He is with us

The following is the text of a sermon preached at the evening service on Easter Day, Sunday 8th April 2007.

The Scripture reading was Luke 24:13-35.

One of my favourite poems is “The Road Not Taken” by the American poet, Robert Frost. It goes like this:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Our reading in Luke 24 is about another journey on a road that made all the difference. Certainly it made all the difference to the two disciples who met Jesus on that road, and I believe it can make all the difference to us in our lives too.

It would be good if you have your bibles open at our passage to follow what I’m saying.

The title of our service tonight is “He is with us.” Now that might seem a rather strange title to some of us. “He is with us? Where is he then?” someone might be thinking. Tonight, we’ll see four ways in which Christ is with us here today.

At the beginning of the reading, in verse 13, two of Jesus’ followers – one called Cleopas and one who is un-named – are walking from Jerusalem on seven mile journey to a village called Emmaus. This happened on the first Easter Sunday, the same day as the disciples discovered the empty tomb and heard that Jesus was risen, early on in the morning. From the passage we get a few clues that this journey may be taking place in the late afternoon, but we don’t know the exact time. We can’t be sure why they are making this journey either, though the most likely explanation is that they are probably on their way home to the village where they live. And this is the scene for a truly amazing meeting with Jesus after his resurrection. This is the first time in Luke’s gospel that the risen Jesus actually appears in person to any of his followers.

Like most people when they’re out walking, the two mean are chatting to each other. And then a stranger approaches them, presumably from behind, walking in the same direction as the two men are heading, and he joins them on the journey.

Much has been made of the fact that the two disciples don’t recognise who Jesus is when he starts walking and talking with them. All kinds of explanations have been offered for this: Jesus had the hood of his cloak up and they couldn’t see his face; the low afternoon sun was in the disciples’ eyes and they couldn’t see Jesus’ face in shadow properly. None of these explanations is particularly convincing. It is a mystery. But it would seem that after the resurrection, Christ’s physical appearance could alter, so that his features were not recognised at times, even by those who knew him very well. Before the resurrection Christ just looked outwardly like an ordinary man; indeed, he was an ordinary man. After the resurrection he is revealed as the majestic Son of God, risen and triumphant, the King of kings and Lord of lords, in all his glory. And it seems to me that his outward appearance after the resurrection was capable of displaying his glory.

Something similar happened at the time of Christ’s transfiguration, where Christ’s glory as God the Son is briefly revealed. Luke 9:29 says of Christ at the transfiguration, “While he was praying his face changed its appearance, and his clothes became dazzling white.”

Once Jesus meets with the disciples on the road, a wonderful transformation takes place in these men’s lives, as in turn the disciples talk with Jesus about what's been happening, then Jesus talks with the disciples about what the Scriptures say about himself as God’s Messiah, and finally the disciples and the risen Jesus share in the fellowship of a meal, during which they finally recognise who he is when he breaks bread with them. Jesus then leaves them as suddenly as he came, but with their lives forever changed.

When Jesus first came to them, these men were filled with sadness. Verse 17 says, “They stood still, with sad faces.” The word translated “sad faces” is found only here in the whole New Testament. It means “looking sad”, “gloomy faced”. These men had been devastated by what’s happened. They’ve seen not only their teacher and friend murdered in the most barbaric way possible, but they’ve also seen their hopes and dreams dashed as the one they thought was going to “redeem Israel” or “set Israel free” (verse 21) from the Romans, apparently fail in his mission and leave his followers disorganised, disappointed and despondent.

By the end of this passage the two men are energised with the fire of God’s Word burning inside them, with the joy of knowing that “The Lord is risen indeed!” and with a new-found zeal that took them out of their village in the middle of the night, back on the road to Jerusalem, so they can tell the others the truth about the resurrection without any delay.

How come? What changed these men? Well, it was meeting the risen Lord Jesus Christ and spending time with him that day that made the difference. But what about us?

