Getting the Big Picture (Part 1 of 2)

The truth of Jesus stunned his disciples. It stopped them in their tracks. They could not make sense of what had just happened. So how did they respond when the darkness of Good Friday crept in and they were seemingly left with nowhere to turn?

Alistair Begg identifies their basic problem today on Truth for Life. Luke chapter 24 and verse 13. Now that same day, two of them were going to a village called Emmaus about seven miles from Jerusalem. They were talking with each other about everything that had happened. As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them. But they were kept from recognizing him. He asked them, What are you discussing together as you walk along? They stood still, their faces downcast. One of them named Cleopas asked him, Are you only a visitor to Jerusalem and do not know the things that have happened there in these days?

What things? he asked. About Jesus of Nazareth, they replied. He was a prophet, powerful in word and deed, before God and all the people. The chief priests and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel.

And what is more, it is the third day since all this took place. In addition, some of our women amazed us. They went to the tomb early this morning but didn't find his body. They came and told us that they had seen a vision of angels who said he was alive.

Then some of our companions went to the tomb and found it, just as the woman had said. But him they did not see. He said to them, How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken!

Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter his glory? And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself. Amen. You may want to keep your Bible open there. Father, we pray now that as we turn to your Word—turning to you, the Lord of the Word—we ask that you will be our teacher, and that in hearing we may understand and in understanding we may believe and obey. For Jesus' sake we ask it.

Amen. Well, we have just read together at least part of one of the best-loved of all the resurrection narratives. Luke, unlike Matthew and Mark and John, does not introduce us to a variety of resurrection appearances. He chooses instead simply to focus primarily on this one appearance and to deal with it in significant detail. He does so presumably because in this account we have aptly summarized essentially all that was going on in the hearts and minds of the followers of Jesus on this first Easter Sunday afternoon. And that was a violent struggle, if you like, between hope and fear—trying to make sense of life in light of all the events through which they had gone, and particularly in light of the experiences of the last few hours. And Luke gives to us this wonderful little story addressing for us this peculiar challenge in the lives not only of these two individuals but in those whom they represent.

I think it's worth mentioning just in passing that in this one respect, the agitation of these individuals is representative of the kind of intellectual and emotional struggle that is performed in the minds of men and women all the time. Some are here this morning, and if you are honest, you have been trying by a variety of measures to try and salvage some kind of meaning and purpose out of life. You thought, when you were a high school student, that it would all fall into line with graduation. And then perhaps this college degree would do it, or the particular area of apprenticeship to which you had gone—maybe marriage or a committed perspective on singleness or whatever it might have been. And here you are along the journey of your days, and if you're honest, you're just bouncing between faith and fear.

You're not sure that you have a grasp of why you even exist. And when the songs that are still familiar come on the radio, at least on the Easy Listening channels, you find yourself saying, Well, I can understand why the Moody Blues, for example, in the early seventies penned the words, Why do we never get an answer when we're knocking at the door with a thousand different questions? And the refrain, I'm looking for someone to change my life. I'm looking for a miracle in my life. Or from Broadway, What is it all about, Alfie?

Is it just for the moment we live? Somebody said to me last night that he was planning on ending the day with a few good beers and his favorite pizza. Well, I said, It sounds like quite an end to the day. Yes, he said, some of my friends have said to me, You may die doing that. And I said to them, What a way to go!

Beer and pizza and good night. Now, presumably, he has asked the question, What is it all about, Alfie? Is it just for the moment we live?

And answered, Yes. Or perhaps he and others like him have embraced the stoicism of the sixties in Paul Simon, gazing from my window into the streets below on a freshly fallen, silent shroud of snow. I am a rock, I am an island, and a rock can feel no pain, and an island never cries.

Don't worry about me, I'm okay. Or perhaps, in unearthing that Shakespeare from high school or college literature, we find ourselves reading again those words. Is this really life? Is Shakespeare right, a fluttering candle, a poor player, whose struts and frets his hour upon the stage, a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury and signifying absolutely nothing? Now, I say to you again that these two individuals, bouncing between faith and fear, are not so far removed from us as geography and history would suggest. And if we do not find ourselves in this category, rest assured that many amongst whom we will spend time this coming week are exactly there. And we have an opportunity, in learning from the Bible, to be able to speak in turn to others about the Bible. Now, essentially, what this passage affirms in relationship to that is that life does have meaning, and that meaning is found in Jesus. Now, to the extent that that is true of these verses, it is equally true of the whole Bible.

There is no surprise in that at all. But that is not the emphasis that we are discovering from the passage as we go through it this morning. I essentially have two points to make for you. One is to identify the basic problem, and the other is to understand the big picture.

So it's very straightforward. Basic problem, big picture. Well, let's start with the basic problem.

What is this basic problem for these two individuals? It's summarized in their words in verse 21, at least part of verse 21, when they say, We had hoped that he was the one. We had hoped that he was the one. Past tense. Now, with that in mind, let's go back and just follow the storyline as we read it there in verse 13. We are identified with the time frame. It is the same day, the same day as that which has been described in the preceding twelve verses with all of the activity at the empty tomb. And two of them are going to a village, the village called Emmaus, which is about sixty stadia, a stadia being eleven kilometers, a kilometer being five-eighths of a mile.

