An Unexpected Question (Easter)

The reading is in Luke's Gospel and chapter 24. I only said we were going to start, but we're going to start at 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 they 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 women 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.

As they approached the village to which they were going, Jesus acted as if he were going further. But they urged him strongly, stay with us, for it is nearly evening. The day is almost over.

So he went in to stay with them. When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him and he disappeared from their sight.

They asked each other, were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the scriptures to us? They got up and returned at once to Jerusalem. There they found the eleven and those with them assembled together and saying, it is true. The Lord has risen and has appeared to Simon.

Then the two told what had happened on the way and how Jesus was recognized by them when he broke the bread. While they were still talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, peace be with you. They were startled and frightened, thinking they saw a ghost.

He said to them, why are you troubled? And why do doubts rise in your minds? Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself, touch me and see. A ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see I have.

When he had said this, he showed them his hands and feet. And while they still did not believe it because of joy and amazement, he asked them, do you have anything here to eat? They gave him a piece of broiled fish and he took it and ate it in their presence. He said to them, this is what I told you while I was still with you.

Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets and the Psalms. Then he opened their minds so they could understand the scriptures. He told them, this is what is written.

The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day. And repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations beginning at Jerusalem. You are my witnesses of these things.

I am going to send you what my father has promised. But stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high. Lord, we thank you for your word.

Jesus Christ on the third day rose from the dead. And if we were to interrogate Mary Magdalene, if we were, if it were possible to bring Thomas here and to question him, you would discover that both these unlikely and so completely different personalities were utterly convinced against all the reservations and the suspicions and the fears and the doubts that previously they had entertained that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead. And one of the great evidences for the fact of the resurrection is that so many differing types of people came to this conclusion inexorably that the man Jesus who was pinned to the cross was not snuffed out.

The Jewish authorities and the Roman powers were manifestly incapable of finding some blood-stained, bedraggled corpse and suspending it on some gibbet from the Damascus gate, which they could have done and doubtless attempted so to do, to find the corpse, because that at a stroke would have put to death all the possibilities that were circulating around the bazaars that they had not seen the last or heard the last of the Lord Jesus Christ and his followers. Christianity stands or falls, hear me, stands or falls on the literal, bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ. Now I can demonstrate this quite clearly by taking you to the Apostle Paul, although in a moment we'll come back to the reading from the chapter to which Jim directed us.

The Apostle Paul tells us when he's writing to the Corinthians that if our Lord Jesus was not raised from the dead, then our faith is in vain, the fourteenth verse. If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless. And the word is empty in the original.

There is no substance to it whatsoever. Now you can't drive a cart and horses through that text. It's not wide enough.

The Apostle is laying this down as a fundamental proposition that if the tomb is not empty, if Jesus has not been raised from the dead, then there is no Christian gospel. There is no faith. You cannot talk about the Christ idea.

Jesus and John Brown are very different people. You remember the English folk song, John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave, but his truth goes marching on. Well, that may be the case with John Brown, but not with Jesus of Nazareth, because you see his person and his preaching, his creed and his conduct are inextricably woven together.

If he is not raised from the dead, then what he had to say, which pivoted on the resurrection from the dead, is questionable. We cannot back off for one moment from the historic creedal statement that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead. In the Napoleonic Wars there was a certain tract of land which was taken and lost, taken and lost, on three separate occasions.

And the question that historians have to ask and answer is this. Why was that tract of land so important? And the answer is fundamental and simple. If that wasn't taken, the rest couldn't be taken.

If they were not the English troops victorious there, then there would be no victory at all. And that's precisely the case as far as our blessed Lord is concerned regarding his resurrection. Give that up and the lot tumbles.

There is no faith. There is no Christianity if Jesus was not raised from the dead. I told you this a couple of years ago, but long enough for the majority of you to have forgotten, or many of you who wouldn't have been there on that occasion, that fairly recently, I was saying, going back two years ago, in Time magazine a questionnaire was sent round to American journalists.

And the question was simply this. Choose a character from history who you'd like to interview. But there's only one question you can put to him or her.

They all came up with the same man's name, Jesus of Nazareth. And surprisingly, they all opted for the same question. Did you really rise from the dead? Why is that the most important question for thinking people to ask and to answer today? I respond with three or four explanations.

If Jesus did rise from the dead, it means that there is more to life than just living out 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 years on this planet. If Jesus did rise from the dead, then it is necessary for us to listen to what He also said in other areas. As Tim argued this morning, if Jesus was right on this issue, then the probability is that He will be right on every other issue.

If Jesus did rise from the dead, then He is the most remarkable person that history has ever known. There is not one of the so-called great world religions that claims this of its founder. If Jesus did rise from the dead, then the form that His body has taken gives us some idea as to what it will be like when God recreates the heavens and the earth and our lives enter into a new dimension.