Well there’s one way we don’t have Jesus with us in the same way as the two disciples had him with them. On the Emmaus road they had the risen Jesus with them in body. He was right there with them physically. Never forget that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the rising to life of his physical body, not just his spirit. The tomb was empty – the body was gone – and the risen Christ is not a spirit, he is flesh and blood. He still bears the marks of the nails on his hands. He ate meals with many of those he met after he rose from the dead. Spirits can’t eat food.

Forty days after the resurrection, the Bible tells us that Christ ascended into heaven. So his body is no longer on the earth. We no longer see him. We no longer have Christ with us in that sense – with us physically I mean.

Perhaps that’s something we regret about living in this period in history: we don’t get to be with Christ physically, to see him face-to-face. Perhaps it’s one of the many things we look forward to heaven for – that then we will finally get to stand face-to-face with our Saviour and look into his eyes? Probably with tears of thankfulness in our eyes. But there’s two things we should remember if we think we’re in a more impoverished position now compared with the people who we read about in Scripture who actually saw Jesus and spent time with him. First, remember that it was quite possible to have Jesus with you physically and yet not see who he was. Not only was this true of the two disciples for most of the time Jesus was actually with them in the passage, it was true of many if not most of the people Jesus spent time with during his life. The Roman soldiers, the Pharisees, the chief priests, whole towns and villages failed to recognise who he was even though he was with them physically. So just being with him face-to-face doesn’t guarantee that anyone would believe in him or accept him as Lord. The second reason we shouldn’t feel automatically impoverished because we don’t have Jesus with us in body is because of what Jesus himself said. When the risen Jesus met with Thomas in John chapter 20, he says to him: “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

There is a blessing from Christ himself on all those who believe in him without having seen him in the flesh, a special blessing for people like us.

Now, even though there is this difference between us and the circumstances of the two disciples, there are three ways in which Christ is with us in ways that are like the ways he was with the disciples in our passage. Let’s look at these three ways because they are each vital to our lives as Christians. Based on this passage I would say that Christ is with us as we speak with him in prayer, he is with us as we read the Bible, and he is with us as we have communion with him and fellowship with each other as his people, the church.

In the first section of the passage from verse 13 to verse 24 we have a conversation between the disciples and Christ, with the disciples doing most of the talking, telling him about what had been happening in Jerusalem. In the passage Jesus shows that he’s interested in what his disciples think and in hearing what they have to say; he’s interested in what makes them sad, or worries them, and what makes them tick; he’s interested in knowing the things that they don’t yet understand about him or the Christian faith. The disciples on the Emmaus road talked to Jesus about all these things and Jesus took the time to listen to everything they had to say, even though he already knew the whole story they were telling him. He took the time to listen to them – he didn’t jump in right away and reveal who he was.

I think Jesus is still the same today. We don’t speak with him face-to-face, but we do speak to him when we pray. For us, when we pray, we can address any of the three persons in the Trinity – probably mostly the Father, but sometimes the Son, Jesus, and sometimes the Holy Spirit – but all three hear our prayers.

And I believe Jesus is with us when we pray. He’s still interested in what’s on our minds, how we’re feeling, what’s happening in our lives, what’s worrying us, what’s bugging us, what we’re happy about, what we understand about him and what we don’t understand yet. So often we tend to think of prayer as being about asking God for things. And of course that is an important part of prayer, as is praising God, confessing our sins, and giving God thanks for what he’s done for us. But I believe prayer is even more than this. Prayer is an ongoing conversation, a relationship of communication between us and the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. It is in this sense that we can and should “pray without ceasing” as Paul writes in 1 Thessalonians 5:17. As we pray, sharing our thoughts, our doubts, our fears, sharing our lives with God as we would with our closest friends, completely openly and honestly, not only does God delight to hear us as his children, but I think it is very good for us to get things off our chests, not keeping anything bottled up inside us. Even things we can say to no-one else, we can always say to him.

And when we do that, Christ is certainly with us, just as surely as he listened carefully and patiently to Cleopas on the Emmaus road.