Hence, the NIV gets us to seven miles from Jerusalem. And the individuals, we're told, are talking. And they are not talking to themselves. They are talking with each other, and they're talking with each other about everything that had happened.

Now, I want you to notice that little phrase, everything that had happened. They refer to it again in verse 18, Are you only a visitor to Jerusalem and do not know the things that have happened? Now, I point this out to you to remind you that here in the Gospel records, we're dealing with history.

We're not dealing with invention. This is not the description of a mythology that was invented a few hundred years after the existence of a person called Jesus of Nazareth. That is, of course, what liberal scholarship wants us to believe. That's the kind of thing that you get routinely in Newsweek and Time magazine whenever the religious festivals come around. They go out and ferret somebody in who foists on us the notion that what we have in the Gospel records is nothing other than human invention, and that there is a gap between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith. And the notion is that since we cannot know anything about the Jesus of history, the only thing we have to go on is the Christ of faith, and the Christ of faith is an invention of the early church, giving us someone nice and palatable in whom we might believe. Now, you're sensible people, and you need to take that and then go to the Bible and say, Now, does the Bible—does the record of Scripture—conquer with that kind of idea, or does it challenge it? And the kind of phraseology that is used here speaks to the reality of Luke's desire in writing his Gospel to make it the result of careful investigation, to provide an orderly account in order that we might have certainty in regarding the things that he conveys. And for Luke, there is no doubt in his mind that the Christ of history and the Jesus of faith are one and the same. And what we have here is the record of what had happened. Now, when it says they were talking with each other about everything that had happened, I'm sure that the primary reference is to the immediate events. That would be most obvious, wouldn't it?

The things that are buzzing in the community, the questions that are on people's lips. Now, where did Jesus go if he's not in the tomb? What was happening there in the crucifixion? Why did he shout and make these amazing statements? Wasn't it amazing when he said to the individual, Today you will be with me in paradise?

I wonder what he meant by that. I wonder where he went. I wonder if the thief on the cross went to the same place.

And back they may track, I wonder if he is really the fulfillment of the things that he said. And to the extent that they were familiar with the Gospel record, the story of the life of Jesus, they may have gone all the way back in their reckoning to Luke chapter 4. And you can turn there for just a moment if you wish to see it, because in Luke chapter 4 we have the record of Jesus going back to Galilee and going to Nazareth. And in Nazareth he goes to the synagogue. It was his custom to do that.

I hope it's your custom to come routinely to evening worship and to the celebration of communion. It certainly was the custom of Jesus to do this. And he was given the opportunity to read from the scroll, from the Bible, from the Old Testament, and he read from Isaiah. And having read about the Spirit of the Lord being on the servant of the Lord, because he has anointed me to preach good news, to proclaim freedom for the prisoners, recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor, having rolled up the scroll, giving it back to the attendant, he sat down, and everybody waited to hear what his sermon would be.

And he began his sermon with a fantastic introductory sentence—one that they would never have reckoned on at all. Today, he said, this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. And the people said, You mean to say you're the Messiah? Are you saying for a moment, Jesus, from the carpenter's workshop, that you are the one in whom there is the fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah here? And these two, as they had the discussion, to the extent that they may have referenced that kind of thing, if not that express instance, may have said to one another, Fulfilled it? He finished it!

It's finished! I mean, for a time we followed him, and we knew that his sermons were terrific and his miracles were brilliant, but it's all come to a crashing halt. He's dead. I mean, they knew that the Messiah, when he came, would overturn the pagans, that he would restore the temple, that justice would be established. They may be said to one another, You know, on the great day of the feast, we thought that he would finally stand up and say, This is it. That, in reference to the cleansing of the temple, when he had gone in and cleaned it out and said, This is a house of prayer, that they might have anticipated then that this was the forerunner of the fact that the temple would be reestablished, that the pagans would be overturned, and that justice, as the prophet Amos said, would roll down like a vast and overwhelming river.

But to the extent that they may have anticipated that, it's all over now, because he's dead. And even the accounts from the women, they didn't know what to make of them at all. They were inexplicable. They were worrisome. Now, I want you to notice that here, as we confront this basic problem, it is a conversation between two individuals whose hopes were dead and buried.

Isn't that true? I mean, that's how it comes across. We had hoped that he was the one. He's clearly not the one, and we're having this discussion about it, going back and forth, and so on. And verse 15 tells us that as they talked and discussed these things in their animated interaction, they are joined by a stranger. Now, I hope you notice that it doesn't say that they didn't recognize him. They didn't recognize him.

But that's not what it says. It says that they were kept from recognizing him. I find that very helpful, because if it had simply said they didn't recognize him, I would have been tempted to say, That's weird to me. I mean, how can you not recognize him? Even though you didn't expect to see him there, even though his resurrection body had different characteristics to the one that he took into the tomb, even given that, you would anticipate that it would be enough about this person that you would recognize him. And so Luke, with his eye for detail, points out they were kept from recognizing him. I wonder if what Luke is doing there is something very important—namely, pointing out to us and pointing out to his readers that we cannot see the risen Christ, although he is walking with us, unless he wills to disclose himself.

