Was It Not Necessary?

5 But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.

3/15/2020 - Isaiah 53 - “He shall make many to be accounted righteous” - His righteousness credited to us by faith

Isaiah 53:11 ESV

11 Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities.

3/22/2020 - Luke 23:34 - “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” - Because Jesus, the Son, took on our sins, we can come before God forgiven

3/29/2020 - Matthew 27:45 - “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” - the perfect Son of God was forsaken that we - rebels - could become sons and daughters of God

4/5/2020 - John 19:30 - “It is finished” - The Cross - the enthronement - the coronation - the King victorious. Atonement complete in the death of Jesus

And now, Easter Sunday, we see the result of the victorious work of Christ & ask the question:

I. Eyes and Ears Shut by Sorrow (vv13-24)

<<READ 13-24>>

That same day - Sunday

Two of the same disciples - present that morning as they sat in mourning with the other disciples. Common - 7 days of mourning - Gen 50:10 (Jacob for his father Isaac), when Job’s three friends joined him, they mourned for 7 days with him (Job 2:13). Their mourning interrupted Sunday morning by the breathless return of the women who had gone to complete Jesus’s burial.

These women had left in the same grief as the disciples who stayed behind. Picture - each clutching a delicate box or jar with precious herbs and oils prepared for this purpose. We outsource our loved ones’ beautification to professionals, just like we insulate ourselves from death in every way we can. But for these women, preparing Jesus’ body for his permanent home was a final, tangible act of sacrifice and love. Give your time, your aromatics and oils, and lay gentle hands on the cold and lifeless body of your beloved one.

That’s what they expected. I wonder where the spices ended up? If Mary lost her grip on the little jar of myrrh, would she even hear it thud in the dirt as her heart thumped in her chest? Would Joanna get back to the house, out of breath, and suddenly look down and see the box of cassia, and think how strange it seemed to still be holding it after everything had happened?

The women returned with very different attitude. But the story fell on deaf ears. The apostles and the others dismissed the story. But Peter still got up and ran to see for himself. Luke doesn’t tell us, but John went with Peter, and they returned in awe

All of this happened early in the morning. The mourners would not typically have stood up at midday and said “See you later.” But at least a couple of them did. These two introduced in verse 13 were there during all of this. And they’ve left the mourners to go to Emmaus, seven miles from Jerusalem.

Emmaus insignificant, most likely just a local village, not even sure where it is. Only important b/c of what happens next. Our two journeying disciples are planning to spend the night in Emmaus, vv14-15 says “talking & discussing together” about “all these things.”

And at that moment, Jesus Himself joins their journey. Verse 16 says “Their eyes were kept from recognizing him.” Common in the stories of Jesus’s post-resurrection meetings with His disciples.

At first we might wonder, “What is going on here?” On the Mount of Transfiguration, when Peter, James, John got a glimpse of Christ’s glory, they still recognized Him.

Luke 24:16 ESV

16 But their eyes were kept from recognizing him.

Same word:

Acts 3:11 ESV

11 While he clung to Peter and John, all the people, utterly astounded, ran together to them in the portico called Solomon’s.

Their eyes were restrained, held back and stopped from recognition. Often, when the Gospels use these kinds of verbs, God is the understood actor. And God is definitely sovereign over our eyes & ears. But there’s something else going on in the story, too.

Throughout Jesus’ ministry, He told them what was going to happen to Him - He told them He would be handed over. He told them He would be crucified. But they did not understand, and they did not believe.

This is why, when the women went to the tomb and see the stone rolled away, and Jesus’s body is not where they know it has to be, it doesn’t say they responded by declaring Jesus risen. Verse 4 says their response was that they became perplexed. The angels tell them in verses 6-7 to remember what Jesus had said.

Luke 9:22 ESV

22 saying, “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.”

Luke 9:44–45 ESV

44 “Let these words sink into your ears: The Son of Man is about to be delivered into the hands of men.” 45 But they did not understand this saying, and it was concealed from them, so that they might not perceive it. And they were afraid to ask him about this saying.

The empty tomb did not automatically mean resurrection. One of the most common attacks on the resurrection of Jesus is that someone could have stolen the body of an un-resurrected Jesus and the disciples would respond by proclaiming Him risen. But an empty tomb by itself would have been simply one more tragedy in a week full of world-crushing heartbreak, and we know this because Mary Magdalene’s first response to the empty tomb, according to John 20, was to assume someone had come and taken His body. An empty tomb without a truly resurrected Christ would not have changed the world, because it wouldn’t have even changed one of the disciples.