The second way Christ is with us is in the words of Scripture. In the passage, once Jesus hears everything Cleopas has to say, he then leads both disciples to consider what the Scriptures say about the Messiah: not only that he would suffer but also that he would then enter into his glory. In other words, he’s starting to prepare them for the fact that not only was the Messiah to die, but he was also to rise again. Verse 27 says:

“Jesus explained to them what was said about himself in all the Scriptures, beginning with the books of Moses and the writings of all the prophets.”

So Jesus went through the Old Testament (remember this was before the New Testament was written) and explained to the disciples what the Bible is all about: it’s all about Jesus Christ. He is the theme of the Bible, the hero of the Bible, and he is in every part of the Bible. Indirectly or directly, it’s all about him. We don’t know exactly what passages Christ focused on as he explained the Bible to the two disciples. Maybe he went right back to the first chapter of Genesis and explained how it was by the Word – by Christ himself who is the Word of God – that the heavens and earth were made. Maybe he took them to Genesis 3:15 to show how even from the time Adam and Eve sinned, God had promised to send the Messiah, the Seed of the woman who would crush Satan’s head. Maybe he explained to them how the system of sacrifices laid down in Leviticus were symbols and types of the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. Maybe he explained to them how King David stands as a type of the Messiah’s kingship over his people. Maybe he explained to them the prophets who foretold where Jesus would be born, what his kingship would be like, and even how he would suffer and die for his people (as described in Isaiah chapter 53 for example). It doesn’t matter what passages Christ focused on, or whether he spoke more generally, not even looking at specific passages, because Christ is in all the Scriptures. They are all about him, in one way or another.

He is the great theme of Scripture and he is the key for correctly understanding Scripture. It’s probably not going too far to say that you won’t go too far wrong in interpreting the Bible if you remember this simple fact: Christ is in all the Scriptures.

This has tremendous implications for us and for what we believe. To give just one example – you sometimes hear people painting a false picture of Jesus as this lovey-dovey, rather effeminate, do-gooder, who is so easy going that you can treat him any way you like, and live any way you like because he approves of everything and can’t do anything but love everyone. But Christ is in all the Scriptures. In the Old Testament he often appeared as the angel of the Lord – the same Lord who went through Egypt on the night of the Passover killing the firstborn of the Egyptians, the same Lord who stood shoulder to shoulder with the three men in the fiery furnace in Daniel chapter 3, the same Lord who went into battle for Israel and slew 185,000 Assyrians in one night in 2 Kings chapter 19.

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. He is the “I AM” who existed before Abraham (John 8:58). And so if our view of Jesus is radically different from the God of the Old Testament, we know we’ve got it wrong, because Christ is in all the Scriptures.

The Scriptures are all about Jesus, so it follows that whenever we read the Scriptures, whether at our services, or at our Bible study, or at home on our own, so long as we read them with a genuine desire to learn about God and learn from God, He is with us as we read.

Of course it is possible to read the Scriptures in the wrong way. It is possible to read them while sitting in judgment on them, accepting or rejecting them as we go. If we read the Bible that way, we will still read about Jesus but he will not be with us as we read.

But if we read the Scriptures in faith, looking for Christ, and accepting that what we read is not the word of man but God’s Word, then Christ will be with us and, like the disciples on the Emmaus road, reading them will be like a fire that burns within us, refining us and purifying us, energising us to live for him, and warming our hearts as we think on God’s love and grace shown towards us.

The third way in which the passage shows Christ is with us, is when we are in fellowship with other believers. In the passage Christ is with the two disciples when he goes into the house and eats a meal with them. And it’s interesting that it was when he broke the bread that the disciples then recognised him for who he really was. We don’t exactly know why this was the case. Various commentators speculate on this. Was it because as he broke the bread they could see the nail marks in his hands for the first time? Was it the way he broke the bread that reminded them of the way he did it before? Was it his tone of voice as he said the blessing or the words he used? We can’t be sure if it was any of these or something else, or if it was because the supernatural change in Christ’s appearance was lifted and they could now recognise him. Yet the fact is that it wasn’t as they spoke to him, or as he explained to them about the Scriptures, but in the simple act of sharing in the fellowship of a meal that the disciples recognised him.

