Luke 24:27 “And beginning with Moses and all the prophets he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.”

This is Luke’s summary of the sermon Jesus preached on the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus the first Easter afternoon. I have often wished that Luke preserved this for us.

But then, he didn’t have to, because Jesus was simply walking these men through words that actually are preserved for us in the pages of the Old Testament. He began with Moses. No doubt that means he began with the very first gospel promise in Genesis 3:15. “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers. He will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” Jesus is the offspring of the woman. He would suffer when Satan struck him. It would be painful–heel pain can be crippling. But Jesus is the one who would do the crushing.

From there he likely went on to the promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; Moses’ promise of a future prophet like himself (Deuteronomy 18); the many Psalms of David that describe Jesus’ person and work; the suffering servant in Isaiah 53; the many descriptions of Holy Week in the Prophet Zechariah.

So Jesus opened the eyes of these men. He turned their lives upside down. All their old hopes and dreams were crushed. But in their place they found a God and Savior who loved them almost beyond belief or imagination. Every sin was forgiven. Every demand and requirement of God was fulfilled. Their relationship with God was fully reconciled. The journey back to God’s good graces was complete. Life would never end. Heaven was guaranteed. No wonder they asked each other after they recognized Jesus at the end of the evening and he disappeared, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?”

Do you know what happens when God opens our eyes and we see our risen Lord in his word? We trade the garbage we have created with our lives, and the garbage we have planned for our lives, for real treasure. We see that an impressive education, perfect family, successful career, healthy life, and happy retirement aren’t all that important. Whether I travel the world, or develop a stellar reputation, or build great wealth doesn’t really matter.

To borrow a phrase from Paul, “I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish that I may gain Christ and be found in him.” To borrow a picture from C.S. Lewis, we stop acting like the little children at the beach playing in the trash fascinated by the broken pieces of glass, when God has placed before us the golden sands and magnificent ocean of his grace in the kingdom of the Son he loves.

This is worth seeing. This is worth having. Jesus still makes it possible for us to see it, and own it, in his word.

Luke 24:25-26 “How foolish you are, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?”

Foolish, slow–these aren’t compliments or terms of endearment. The Greek behind the first term, “Foolish,” suggests mostly empty space between their ears. “Hello! Any brain cells in there?” It is a little different than the fool described in other parts of the Bible. He has a moral issue as much as an intelligence issue. Jesus is suggesting that they suffer from a lack of knowledge. He had given them plenty of instruction. They had real experience with his teaching and life. “Why don’t you guys get it?”

Is Jesus’ being unreasonable in expecting them to know better? Is his way of addressing them mean? No, sometimes you have to let a person see his fault in plain words, without pulling any punches. You can’t worry about wounding their fragile self-esteem. Admittedly, some people don’t understand because they just haven’t been taught, or a concept is too difficult to grasp. These two disciples, however, were underachieving. They were capable of grasping more.

As exhibit A, Jesus exposes the blind eye they were turning to all the prophets had written about his sufferings and resurrection. For three years he often referred to these prophecies himself. Why hadn’t they paid attention?

As exhibit B were the many times he told them directly he would suffer, die, and rise. He gave them pictures: he would destroy and rebuild the temple in three days; he would be like Jonah in the belly of the great fish for three days.

His enemies got it. They asked for a guard at his tomb because they remembered him saying he would rise in three days. Was it asking too much for the men who loved and trusted him to take his words seriously?

Sometimes we don’t see, because we don’t want to. If we see what we don’t want to see, we will have to change our beliefs or behavior. During my college years I sometimes tutored high school students in Algebra and Latin. I believe that some didn’t understand because they didn’t want to. Algebra and Latin can be hard, I know. But not everything is hard to get. For some of them, “getting” the concepts would mean doing the work themselves going forward. They would have to do the assignments without someone walking them through it. As long as they could say, “I don’t get it,” they could lean on someone else to do the thinking for them.

Jesus’ disciples didn’t get that the Christ first had to suffer, and then enter his glory, in part, because they didn’t want to. This made him a different kind of Savior than the one they were hoping for. The grand future of success, riches, and power they were planning for themselves wasn’t going to happen. To follow Jesus means to go where he goes: first suffering, then glory. I am sorry if that is a disappointing conclusion, but it is why we need the risen Lord to overcome our foolish hearts, so slow to believe.

