God wants us to deal with ENDURING TRUTH! Enduring truth costs something. “But as it is written, ’Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.” (1 Corinthians 2:9)
A brief summary of Luke 24: 1-53: On Sunday morning, following the crucifixion, several women go out to the tomb. They find the stone rolled away and are told by two angels not to “look for the living among the dead.” Just as Jesus promised, He has been raised. (1-12)
Acts 1:3 tells us that Jesus “presented Himself alive after His suffering by many infallible proofs, being seen by them during forty days and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God.”
In Luke 24: 1-42, we have the first of three resurrection appearances of Jesus found in Luke. Two men are travelling to Emmaus just days after the crucifixion. They are downcast and defeated. Together, they walk and discuss the life of Jesus of Nazareth and how He may still be alive after the tomb was found empty.
We have to go deeper. The deeper we go, the higher we go in Christ Jesus.
For over three years, these men walked with Jesus and now they have lost their faith. Jesus overhears their conversation. “We thought,” they were saying. They share their dashed hopes and tell of the rumors that Jesus is alive, which they do not believe. They don’t understand that the promised King would be a suffering Savior (Isaiah 52 – 53).
Jesus had to come to them to straighten out their thinking. Jesus drew near, but they did not know Him. He called them “foolish ones and slow of heart to believe.” Jesus opened the scriptures to them. “Beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Him.” Later, at supper with Jesus, their spiritual eyes were opened as Jesus broke bread with them. They then recalled, “Did not our hearts burn within us when He talked with us, when He opened the scriptures to us.” Their spiritual eyes were opened! When Jesus vanished, the men returned to Jerusalem where they pronounced to the other disciples that the Lord has risen!
Jesus then appeared to the disciples in the upper room. He dispelled their fears and they were convinced that He was the same Jesus who had been crucified days earlier as the scars in His hands and side showed (John 20:20). He spoke peace to them and commissioned them: “As the Father sent Me, I also send you.” He then breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” As the old creation began with the breath of God, now the new creation begins with the breath of God, the Son. (NKJ notes on John 20.)
Jesus was with them for a short time and then He returns to the Father. But He leaves His disciples with a great promise: He will send the Spirit to “clothe them with power from on high.” (Acts 1:8) These men on the Emmaus Road represent disappointment in our lives. These men had lost their faith.
Jesus was saying to them “The conversation you are having is making you sad!” It was the word of God that restored their joy!
The Church is in a conflict between the Word and the Spirit. There has to be the fullness of the Spirit to have the fullness of Jesus.
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