Our scripture reading this evening is found in the Gospel according to Luke chapter 24 verses 1 through 35. Verse 35 verses of Luke chapter 24. Luke has spoken of the crucifixion and the burial of the Lord Jesus and at the end of chapter 23 he leaves us with the people resting on the Sabbath according to the commandment. So Luke chapter 24 Now on the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they and certain other women with them came to the tomb, bringing the spices which they had prepared. But they found the stone rolled away from the tomb. Then they went in and did not find the body of Jesus. And it happened as they were greatly perplexed about this. But behold, two men stood by them in shining garments. Then as they were afraid and bowed their faces to the earth, they said to them, Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen. Remember how he spoke to you while he was still in Galilee, saying, The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again. And they remembered his words. Then they returned from the tomb and told all these things to the eleven and to all the rest. It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James and the other women with them who told these things to the apostles. and their words seemed to them like idle tales and they did not believe them. But Peter arose and ran to the tomb and stooping down he saw the linen cloths lying by themselves and he departed marveling to himself at what had happened. Now behold, two of them were traveling that same day to a village called Emmaus, which was seven miles from Jerusalem. And they talked together of all these things which had happened. So it was, while they conversed and reasoned, that Jesus himself drew near and went with them. But their eyes were restrained, so that they did not know him. And he said to them, What kind of conversation is this that you have with one another as you walk and are sad?" Then the one whose name was Cleopas answered and said to him, Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem? And have you not known the things which happened there in these days? And he said to them, What things? So they said to him, The things concerning Jesus of Nazareth who was a prophet, mighty indeed and word before God and all the people. And how 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. Indeed, besides all this, today is the third day since these things happened. Yes, and certain women of our company who arrived at the tomb early astonished us when they did not find his body. They came saying that they had also seen a vision of angels who said he was alive. and certain of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but him they did not see. Then he said to them, O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe in all the prophets have spoken, 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 then they drew near to the village where they were going and he indicated that he would have gone farther but they constrained him saying abide with us for it is toward evening and the day is far spent and he went in to stay with them Now it came to pass, as he sat at the table with them, that he took bread, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to them. then their eyes were opened and they knew him and he vanished from their sight. And they said to one another did not our heart burn within us while he talked with us on the road and while he opened the Scriptures to us? So they rose up that very hour and returned to Jerusalem and found the eleven those who were with them gathered together saying the Lord is risen indeed and has appeared to Simon and they told about the things that happened on the road and how he was known to them in the breaking of bread. And may God bless the reading of his holy word. Our text this evening is found in the chapter from which we read the gospel according to Luke chapter 24 and verse 25. Then he said to them, O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken. Here we are on the evening of Easter day, the day when, above other days even, we remember, we bring to mind the fact that it is always true that Christ is risen from the dead. that Jesus Christ who was crucified is not in the tomb but he is risen and he is risen indeed. And we are brought back in our reading to that first Easter day, that first day of resurrection when two of that company were travelling from Jerusalem to Emmaus. Now the figure given here is seven miles from Jerusalem. There is some debate, if you look at the literature, as to whether that was the distance from Jerusalem or the round trip. And the reason for that is there is a place called Emmaus that is about three and a half miles from Jerusalem. Otherwise, we don't know where this Emmaus was. It may have been a tiny little village, all trace of which has vanished. But it wasn't that far from Jerusalem, seven miles. And here were these two men. One of them was Cleopas and probably the reason Cleopas is named here is that Cleopas is the one who told the story to Luke. Luke, as a historian, he tells us that he interviewed eyewitnesses, he spoke to people, and the reason one is named and the other not, will be most likely that Cleopatra is the man who told Luke the story. And here they