Everyone - everyone’s default reaction on that first Easter was sorrow, confusion, unbelief.

Because their eyes and ears were shut by sorrow.

ILLUST: When your life seems to be coming unraveled, every time the phone rings you wonder, “What could be going wrong now?” We are slow to see and hear when sorrow overwhelms us. When Jesus joins them on the road, they are not able to recognize Him on their own power.

So, He asks what they’re talking about, and they stop right in the middle of the road in surprise and sorrow, and they tell their story, and here is where we see our second point and a second reason they cannot recognize Jesus.

II. Hearts Shut by Unbelief (vv19-27)

Look how this disciple named Cleopas summarizes the ministry of Jesus starting in verse 19:

v19 - Jesus of Nazareth, a prophet. But is that all Jesus claimed to be? Cleopas calls him “mighty in deed and word before God and all the people,” a phrase that recalls what Deuteronomy 34:10-12 said about Moses, and about the unique prophet that would one day come. And in Luke 4:18-19, when Jesus announced His mission, He quoted from Isaiah 61, saying

Luke 4:18–21 ESV

18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, 19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” 20 And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21 And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

And that proclamation was a promise that Jesus would be mighty in deed and word. That much is true. But verses 20-21 show us where the disciples’ problem sat. His death seemed like a contradiction of His promise. How could he redeem Israel, how could He be the Deliverer, the King of Israel, if the rulers of Israel had the oppressors of Israel kill Him?

Before they even tell of the women’s visit to the tomb, they mention the third day, so Jesus’s words are clearly on their minds.

With the testimony of the women, and the reminder of Jesus’s repeated prediction of His crucifixion and resurrection, and the words of Peter confirming the empty tomb, their hearts are still shut by unbelief.

They had seen His might in deeds and words. He had fed the five thousand and then declared Himself to be the Bread of Life. He had freed the sick and the demon-possessed with only a word, and they had seen it.

But they say “We had hoped He was the one to redeem Israel.” Even at mid-day, in the presence of the resurrected Jesus, their hope was still dead and buried.

They did not believe his death redeemed them, they did not believe that He was raised. They could not recognize Him because they did not believe His words.

APPLY: Now, before we move to Jesus’s response, there’s a couple of questions for us to ponder.

First, I want you to consider the sorrow and fear that the disciples felt on that first Easter. Their eyes and ears were dulled to the truth around them by their sorrow. “But we had hoped,” they said. Everything had happened according to Jesus’s words, but sorrow was like a cattle guard in their minds. The evidence was all there - He was standing there, talking to them.

I expect that some of us woke up this Easter with blinding sorrow, too. Grief has a tendency either to thrust us upon Christ or to stop us dead in our tracks. If you’re stuck in sorrow today, there’s hope for you in this story.

Second, I want you to let the strangeness of these verses sink in. Imagine meeting your best friend in the road and having a conversation with him, all the time thinking it’s a stranger. This is weird, right? The mental block here is a certainty that Jesus could not be raised from the dead. That He cannot fulfill His promises.

Which of God’s promises seem impossible to believe today? That He loves you? The cross and empty tomb are proof of that.

What about His promise that He will never leave you or forsake you? Have you been abandoned, hurt, cast off? Do you fear you are unloveable or irredeemable? The mental block of unbelief is most often a rejection of the central premise of Scripture, that God is who He says He is, and what He says about you.

Romans 8:32 ESV

32 He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?

If you’re not a Christian, perhaps you’ve always approached the Gospels with the same certainty against the Resurrection that these disciples had. In the face of overwhelming evidence, they still did not believe. If you do not believe in the risen Christ, it’s not because of a lack of evidence. The resurrection of Jesus has a matchless pedigree among historical truths.

But even more than that, it is the answer to the problem of death that you can find nowhere else. The Bible tells us that all who belong to Christ share in His resurrection, not just in heaven after we die, but in eternity here, in the renewed heaven and earth when He returns, in literal, glorified and perfected bodies. Maybe you’ve heard a lot about Jesus dying and rising, but you haven’t heard this part: Your body is not a temporary house for the part of you that lasts forever. God didn’t create the world as an infinitesimal blip in the sweep of eternity. His plan is to redeem this world, to renew it and remain with us forever in it. There is no competing worldview to the truth.

Every other philosophy and religion treats this broken world either like the only thing there is - a brutal, short existence and then nothing - or like it’s a mistake or a bus stop before an ethereal afterlife without form or shape or meaning.