So I say that what this Tory minister refers to as a discussion by half-baked heretical clerical misfits, he's not very complimentary, is he? that takes place this evening is really within the context of the Christian church not a debatable issue. You either believe this or you are not a Christian. There's no two ways about it.

Well, that's just a little appetite stimulator. A stimulus as we come to this particular passage of Scripture that we read earlier. It's found in the 24th chapter of the Gospel of Luke, as you will recall.

And our blessed Lord now finds Himself within the company, the larger company of His disciples. Hugh Hill, in our earliest service this morning at the Tab, took us to the story that precedes this, the two on the Emmaus road. Our Lord has drawn alongside these two and in a remarkable fashion they have come to a realization as to who He actually is and they go hotfoot from Emmaus back to Jerusalem, probably beating the Jewish jogging record for so doing because they've got good news.

They have got astonishing news. They have got the most sensational news that there has ever been in the history of Judaism. For they have come to a conclusion that the man who drew alongside them as they walked to the village of Emmaus is none other than the crucified, once crucified Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, when they come to the disciples who are in Jerusalem, true to form, they discover, as Mary Magdalene discovered, that these disciples were not exactly a susceptible bunch. I mean by that they didn't believe everything that was said. In fact, you could almost come to the conclusion in these resurrection narratives that they were barely believing anything that was said.

The two, verse thirty-five, told what had happened on the way and how they had recognized Jesus when He broke bread. But there's no reaction, at least described by the gospeler, of immediate belief on the part of those who were hearing this testimony. You see, there were amongst the disciples, the followers of our Lord, there was what I would refer to as a strong negative factor.

You see, these were not a bunch of cavemen. These were sophisticated, though men from an artisan background. You know, sometimes today in charismatic stroke evangelical circles, I think the susceptible factor is often quite high.

Especially as far as emotional meetings and claims for the supernatural is concerned. That's not to say the supernatural does not manifest itself. God in His grace can do anything He wants to.

But you can come to a certain sort of meeting and leave your mind at the door and go in and enjoy yourself emotionally. A susceptible factor. But really, as you ransack the narratives of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, as they record the events following the resurrection appearances of our Lord Jesus, what you find is not a susceptible factor, but a negative factor on the part of the disciples.

And we sometimes may shake our heads in shame and say, well if we had been there, we wouldn't have been quite as doubtless, quite as timid in expressing faith. But the problem is that you have known the Christian gospel for a long time and you've got the whole of the New Testament to refer to. They didn't have that.

You're advantaged over them. You see, it had only just been a few hours ago, certainly just a couple of days ago, when they knew that Jesus had been pinned to a cross. Disillusionment.

That's what these disciples were suffering from. You read the past tenses in the narrative that Hugh so movingly led us into this early morning. We had thought that this had been the man who would have redeemed Israel.

We had thought that this would have been. All past. Disillusionment.

Depression. I reckon if the Samaritans had been in business in terms of the organization that we have today, Peter, assuming there were telephones, would have been ringing them when he rushed out into the darkness of the night, having denied the Lord Jesus his acute depression. I think the only thing that stopped Peter from taking his life were the words that were ringing at the back of his mind, planted there by Jesus.

Remember, Peter, I have prayed for you. And the look that was on Jesus' face as their eyes met in the high priest's courtyard. These were depressed men.

They were disillusioned. They were scared men. Read the parallel account in John's Gospel that homes in on this one that we've had read to us earlier.

And you will find the description regarding the house. The door was locked. Why was it locked? Well, the Roman police might be knocking and there along these men may be hooked into their accompanying guard and marched off to the local police headquarters.

Or they could have been delivered to the religious authorities because they were accomplices of our Lord Jesus. The negative factor. Now look, shake your heads and get those little wheels working at the back of your mind because I do want you logically to think this one through.

I am not appealing to your emotion. I want to reach your emotion but I want to reach your emotion through your mind. Give some explanation, will you, as to how these men did a complete about-turn and became believers when they were entirely sceptical as news of the resurrection kept filtering through.

They were not weak men in terms of clutching onto anything. They were terrified men who, if they were going to change as far as their conclusions were concerned then it had to be hard evidence. No one person during the resurrection appearances was ever convinced as a result of the testimony of another.

Each one was convinced by a personal manifestation of Jesus Christ on his or her own or together in company of a few or eleven or on one occasion five hundred. So here our beloved Lord comes into this locked room in which are the eleven and notice verse 36 his opening words of conversation Peace Shalom Be with you. You go down the bazaars in Jerusalem this day and you'll find people, Jewish people will greet you with Shalom but I don't think it was a sort of verbal equivalent of the English handshake.

