MAY 18 2025 | 50 Days: Road to Pentecost S1E4 | Road to Emmaus

Sea Change Church · MAY 18 2025 | 50 Days: Road to Pentecost S1E4 - Road to Emmaus
Luke 24:13-21
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

good of those who love you Lord and so we bring you God all the joys all the trials we just bring it to you now we know you're working things out for our good bless this service today God prepare our hearts for the preaching of your word Lord and help us to walk out God more like your son we ask in the name of the father and the son and the holy spirit amen the gospel according to Luke chapter 24 verses 13 through 21 that very day two of them were going to a village named Emmaus about seven miles from Jerusalem and they were talking with each other about all these things that had happened while they were talking and discussing together Jesus himself drew near and went with them but their eyes were kept from recognizing him and he said to them what is this conversation that you were holding with each other as you walk and they stood still looking sad then one of them named Cleopas answered him are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days and he said to them what things and they said to him concerning Jesus of Nazareth a man who was a prophet mighty !

and crucified him but we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel yes and besides all this it is now the third day since these things happened this is the word of the Lord the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the �� the k �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �륥 �� �� �� �� �� �륥�� �� �륥s �륥k ��s �륥c Right on, welcome to See Change Church. It's a little hot right now, I know what happened to it.

If you want to turn that down a little bit, thank you so much. Welcome to See Change Church. I'm Pastor Adam. I'm the lead pastor here. And we are in our Pentecost series. We are in episode four of that. And it's called 50. It's the 50 days between when Jesus rose from the dead and the Holy Spirit fell on the disciples. Now we know that Jesus left after 40 days, right?

We are looking at those 40 days. It's an incredibly important 40 days where he's speaking to his disciples. He's giving some of the best teachings he's ever given. He's given some incredible interactions. And here we are on the road to Emmaus. Emmaus is a city about seven miles outside of Jerusalem. And on the day that Jesus rose from the dead, he was busy that day, rising from the dead obviously, talking to people in the morning, and now it's the same day.

It's a few hours later because these disciples who were in Jerusalem have ended up on the way to Emmaus, this city. There's a monastery in Emmaus now. When we were in Israel, we went to it. It kind of marks the spot. I think it's a Cistercian monastery of the Catholic faith. And we see Jesus meeting these two disciples who are struggling. It actually says that they are sad.

Obviously they are. They were in the hub of what happened. And Jesus has this conversation with them. And they begin to speak with Jesus and to share their hearts. As he begins to press in, he begins to show up, draw near, it says, and he begins to ask them questions about, you know, and it isn't like he didn't know. He was just asking these penetrating questions that got to the root of the matter.

His identity was hidden from them. But at a certain point, you're gonna see in next week or the week after, I think we're gonna do three weeks in this passage, they're eating a meal together and at the breaking of the bread, his identity is realized, recognized, and then just like Jesus, he's gone, he disappears. And then they head back to Jerusalem to tell the story.

I wanted to, I'm really glad you're here today. I love preaching the word of God, especially when people tell me, hey, that was a word for the week. This is a routine that we get into, and I love to be able to share an encouraging word. And today, the word I really wanted to share, I think so many people need to hear it. This is a week where the last couple weeks, my text has been getting blown up with, in a good way, but just people struggling.

And at a certain point, it's like, Lord, you're gonna carry all this. It's not something I can carry, but you're gonna have to carry it. So when I got this word, I'm like, the word of God is powerful, and I think a lot of you are really gonna dive into this because we all have Emmaus moments. We all have these moments where we've been somewhere, maybe things are going really, really well, and all hell breaks loose, as it did in Jerusalem on that day.

And all of a sudden, we leave the place where the power was. We don't go to the place where we were told to go. You'll see in a moment, Jesus had told them to go to somewhere, and it wasn't Emmaus. And they leave that place in doubt, in discouragement, disillusioned. We know at least they were sad about all these things that had happened. In the midst of that, Jesus draws near, unrecognized, which didn't really seem to matter because he continues to press in.

He continues to follow on. He continues to tarry. You'll see later on in the story, they get to a place, and Jesus is like, well, I'm just gonna continue on until they invite him in. They're like, no, come into our home. Come spend a little bit more time. Who's this incredible person we're meeting? And so they invite him in, and then he lingers. He hangs out a little bit longer, and goes, and he has a meal with them.

I put today, we all have Emmaus moments, and the thing that's not in your notes, I want you to write at the top of your notes, routine and communication. These are the ways to get back on track. We see this in this conversation here. Jesus enters into the routine, the eating of the bread together, the common meal, the walking along the road together.

There's all this routine, and he enters into a very mundane place, right? He doesn't all of a sudden take them up and show up on the top of a mountain or fly through heaven with them, and they're like, whoa, you are Jesus. No. He just starts taking a walk. They're walking home, walking probably home to where they are, and he shows up, and he just begins to talk in the mundanity.

