Easter Sunday: Resurrection Perspective
Pastor Fletcher preaches about a post-resurrection story about Jesus from Luke 24:13-35. Discussion points: Jesus’s followers’ perspective was limited to a political and worldly salvation, there are many stories from the Old Testament that point to and foreshadow Christ’s coming, God is always alongside us even when we can’t see his perspective.
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Scripture reader: [Luke 24:30-35] When he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them, and their eyes were opened, and they recognized him, and he vanished from their sight. They said to each other, "Did not our hearts burn with us within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the scriptures?" And they rose that same hour and returned to Jerusalem, and they found the were and those who are with them gathered together, saying, The Lord has risen indeed and has appeared to Simon. Then they told what had happened on the road and how he was known to them in the breaking of the bread.
This is the word of the Lord.
Preacher: Hi, good morning. He has risen. It's good to see you all. My name is Fletcher. I'm the lead pastor here at the church. Always joyous time to get together for Easter and to celebrate this wonderful day together. Back when I was a kid growing up in the late 1900s, my. The, the, the things that we call cell phones these days, you know, or just phones, they didn't exist. It was like if you were really wealthy, you would have like a bag phone that you had in your car that you could call someone from. Anybody remember the bag phone? Don't you you don't have to admit to having one, OK? That would be a confession. I already said that you're, you would be really wealthy in my mind if you had a bag phone as a kid.
Or you had this big, Zack from Saved by the Bell phones that had the antenna that would come out. There was, there was all kinds of situations that you would get into that you could really need a cell phone. And this is one example. When I was a kid, I was probably 3 years old, so maybe 1989, my father was not home and we were living in Midtown Memphis at the time and in an apartment there my, my mother was vacuuming and I was just playing climbing on something. This is my earliest memory of my entire life and as I'm climbing on something I fall down and I just crack my head open in the middle of the room. And there's blood kind of everywhere. It's bleeding. My mom, she just stops the vacuum immediately and leaves it there, picks me up, puts me in the car, and takes me to the emergency room because it's very obvious.
Now when we get to the emergency room, everything's fine, no, no brain damage that we know of. they just stitched me up and send me on my way, but my father got home before we did, and so you can just imagine what he walked into. He walks into a room, vacuum in the middle of the floor, blood everywhere, family gone. He's like going into a Liam Neeson kind of moment here. He's like, who has taken my family? he's gonna become a bad man very soon. but we got home soon after, and that is one of the reasons why you always leave a note.
Our perspectives color our reality. As humans, our perspectives are limited. We can only see things from one side. There are some people who have the gift of being able to see things from other people's point of views, and we tend to pay them far too little money and call them mental health therapists. But God has the ultimate view of reality. He sees everything and the amazing complexity from a heavenly viewpoint. And I promise you that if you could see your life from God's point of view. It would change the way you think about everything.
With it being Easter, we normally preach through books of the Bible, kind of verse by verse or, or idea by idea at least. With it being Easter, I decided that we're just gonna take a pause in our first Thessalonians series and go over to a story about the resurrection in the book of Luke. So this story of the resurrection is one of my favorite stories in the entire Bible. It's about the the walk on the way to Emmaus, and two men who meet Jesus, actually we don't know if one of them is men. We only one of them is identified as Cleopas, and the other one is not identified at all. So two people on the way to Emmaus. And they're talking about things.
And as you see, these two people who are on their way to this town known as Emmaus. They're discussing what they have experienced over the past few days, and they only have one perspective of what's happening, but very soon their perspectives are widened and they're able to see things from God's point of view and it changes the way they see everything. So let's dive into this two points for today. First, our perspective. Second, God's perspective, as easy as that.
First, our perspective. So the story starts on the same day that the tomb is found empty. We're going to start in verse 13, and we're not going to go we we read only verses 30 through 35, but we're going to start in verse 13 so we can get the full story. And so in verse 13, what you see are we see that very day, two of them were going to a village named Emmaus, about 7 miles from Jerusalem. One of these people is named Cleopas. We don't actually know who the other person is, and Emmaus as it says, is 7 miles from Jerusalem.