What does that mean for us today? It’s tempting to see this breaking of the bread in terms of the Lord’s Supper, holy communion. Certainly I think that’s partly what we can draw from this passage. Christ is with us as we share in the Lord’ Supper. Of course this doesn’t mean the bread and wine at communion turn into Christ’s body and blood, the blasphemy that Roman Catholicism teaches. But in a spiritual sense, Christ is with us as we eat and drink the bread and wine at communion. In a special way, at the same time as we physically eat the bread and drink the wine, looking to Christ in faith, we feed on him spiritually, nourishing our souls as we consider the new covenant sealed with his blood, as his body was broken for us on the cross.

But I don’t think that’s all this passage means. I don’t think we should restrict Christ’s presence being with us when we gather to celebrate communion. After all, there’s nothing in the passage that says the meal the disciples shared with Jesus was the sacrament of communion. It was just an ordinary meal two hungry travellers might have at the end of any day.

No, I think this passage teaches us that Christ is with us every time we come together for fellowship. This is of course what Jesus himself said in Matthew 18:20: “For where two or three come together in my name, I am there with them.” And here we see that happening. When we come together in his name – as his people gathering together – he is with us. It doesn’t matter whether that’s for a service of worship like this, or in our Bible and prayer meeting, or for the Kirk Session or Congregational Board, or for a social event. When we gather for Christian fellowship, Christ is with us in the midst.

What a great privilege and responsibility that is! But what about when we’re not gathered together. What about when we all go our different ways? What about when we aren’t reading our Bibles, or spending time with God in prayer? Are we on our own then? Is Christ not with us then?

Well there’s a way that Christ is with us that’s not mentioned in our passage. There’s a way in which we are in a better position than the disciples in the passage. Although they spent time in the physical presence of Christ and although he stayed with them for a while that day, at the end of the day they were left by themselves. Just after they recognised who he was, verse 31 says, “He disappeared from their sight.” He left them at the end of his time with them.

We’re in a better position than this. Christ is with us all the time through the Holy Spirit, the spirit of Christ, living inside us. This is what Paul says in Romans 8:9-11, writing to Christians:

“But you do not live as your human nature tells you to; instead, you live as the Spirit tells you to – if, in fact, God's Spirit lives in you. Whoever does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ lives in you, the Spirit is life for you because you have been put right with God, even though your bodies are going to die because of sin. If the Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from death, lives in you, then he who raised Christ from death will also give life to your mortal bodies by the presence of his Spirit in you.”

We must remember that the events in our passage took place before the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost, which was fifty days after Easter day. The disciples on the Emmaus road met the risen Jesus, but we who live not only after that first Easter but after Pentecost actually have the spirit of the risen Jesus living inside us, not for a few hours, or a day, but with us forever. That’s what Jesus promised just before he ascended into heaven, in Matthew 28:20: “I am with you always, even to the end of the age,” he said.

This is what Jesus also promised us in Revelation 3:20: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.”

He was with the disciples during that wonderful day; he is with us all the time during all our days. This is the truth for every Christian believer. He is with us.

He is with his people as they pray, as they read the Bible, as they have communion with him and with each other. But the question everyone has to think about sooner or later in their lives is this: Am I with him? In other words, have I really met with the risen Jesus and decided to follow him?

Yes, he’s with his people in all these wonderful ways, but are you one of his people? We need to ask ourselves, “Have I believed in him? Have I trusted in him and committed my life to him, accepting him as my Saviour and Lord?”

If you have, then he is with you in everything you do. If you haven’t yet trusted in him and accepted him, then he is calling you to himself tonight, with the promise that he will never turn away anyone who comes to him. “Everyone who calls out to the Lord for help will be saved,” as Romans 10:13 says.

John 3:18 says: “Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.”

There is a choice before each one of us tonight. It is to travel on life’s road with Christ as our companion, our guide, our Saviour and our Lord, or to travel on life’s road without him. “Two roads diverged in a wood and I, I took the one less travelled by. And that has made all the difference.”