I don't know if that's a word, but I use it a lot, mundane. In the mundanity of the moment, he has a meal with them. He lingers. He tarries, and in the midst of that, he is recognized, and so for any of you that feel like, hey, I'm in an Emmaus path right now. Something has happened. It can be incredibly tragic. We've seen, I know people have texted me.

They've had people pass away. Somebody spoke to me this morning on the way in the door. They had a loss in their family, and we oftentimes leave the places that are the most powerful, right? The places we were called to stay, the places we were called to go, and we head in a different direction. How do we stop doing that? I had you write routine and communication.

Those are points. Here's the big idea today. I usually put main point, but I don't know. I felt cool. I wanted to explore the space, so I put big idea. Sometimes we don't recognize God or Jesus' presence because we're too focused on our pain. Jesus walks with us even when we're walking away. That is so key. Romans 5, 8, it says, while you were still a sinner, Christ Jesus died for us.

He didn't wait for you to get it all together. He's not waiting for the perfect version of you, the cleaned up version of you, the one that gets it all right, that gets an A on the test. He understands, and he's gently trying to guide you back to where you belong. As you'll see, they end up back in Jerusalem. I would imagine they end up in the Galilee after that because that's where he had told them to go.

There's two main points. Routine and communication, I just wanted to frame that up. I want you to have good routines when you're walking away from Emmaus. If you're walking away from Jerusalem right now on a road to Emmaus, discouraged and in doubt, or struggling, get back to your routines, keep the communication open with God and with others. Here's the two main points, though, that we're just gonna hit.

Number one, don't let discouragement change your direction. Discouragement has this incredible ability just to change your direction. Right? Let God change your direction. The Holy Spirit, who we're speaking about, if God tells you to go to Emmaus, then you best go to Emmaus. Right? But a lot of times, and I'm using Emmaus as a metaphor, this place of comfort, it's probably where these disciples lived, we tend to go to the places that are most comfortable to us.

Don't let discouragement change your direction. If you're discouraged, all of a sudden, you can change your direction. You can change your emotional trajectory with your spouse if you're discouraged. You can stop doing the things you know. We get into negative routines, negative patterns. Second one, the second point is, in times of doubt, keep the conversation flowing.

This was the point that really was the most helpful for me this week. Just keep talking to God, keep in that conversation. Go to verse 13 and 14, don't let discouragement change your direction. That very day, that's the day of the resurrection, two of them were going to a village named Emmaus. It's about seven miles from Jerusalem, and they were talking to each other about all these things that had happened.

The question is, who are these disciples? Two random disciples. He's shown up in the morning, he's shown up to Mary, and he showed up in the garden tomb. We know all those stories from Easter. But now it's the same day, and he shows up like seven miles away from where the action's happening to these two random disciples. Like, I always wondered, who are these disciples?

Well, the scripture tells us the name of one. Clovis is the name. It says there was a disciple in this passage who's named Clovis. But it doesn't really tell us any more of that. But if you were to dig into church history, which I know you all love to do, right? Like deep into, like Eusebius, right? Eusebius wrote in the fourth century. I know you already all know that because you study the ecclesiastical history of the church by Eusebius in the fourth century.

But if you haven't, I'm gonna help you out, all right? Eusebius wrote in the ecclesiastical history in book three, chapter 11. You can write it down. He wrote about who this Clovis was. Now, there is some debate, and it is actually church history. It's not actually in scripture. There is some debate that there is a little bit of a, there's a misspelling, a different spelling, which could have been possible with this Clovis.

Clovis is believed through church history, and he is writing 300 years after Jesus dies, and he's talking about another person who had written 100 years after Jesus died, so a lot closer than we are to the situation. Clovis is believed to be Joseph's brother. Now, Joseph, the brother of, excuse me, the father of Jesus had a brother. His name was Clovis, and it is believed that the Clovis in this story is Joseph's brother, which means it would be Jesus, do the math, uncle, right?

Now, it is also believed that Joseph married, excuse me, it's difficult, right? I'm doing my best. So this is Eusebius four centuries ago, okay? You have Joseph, the father of Jesus. He has a brother named Clovis, right? Clovis marries a woman. Who is it? We believe it's Mary's sister, Mary the mother of Jesus. So this means that the two people, and this was common in the culture of the day, according to church history, that the two people walking are Jesus' uncle and his aunt, and they're walking together, and one of them is a female.

You can look it up on your own. You can do more. I won't go any deeper than that, but this woman was believed to be at the cross when Jesus died, his aunt, and it says this. You can find that in John. This is in the scripture, John 19, 25. It says, but standing at the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clovis. Now, that is found in John 19, 25.

You can do the debate on that. The scripture doesn't exactly tell us, so this is just a point to make it more interesting, but if it is true, that conversation along the road as what they're talking, a husband and his wife, relatives of Jesus, if it's true, if church history is correct, standing at the cross brings in a lot more gravity to the suffering that they're going through in that moment, and the reason why Jesus would show up to two, quote, random disciples seven miles away because he went to his family to say to them, I am alive.

