Sermon for the Week of Easter

Luke 24:13-35

What a wonderful story we have before us in the Gospel during this Easter week! What a beautiful scene St. Luke paints for us! Two downcast disciples of Jesus—not from among the eleven apostles but obviously sincere believers in Jesus who had spent considerable time with Jesus and the Eleven—walking sullenly down to the village of Emmaus. They had thought that Jesus was the Christ. They had thought that He would redeem Israel. But after seeing Him suffer and die two days earlier, rejected by the leaders of Israel, they thought they must’ve made a mistake. Jesus couldn’t be the Messiah foretold in the Old Testament Scriptures, could He?

Then Jesus comes out of nowhere, walking alongside them, and doesn’t allow them to recognize Him. Why? Why not just announce Himself and begin the Easter celebration? Because they needed a firmer foundation than their eyesight alone could provide. They needed to know the Christ from the Scriptures, and know Him better than they did, because what they knew about the Christ from the Scriptures up until now was far too vague and not nearly enough. They knew He would be a miracle-working Prophet. They knew He would redeem Israel. They knew He would reign on the throne of His father David forever. That was all true, but, again, it’s not nearly enough, which is obvious, because, according to their understanding, the Christ should not have suffered and died.

So Jesus, still not letting them recognize Him, rebukes them: Foolish men! You’re so slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! Didn’t the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter into His glory? And then He patiently walked them through the whole Old Testament, showing them passage after passage that spoke of the suffering of the Christ.

Surely He pointed them to the very first promise of a Savior, given to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, where God said to the devil, in his serpent-form: I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel. They probably focused on the “He will crush your head” part, without ever putting it together that the devil would also attack the woman’s Offspring, striking His heel, as a serpent strikes the heel of a man—a strike that can often be fatal, and in the case of the Christ, it was.

Then Jesus surely walked them through the events of Holy Week, maybe going through it all in order. Maybe He reminded them of Zechariah’s prophecy of the King riding into Jerusalem on a donkey. Or maybe He began with another prophecy from Zechariah, prophesying Judas’ betrayal: “So they paid me thirty pieces of silver. And the Lord said to me, ‘Throw it to the potter’—the handsome price at which they valued me!”

Then on to Maundy Thursday in the Garden of Gethsemane, He likely quoted Zechariah again, telling how all Jesus’ disciples would flee when the Christ was arrested: “Awake, sword, against my shepherd, against the man who is close to me! … Strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.”

He could have continued with Psalm 109, where David prophesies the wicked and false accusations that were made against Jesus by the Jews: For wicked and deceitful mouths are opened against me, speaking against me with lying tongues … In return for my love they accuse me. And Isaiah speaks of how they would commit violence against the Christ, and about He would respond to their attacks: I offered my back to those who beat me, my cheeks to those who pulled out my beard; I did not hide my face from mocking and spitting.

But it wouldn’t be the Jews alone conspiring against the Christ. David had said in Psalm 2, Why do the nations rage, And the people plot a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, And the rulers take counsel together, Against the Lord and against His Anointed, saying, “Let us break Their bonds in pieces And cast away Their cords from us.” And so the Jews got the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, involved, who also conspired with King Herod in Jesus’ trial, fulfilling this prophecy, even as the crowds cried out, Crucify Him! Crucify Him!, fulfilling a prophecy in Psalm 69, Those who hate me without reason outnumber the hairs of my head. And then Pilate condemned Him, even though, as Isaiah had said would happen, He had done no violence, nor was any deceit in His mouth…By oppression and judgment he was taken away.

As Jesus walked along with the two disciples, getting closer to Emmaus, He must have quoted extensively from Isaiah 52 and 53, where it says of the coming Christ: “He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain … Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering … He was pierced for our transgressions … By his wounds we are healed … He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth.

Yes, He was wounded and “pierced,” as Psalm 22 said He would be. They pierce my hands and my feet. And they divide my clothes among them and cast lots for my garment. Meanwhile, Jesus prayed, “Father, forgive them, fulfilling another prophecy, He made intercession for the transgressors. And He was numbered with the transgressors, one hanging on a cross on His right and another on His left.

Maybe these two disciples on the road to Emmaus had been there on Good Friday to hear the chief priests and Pharisees mocking Jesus with almost the exact words from Psalm 22, where the Messiah lamented: I am a worm and not a man, scorned by everyone, despised by the people. All those who see Me ridicule Me; They shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying, “He trusted in the Lord, let Him rescue Him; Let Him deliver Him, since He delights in Him!”

You have to think that Jesus reminded the disciples of the words He cried out after three hours of intense suffering in darkness, words taken directly from Psalm 22, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And when He said, “I thirst,” the soldiers fulfilled the prophecy from Psalm 69, They gave me vinegar for my thirst.

The death of Christ was specifically prophesied in several places. In Psalm 22: You have brought Me to the dust of death. In Isaiah: He was cut off from the land of the living… he poured out his life unto death. And in Daniel: After the sixty-two ‘sevens,’ the Anointed One will be put to death and will have nothing.”

Even after He died, the prophecies continued. When the soldiers found Jesus dead, they didn’t break His bones as they had done with the other two, fulfilling the Passover Lamb prophecy from Genesis, Not one of his bones will be broken. Instead, they pierced His side with a spear, fulfilling Zechariah’s prophecy, “They will look on me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child.” And then, even in His burial in rich Joseph’s tomb, Isaiah’s prophecy was fulfilled: “He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death.”

But death would not be the end for the Christ. After His suffering and death, the prophecies continued from Psalm 22: For the LORD has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted One; nor has He hidden His face from Him; nut when He cried to Him, the LORD heard. Or Psalm 16, which Peter would later quote: For You will not leave my soul in Sheol, nor will You allow Your Holy One to see corruption. You will show me the path of life. Or from Isaiah 53: After You make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, and the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in His hand.