Sometimes we come to a passage in the Bible, and we say that it is hard to understand, because we don’t want to believe it. The words are simple. A five-year-old could tell you what they are saying. But if we believe them, then we are going to have to change. We are going to have to give up some behavior. We are going to have to sacrifice some grand plan. We are going to have to admit something unpleasant.

So we say these words don’t make sense to us. Or we say that that is just someone’s interpretation. We would like to keep our eyes closed, as though somehow it will hurt us if we see the truth about ourselves and our God. It is why we need Jesus to open our eyes, so that we can see there is nothing greater than the grace that led him to suffer for our sins, and rise to glory for our assurance.

Psalm 67:1 “May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face to shine upon us.”

There is a whole world view in the words with which the psalmist begins this prayer. In Christianity, everything begins with grace. Asking God to be gracious to us is more than a request for him to be kind, to do something nice for us. If you ever listen to radio personality Dave Ramsey greet his callers, when they ask him “how are you?” his stock answer is “better than I deserve.” Better than I deserve. That’s God being gracious.

A Christian doesn’t approach God and say, “Just give me what I’ve got coming to me.” That would be insane. What I’ve got coming to me is really, really hot, and really, really uncomfortable, and lasts forever and ever. I have offended God with my life, and my attitudes, not the least of which is the idea that somehow I deserve better than I’ve been getting.

Asking God to be gracious is a way of saying, “I get it. I haven’t been banking all kinds of favors that you owe me, and now I am calling some of them in. It’s a blessing that you haven’t decided to squish me yet, because every day I am giving you more reasons to.”

But there is a more important part of this world view behind our prayer for God to be gracious. It is our complete confidence that he is! We don’t approach him in utter terror. We don’t come to him as a last resort because we are just that desperate. This is the God whose every dealing with us is always, only love. He doesn’t just send us a Savior. He comes here himself to rescue us. He doesn’t just put up a stiff fight to deliver us from our sins, and dig deep into his pockets to finance the operation. He dies in our place. He lays down his life as the payment that sets us free from all our sins deserved.

Maybe you remember a campaign for evangelical Christians to text “God is not dead” to all their friends at Easter several years ago. It was inspired by the movie of the same title. It’s true that he is not dead. But at the cross he was dead when Jesus breathed his last. He was dead until Easter morning, because God is gracious.

God is so intent on loving me and saving me that there is no price too high for him to pay. In Christianity, everything begins with grace, like this prayer, which understands from the very first words exactly where we stand with God. It starts and ends with grace.

John 11:25 “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies.”

Email and social media allow people to see pictures of amazing, unbelievable, miraculous things. Sometimes they turn out not to be true, like the pictures of 15-foot-tall human skeletons I once received in my inbox.

Sometimes they are truly amazing, like the picture of an X-ray of a large kitchen knife plunged through the left temple of a Chinese teenager and crossing the entire width of his skull. The young man walked into the hospital himself and doctors were able to surgically remove it with no serious damage to his brain or nerves.

These things are interesting to look at for a minute or two. But they are just curiosities. After I look at them I can go back to my work and forget about them and it won’t make any difference at all.

Jesus’ dead friend Lazarus left his tomb alive again. Jesus himself left his tomb alive again. That is no hoax. But it is not a mere curiosity either, a story that amazes us for a minute or two, and then we can go back to what we are doing and forget the whole thing happened. It is a promise of life after death for us as well.

You know the story from which these words are taken. It is a few months before the first Easter. Jesus’ friend Lazarus has just died. Jesus has come to comfort his sisters Mary and Martha. Shortly before raising Lazarus back to life, Jesus gives Martha this promise. “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies.”

“Even though he dies…” One of my professors used to complain about preaching that identified sins, but failed to mention the consequences. “The soul who sins is the one who will die.” “Your iniquities have separated you from your God.” “Depart from my, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink…”

This is what makes Jesus’ promise so relevant, and so reassuring. The resurrection was not merely something Jesus taught. He wasn’t just the best place to go for information about it. Jesus IS the resurrection and the life. He is the source.

Other religions talk about an afterlife, but where is their proof? What foundation do they have for their hope? Jesus himself is ours. His sinless life provides all of us with every good work, all the loving service that we need to please God and make him smile on us. His innocent death cancels the guilt of every sin, and if the wages of sin is death, then no more sin means that God’s death penalty over us has been lifted, too.