Think about it. Some of us were brought up in Christian homes. Our fathers read the Bible routinely at the end of the meal.

We were taken to church, we attended Sunday school, we moved, if you like, in the company of Christ. But we didn't recognize him. Some of you come routinely to Parkside Church. But you do not recognize him.

You may even wonder why it is. It may be that God has kept you from recognizing him, in order that when you do, it may be so clear to you that this is the Lord's doing, and it's marvelous in his eyes. In other words, that your own skepticism, your own diffidence, your own sense of, I don't know about this, is all swept into God's economy as he brings you to the point of a great denouement, and you say, Aha, so this is Christ! As opposed to, you know, well, I know there is a Jesus, or I know that my children sing the songs about him, or I know they bring the pictures home from the Sunday school when I go and pick them up up the stairs, but I need to just get in the car and get on with my life. I don't recognize Jesus.

They were kept from recognizing him. And he speaks to them. He just asks a question. What are you discussing together as you walk along? What's the topic of the day, essentially, saying? What's happening? What's everyone talking about? What are we talking about today?

It's a fair opening line, isn't it? Happens all the time, people say, on elevators and in airport terminals and on buses and at bus stops. So, what's the word on the street, you know? What's happening?

And they say, Excuse me? Are you just a visitor to Jerusalem? You don't know the things that have been happening there in these days? In other words, we're talking about what everybody's talking about. If it had been this past week, if this had taken place on Monday, their response would have been, What?

You didn't see the halftime show? Jesus comes back and says, So what's everybody talking about? So what are you talking about? Well, we're talking about Jesus of Nazareth. I love the irony in this, don't you? It has the touch of John's Gospel about it. Happens all the time in John, these little ironies.

Luke doesn't do it very often, but it's perfect here. So we have Jesus talking to them, asking them what they're talking about. They're talking about him, but they don't know he's he. He's him.

Him who? Ha ha ha! Whatever it is, all right?

It's fabulous. A child reading this as a bedtime story will get this very quickly. Faster than some of us intellectual adults, who say, Well, I don't know. So the child goes, Daddy, does that mean that he…? That's right! Wow! This is a great story, and it is a great story. So what are you talking about? Talking about Jesus of Nazareth. Oh, Jesus of Nazareth! Very interesting, yeah.

So, what's the word? Well, his sermons were fantastic. Terrific sermons. We were sick and tired of the scribes, the Pharisees. Their stuff was boring.

It was horrible. The same old stuff week after week. But when he spoke, people listened. People began to follow him and believe in him. We had done the same thing. And his miracles—wow!

We've seen lame people get up and take their beds and walk, blind people see. We saw the transformation of a little cheat called Zacchaeus. Came scattering down the tree and finally came out of his house, and his whole life was turned upside down.

Oh, yes. Jesus of Nazareth. Fantastic sermons.

Wonderful miracles. There is no question that he was a prophet. He was a prophet. But the chief priests and our rulers, the Jewish authorities, handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him. And our hopes for liberation—verse 21—all came to a grinding halt.

We had hoped he was going to be the one to redeem Israel. It's now the third day since all this took place. There doesn't really seem to be any indication of the fact that he is who he claimed to be. The women have gone, and the story is out about the angels and so on.

Some of our companions actually went to the tomb. They found it just the way the women said, but him they did not see. Now, when you read this, it's not difficult to catch the perplexity in their voices, the disappointment, the sense of hopelessness that permeates the account.

That's the basic problem. The disciples had a complete sense of hopelessness without Jesus. We're seeing that in the Scriptures.

You're listening to Alistair Begg on Truth for Life with a message called Getting the Big Picture. Today's teaching helps us imagine what it must have been like for Jesus' disciples in those first days after his crucifixion. All they'd hoped for had been lost, but the resurrection of Jesus changed everything. That's our focus this weekend as we celebrate Easter—the fact that we have a risen Savior.

Today I want to recommend to you a book that affirms this truth. The book is called Alive—How the Resurrection of Christ Changes Everything. We live in a world where many people dismiss the resurrection as a myth, but the truth that Christ rose from the grave is the very heart of the gospel. The author of this book walks through the Scripture to demonstrate how the resurrection is foreshadowed in the Old Testament and fulfilled in the New Testament.

He explains how the reality of the risen Lord changes our lives forever. So whether you're looking to deepen your understanding or convince others of God's truth, we want to invite you to request a copy of the book, Alive, when you give to support the mission of Truth for Life. You can donate online at truthforlife.org slash donate or call 888-588-7884. If you'd rather mail your donation along with your request for the book, Alive, write to us at Truth for Life, P.O.

Box 398000, Cleveland, Ohio 44139. I'm Bob Lapeen. We hope you have a blessed Resurrection Sunday. Alistair continues his message Monday explaining where so many of Jesus' followers have gone wrong. I hope you can join us then. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.