were walking the road, these two downcast, depressed, Well, we say men, people, we're not even told, and some people have speculated it may have been Cleopas and his wife. We just don't know. But these two downcast disciples were walking the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus. And we see first of all their resignation. They had put all their hope in Jesus, now they were resigned. Well, that's it! We see then the revelation of the One who drew near to them. And we see finally the rejoicing that the Good News of His Resurrection gives. We have the resignation, the revelation, and the resurrection. And first we see their resignation, two disappointed disciples on the road. There they were walking and they talked together of all these things which had happened. They conversed, they reasoned. There they were, talking, reasoning. Looking sad, we are told, verse 17, Jesus said, you walk and are sad. There they were, downcast, disappointed. They had put all their trust in Jesus. They say, we were hoping that it was He who was going to redeem Israel. They were, as good Jews, looking for the Messiah. Expecting Messiah to come. And then Jesus came. And John the Baptist had pointed to Him and said, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. And they had looked and they had followed Him. And they had heard that confession that He is the Christ, the Son of the Living God. They had joined in the confession themselves. You cannot be a disciple of Jesus if you don't confess that He is the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of the Living God. We trusted, we were hoping, that it was He who was going to redeem Israel, to deliver God's people. They had been there when he had ridden on the donkey into Jerusalem. And the crowds have cried out, Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna to the son of David. Their hearts are rejoiced. David's son comes to David's capital. Messiah is come. They looked on, no doubt with confusion, as he was betrayed, as he was, well we can't really say he was put on trial, there was no formal trial of Jesus. He was condemned without any real trial at all. They determined that he must die, and die he must, justice or otherwise. They had watched, they had heard the crowd cry, crucify him, not this man but Barabbas. Maybe they had seen Pontius Pilate wash his hands and say, do with this man as you please. They would have seen Jesus Christ walking through the streets of Jerusalem, bearing the cross, They would have seen, no doubt from afar, but they would have seen when he was fixed to the cross and lifted up to die. They certainly saw when the sun was darkened. And for three hours men wandered and feared what was going on. Because one thing it certainly was not, it was not an eclipse. because eclipses only happen at the full moon, but the Passover was not at the full moon. Something had happened. They would have heard, no doubt, the cry, it is finished. They watch as the body was taken down, delivered up to be buried. They were there in Jerusalem. And their hope had all been in Him. And now here was the One in whom their hope was. And He was dead. And He was laid in the tomb. And the stone was placed in front of it. And it's ironic really. The chief priests, the scribe, were so concerned. What if the disciples try to steal the body? The disciples were so demoralized that they would never have dreamed of such a thing. Also, they were too infused with the spirit of their master, who is the way, the truth, and the life. They would never have done such a wicked, false thing. And so their hope they believed had failed. All their hope had been in Him. He was the Messiah. There was nothing else. They'd gone to Jerusalem to see His triumph. And now they were resigned. This is it. It's over. we might as well head off and go home. So off they went, depressed, downcast and sad. And as they walked, they could but talk. What has happened? What does it mean? Is this it? What are we going to do with ourselves now? What are we going to do? What will God do? Now that Messiah has been crucified, and as they walked and as they talked a man drew near to them on the road and asked them, he said to them, what kind of conversation is this that you have with one another as you walk and are sad? And they did not recognise him because their eyes were restrained. There was something acting upon them so that they didn't recognise the man And yet, the meeting would be a revelation. Revelation is our second point. The man on the road, you might expect that a couple of downcast people, depressed, despondent disciples, would get a bit of sympathy from a stranger on the road who sees them. And they shared with him. They said, Don't you know? Are you the only man in Jerusalem who has never heard about all this? Were you under a rock for the last few days? and they repeated what they believed about Jesus, and they might have expected some sympathy. Oh yes, your situation is very bad, very depressing, but instead he replies, oh foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken. They had heard the words of the women who came from the tomb. Now, In the ancient world, the witness of women was largely discounted. Women, it was felt, were excitable and prone to making