I don't know how many of you have taken a 7 mile trek. We know that Jerusalem is on top of a hill, so it's downhill most of the way. And so you can do a 7 mile walk down an incline in about 2 hours. That's your average time, you know, you can walk 3 miles in an hour. That's not too crazy, 3.5 miles in an hour. So we're thinking about this being a 2, maybe 3 hour walk that they're taking. If they go slowly, and they're talking about the things that have happened over the past 3 days, and then someone shows up, and we know it to be Jesus himself, but they didn't recognize him at first. Verse 16, it says that their eyes, but their eyes were kept from recognizing Jesus as he drew near.
Now, this probably means that God supernaturally kept them from recognizing Jesus in that moment. It also is likely that they were not Jesus's closest followers. They also did not expect Jesus to be risen from the dead and so they weren't looking for him and they weren't his closest followers, but ultimately I think it was because God had supernatural. Actually cause them to not be able to recognize who he is so that they, they could have this experience that they're going to have over the next 2 hours or so walking with him on the way to Emmaus.
And so Jesus asked the two of them, he says, what's this conversation that you're holding as you walk? Do not miss their first response. It's so great. They say they stood still looking sad. They were mourning. How the irony is just dripping here. They stood still looking sad because Jesus was dead, yet he was standing right in front of them. And Jesus responded, and they responded to Jesus actually. Jesus didn't respond. They responded to Jesus after they looked sad, they said, are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened in these days? What a hilarious question. In fact, Jesus is the only one who knows what has happened in these days. You all think, Jesus might be able to say, you all think that I'm dead and buried, defeated, but I'm alive and death is defeated.
Jesus simply asked them what's happening and what has happened. And so they explained the story to Jesus from their point of view, the story of Jesus to Jesus as they see it. They cannot see things from God's point of view, from Jesus's point of view. So there's parts of the story they're just off as they recount it.
Verse 19, Cleopas recounts the story. He says the story of concerning Jesus of Nazareth, a man who was a mighty prophet in deed and word before God and all the people. So let's look at that for just a second. Jesus was primary word he said was. A mighty was mighty indeed and word. He was a prophet mighty indeed and word before God and all people. He's this man from Nazareth. Notice what he doesn't say. He does not say that he was the Messiah, that he was the Christ. He's missing important information about who Jesus is, and he continues and how our chief priests and rulers delivered Jesus up to be condemned to death and crucified him. But we had hoped that he would be the one to redeem Israel. And so here Cleopas says, speaking to Jesus, saying we had big hopes for Jesus, but he was quite a failure. He, we thought he was going to redeem Israel, but he did not succeed.
In his efforts to redeem Israel, you see, Cleopas understood that Israel needed to be redeemed, but he had no idea what Israel needed to be redeemed from. He thought that the problem that Israel was facing was Rome, that the Romans had taken over the land, and that they needed to be liberated from their captors so that they could reign as a mighty kingdom once again as they had under the great King David. But his perspective is limited, is it not? He does not see the great slavery captivity to sin that all of us sit under and the actual thing that Jesus came to accomplish, which is not a political liberation, but a spiritual liberation from death and sin and defeat. His perspective Is limited. Friends, if you start to see Jesus as a failure, you might need to rethink your definition of success. Let's look at it from God's perspective.
Number 2, God's perspective. You see, Cleopas's dreams of Jesus rising to power were far too small. And shortsighted, sure he had these big dreams in his mind it was an amazing thing that Jesus was going to come to power he was going to kick the Romans out he was going to become the great king that they had longed for for all of these years. Those are big dreams, big visions. If any of you told me that one day you want to become president of a nation or king of a nation and liberate them from captors, whatever it might be, I might be like, whoa, you got big dreams. But his dreams, Cleopas's dreams for Jesus, were far too small for what Jesus had in mind. Because an earthly king can only do so much. And every earthly king has died relatively quickly. Jesus was set on something far bigger.
The redemption that Jesus is thinking of is not only for Israel but for the whole world, for all those who would believe, not from political powers, but from the evil of sin that lives within us all. So how does Jesus respond to Cleopas? This is what he says. He says, Oh foolish ones and slow of hard to believe. It's almost like he says it aside, right? Like he's not even speaking to Cleopas. It's almost like he's just kind of like, these guys again. But he, he says, Oh foolish ones, and when he says foolish, he's not saying you're so dumb. That's not what he's saying when he says foolish, what he's saying is a moral statement in the Bible to be foolish is a moral statement. The Bible says that the fool says in his heart that there is no God, and so he's saying that they're not hearing what I'm saying about this, and Jesus says. Without them knowing as Jesus still. Was it not necessary that the Christ suffered these things and enter into his glory?