As proof that all of this is not just theological theory, fine-sounding philosophy, Jesus himself rose from the dead. It’s all based on a real life person and real life events in real human history. Jesus’ own resurrection backs up his promise, and that promise gives us comfort.

Galatians 3:1 “You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified.”

What was wrong? These people whom Paul had once led to trust Jesus for everything necessary for their salvation were now basing their heavenly hope in part on their own good works. They thought they had something to contribute of their own.

Missionaries of a false Christianity known as the Judaizers had come to them and convinced them that Jesus was good and necessary. He just wasn’t enough. They needed to be circumcised. They needed to follow Old Testament ceremonies and food laws. But once you let this camel’s head into the tent, the camel’s head of keeping a few rules in addition to the work of Jesus, pretty soon the whole camel of salvation by works gets in.  The introduction of such ideas couldn’t help but turn their attention away from Jesus to the quality of their own performance. Paul writes just a few verses later, “After beginning with the Spirit, are you trying to attain your goal by human effort?” They were adopting a self-righteous salvation.

This was no small problem. Paul warns, “All who rely on observing the law are under a curse, for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law’” (Galatians 3:10). How much of God’s law do you have to keep if you are going to avoid the curse of death based solely on your own efforts? The whole thing! There is no margin of error here. A “99″ is a failing grade. It’s not like a video game in which you have additional “lives” based upon how many points you have scored, and even if you use them all up, you can turn the power off and on and start the game over from the beginning. Relying on our own righteousness, a self-produced righteousness, always ends the same way: the curse of death.

How much explanation does the cross really require? What do we need to know to recognize that this isn’t just the lynching of a man who defied some cultural taboo or crossed some societal boundary? How much information is necessary to realize that this is more than martyrdom, like the death of so many of the prophets before Jesus and most of the apostles after him?

Is it enough to know that this man was God’s Son, the promised Messiah; to hear John the Baptist declare “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world”; to hear Jesus’ own words from the cross offering forgiveness to his executioners, promising paradise to a man hanging next to him, crying out in agony as God the Father forsakes him there, finally declaring that all is finished; to see the unnatural darkness that covers the land that afternoon, feel the earthquake that follows, witness the hand of God tearing the temple curtain separating the Creator from his creatures in two?

The cross is God’s tool for removing the curse of dying for our sins from us and transferring it to Jesus instead. Here our death sentence has been served. Here the Law’s demands for our blood, and for our souls, have been satisfied.

As a result, we have been redeemed, set free. There is nothing more for us to do. The Law can make no more demands on us. We live in God’s forgiveness. In place of a self-righteousness, a counterfeit and inadequate righteousness based on our own unsteady performance, the cross brings us a real righteousness, the perfection of Jesus and the cleansing of his blood provided to you and me.

This portrayal of Jesus Christ as crucified before your very eyes, then, lays this real righteousness upon your heart and soul. Thirty years ago a former missionary wrote in Christianity Today about a Muslim student in a North African university who heard a simple explanation of Jesus’ saving, substitutionary work on the cross for the first time. “If that is true,” he blurted out, “then Jesus is my Lord.” When Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified before his very eyes, God’s power laid claim on his heart and made him his own by faith.

But this is no surprise to you. The preaching of Christ crucified has been the power of God in your life. It has laid real righteousness, the freedom of forgiveness and grace, on your heart and soul. It still gives life to your faith and keeps you his child today.

Isaiah 55:8-9 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ declares the Lord. ‘As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

Isn’t your own life clear evidence that your thoughts are not the same as God’s? Who of us would ever have come up with this plan? Not a single one of us would have chosen everything we have experienced and endured so far. 

But God’s thoughts are not only different. Isaiah tells us that they are higher. They are better. If we had to come up with a way to heaven on our own, we would think that you had to work your way up. You had to earn your place. That is how it works with everything else we know. There is no free lunch. When you get an email offering you some expensive item, or some great treasure, for free, you assume it must be a scam. When some store or business is offering something for “free,” you wonder “What’s the catch.” There must be strings attached. If something is worth having, you have to work for it. You certainly have to pay for it.