things up and believing things that were not true. and God disapproved of that attitude and so God made sure that the witnesses, the first witnesses to the resurrection were women so that the male disciples would have at least some rebuke to their attitude towards women, because the Lord Jesus Christ tells us that in Christ there is neither male nor female, nobody has higher status, we are all one in Christ Jesus, doesn't matter your background. But also it's a point that shows us the truthfulness of the Gospel account. If you were making stuff up in the first century, one thing you would never do was have women to be the first witnesses at the tomb. And these disciples, these disciples going to Emmaus, I think it's one reason why most commentators think they were two men, they took this attitude about the women. Well, certain women of our company who arrived at the tomb early astonished us. When they did not find his body, they came saying they had also seen a vision of angels who said he was alive. And what did these two disciples do? They didn't believe them. Now that's normal on several levels. After all, if somebody tells you that somebody who died is alive again and they've seen a vision of angels, you're likely to try to take it with a big pinch of salt. and these disciples didn't believe. And so Jesus says to them, oh foolish ones. Now it's not a harsh word for fool, it's a rather less harsh word, but ultimately it comes down to this, you're not thinking. You are foolish, he tells them. Oh foolish ones. At the very least there's an impatience there with their unbelief. that they had heard. They heard the women's witness. They heard that the tomb was empty. And they didn't believe what they were told. They didn't believe the angels. And off they went. And the man on the road has absolutely no sympathy for their sadness, because he knows that there's absolutely no point in their sadness. And He rebukes them. He rebukes them so that they are challenged. But more than that, ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory. That's what ought to have happened. They were so taken up with ideas about an earthly kingdom, about glory in Jerusalem, about Jesus sitting on a throne, they didn't even realise what the Messiah's mission was. We were hoping that it was He who was going to redeem Israel, to deliver But there's always an idea in redemption that it's deliverance with the payment of a price. Something is paid to redeem. And in the Old Testament it's not all that obvious all the time what the price that God was going to pay was. Now there are points where it becomes very clear. Isaiah 53 been reading this afternoon about a man called Bishop Michael Solomon Alexander. He was the first Anglican Bishop in Jerusalem and he was a Prussian, a German Jew who came to England and coming to England as he did from Germany, he was the son of a Rabbi and qualified himself as a Rabbi. and he began to teach and being a rabbi, one of the things he did to make money was he taught people Hebrew. One of his places, in fact the first place he was a rabbi was in Norwich. And there he met a number of Christian people who began to share with him from the Old Testament. And they opened up the book of Isaiah and they said to him, look at Isaiah 53, he was wounded for our transgressions. He found this so difficult to understand, all these Christians wanting to witness to him, all these Christians wanting to share the Gospel with their Jewish neighbour, that he headed off to Plymouth to become a rabbi of a synagogue there, to get away from all these Christians sharing the Gospel with him. Well, if God is pleased to bring someone to faith, they can't get away from the Gospel. So in Plymouth, a local clergyman, an Anglican clergyman, came to him and said, I want to learn Hebrew. Great! Well, the Anglican clergyman was an evangelical. And so they began reading the Hebrew Bible together. And the clergyman said to his rabbi friend, let's look at the prophecies, shall we? Let's look at the prophecies together about Messiah. They went through the prophecies together. By the end of the study, the Rabbi had to confess, Jesus is the Messiah. Jesus is the Messiah. He was converted, his wife was converted, and he set out to preach the Gospel to all the Jewish people he could find in England, in Germany, in Israel, all the way there. Well you see it's like that with the gospel in the prophets. Jesus began at Moses and all the prophets and he expounded to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself. What a wonderful thing it would have been on that road to hear Jesus himself go through the great flow of the prophecies all the way from that words speaking of the seed of the woman who would crush the serpent's head and his own heel would be bruised, all the way through the promise of the seed to Abraham through whom all nations would be blessed, through the promise of that suffering servant of the Lord. until at last he explained, yes, he would die and rise again. And I expect that that journey, however long the journey out was, felt like a very short journey as they walked and listened to these things. Their hearts burned within them what he taught with them on the road and opened the scriptures to us. That's what