You see, Cleopas cannot think of any reason why Jesus might have in his plan to die. He's got other plans for Jesus. But Jesus says, was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things? Friends, it was necessary that the Christ should suffer these things. It was necessary for a lot of reasons. Jesus had to suffer like this to rescue his people from the curse of sin. Jesus had to suffer, and I often think this, and many of you might think this, why can't God just forgive people? Why did Jesus have to die on the cross?
And the reality is if you have a God who is always just. Then you have a God who must punish every sin. He cannot allow evil to go unpunished. This is what gives people who withstand oppression great hope, to know that those who oppress them, those who sin against them will not be left. Off the hook for their sins, for their evil. Every sin must be paid for, but at the same time, God is gracious and he wants to give us salvation. So therefore, the only way that he could do this was to pay the cosmic penalty for sin himself. It is an amazing reality that Christ said that it must. Necessary for him to die because he took on the sins so that God would still be proven righteous and just a just judge, but yet at the same time generous and loving, he stands between those two on the cross, where God's wrath and his mercy meet.
By suffering like this, Jesus both satisfied the justice of God and welcomed us into relationship with God. And in so doing, Jesus inaugurated what we call the kingdom of heaven. Where the reign and rule of God exists today. In part, not in full. But through the lives of those who follow Christ, I love the way that NT Wright, an Anglican bishop or former bishop, puts it, he says Jesus' resurrection is the beginning of God's new project, not to snatch people away from earth to heaven, but to colonize Earth with the life of heaven.
So Cleopas thought that Jesus was a failure. But he just lacked perspective of what God was doing. And then Jesus says, And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted, and then the scripture says, sorry, beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted them. All the scriptures, the things concerning himself. As Jesus is walking on this road to Emmaus, he does a little Bible study. He takes what's left of their 2 hours and he just starts walking through the Bible and of course he cannot speak about every story in the Bible, but he does an overview of the entire story and these, these were Jewish followers they certainly knew their Bible, they certainly knew their Old Testament, but Jesus gave them new eyes to see who Jesus really was. Again, they still don't even recognize that this is Jesus, yet he's walking through the scriptures and explaining to them how Jesus, his name is on every page and beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted them in all the scriptures, the things concerning himself.
I don't know what he brought up at that moment, but I would suspect it might be a few of these things. That he might have started with Genesis. And in the story of Genesis, he might have started with Adam and Eve, as many of our stories do start with Adam and Eve, and he may have talked about the first promise of the gospel that we have in Genesis chapter 3. When after Adam and Eve's sin, God says that he would put enmity between Satan and the child of Eve, and he says to the evil one, he says to Satan, he says, the child of Eve, he will bruise your heel, but you, but you will bruise his heel, but you will, but he will crush your head. Let me say that one more time. You will bruise his heel, Satan, but he will crush your head. And on the cross Jesus' heel was bruised and the head of Satan was crushed.
Then he may have walked, just jumped over to the story of Abraham and Isaac. Abraham, if you remember the father of all of Israel, Father Abraham. Had many sons. and he might have told the story of Abraham and Isaac walking up the mountain as Abraham has to carry the wood for the sacrifice, and as Isaac has to carry this wood for the sacrifice, and Isaac's asking, where is the sacrifice, Father? and he's like God's going to provide the sacrifice. And God has told Abraham that he must sacrifice his very own son Isaac, and they're climbing up Mount Moriah. And when they get to the top, Abraham has a knife over Isaac ready to kill his own son for love of his father, God in heaven and God stops him and he sees a a ram caught in the thicket. And he sacrifices the ram instead. And then fast forward many years later that mountain, Mount Moriah has been renamed Mount Golgotha. As the very same mountain where Christ climbed with his wooden cross on his back, the Son of God Himself. And was placed but this time, he would be both the ram and the son taking the penalty for our sins.