I think our blessed Lord as he stands before his disciples as he comes into this sealed room is actually proclaiming the victory that he has achieved on the cross. Peace He has made peace through the shedding of his blood. Peace as far as sinners are concerned as they're brought before a holy God.

Every time Jesus manifests himself he always starts off with the word Shalom and this so influences the Apostle Paul that when later on conversion he dashes off his letters to a variety of churches he always incorporates Shalom into his opening statement. I think it's just like Jesus to say peace to the disciples not just in terms of the triumph of the cross but in terms of his relationship to them. You see he had every reason to be disquieted by them.

All their promises they've broken. These were men who said you can trust us and we'll be with you. But one had betrayed him, another had denied him and the rest they'd gone away like frightened sheep.

But have you noticed when Jesus comes back in the resurrection appearances there is not a smattering of vindictiveness. He just comes to his beloved eleven and he says peace. Peace.

Peace. And they nearly jump out of their wits. Well wouldn't you if you were in the lot room and suddenly somebody appears I mean be sensitive towards these disciples.

As I say you're reading back with so much knowledge this is fresh as far as they're concerned this is new. They're startled, they're frightened, they're seeing a ghost. I think the independent newspaper has done a good job this past week.

I'm almost at the point of saying that all evangelicals should resign their subscriptions to any other paper and just stay independent because it seems to me the only paper that is actually taking the resurrection of Jesus and the Christian message seriously. I gave a picture I think it was on Monday of some ghost watching fellow, some of you may have seen it spending nights in church, cemeteries, graveyards God bless him, chasing ghosts. Well I mean if you want to spend your night chasing ghosts well go ahead but what got me was he said well the whole of the Christian message is based on the story of a ghost.

I thought you must be joking. Spiritism has got nothing to do with Christianity. Nothing at all.

Spiritism is of the devil. When our Lord came back from the dead he was not a ghost. He says to his disciples why are you troubled? Why are you so scared? Why do doubts rise in your mind? Look at my hands and my feet.

You know the word stigmata it's the Latin word that gives us the sense of wounds and scars. He says as he shows his hands and his feet prior to directing them to have a look he says it's I myself. In fact the grammatical expression here in the original is bizarre because it keeps coming in with the I and the me.

It sort of butchers the grammar but it gets the truth across. Jesus is saying it really is me. Lads touch me.

See a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see I have. Then he shows them his hands and his feet and still they have problems in believing. Their joy, their amazement, it's running together and their emotions are all in a jumble and Jesus doesn't just want to hit their emotions he wants to hit their mind too.

And so he says and it's sensational the question do you have anything to eat? There's almost a tinge of humour is there not? I mean here's our blessed Lord he's been on the cross and there have been these three strange days and now he meets up with the eleven and he says lads what's it like in the pantry? He appeals to their memory. Three years ago was it? Less? There's a great crowd of people. What's in the pantry? Jesus you must be joking.

We've got no food. And even if we had a substantial sum of money we couldn't feed this lot. See Jesus is twinning in their minds with his skillful question.

An event of yesteryear, two events of yesteryear three times at least our Lord Jesus taught to his disciples in terms of physical food. It seems to me that Jesus is if you please putting his thumb print on this conversation by actually referring to food. You say what do you mean? Well look there are little characteristics that people develop are there not that become the sort of stock in trade of the cartoonists.

You know if somebody didn't have a longer nose than the average or bigger ears or didn't have a nervous twitch or what have you the cartoonists well they would be out of a job wouldn't they? Or put it in a verbal fashion we all have particular phrases. I mean you can work out some preachers just by the phrases that they keep continually using. It's just as though the thumb print of their personality comes out in their ministry.

There's nothing wrong with that we're all human we're all different. Now our Lord has a little quote idiosyncrasy. You ever watch him eat? Have you watched him eat Peter? When he takes bread he looks up to the Father.

How did the two on the emas road know that it was Jesus? Well it was the thumb print. He breaks the bread. But here it's fish.

And fish was the first thing that became the subject matter of conversation. Those years ago when Jesus met up with the disciples on the seashore of Galilee they were catching fish. Leave your fish come follow me I'll make you fishers of men.

Lads have you got any food? Fish. He appeals to their memory. But not just to their memory he appeals to their senses.

We can run through this quickly for I've touched on it. When he said this he showed them his hands and his feet. He wants them to know that he is real.

These men were not hallucinating. I mean a man can hallucinate. He can think he's a poached egg.

He might think any one of several bizarre things about himself. But you never get hallucinations in company. And on one occasion our Lord appeared to 500 people.

Did they all hallucinate at the same time and have exactly the same hallucination? I mean that's basically the conclusion you're driven to unless you accept the truth of scripture or what scripture says as being literal. Appeals to their senses. Touch me.

