From Slow Hearts to Burning Hearts

From Slow Hearts to Burning Hearts

Luke 24:13-43

A Sermon Delivered by Pastor Jim Scott Orrick

April 15, 2001

Let's open our Bibles to Luke 24. When I was a much younger man, while traveling around the country, I visited a certain college. I went to the administration building and met a man there who was very friendly. I don't remember much of our conversation, but part of the conversation went something like this. “Well,” I said to him, “I see that you work here. You're an employee of the college.” He said, “Yes, I do work here.” “What do you do?” I asked him. “I'm a fund-raiser,” he said.

We finished our conversation soon after that, and I went on. I was talking to someone else, and I don't remember exactly how this came up, but it turned out that the man who had identified himself to me as a fund-raiser was actually the president of the college. He didn't want to make me feel ill at ease, and so he disguised himself and just said that he was a fund-raiser. Really, he wasn't telling something that was untrue. How do you think I felt about him after I found out that he was the president? You've got to like a guy like that who was not boasting, "I'm the president of the college,” and who was just willing to talk to me man-to-man.

Well, Jesus appeared to His disciples on the first day after He was raised from the dead, and He appeared to them in disguise at first. Then later on, when they found out that it was really Jesus who had appeared to them, I think that his having disguised himself added to their wonder and their awe at what had transpired that day. We read that Jesus appeared to Mary outside the tomb. She didn't recognize Him. Here is another instance that we will be reading today of Jesus' appearing and His disciples not recognizing Him. That is significant. I'm going to make a point later on that Jesus was drastically changed. He was the same man, but He was a drastically changed man, and it's significant that they didn't recognize Him. This is at least the third, maybe the fourth, appearance that Jesus has made to His disciples on this day that He arose from the grave. He first of all appears to the women. It seems to me that there were a group of them that He appeared to, and they fall down at His feet. He tells them to go tell His disciples that He has arisen. They go, and they tell Peter and John and the others. Peter and John run to the tomb. They find the empty tomb. Jesus is not there, but clearly something unusual has happened. Grave robbers would not have taken the time to have folded up the grave clothes and left them. The napkin that had been on Jesus' face was folded up, and it was by itself. I gather also, that the linen wrappings that were around Jesus' body were simply vacated, not strewn all over the place. You know, they would wrap bodies much the way you think of a mummy, and in the linen wrappings, they would put various spices. John tells us that Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea put about seventy-five pounds of spices in these wrappings, and of course, when the body would be removed from the wrappings, then the weight of the myrrh and the aloes would cause the linen wrappings to collapse. So, I picture the facial cloth as folded up by itself neatly. Then the body wrappings, the linen cloths, were in the shape of a body, but collapsed. There was nobody in them. The stone was removed.

Peter and John saw all of that, and John believed. Peter doubted. Then apparently Peter and John went back to the place where they were staying. It seems that Mary Magdalene was left standing outside the tomb, and then there is a second appearance of Jesus. He first of all appeared to the women, and then Mary Magdalene is standing outside the tomb, and Jesus appears, as we have just read together from the gospel of John. I think it's one of the most dramatic exchanges in the entire Bible when she, mistaking Jesus for the gardener, says to him, “Sir, if you have taken Him away, tell me where He is, and I will go and get Him.” Then Jesus said to her, “Mary.” Just with that one word when He spoke her name, she recognized Him, and she turned toward Him and said, “Raboni!” which means teacher. In that instant Jesus revealed Himself to her, spoke her name.

I dare say that something like that has happened in the lives of all of you who know Jesus Christ. You, like Mary, stood outside the tomb weeping for one reason or another, maybe weeping over your sin, not recognizing that your sins could all be forgiven in Jesus Christ, and then Jesus spoke your name. He revealed Himself to you, and you turned and said, “It's true! It's really true! All that I've heard preached about Jesus." Suddenly the Truth became true to you.

The Resurrection is incalculably important in the confirmation of many truths concerning Jesus, and that statement by itself just seems so mundane. It doesn't begin to capture the importance that is affixed to the Resurrection. By His resurrection from the dead, Jesus was declared with power to be the Son of God.