If God worked that way, then every funeral would truly be a sad day, because those who have died may have been dear to us, but not one could be so good or perfect to earn a place in heaven. Neither could any of us. All would be lost, and life would always end in fear and sadness.

But God’s ways are higher than our ways. He gives away the unbelievable gift. Forgiveness is free, and that means that heaven is free as well. Would you think of asking him for that? Would you even dare make the request, if he did not reveal it to us? “Lord, I know that I can’t do everything you demand, so could you just give me heaven instead? In fact, could you just crucify the only Son you have, could you let him suffer the agony of hell I can’t imagine, so that I don’t have to?”

Isn’t it better to have his heavenly gift sooner rather than later? A popular hymn at Lutheran funerals claims “…earth’s but a desert drear–heaven is my home.” That’s not to say we should depart from God’s plan for us in this “desert drear” and take it upon ourselves to try to get to heaven before he is ready to take us. Nor is it to say that God doesn’t give us some pleasant stops along our way through this desert, times filled with joy and fun, and plenty of blessings. But compared to heaven? There the hard work and the hard life are over. The holidays have begun, to borrow a phrase from C.S. Lewis. All of our existence above God describes as “rest,” not because we do nothing but sleep or sit, but because there is no such thing as hard and difficult anymore.

This same wise and gracious God has good things in mind for each of us while we are here as well. Many years ago I heard a wise old pastor describe his answers to our prayers this way: “God always gives us what we ask, or he gives us something better.” The only kind of gifts he knows how to give are good ones. That may not be easy to believe when life his hard, but God promises. Trust his grace, and trust his wisdom, and know that his “higher” thoughts and ways are better for all of us.

Isaiah 55:7 “Let the wicked forsake his way and the evil man his thoughts. Let him turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will freely pardon.”

Words like “wicked” and “evil” are strong words that we tend to reserve for the world’s worst criminals and killers, men whose crimes against humanity bring death and suffering to thousands. Maybe it’s hard to see how they apply to the people we know personally, or to you and me.

It’s not that some of us are worse than others. It is that we are the same as all the rest. The Bible tells us: “There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” There is no difference. Call it what you want. Sin, evil, and wickedness infect us all. They may show themselves in different ways. Some of them are subtler and can be more easily hidden. But there is no denying the problem. The day of our death proves it beyond any doubt. Sin is the reason we die–every one of us. “The wages of sin is death,” Paul wrote the Romans.

But Isaiah doesn’t leave us there stewing in our sin with no solution. “Let him turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will freely pardon.” Mercy is a “heart” word. It tells us that the Lord doesn’t merely follow some unbending rules or principles in the way he treats us. He isn’t merely following a formula in the way he runs our lives. When he sees our pain or our difficulties, it moves him. He feels for us and he intends to bring us relief. He hasn’t forgotten us. He knows how hard it is, and how hard it is going to be, and he promises his mercy.

That mercy starts with his forgiveness. “He will freely pardon.” We can create a lot of sin in our lives. The sum total of the world’s sin is immeasurably bigger. But God’s pardon, his forgiveness, dwarfs it all. There is no end or limit to it. It never runs out. How could it when we consider the price God paid to make it possible?

Our God knows what it is like to have a close member of the family die. He gave up his one and only Son. He sacrificed Jesus to pay for every sin ever committed. If he loves us that much, if he has made that sacrifice to pay for our sins, he is not going to become stingy in actually applying his forgiveness to his people. If he loves us that much, he will not be stingy with any of his gifts. Remember his promise in Romans 8: “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all, how will he not also, along with him, gracious give us all things.” God freely pardons. He freely gave up his Son to make it possible. And that means he will freely give us every good thing that we need for this life and the one to come.

This mercy and forgiveness God freely gives does not cost us a penny. This is what we commonly call his grace. Do you see how this assures us that he has only good things in mind for us, even after we sin? Mercy and pardon are waiting for us no matter what we have done.

Philippians 3:10 “I want to know Christ, and the power of his resurrection…”

Jesus’ resurrection involves power. Of course, there must be immeasurable power, indescribable power, unearthly power to bring a man back to life after he has been dead for three days. But the power of Jesus’ resurrection does not work only on Jesus. It works on us, too. It’s why Paul wanted to know Christ.