All the while, as Jesus unfolded and decrypted the Scriptures for these two disciples, their hearts were burning within them. How could they have missed all these prophecies? They weren’t mistaken about Jesus being the Christ. On the contrary, the Christ had to suffer everything that Jesus suffered, in order to redeem Israel from sin, death, and the devil. And He also had to rise from the dead to “justify many” through His Gospel, and to build His kingdom, which would include both Jews and Gentiles, and to reign over God’s people forever. So, maybe the stories of His empty tomb this morning make sense! Maybe the tomb is empty, because Jesus is the Christ, who not only died, but has risen from the dead! Maybe His kingdom is just getting started!

And so it was. And so Jesus revealed Himself to those disciples at the dinner table. But only after revealing Himself to them first through the Word of God. That was always His plan. To build His Church through the Word of God, which came to include the eyewitness accounts of those who saw the risen Lord. So keep studying the Scriptures, and the Holy Spirit will continue to open your hearts, too, so that you see the Lord’s death and resurrection, as they were both foretold and fulfilled. This is how the Lord will comfort your hearts in every trouble, in every trial. This is how the living Christ will grow and extend His kingdom until the end of the age, through the preaching of His suffering, death, and resurrection. And you get to be a part of it! Amen.

Source: Sermons

Sermon for the Week of Easter

Acts 10:34-41  +  Luke 24:13-35

We spent a lot of time last week hearing the Holy Week Scriptures. It’s important to know the events of Holy Week. In fact, it’s vital for us Christians to know them. But it’s just as important to know the Word of God that prophesied those events ahead of time, which is why we also spent some time reviewing the prophecies of Isaiah. This is how the Holy Spirit works faith in a person’s heart, through the Word of God, through the prophecies and through the fulfillment of them. Faith comes by hearing the Spirit-inspired words pointing to the crucified and risen Lord Jesus. Faith has to be founded on God’s Word, or it will never last.

Two disciples were walking toward the town of Emmaus on Easter Sunday afternoon. One is called Cleopas, who is probably the same man who is called Clopas by the Apostle John. He was Jesus’ uncle, in fact, married to Mary, the sister of Jesus’ mother Mary, who was one of the women at the foot of Jesus’ cross, together with Jesus’ mother. We don’t know the other disciple’s name, but, like Cleopas, he was not one of the Twelve apostles. They had witnessed all the events of Holy Week, and then their hopes that Jesus might be the Christ were dashed when He died. Even the reports of the women that day and of the empty tomb weren’t enough to give them hope.

Why did Jesus not allow them to recognize Him as He walked with them? Why were their eyes “restrained” so that they did not recognize Him? Because the kind of faith they would need for the rest of their life doesn’t come from seeing. It comes from hearing.

And so Jesus walked through the Old Testament with them, as He walked on the road with them, making the connections for them between prophecy and fulfillment, between shadow and reality, even as we did last week. Using the Holy Scriptures, Jesus swept out the debris in their hearts, the debris of misinterpretation that plagued the people of Israel, the notions that the Christ would appear glorious at His coming, that He would restore an earthly kingdom to Israel, that He would take up the throne of His kingdom without suffering, without dying, and without rising from the dead. As they walked, they began to see the truth, that the Christ, whose coming was prophesied in the Old Testament, had to come first to suffer for sin, that He was to be like the Passover lamb, and like all the Old Testament sacrifices, shedding His innocent blood in order to keep safe all who believe in Him. He had to be lifted up on a cross, like the bronze serpent that Moses lifted up in the desert, so that all who look to Him in faith are saved from the serpent’s venom. He had to be like the tabernacle and the temple, God’s dwelling place on earth. And the temple of His body had to be destroyed and rebuilt in three days.

The hearts of those two disciples burned within them as they listened to the Word of God that Jesus spoke, and only then, after their faith was resting securely on the foundation of God’s Word, only then did Jesus reveal Himself to them and allow them to recognize Him. He didn’t first show them visible proof of His resurrection. He first led them to faith through the Word. Then He allowed them to see.

And so it is with us, too. We haven’t seen Jesus. But He has sent His Gospel out into the world, and His Holy Spirit has caused our hearts to burn as He shows us that all of Scripture was pointing to the cross and to the empty tomb of the Christ, so that we might believe in Him and be saved. That’s the message that brought us to faith, and it’s the same message and the same preaching of Law and Gospel that will bring others to faith. No programs, no activities, no gimmicks, no youth groups, no amount of training in apologetics, no Shroud of Turin will bring a single soul to be convinced of Jesus’ resurrection or to trust in Jesus for salvation. Only the Scriptures. Only the Word of God. Only the preaching that centers on Christ, and on Him crucified. And risen! According to the Holy Scriptures.

And if the Scriptures were telling the truth about the Christ’s death and resurrection, then you can be sure they are also telling the truth about Christ reigning at the right hand of the Father, and about His constant care for His Holy Christian Church and for every single baptized believer in it.

So even though you don’t see Jesus, listen to the Scriptures! Listen to the Word of God! And your faith will grow! And then, if you know someone who doesn’t know the risen Lord Jesus, don’t try to convince them with arguments and proofs. Just use the Scriptures. Tell the story of God’s Word. It’s the Holy Spirit’s only tool for bringing people to faith. And if we come to know Christ through God’s Word, then He will surely abide with us here on earth by His Spirit, until, after believing in Him through the Word, we see Him in person, with our own eyes, when He comes again in glory. Amen.

Source: Sermons