You remember a couple of weeks ago, I preached a sermon entitled Jesus is God, and I followed the arguments that Jesus presented on His own behalf. We were studying in John 5. He did the works of God. He did them in the way that God does them. He does them when God does them. He knows what God knows. He does works that God alone can do, raising the dead and judging them. But, according to the New Testament, the preeminent demonstration that He was who He said He was, was His resurrection from the dead. And Jesus Himself set Himself up for success or failure by predicting His resurrection from the dead. In John 2, His detractors ask Him, “What miraculous sign will you show us to prove your authority to do all these things?” Jesus said, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it up again in three days.” They thought He was talking about the physical temple, so they said, “It's taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you're going to raise it up in three days?” But the temple He had spoken of was His body. After He was raised from the dead, His disciples recalled what Jesus had said. Then they believed the Scriptures and the words that Jesus had spoken. They didn't fully understand. They didn't fully believe until after the Resurrection, when He was declared with power to be the Son of God by His resurrection from the dead.

Then, if He is the Son of God, His resurrection from the dead also confirms the truthfulness of all that He said because God cannot lie. Suppose that I made some kind of outlandish prediction about something that was going to happen this week. I said, “Next Sunday, there's going to be a tremendous earthquake. You should make ready for that earthquake.” You would be smiting your forehead and saying, “Oh, our dear deranged pastor has joined the ranks of those making outlandish predictions. What has happened to him?” And I said, “No, there really is going to be an earthquake next Sunday, and to prove to you that I'm telling the truth, I will also predict a couple of other things that are going to happen. I am going to be killed on Wednesday, but don't worry. On Friday, I'll come back to life.” You say, “More and more mad! More and more out of his mind—the poor man.” So things go on, and then you get a phone call on Wednesday that Pastor Orrick has been killed. It gives you pause, but you think that surely it just must be coincidence. Funeral arrangements are made, and you attend the funeral on Friday. So Friday you come, and there I am in a casket at the front, and someone is preaching my funeral sermon. Suddenly I kick the lid off the coffin and say, “I told you there's going to be an earthquake Sunday!” You know what? I believe you'd get ready for an earthquake. I really think you would.

That is the sort of proof that Jesus gave to everything that He said. “What sign will you give us?” they asked. He said, “Don't believe me, unless on the third day, I come back to life.” And so on the third day, He came back to life. It is no wonder that the apostles preached the Resurrection so strongly that some people thought they were preaching a new god. When Paul was preaching at Athens they said, “What are these new gods? He's preaching about Jesus, and the Resurrection.” Every sermon in the book of Acts talks about the Resurrection. It was the indisputable proof to those who knew it was true, that all that Jesus said about Himself and all that Jesus taught was true. They considered it so important that when they were determining who was going to take the place of Judas, the criterion was, “It must be someone who has seen the risen Lord.” And in order for Paul to be a legitimate apostle, he, too, had to have a vision of the risen Lord. Paul was granted a vision of the living Christ after Christ had ascended to heaven, but the other apostles, they saw Jesus after He was raised from the dead. All but Thomas saw Him the first day. Thomas saw Him eight days later. Then during the forty days that Jesus remained on earth, He appeared to a group of more than five-hundred people at one time, and several years after that when Paul was writing to the Corinthians, he was able to say, "Most of those five-hundred people are still alive today." So it's impossible for us to overestimate the importance that the Resurrection holds for the Christian life.

I had a liberal professor in one of the colleges that I attended. Right away I perceived that what he was saying was drastically different from what the Bible was saying. He was a religion professor and my Hebrew teacher. I think it was during the very first week of the school year that I asked him a few questions one day after class. I asked, “Do you believe that Jesus died for sinners?” He told me, “I do not believe in the substitutionary penal atonement of Christ.” He thought that Christ just died as an example to show us how eager we should be, how devoted we should be to stand up for the truth. He didn't believe that Jesus died for anyone's sins. So I asked, “Do you believe that Jesus arose from the grave literally and physically?” He said, “To me, it doesn't matter.” But it mattered very drastically to first century Christians, and it matters very drastically to us as well. The Apostle Paul said, “If Christ be not raised from the dead, then we are of all men most miserable. If there's no resurrection from the dead, then it's just crazy for me to go through what I have been going through, fighting with wild beasts at Ephesus. It's insane for me to go through all this suffering if Christ is not risen. If Christ is not risen, then we are of all men most miserable. Your faith is in vain. My preaching is in vain. But Christ is risen. He really is."

