Sermon Tone Analysis

*Intro*

Christ is Risen!

On this Lord’s Day, we celebrate the greatest event in history: the resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!

Happy Resurrection Sunday!

I don’t like to call this day /Easter/.

Did you know that most likely, this word, as a scholar from England back in the seventh century claims, the origin traces back to an Anglo-Saxon goddess of fertility and spring named Eostre?

So “as Christmas was moved to coincide with (and supplant) the pagan celebration of winter, Easter was likely moved to coincide and replace the pagan celebration of spring.”[1]

Germans also had an equivalent to Santa Claus for Easter, which happened to be a rabbit or bunny who laid and carried colorful eggs to children who were good that year.

And they brought that over in the eighteenth century.

By the way, rabbits don’t lay eggs, if you were wondering.

However, I found out that the history of this might possibly go back even further.

The word “Easter,” which is not found in the Bible, probably has its origins to the Tower of Babel.

After the Flood, Nimrod (Gen.

10:6-10), Noah’s great-grandson, led people in great rebellion against God (according to Jewish tradition).[2]

He was not only a great political leader organizing major cities (Gen.

10:10), supposedly he was also an occult priest practicing all kinds of perversion as well as idolatry and human sacrifice.

His wife, Queen Semiramis, later would make him a god after his death, calling him the Sun-god.

Later, he became known as Baal.[3]

Well the Queen had a son, Tammuz, whom she claimed was conceived without a human father and was the promised seed of Gen. 3:15.

According to the legend, when Tammuz was killed by a wild boar and went to the underworld, she claimed he was resurrected by her tears that spring.

Both she and her son were worshipped (she was called the moon goddess and also worshipped as the goddess of fertility and spring).

In fact, each spring, they held a festival celebrating this “resurrection.”

After the Tower of Babel incident and God scattered the peoples (Gen.

11), other groups kept this religion and called Queen Semiramis, Isthar, which was originally pronounced, you guessed it: Easter.

Interesting history lesson there!

Now I certainly do not judge people doing egg hunts or coloring eggs, as long as for us believers, we do not forget or overshadow the foundation of our faith in the resurrected, exalted Lord Jesus who came up out of the grave and lives forever!

Paul says if Christ did not rise from the dead, our faith is in vain (1 Cor.

15:14).

Let’s all pack up, go home and wait to die! C.S. Lewis says the resurrection is the central event in the history of the earth.

British theologian John Stott adds, “Christianity is in its very essence a resurrection religion.

The concept of resurrection lies at its heart.

If you remove it, Christianity is destroyed.”[4]

Through the resurrection, Jesus was validated as God’s Son, so we can fully believe in Him.

Jesus’ work on the cross was also validated.

Otherwise we just have a valiant martyr and are still in our sins (1 Cor.

15:17).

And one day we too will be resurrected as death was crushed to death.

Today we live, if you will, as Resurrection Sunday people living in a Good Friday world.

I liked what Tim Keller said this week, “Easter means Christmas really worked.”

And as the old church father Clement of Alexander once said that in the resurrection, “Christ has turned all our sunsets into dawns.”[5]

Yet sometimes we seem to have far too many Good Friday moments, too many sunsets than too many dawns or Resurrection Sunday moments.

Some of us have wondered why hopes we had believed would come true have not.

Some of us have disappointments in our journey; some of us had dreams that have been shattered.

We may even have had expectations for the Lord that we thought would have been met by now and questions we thought would be answered.

Sometimes the Good Fridays last longer than just a day.

Sometimes life seems like a lifelong Good Friday.

And though we have glimpses of divine intervention here and there, deep down in our souls, we feel this gnawing confusion, with some regret mixed in.

Maybe we are still trying to find God’s will for our lives.

Maybe we are waiting for a season to change.

Or maybe we are still wondering when we will ever change and be the person God wants us to be.

Today we are going to meet two people on a journey.

They are on a journey because they need to get away.

Proverbs tell us that hope deferred makes the heart sick.

For these two, their hearts were way past just sick.

It was broken, smashed, crushed into a million pieces.

There was nothing good about this Good Friday for the weary travelers in this story.

Everything good in their lives was dead.

But it is right in the thick of this situation, they will meet Jesus Christ, leaving them with an experience they will talk about every day for the rest of their lives.

This is a great story!

Today we will be looking at how the meaning of the resurrection affects our day-to-day lives.

How does the living Christ meet us in the roads we are traveling?

How do we experience Him in ways that will leave us transformed?

Three things here to look at:

*I.    **The Living Christ is the Companion of our Weary Travels (vv.13-16)*

We pick up the story in Luke 24:13.

“That very day” refers to Sunday, Resurrection Sunday.

It is probably afternoon, since by the time they get home (seven miles away from Jerusalem), it seems to be evening (v.29).

We know from earlier in the chapter that Jesus rose in the morning and some of the women found the tomb empty and then told by angels that He arose.

Peter and John also went and looked for themselves and saw that the tomb was indeed empty.

Jesus then appeared to Mary Magdalene as she wept (John 20:11-18).

Now it was afternoon.

Two disciples, out of the probably the 70 in Jesus’ outer core group, had witnessed everything.

They knew the Messiah was dead on Friday, but He had also said He would rise the third day, Sunday.

The women had told them He wasn’t there (Luke 24:9).

However, they themselves had not seen Him.

What if His body was stolen?

Where was He?

Why didn’t He show up yet if He was alive?

Isn’t this always the case with our prayer requests?

We know God can answer them, but it is really hard to trust His timing for everything!

So like them, we often feel like God let us down, by not doing what we wanted Him to do.

And then we get away.

They had grieved a lot up this point.

They felt their dreams were smashed when He died on Friday.

And it seemed like it was going to be one really long bad Friday for the rest of their lives.

You see, for possibly three years, they had put their hope in Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah they had long been waiting for.

We don’t know exactly how long they knew Jesus, but long enough to be convinced that He was God’s Messiah.

They had built everything on Him and now they felt buried under the rubble of disappointment and grief.

He had told them he would rise and so they waited.

And waited.

And waited.

It’s now Sunday, late in the day.

Where was He?

And with nothing else happening, they just need to get out of sadness, gloom, frustration and doubt.

By the way, we know one of them is called Cleophas (v.28), but we don’t know who he was traveling with.

Some have said it was his wife, but we don’t know.

But they are not walking in silence.

They are openly sharing their grief and confusion.

I wonder if tears come and go as they share?

I wonder if sometimes there is a lump in their throats as they look at each other and share?

In any case, they are in an ongoing, intense conversation about the death, burial and resurrection, which should have produced joy and delight, but instead brought doubt and despair.

They still had a lot of questions.