Why does he want to eat? Well because he's indicating that he is not a ghost. He is real. So when the apostle John starts to write one of his letters towards the end of his life he takes his pen and he speaks about the blessed Lord and he almost seems to refer to it in an impersonal fashion.

That which was from the beginning, speaking of Jesus, that which was from the beginning, the beginning of all time, this God being who stepped into time and space, that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen, which we have looked at, and our hands have touched, this we proclaim concerning the word of life, the life appeared, we have seen him and testified to him and we proclaim to you the eternal life and so forth. You see the point? The appeal is to the memory. The appeal is to the senses.

And as an insight given to the future. You see, one day these disciples will physically die. One day everybody here will die.

Death is a leveller that has no bias at all. It topples poppers and princes. So we're all at least interested in the question what happens when I die? And the Christian gospel says this, that this vile body, it's Philippians chapter 3, the last verse, this vile body, this body of corruption, will one day be like our Lord's body.

The renewed, resurrected body of our Lord, which had a sort of continuity with the old and a discontinuity. There was a similarity and a dissimilarity. Dissimilarity? Well, the disciples didn't immediately recognize Him.

And then when they thought it through and they watched Him and they saw these idiosyncrasies and they heard His language, they came to the conclusion this is none other than our Lord Jesus. And yet, and yet He can do things that He didn't do when He was on His earthly ministry. He can materialize and dematerialize.

And yet He can have conversation, He can take food. The Bible indicates that one day we will have a body like His glorious body. This corruption shall put on incorruption.

This mortal shall put on immortality. What does the future hold for you? The future holds this if you're a Christian. That one day when God regenerates this heaven and this earth, your body will be raised similar to the body that you now have, but dissimilar.

It won't have the aging characteristic. It won't have the propensity towards disease. There won't be the frustrations that are so often part and parcel of life as we now know it.

It will be a body like our Lord's glorious body. And here our Savior shows His disciples what is in store for them and all who love the Lord Jesus Christ as they respond to His gospel. So let me try and draw things together and conclude.

All this depends on the fact, on the claim of the doctrine of the resurrection. If Jesus is not raised from the dead then there's no hope. But that He is raised from the dead is not just you responding to a claim made from the pulpit, a bold statement.

It's you sifting the evidence. How do you explain the change that came in these men, in these women? How do you explain a man like Saul of Tarsus, perhaps the greatest product of Jewish and Greek philosophy, who was so hostile to the Christian church that he went hell bound towards Damascus to eliminate the Christian community there? What changed him? Jesus on the Damascus road appeared to him. Have you sifted the evidence? Two men, once federated together in the 18th century, one to write a book disproving the conversion of Paul, another to write a book disproving the resurrection of Jesus.

They went their own ways and they came back after doing their studies and they were both mealy mouths when first they accosted one another and the one said that he had been unable to prove his point but rather had turned completely round and believed that Saul's conversion to Christianity was utterly genuine and the other said, it's strange you should say that. I have come to the conclusion that the resurrection of Jesus is absolutely true. And he wrote a book which was published in 1747 called the Observations on the History and Evidence of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ and on the fly leaf of the book he says this, Blame not before thou hast examined the truth.

Have you really examined the truth? Have you considered the claims of Christianity as encapsulated within these four documents, the gospels? Is there any other conclusion that you can come to but this, that Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead in the power of an endless life? Then if that is so, have you responded to his atoning death and the value that it has for you? Have you said in that little song that we were singing earlier that I led off in one of the Chinese dialects, I am glad I belong to Jesus? Have you given your heart and your life to him? Has he filled you with his Holy Spirit? Have you that oneness with him that will take you from time on into eternity? This could be your experience right now if you will simply respond to what Jesus Christ offers you. He says to a bunch of men give me something to eat and the implication is I'm back and I love you and I want to give you my peace and I want all the teaching of yesteryear to come to the forefront of your mind and I want you to take that teaching after you've been baptised with the Holy Spirit to the whole world and bring them to a knowledge that God is my father, that I am his son and that my death is the salvation of the world in terms of those who respond in believing faith. Let's bow our heads in prayer and say a simple prayer like this Lord God I've considered some of the evidence I know my own need I confess my sin and ask you beloved God to forgive my sin to fill me with your spirit and to give to me this grand assurance this Eastertide that I'm born again made a member of the family of the redeemed Amen Father we thank you that we can justifiably make an emotional response to that which we mentally receive send us out into this world as Easter people as light to illuminate as salt to savour create faith within the hearts of unbelieving people we ask and bless your church in these days may she be a church militant strong and courageous to go into the seas of unbelief and to fish there and to bring many to a knowledge of the Lordship of Christ send us out rejoicing in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost and all God's people said Amen and the saints risked shouting Amen