Only the Bible invites you to look around at this beautiful creation and say, “It’s not supposed to be like this.” And God says, “Yes.” He invites you to look around and say, “But there’s so much beauty.” And He says, “Yes.” And then to look at death - the death of a loved one, or a beautiful green leaf that turns yellow and falls, and then its beauty wicks away as the leaf browns and dries out and crumbles. Why does beauty fade? The Bible says:

Ecclesiastes 3:11 ESV

11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.

The Bible alone teaches us that God will not permit His world remain in the entropy of sin and death. Apart from the hope of the Resurrection, entropy wins. But God will not allow it.

And in the next words of Jesus, we see what God intends to do about these disciples who are incapable of seeing Him.

III. Hearts Opened by the Living Word (vv25-27)

How does Jesus respond to hearts shut by unbelief? He opens them by His word.

<<READ 25-27>>

Remember that the disciples had said that Jesus of Nazareth was mighty in deed and word. Here, He proves Himself to be mighty in word yet again.

The disciples’ unbelief is addressed first by opening the Word. Jesus points back to the Scriptures that the disciples claimed to believe. They had hoped Jesus was the one to redeem Israel, the prophet like Moses, whom they read about in the prophets. But they had missed the centerpiece of the entire Old Testament: “

Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and then enter His glory?”

The disciples wanted their Messiah to receive glory without suffering. They wanted Him to redeem Israel and take possession of the kingdoms of the earth without fulfilling the Father’s mission. This was the temptation that Satan had put before Jesus in Luke 4. To this day, people continue to want salvation without the cross. The cross and empty tomb are the greatest stumbling block in all of Christianity.

And Jesus’s question puts it to us: Was it not necessary? How would we know? By looking where He tells us to: In the prophets. This is why, over the last several weeks, we’ve continually turned back to Isaiah 52-53. There we have the suffering servant who carries our sins on His sinless shoulders, makes atonement for us, dies, is laid in the tomb, and then sees his offspring.

Isaiah 53:10 ESV

10 Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief; when his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.

And here we see the promise of the resurrection and its purpose: That we would become His offspring. Children of God, reconciled to God. Redeemed.

It was necessary for the Christ to suffer and then to enter his glory, so that the promises of God would be fulfilled in Him.

This is precisely why the cross and the resurrection stand at the center of history and permeate the marrow of every Scripture in both Old and New Testaments. It is the substitutionary death and victorious resurrection of Jesus that give meaning to history. Humanity's striving against darkness only makes sense if the darkness is meant to be felt and opposed.

Every sorrow, sickness, pain, injustice, and every death is answered by God in Christ with, "Fear not, for I have redeemed you."

Every weakness and weariness is answered by God in Christ with, "Come to me, all who labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest."

Every loss, fear, and grief is answered by God in Christ with, "Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom."

Every darkness is answered with, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life."

Jesus, the Living Word, is the One who can open their hearts. Verse 27

Luke 24:27 ESV

27 And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.

Moses told them to look for the prophet like himself. Isaiah points us to the suffering servant, the substitutionary sacrifice, the virgin-born prince of peace, Immanuel - God with us. Daniel tells us of the Son of Man and the Ancient of Days. Zechariah says

Zechariah 12:10 ESV

10 “And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that, when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn.

The disciples had hoped that Jesus was the one to redeem Israel. But it was necessary for Christ to suffer and be raised because that is how He redeemed them.

But the disciples still have not recognized Jesus, and so we turn to the end of the story:

IV. Eyes and Ears Opened by the Bread of Life (vv28-35)

They’ve approached Emmaus, and it’s late, so they extend hospitality to this stranger. But when they sit down to eat, the text says <<READ 30-31>>

What happened here? Jesus showed them that He was still mighty in deed, and not in word only. Like at the feeding of the five thousand, the meal became the moment of revelation and recognition. It was after the feeding of the five thousand that Jesus said to the disciples, “I am the bread of life - whoever comes to me shall never hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.”

Now they turn to one another and say, <<READ 32>>

And they rose and made the 7 mile return trip to find the disciples and tell them. Verse 34 says that when they arrive, they’re not the only ones with news! The whole gathering says what Christians have been saying on Easter Sunday ever since: “The Lord has risen indeed!” And perhaps during their walk back to Jerusalem, He has appeared to Simon Peter as well!

And notice how they conclude: He was known to the min the breaking of the bread.

First He kindled their slow hearts by opening the Word, and then The Bread of Life opened their eyes so they could see and believe.

And this brings us to the question our text calls us to answer:

Question: What shall we do with our doubts and sorrows today?

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