He may have moved on to the story of Joseph. The young man betrayed by his brothers sold into slavery, left for dead. Betrayed Given up Walked away from, but yet this brother, he would be the one that would go before them to prepare the way for them to go to the promised land just as Christ would be betrayed by his disciples and go before them to prepare the way to the promised land. He may have gone to the story of Passover in the book of Exodus. Where Pharaoh and the people of Egypt have had plague after plague after plague, and they finally get to the final plague and it's the plague of the first born son, and in this story with the first born son, there's the story there's the angel of death that's going to come through the camp and kill every first born son in the entire camp unless. You take the blood of a lamb, a spotless lamb, and you put it over your doorpost. You see, even that blood is my blood, Jesus would say. That the angel of death, when you have the blood of Christ on you, skips over, passes over you, that you might continue to live.
He might have moved on to the time of the great kings and King David himself, and he might have drawn out how he himself is a descendant of the great King David. That he comes from the royal line of David and the tribe of Judah.
He might have moved on to the book of Daniel, the great prophet of Daniel. We, we just did a whole series on Daniel spent over 10 weeks or so in the book of Daniel. There's so many different things you could pick up on there, but he almost certainly talked about how he's the son of man. Come to destroy the beast, to set his people free, the beast that lives within each of us, the evil desires and sin that we have.
He may have moved on, he almost certainly did move on to the book of Isaiah. Isaiah 53 in particular, and he may have shared this passage which seems so descriptive, it is hard to believe it is in the Old Testament. Like if you take this passage and show someone and say, tell me which testament this is in, they're almost always gonna be like that's obviously New Testament. This is Old Testament 500 years or more before Jesus was born. 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. All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
It's really amazing that Cleopas and his friend, they get this opportunity to hear the Bible taught as it's meant to be understood. For the first time. The first people to understand the Bible in all of its perspective from a heavenly point of view. And after they get done with the walk they finally go and they eat, they sit down and they're eating and as they're eating, Jesus prays and serves them the food and they're still like, who is this guy walking with us? And at that moment their eyes are open and they see who he is and it's so crazy this story, I don't really get it then it it just says he vanishes. And it's like I don't know. I don't know how he vanished, OK? I wish, I think personally I'm like, I think it was just like mic dropped out of the room, OK? I'm getting out of here. I got other things to do. You see who I am, my point is received, but who knows how he vanishes.
It just says he vanishes and God works like that, doesn't he? How we're going through life, we're suffering, we're struggling. He's walking with us all along the way. And we just don't recognize it. And then our eyes open, we're finally able to see that he's with us, that he's been with us this whole time, in fact. Because we just didn't have his perspective. We need some of that heavenly perspective, do we not? But the challenge is you can't just get it. You can pray and ask God, help me see things the way that you see it. In fact, that is a bold prayer. I would encourage you today. God, help me to see my life the way you see my life. In fact, there's almost no better prayer for you to see how well you were loved, to see how well you're taken care of.
But many of us, we go through difficult dark days. And we just don't see where God is acting and where he's moving, but, but he's got his plan and his perspective on things. I can think of one time, when I was in grad school I was dating someone and I thought that it was the right relationship. It was before Megan and I even met and um. That it wasn't, it wasn't right for me and I think if you've been through a breakup that you thought was going to work out, you know that's a really painful experience. It's there's almost nothing like being like I'm gonna be with this person and then it's like no you're not. And I, I was kind of on a breakup set calendar for like several weeks where I was like it's been 2 weeks since I got broken up with. And, but actually I got broken up with on a Friday. And I'm still on that calendar I guess.
So two days later, almost like Good Friday and Easter here, OK? Two days, on the third day, I go to serve in in my, at my church and I just substitute. Get this, there were 4 services at this church. I was so lonely that I decided to teach 2 kids classes at 2 different services that day, so I go to substitute teach. At the 11 a.m. service and I'm in a room with 15, 4 and 5 year olds by myself. That's not legal. I'm not sure what they were doing and my wife is placed in the room with me to be my future wife at that point. I didn't know who she was and at that point I decided to sign up to serve every week at that service, no longer a substitute, just put me in. I couldn't see what God's perspective was on this. I had had this serial problem of going into a relationship. Too too fast and not allowing myself to to show discernment, not allowing myself to to slow down, but with this one I made a promise to the Lord probably on that Saturday that I wasn't going to date anyone for 6 months and then he places me in a children's room with my future wife the next day. And I waited 6 months and then I asked her out and and the rest is history. We're still together. Praise the Lord. Amen. Hallelujah.
