Can you imagine the existential poignancy of that moment?

They're sitting at a table breaking bread with the risen Christ. And when they sat at that table they had no earthly idea who He was. But when God removed the scales from their eyes and they saw Him and recognized Him and instantly He vanished from their midst. If you think they were puzzled before they met this stranger on the road to Emmaus, can you imagine their consternation now? I don't know whether they were giddy, you know, they just sat there and started to laugh and give each other high fives and say, can you believe it? Can you realize what we just experienced? It was He. We've been with Jesus.

He's alive. One of my favorite texts of all the Scripture follows upon this account. Verse 31 reads, then their eyes were opened and they knew Him and He vanished from their sight. Now hear this, and they said to one another, did not our heart burn within us while He talked with us on the road and while He opened the Scriptures to us?

Cleopas says to his friend, to Emma, we were back there on the road. Do you remember when he was talking out of Isaiah? Or was it the reference to Moses?

But boy, I was feeling funny. I mean, something strange happened to me when I was listening to him teach the Scriptures. I had a strange feeling, a sense of warmth, of heat, but it wasn't from the sun. It wasn't on the surface.

It wasn't external. It was something that developed deep within my soul. Did not our hearts burn within us as we heard Him teach from the Word of God? How many times in church history have we heard that testimony?

John Wesley, when he stood in the crowd at Alders Gate and heard the lesson from the book of Romans, the lesson that turned his life upside down, afterwards John Wesley said, as I was standing there hearing the Word of God, my heart was strangely warmed. Warmth is the opposite of coldness. When the Scriptures describe our natural condition as fallen human beings, they describe it as this, that we have hearts that are like calcium. They are recalcitrant.

They are reified. They are like things, inert, stony, cold. But the Spirit of the living God has the power to take the Word of God and pierce that stony heart and turn that heart of stone into a heart of flesh that it begins to beat and pulsate and make alive. But a cold heart can't do that.

It has to be warm. It has to become sanguine for faith to come alive. Did not our hearts burn within us as He was teaching us from the Word? You know, Jesus didn't need to do it from the Word.

He could have just said, open your eyes, fellas. The living Word is here. Here I am. Look at the marks in my hand.

Look at the marks in my forehead. I am the crucified Lord. He could have simply done it directly and immediately, but instead He said, no, I'm going to do it through the medium of sacred Scripture. And the Bible tells us that the power of the Word of God is living.

It is vital, and the Spirit of God works with the Word of God to bring life out of death, to bring warmth out of coldness, and the chill and the frost that had descended upon these men's hearts was melted. By the teaching of sacred Scripture, what an experience, to be face-to-face with Jesus, and not even know who He was. As the two men on the road to Emmaus would discover, there was far more to Jesus than they realized. Not only is He the Son of God, He's also the focal point of the entire Bible.

As it says in Luke 24, beginning with Moses and all the prophets, He interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself. That's just one of the many important lessons about Christ that we learn in the series we've been featuring all week here on Renewing Your Mind. It's titled Face to Face with Jesus. It features 12 messages on some of the dramatic encounters that Jesus had with various people in Scripture. We'll be glad to send you the DVD of this series when you contact us today with your gift of any amount. There are a couple of ways you can reach us to make your request.

One is online at renewingyourmind.org, or you can simply call us at 800-435-4343. One of the important lessons we learned today was how all of Scripture points to Jesus Christ. Our desire is to see Christians just like you come to a deeper understanding of the Bible and what it teaches about Christ, salvation, and how to live for God's glory. Another resource that we provide to that end is Ask Ligonier. We have trained team members in time zones around the world who are waiting to answer your questions. Maybe you have a question about theology, the Bible, or apologetics, or perhaps you're wondering about an apparent contradiction in the Bible. If you're looking for answers, you can find this resource online at ask.ligonier.org.

That's ask.ligonier.org. Thank you for being with us today, and I hope you'll join us again tomorrow as we learn about perhaps one of the most dramatic conversion stories in Scripture. Luke tells us that just before Paul arrives in Damascus, having a growing sense of gleeful anticipation of continuing this harassment of the Christian community, suddenly the noonday sky is filled with a light that is brighter than the sun, that is blinding in its dimensions, and it knocks people to the earth, and Paul, terror-stricken now, suddenly hears this voice coming from heaven, speaking to him by name. How Saul of Tarsus became the Apostle Paul. That's tomorrow, here on Renewing Your Mind. Amen.