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Who would have liked to have been at that Bible study that Jesus gave those two people?

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You know, he opened all of the scriptures to them and they understood it and went, whoa, I would really love if somebody could explain the Old Testament to me, because there are passages in there that I look at and go, what does that mean?

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But Jesus talked to these two people and gave them an understanding.

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These two guys, we don't know a whole lot about them except that they were walking to Emmaus.

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We know that earlier that day they had had some discussions.

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The women had came in and said, jesus is alive. We saw him. Wow.

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And they went all, okay, sure.

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What did you smoke?

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And then Simon Peter runs off to the tomb with John and comes back and says, the clothes are gone. There's a folded napkin there. It's really exciting.

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And they just went, all right. Yep. That's good.

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Because they didn't really believe it.

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Because, let's face it, how many dead people have you seen get out of their graves and come up to you later and say, I've defeated death.

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Anyone?

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Anyone at all met anyone who's been dead?

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No.

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So these two guys, quite reasonably, were going to. Yeah, nice story.

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Not so sure about the detail.

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And they were going, yep, I think we'll just go for a bit of a walk to Emmaus. Let's get out of here.

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One of them is named. He's a genuine brother named Cleopas.

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He's named once in the entire Bible there.

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But scripture is this sort of thing that goes, if it's going to give you a detail, it's going to give you a detail for a reason.

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So who is this Cleopas?

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According to early Christian tradition, he was the brother of a guy called Joseph.

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Anyone recognize the name Joseph?

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He married this lady called Mary, and Mary had a child, and they called him Jesus.

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So according to the early tradition, Cleopas is Uncle Cleopas from Jesus perspective.

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And no doubt if he truly is his uncle and that tradition is true, he would be feeling a level of grief that most people in the area did not have.

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Because I don't know about you, but I would tend to think that an uncle might feel a little bit about the loss of their nephew more than a stranger.

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So he is walking around feeling this grief of loss of Jesus and going, I wanted so much to see Jesus do this and this and this. I had so many hopes.

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And they killed him and they crushed it.

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And it's sad, and I don't know what to do next.

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Now, had he been told by Jesus that this was going to happen.

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Yes.

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Jesus had told the disciples time and time again, guys, this is what's going to happen.

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One version is, in Matthew 20:17, Jesus was going up to Jerusalem. On the way, he took the 12 aside and said to them, we're going to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the teachers of the law.

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They will condemn him to death and will hand him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified.

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On the third day, he will be raised to life.

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Now, if someone told you that and then went to Jerusalem and then you saw them get handed over to the Gentiles and get flogged and get mocked on a cross and then get crucified, would you think there might be some truth to the statement that comes after it that he is going to also be resurrected?

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Or would you go, nah, lucky guess. He got it right. The first couple.

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Not going to happen.

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What would you do?

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See, it's easy for us 2000 years later with the history to go and say, oh, they should have believed Jesus.

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But we weren't there.

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We didn't see the hurt, the pain and the difficulty they went through.

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In Luke 9:51, it says, as the time approached, Jesus set his face for Jerusalem and there was no stopping him.

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I'm going this way now. I don't know about you, but if that was my crucifixion in Jerusalem, I'd be going any other way.

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Going to Jerusalem is not the course that I would take.

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But Jesus set his face and went there and told them, this is what we're doing.

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And yet they struggled to believe it.

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Isn't that sad that when Jesus gave them clear words, clear direction, they struggled to accept it because it was outside of their expectation?

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Have you ever noticed that God's plans don't always make sense to humans?

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Have you ever seen God do things and go, wow, that wasn't what I was expecting?

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And yet here Jesus is telling them very clearly, this is what's going to happen. He shows them the first few steps right in front of them, and yet they can't accept this last step could be true.

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They are just like you and I, and I suspect just like you and I, when we're put under pressure, when the things are going wrong in our life, when our expectations are not being met, when God's being difficult and saying, we're going this way and we're going, God, I want to go that way.

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We sort of go, oh, I Don't know about this.

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We start to worry about it, really. God is dying. Actually, the way forward, really.

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Come on. There's got to be a better way than that, surely.

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So in their shock, in their grief, in their heartache, they go back to Emmaus.

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Are there any Bible scholars in here that know what Emmaus is?

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All shaking your heads.

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Well, this is a very, very, very important place in Jewish history.

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Emmaus is the place where a guy by the name of Judas Maccabee won a great victory for Israel at about 160 BC.

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He fought off the Greeks and raised a revolt that pushed Greek occupation of Israel back.

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He then went to Jerusalem, pushed the Greeks out of Jerusalem and restored worship in the temple.

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And the first service at the temple after his freeing was on the 14th of December, 164 BC.

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And the celebration to remember that thing is called Hanukkah.

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Heard of that one?

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So the Jews to this day celebrate Hanukkah to remember this guy, Judas Maccabee and what he did.

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The Romans, knowing that this happened to the Greeks, flattened the town.