From our text today, let’s notice first, their slow hearts, and then their burning hearts.

Jesus chides them and says, “O foolish ones and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken!” And then later on, they say, “Did not our hearts burn within us while He talked to us and opened the Scriptures to us while we were on the road?”

Let's think about their slow hearts. Their slow hearts were, in the first place, sad hearts. When Jesus walks up to them, they don't know who He is. This is a very nice literary touch. We, the readers, know something that the people who are being described don't know. It's a common literary device known as dramatic irony. Of course here it's not merely a literary device; it's a statement of fact, but it does give us the position of observing things from a position of knowledge. So we know they're talking with Jesus, but they don't know it! He asks them, “What kind of conversation is this that you have with one another as you walk and are sad?” So they were very sad. I don't guess they lived in Emmaus. They may have, but I gather they were probably on their way home, and they may have been trying to just make a quiet exit from Jerusalem and go back to pick up the pieces of their lives that they had left when they had come to follow Jesus. One of the disciples here is named Cleopas. He was not one of the twelve. Some surmise that he was actually Jesus', step-uncle, that is, the brother of Joseph, Jesus' earthly father. But the Bible doesn't say that. We don't know who the other disciple was that was with Cleopas.

But Jesus comes up, and He observes that they are sad. It's no wonder that they were sad. They had lost their Messiah. They were greatly disappointed. When Jesus asks, “What are you talking about?” they describe the death of Jesus in this way in verse 19: The things concerning Jesus of Nazareth, who was a Prophet. In their mind they had a great love for Jesus Christ, but if they thought Him to be nothing more than a prophet, then their ideas of Christ were very inadequate. He was a prophet. He was mighty in deed and word before God. He was such a wonderful teacher, and He was also a great miracle worker. He was their hero. He was mighty in deed before all the people. But He was killed. The chief priests and our rulers delivered Him to be condemned to death and crucified Him. But we were hoping that it was He who was going to redeem Israel. And there we catch another glimpse into their inadequate conceptions of who Christ was. They thought Him to be a great prophet, but merely a prophet, a great miracle worker, a great speaker, a great hero, but nothing more. They thought that He was going to be the Jewish Messiah, but nothing more. And much of the teaching that the Lord had given them regarding Himself had just gone in one ear and out the other. Their minds were filled up with a concept of who the Messiah was to be, and their mistaken concept so possessed them that they had no room for who the Messiah really was.

Now in order for them to receive the truth of who the Messiah really was, the Lord took away their mistaken notions of the Messiah. He took away something that they valued very much, so that He might give them something better. The Lord often does that in our lives. He takes away something good that he might give us something better. And He will give us temporary sadness so that He might replace it eventually with everlasting joy. Just take this very event as an example. How happy they would have been if Jesus had appeared to them, not in disguise form, but just as the old Jesus, just like He used to be. How happy they would have been; but if that had been the way He did it their minds still would have been filled up with their false and inadequate conception of who Jesus Christ really was. So Jesus’ purpose in keeping them from recognizing Him was that He might more readily teach them, catching them with their guard down, as it were. He took away some temporary happiness that they would have experienced by seeing their old friend, their old teacher, and their old hero again. He took away that temporary happiness so that He might replace it with everlasting joy, and this is a very minute picture of what Jesus had to do to the Jewish people in general and to all of His Jewish followers. He had to take away their temporary hopes that He was the Messiah so that He could replace it with the true teaching of who He was, and thus give them everlasting joy.

The Lord chides them for being slow to believe. What were they slow to believe? They were slow to believe, in the first place, the teachings that Jesus Himself had given about His resurrection. Notice a phrase in verse 21, which I interpret to be an indication that they were aware of these predictions that Jesus would rise from the dead on the third day, but they just didn't believe them. Verse 21 says, We were hoping that it was He who was going to redeem Israel. Indeed, besides all this, today is the third day since these things happened. Now what does that last phrase have to do with the explanation of their grief? What does it matter that it is the third day? I think it's some indication that they had, in the back of their minds, these teachings and these hopes, that maybe something miraculous would happen on the third day, and that hope and those memories had been stoked by the report they had received from the women returning from the tomb earlier that very day. But now it was late in the day and nothing had happened. Surely if Jesus had indeed risen from the dead, He would have revealed himself to his followers by the end of the day! So they didn't believe the teaching of Jesus, nor did they believe the report from the women. They probably reasoned, “Yes, there were women of our company who arrived early at the tomb and astonished us, but after all they were just women. I mean, they're prone to be excited,” and the disciples didn't believe them. Their words seemed to them like idle tales, verse 11 reports, and they did not believe them. So Jesus chides them, “O foolish ones and slow of heart to believe. You were slow of heart to believe the teaching that I gave you about my resurrection, and slow of heart to believe the report of the women. But specifically Jesus says in verse 25, “You're slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken.” All of this was taught in the Old Testament, that Jesus would be raised from the dead on the third day. Jesus rebukes them for being slow of heart to believe what the Old Testament plainly reveals.