The power of Jesus’ resurrection is the power that makes us spiritually alive. A dead Christ inspires no faith. It can inspire fear. That’s the effect it had on Jesus’ disciples. They locked themselves behind closed doors because they were afraid they would be the next to go, the next to be arrested and executed.

A dead Christ can inspire grief, depression, hopelessness. Poor Mary Magdalene weeps alone at Jesus’ tomb. She is beside herself because not only is her Friend and Master dead. Now they have desecrated his tomb and taken his body away. She has no proper place to mourn her loss.

At most, maybe a dead Christ can inspire curiosity. I once visited Rome, and I visited the Vatican. There you can see the mummified remains of four popes on display, each one kept under a glass case inviting the stares and the photographs of millions of visitors every year. I was curious to see the centuries-old bodies, too. But my interest was like the interest a person takes in the sideshow at the circus. During their lives these were some of the wealthiest, most influential, most powerful people on earth. But their dried and shriveled remains inspired no desire to know them, to trust them, or to follow them anymore.

Without a living Christ, this is what we are left with in this world: Fear of our own death and the sin for which we have to answer ourselves; grief, depression, and hopelessness; a life filled with losses beyond our understanding or control; and the occasional curious sideshow to distract us from the misery we live today, and the misery we fear will follow.

A Christ who takes my place under God’s judgment, dies on a cross for my crimes, and then walks out of his grave alive three days later with all the power and promise of heaven–that invades my soul and takes over my heart! Here is someone who invites more than my admiration or imitation. This is a man who deserves my complete trust and utter dedication. More than deserves it, he creates it.

With his gospel the living Christ inserts faith right through my ears and eyes. He plants it deep inside my mind and heart. I want to know Christ because his resurrection has the power to make me spiritually alive. It fills me with faith, and from that faith flows a new life full of love, and hope, and joy. That’s the power I want to know!

Matthew 28:5 “The angel said to the women, ‘Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here…’”

The first words these women who came to Jesus’ tomb heard in their Easter sermon is “Do not be afraid.” Shall we list some of the things that might have contributed to feelings of fear?

One, they were coming to a grave, and places with dead bodies like funeral homes and cemeteries have a tendency to make people feel a little uneasy to begin with.

Two, the grave was open and empty. They saw the very-dead body go in. Now it’s gone. I’ll let your own imaginations run with that one for a few moments.

Three, they are immediately confronted by a white, shiny being from another world. The first thing they see in the tomb is a spirit. That’s what an angel is. Whether a ghost or an alien, I am guessing that if you came face to face with a spirit creature from another world, you might not act exactly cool, calm, and collected at first.

There is more to that last reason for their fear. Nothing in the four Bible accounts of Jesus’ resurrection suggests these women thought they were seeing a ghost. Aliens and extra-terrestrials were a completely foreign concept to First Century Jews. But angels, spirit-messengers from God, were a part of their history and their faith. It didn’t happen often, but when God sent angels to deliver a message like this, people were afraid. God sends an angel to Mary to announce the coming birth of Jesus, and the angel has to settle her first: “Do not be afraid.” God sends an angel to shepherds near Bethlehem to announce that Jesus has been born, and the first words he says? “Fear not,” “Do not be afraid.”

Angels are the good guys. Why the fear? It’s not about them. It’s about us. Contact with angels confronts us with the “holy.” They bring us face to face with absolute sinlessness, goodness, and love. When we are standing face to face with such a creature, all our sin and failure, all of our spiritual inadequacy, suddenly become impossible to deny.

If a woman were standing next to a supermodel, she might suddenly become more self-conscious of some of the flaws in her figure or face. If a man were standing next to some finely chiseled athlete a head taller than him, someone who has lived his life in the weight room, he might lose a bit of his swagger.

How we look on the outside is superficial, practically meaningless. Who we are on the inside, sinful or holy, makes all the difference in the world if someday we want to hang out with God and his angels instead of the devil and his demons.

Our lives don’t measure up. Mine doesn’t. I know that yours don’t either. But that is exactly why we need to go looking for Jesus. That is the point. He hasn’t put together a club for people like Mary Poppins–practically perfect in every way. He has come to be the friend of sinners– not to approve of them, but to love and rescue them. He has the medicine our souls need. It’s why we celebrate this day he rose! So as you look for Jesus, look without fear in your hearts.