But I can't the point of that story is sometimes you just don't have God's perspective. God had a plan for what he was going to do in my life. I just didn't see it at the time and maybe he has a plan for what's going on in your life and you could be going through a difficult time and you just don't see that plan yet. A lot of us today, we're walking through life like Cleopas. We're lacking perspective, are we not? Maybe you're in a dead-end job. Maybe your personal life is falling apart. Maybe you're impossibly lonely. Maybe you're suffering from a chronic illness. I don't know what it is.
And look, friends, I'm not here to tell you it's all going to work out in this life. You see, I share that story with you to say sometimes God gives you the ability to see what his plan was eventually. And sometimes he doesn't. But we have to trust, and that is what trust is to say, I trust that you have a plan. I trust that you are going to see this through. And friends, I will share this with you, that if this life is all that there is, if there is no resurrection. Then a lot of our life is going to feel pointless and depressing. When you get down to it, it's just going to feel that way. We have no hope in life without eternity with God.
Many of us, we are walking that way. We're walking like Cleopas. We're walking as if the resurrection did not occur. We're walking as if it is not real, as if Jesus did not get out of that grave, as if he did not promise that we would join him in that life. We feel stuck or depressed because this life is our only hope, and if this life is your only hope, you're in the same boat as Cleopas thinking about only your perspective. But today is an invitation to see your life from God's point of view. To understand that the resurrection means that your story is not over. It means that there is always hope that Jesus has conquered death itself. And because of that, whatever you're going through in this life, you know that there is more to life than this. You have a heavenly eternal hope.
Death is swallowed up in victory. Oh death, where is your victory? Oh death, where is your sting? He has risen. He's risen Friends, the resurrection completely changed the way that Cleopas saw his life. Once he realized that Jesus was resurrected, it changed everything. He was able to understand God's perspective, and it can do the same for you, as DA Carson, the famous theologian says. You are not suffering from anything that a good resurrection won't fix. Our God is not dead. The cross isn't the end of the story. He's alive. And because he lives, we live with him.
This life is not all that there is. We need that resurrection perspective, and today I'm going to invite you if you need that perspective in your life today over that we're going to have a couple of songs in time to respond, and this is really a time to respond in a couple different ways. You can go to the Lord and say God, I've never had your perspective on my life. I've seen my life as my own and all that there is in life. And so I am inviting you to give me that heavenly perspective. Or you might just say in this area, or in this area, I haven't had your perspective on things and I'm inviting you to help me to see things from your perspective, God. You can pray with someone in the back. That'd be an awesome opportunity for you to take that next step. Nothing like Easter to allow yourself to open yourself to what God might have for you in that way.
But also as an opportunity to receive a communion meal each week we participate in the sacred meal that Jesus established on the night that he was betrayed. And on the night that he was betrayed, he took a loaf of bread and he broke it and he said, this is my body broken for you and he took a cup and he said, this is my blood shed for you. Do this in remembrance of me. And so each week we participate in this sacred meal here at the church, whether you call it communion, Eucharist, Lord's supper, whatever you might call it, and it's a way for us to be reminded that Jesus is with us and that he is continuing to work in our lives that his body and his blood broken for us is sufficient that we don't have to continue our own tasks of making it ourselves but his body, his blood is broken and he is resurrected.
And so as we participate in this meal we're reminding ourselves of what he's done for us, the penalty that he's paid, and we do it until he returns one day. So if you would stand with me as we pray, if you are able.
Father, we pray now that this meal would be something that we can delight in, that you can delight in. That as we enjoy communion with you, that you would remind us of your perspective on our lives, help us to see things from your point of view, help us to understand the easy yolk, the gentle way. That you are with us. God, we pray that you would gift us with forgiveness of sins that you would see you would help us to see why it was necessary for you to die, that we would not have the same perspective as Cleopas with just political agendas, but that we might have the perspective of heaven and that we might delight in you. We ask these things in Christ's name, Amen.