it's like when God, by His Holy Spirit, today opens the Scriptures to His people. They are always the Word of God. The Bible is always the Word of God. It's not just the Word of God when it feels like it to us. But there are times when God is pleased to stir up our hearts more than others when we read the Scriptures or hear the Scriptures. And they were taught this wonderful lesson that it's all about Jesus. It's all about Him. Not about us. but about Jesus Christ for us. At the great centre of the Scriptures is Jesus, the Messiah, who died for our sins and was raised again for our justification. And so we come to our third point, to the resurrection. They came to Emmaus. and he indicated that he would have gone farther. This was not an act, this was a fact that had they said to him, had they not said to him, stay with us for the night, he would have carried on. Now of course he knew that they would say, stay with us for the night, he is God after all. But they saw him as if he would go on and they would have said, well look it's getting, they said, well it's getting late. They said, abide with us, it's toward evening and the day is far spent. Stay the night with us, have supper with us. And because he had so wonderfully taught the scriptures to them, they honoured him by saying, well, rather than one of us give thanks at the meal, you give thanks. And he took the bread in his hands and broke it, giving thanks, which is the normal thing in a meal. And then immediately their eyes were opened and they saw what they had been unable to see before, that it was Jesus. They knew Him. They knew that He was alive, that everything that they had heard from the women was true. They knew Him because He met with them. They knew Him. because they heard his voice and they saw his face. They knew him in that meal. Now it wasn't the Lord's Supper, it was an ordinary evening meal, because in one sense it wasn't the Lord's Supper because he broke the bread and ate it and didn't eat it, but he left immediately. So he did not eat the supper with them. It doesn't seem that they ate the supper either, because they would have jumped up and headed straight back to Jerusalem to tell the others. Christ is alive! Jesus lives! However far the journey was, whether it was three and a half miles or seven miles, they didn't really care. They ran, hurried all the way back. They arose up that very hour and returned to Jerusalem. And they found that the eleven there, the apostles, said to them, Welcome back! As it were, the Lord is risen indeed, as appeared to Simon. And the two who had been on the road to Emmaus realised Jesus went with them to Emmaus. so that they would come back to Jerusalem. There they were downcast, despondent, everything's gone wrong. What will we do? And Jesus came to them and showed them that everything had not gone wrong. Everything had gone according to God's intention, God's plan. God had done it all. It is the Lord and it is the Lord's doing and marvellous in our sight. Christ is alive. We look at the world and we look at things around us and there are many things that cause us to be downcast but there is one thing that lifts us up. Christ is alive. This lifts us up And it reminds us again that if he is risen, then his people will rise. He goes to prepare a place for his people that where he is, there they may be also, there we may be also. That he is risen from the dead as that marvellous word that the Apostle Paul uses, the firstfruits from the dead. He is the firstfruits and that means that he who is risen will raise up his people on the last day. We are reminded by the resurrection of that marvellous fact that our faith is true. We did not follow cunningly devised fables, cunningly devised myths, when we believed on the Lord Jesus Christ. We weren't following some pipe dream that someone had, but believing on the Risen Lord, the Lord who is alive. when the Apostle John was in exile on Patmos for the Gospel, when he was suffering tribulation, the word he uses, speaking of his sharing in the suffering, the tribulation of the Church. It was then that Jesus appeared to him and said, I am he who lives and was dead and behold I am alive forevermore and hold the keys of death and of Hades. These glorious truths of the resurrection, these hold us up, bear us up in the midst of all our trials. the fact that our Redeemer lives. We trusted, they said, we hoped that He that it was He who was going to redeem Israel. And it was true, what was He doing on the cross, but redeeming His people, redeeming Israel, paying the price. And the fact that He rose from the dead says He's paid the price. Christ is alive, His people are redeemed. All who believe on Him have been redeemed from death and from hell. And so we have the joy of the resurrection. The joy that these two on the road shared once they got back to the others in Jerusalem. And they rejoiced together. And we too rejoice this evening that Christ is alive. They were resigned because they didn't know the truth. But Christ comes with his revelation of who he is and that he is alive again. The revelation of the resurrection which transforms. The cause is asked to rejoice since Jesus is alive, that Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. Alleluia. Amen.