But the experience of these two followers of Jesus is not entirely described by slow hearts. Now let’s turn our attention to their burning hearts. Jesus says in verse 26: “Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory?” And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself. Their hearts begin to burn when Jesus starts preaching to them, and He preaches Christ to them. He preaches Christ to them from the Old Testament, and He explains to them in a way that they've never understood before that all of this was taught in the Old Testament. Jesus starts with Moses. He just starts right at the very beginning, and I can just imagine the three of them as they're walking along. Jesus was eloquent and speaking with emotion about what the Scriptures had to say concerning Himself, and I can imagine these two disciples as they listen, lumps forming in their throats, and their hearts burning as they think, “Yes! It's true! It's true! I see it! The Christ was to suffer and then enter into His glory.” But still there must have been lingering doubts in their minds. If all this is true, then where is Jesus? Were those crazy women telling the truth this morning? They're still slow of heart to believe the Scriptures and the Prophets and all that was spoken concerning Jesus.

And then they reach the point where, I suppose, they're at Emmaus, where they're going to stay that night. I don't know if they lived there or if they were just going to have temporary lodgings, but Jesus made as if He were going on. But they wanted to hear some more, and they said, “Stay with us. The day is far spent. Come and stay with us. It's toward evening.” And He went in to stay with them. I think there are times in our own lives when Jesus acts as though He is going to go on, to see whether or not we are going to say, “Stay with us.” The Lord stayed with them, but He would be invited to stay with them. I'm afraid that sometimes you and I enjoy so little of the Lord's company at our table because we just haven't asked Him. We haven't said to Him, “Lord, will you stay with us? Come and stay with us, and give us some more of that talk that makes our hearts burn inside of us.” But they asked him to stay, so Jesus went in, and He stayed with them. And the next thing we know, Jesus has taken over the dinner party. That's what Jesus will do if you ask Him to come home with you, if you ask Him to your table. It won't be long until He takes over, and that will be just fine. It may not be very mannerly for me to come to your house and take over, but it's entirely appropriate for Jesus to come to your house and take over, because He's the Lord.

And it came to pass, as He sat at the table with them, that He took bread and blessed it and broke it and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they knew Him; and He vanished from their sight. Why? Why, just at that moment, when they recognized Him, did Jesus vanish from their sight? For one reason, I think that Jesus was showing them and teaching them that He had not merely been resuscitated. He had been resurrected. He had not merely come back to life in His old body that was the same as it was. It was His body, but it had undergone a tremendous change, so that He could suddenly become invisible. He could walk through doors that were locked. It was His body, but it was now a glorified body, and Jesus taught them in an instant what pages and pages of theology could never have taught them. He taught them that now things are going to be different. “I've not just been resuscitated; I've been resurrected. The glorification of the Son of Man has come.” And not only that, but Jesus taught them in this one instant of disappearing that the glorification of all of His elect people had commenced.

Sometimes I have trouble remembering what I preached last week, much less back in December, but I'm going to ask you to look back in your minds to the month of December, when we studied from Hebrews, chapters 1 and 2, about Christ being made a little lower than the angels. He made Himself subject to mortality. He had not, previous to that, been subject to death, but when He became a little lower than the angels, then He became subject to mortality, like the people that He came to save. I surmise that mankind, as originally made, was not mortal, but that because of sin man has been made lower than the angels for a little while. But the Old Testament predicts that eventually all things are going to be put under the authority of humans. We don't see that happening yet, the writer of Hebrews said. But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, now exalted on high. And the application that I made in December and that I'm going to bring you back to now, is that the resurrection and exaltation of Christ is the first step of the glorification of all believers. And so, in order to teach this truth to the disciples, Jesus disappeared from their view, and in this way he began to teach them, “What has happened to Me with My death and My glorious resurrection, will also happen to you.”