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Emmaus was wiped from the face of the earth. And in 4 BC, that was the Romans way of dealing with occupation.

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You want to have your little rebellions not happening. Boom.

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So why are these people going to this town?

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Why are they heading back to a place that has this history?

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Because this was the place where the last known revolt and victory of the Jewish people took place.

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This was their last great revival, to use that word.

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They were going back to that place to remember.

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This is how we beat the Romans and the Greeks. Yes, this is our way of victory.

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And isn't it tempting when we're in a stressful place, when things are chaotic and confusing around us, to go back to whatever our last great victory was, to find that last thing that worked for us. And let's say I will do that again.

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I hear people that still want to have Billy Graham revivals because that was a great time when the church grew. Let's go back to that.

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Surely that will work.

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Or let's go and have this or that or whatever it was that was in history that worked at that time.

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And in their confusion, in their disappointment, in their unbelief at what Jesus was doing, they ran back to their past.

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So often that happens so many times.

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Do we do that?

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Because it is just a natural part of being human, isn't it?

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We feel safe in the things that worked in our past.

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But Jesus is calling them forward.

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Jesus wasn't content to let them just wander off. He Turns up and says, mates, how's it going?

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Having a good walk here?

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What you chatting about?

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Haven't you heard?

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Heard what?

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Well, there was this thing that happened at Jerusalem. Really?

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What happened?

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And can you just imagine? They're telling Jesus about Jesus and not recognizing this is Jesus.

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Now, some people think they must have had big scales on their eyes or something like that.

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No, they didn't.

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Jesus didn't look weird or wonderful or any of that.

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They were just blinded by their unbelief.

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They were simply blinded because they couldn't believe this was God walking with them.

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And it wasn't until they hit the point where they had the aha moment, they suddenly went, oh, gosh, there you are.

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Who's ever had those moments in life where you've been absolutely certain God's doing this and then you suddenly realise he was doing that and you just have that moment of, ah, that's what you're up to, God.

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Now I get it.

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We have that all the time. Or we should.

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Perhaps you just walk with God all the time so that you never have those moments of recognising, I was so wrong and now I'm right.

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But for these guys, this is that moment.

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Oh, our hearts burnt.

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Oh, why didn't we see it earlier?

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Can you imagine? As they were walking back from wherever they were staying, back to Jerusalem in a big mad rush, they were going, oh. Kicking themselves. Why didn't we see it earlier? Why didn't we? Why couldn't we believe it? What was going on? Why were we so silly?

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And yet they were just humans struggling to get their head around something that had never happened before, that God was doing right in front of them.

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They raced back to Jerusalem.

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They gather all the others together and go, hey, guess what? We saw Jesus too. It really is true.

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Isn't that exciting? We saw Jesus.

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Wow.

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Simon saw Jesus, Mary saw Jesus. And we saw Jesus. It's real.

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And when they get back and everybody says, we've seen Jesus too, they all start going, what does this mean?

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First Corinthians 15:55. O death, where is your victory?

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Where is your sting?

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The sting of death is sin. The power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, he gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

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What does this mean? Means death has been defeated.

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Whoa.

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Could you just imagine as the penny drops for them and they realize what this means, that the whole scenario of the way life functions, I'm born, I live, I. I die, has just changed.

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It's now, I'm born, I live. And then I live again.

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Wow. What do I do with that?

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Two thousand years later, we sort of take it for granted, don't we?

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But at that moment, this was the grappling of, whoa, wait a minute, what do we do with that?

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How do we figure this out?

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This is a whole new world. This is a whole new revelation. This is exciting. This is. Oh, wow.

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And if you can't get excited by that, there's something wrong with our Christian walk.

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Because this should be the most exciting revelation there is. That God loves us and wants to give us eternal life.

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Wow.

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And they step into it and they go, this changes everything, right? And then they march off and they all face their own deaths and they face it with joy and they push through it. Because all of a sudden the sting of death is gone.

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All of a sudden the fear of dying is gone. All of a sudden, the realization that there is an eternity is there.

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And all of a sudden everything has changed.

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Because they now realize that they're walking with a God who can turn defeat into victory, who can turn confusion into order, who can take the most broken, messed up, confused individuals and hold them up later and say, here is such and such, my child.

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And look at the wonderful things I can do through them.

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That's all what happened on this day. It all changed. And isn't that amazing?

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Well, I think it is anyway. You might think it's ordinary and you've heard these sort of sermons year after year after year after year, and it's sort of, oh, yeah, whatever.

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But I think this is absolutely amazing that God would change everything like that.

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And here's the kicker.

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For the people that doubted and the people that struggled, what was Jesus response?

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He pursued them, put his arm around them, and brought them back.

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What does that tell us about the love of God?

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What does that tell us about God's grace for us?

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That no matter how we get it wrong, no matter what the mistakes are that we make, God will not abandon us, but he will pursue us and draw us back to make us his own.

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That, to me, is amazing.

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That, to me, changes a lot.