Later on, the Holy Spirit plainly revealed the truth to them. It does not yet appear what we shall be, but this we know: when we see Him, we shall be like Him, for we will see Him as He is. The Apostle Paul says, “Our citizenship is in heaven, and from there we eagerly expect a Savior who will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like His glorious body.” I don't want to speculate too much. I don't want to go beyond what the Apostle John says when he says, “It does not yet appear what we shall be,” but we can gather a few things from this sudden disappearance and reappearance of Jesus, as to what our existence will be like when we have glorified bodies. These were sown in weakness, but will be raised in strength. These bodies were sown corruptible, but they will be raised incorruptible. And we will be changed to be like the Lord, Jesus Christ. So I think that Jesus disappeared from them, first of all, to show them that His new life was not a mere resuscitation of the old life. It was a resurrection to newness of life, and then secondly, that this was a foretaste of what was going to happen to them who are believers in Him.

And then I think there's a third significant reason for Jesus suddenly disappearing from them like this, and that is to teach them that from that time on, their relationship to Him was going to be one that was by faith and not by sight. We read a few minutes ago that Thomas said to the disciples, “I won't believe it unless I put my finger in the place where the nails were in His hand and unless I thrust my hand into His side.” Eight days later Jesus appears to the disciples, and Thomas is with them. And He quotes Thomas' words back to him. It must have made Thomas hang his head in shame. “Thomas, reach out your hand. Put it in the nail holes here. Reach out your hand, Thomas. Put your hand into my side.” I don't think Thomas did it. Thomas said, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said, “You have believed because you have seen. Blessed are those who do not see and yet believe.” And of course, that's the position that you and I are in. There are times when we foolishly long for some kind of miraculous appearance of Jesus Christ to comfort us in our sadness, to soothe us in our disappointments, but Jesus teaches us here, that now our relationship to Him is to be commenced and carried on by faith. And we are to believe in the Christ who is taught in Moses and in the Prophets and in the New Testament.

I think these disciples on the road to Emmaus give us one of the tests of true preaching. “Did not our heart burn within us while He talked with us on the road and while He opened the Scriptures to us?” You know, I have said before, I don't think there's any substitute for coming and hearing the preached Word of God from a real human being. Printed sermons are good, but printed sermons are like a printed description of a fire. Tapes of sermons are good, but it's like a description of a fire with a soundtrack. Videos of sermons are good, but it's like a video of a fire with sound and pictures. But the live preaching of the Word ought to be like standing by the fireside, where you can feel the heat, and you can smell the smoke, and your heart burns within you.

Well, they hurried back to Jerusalem. They found the eleven together, and they said, “The Lord is risen indeed.” The New International Version says, “It is true, the Lord has risen, and has appeared to Simon.” And then these disciples, fresh back from Emmaus, told about the things that had happened on the road and how He was known to them in the breaking of bread, and then notice: As they said these things, Jesus Himself stood in the midst of them and said to them, “Peace to you.” But they were terrified and frightened and supposed they had seen a spirit, and He said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I, Myself. Handle Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have.” When He had said this, He showed them His hands and His feet, but while they still did not believe for joy and marveled, He said, “Have you any food here?” So they gave Him a piece of broiled fish and some honeycomb, and He took it and ate it in their presence. And once again He is demonstrating to them that He is not a resuscitated corpse; but neither is He a disembodied spirit. He is showing to them, “I am not a ghost, I'm not a shade. You see, a ghost doesn't have flesh and bones as you see that I have. Go ahead. Feel it. Touch me.” He had flesh and bones. They still didn't believe it, and so He ate some fish, and He ate some honeycomb, and they knew that ghosts didn't do that.

The Resurrection from the dead is not teaching us only the immortality of the soul. They already believed that. Jesus is teaching something far grander. He is saying something about Himself and something about us. He really is the Son of God. And made like Him, like Him, one day we, too, will rise.

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Scripture from The Holy Bible, New King James Version. Copyright 1982 by
Thomas Nelson, Inc.

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