That changes the gravity, and so we all have these Emmaus moments, and so let's just choose to believe church history, right? You can look at the spelling on Clovis and say, well, I don't agree with that or whatever, but let's just choose to step into what the ages has believed about this couple that are walking, and in that gravity, look at the discouragement and realize that discouragement has an incredible power to redirect our lives.

Discouragement has this incredible power. Now, so the question is, what would you have done had Jesus been crucified in front of you, if you were his friend, if you were there, if you were his family member? Well, what you want to do is do the thing that you know is right rather than oftentimes the thing you want to do, and that's the point for us on our ways to Emmaus.

Jesus had told them where to go. Before Jesus had died on the cross, if you go to Matthew, not right now, it's in the notes, Matthew 26, 32, this is the English Standard Version, it says, Jesus said to them, but after I am raised, I will go before you to Galilee. Now, it is possible that he could have meant, well, go to Emmaus, do a few other things, and then you can meet me in Galilee, but he doesn't say that, and I gotta tell you, I don't want to say I know more than other disciples who had that, because I have a lot of go to Emmaus in me when I'm struggling.

I have these routines, these go-tos, these things I go to. I like to think in my best moments, when I'm preaching a sermon, I feel, you know, like I gotta, you know, I feel a little better than I do in my low moments, that I would say, hey guys, no, no, no, no, you know, to my wife, hey, you know, we're not going, we're not going to Emmaus, because it was her idea, obviously, not mine, just kidding.

I would say, hey, no, we're going to Galilee, why are we going to Galilee? Because that's where Jesus told us to go. A lot of times, discouragement just messes up our map, right? Discouragement crosses out towns, it highlights other ones, here's a town you should go to, you're like, well, I left that town a long time ago, Jesus told me not to go back, but I want you to go to that town, because you're discouraged, you go back to that town.

Just discouragement takes the map of your life, it has winds blow in the other directions, and it takes a lot of spiritual fortitude, courage, and faith to go to the things that you know. And one of the things that they knew is that Jesus has said, go to Galilee, and they were not going to Galilee. Galilee are those places in your life that you know work.

Perhaps it's your AA meeting. Perhaps it's a relationship with a discipler. Perhaps there's a special place where you go, and you have quiet time with Jesus. It's your quiet time in the morning. It's your afternoon walk on the bike path. It's whatever it is. You know that these are places where Jesus shows up. You know these are places that he has highlighted on the map, on the terra firma of your life, and he has said, go to these places.

But how often do we just go back to Emmaus? We walk away from that. And so what I wanted to really say is don't let discouragement change your direction. Right now, where are you walking? Granted, you might be going in the right direction, but how many little detours are you taking to places you know that that's really not where Jesus told me to go?

That's not the healthiest place for me. It could be a relationship. It could be these other things. They've gone off, and they're on their way, because disappointment often makes us distance ourselves from the things that are healthiest for us. I want to say, go to the places of refuge, to the places that you know that you have been called. There's a thing, an experiment done in the 1960s.

It was called the free running experiment. And in the 1960s, they took a people, and they put them in the solitary confinement, and they left the lights on. And they left them in there for like 30 days, 60 days. I guess they paid them a ton of money, because you couldn't put me in there for that. You had to pay me. And they found out that the people there, because there was no light, because there was no day, they lost all rhythm in their lives.

They would stay up four hours, and then they would sleep 27 hours. And then they would be up 42 hours, and be asleep eight hours. And they came up with the euphoria of not knowing where you are, not knowing where to go, having no routines, having no anchors in your life. The idea of free running. My wife and I, since we heard about that experience, experiment, Eusebius, experiment, Emmaus, got it.

You try it. I say that seven times fast. Since we heard about that experiment, we've always understood what each other mean when we say, hey, we're free running our finances right now. Just free running the finances, right? It's Christmas, just free running. No, no, free running our schedule. Let's get up, let's go, just free running. We just call it free running.

Free running's fun sometimes, right? When you're on the 42-hour bender, you know what I mean? But like, all of a sudden it ends. When I find myself in discouragement, and when the map has gotten messed up, when I'm in my Emmaus spirit, when I'm walking away from Jerusalem, I'm walking away from the places God has called me, I get away from those routines.

This week, I got back to those routines, but the routines, I didn't get back to them until I did the second point. And the second point was the one that got me at least in a spiritual condition to get back to the routines, to go into the Bible first in the morning before I go to anything else. Like, I know, I go to the coffee. I told you that last week.

I admitted it. I do go to the coffee first. People are dying in prison for Christ all over the world. I'm like, no, Lord, not without my coffee first, but nonetheless. Here's the second point that I think is key. So, the second point is in times of doubt, keep the conversation flowing. So the first point is, are you hitting your marks? Do you surround yourself with really healthy, spiritually healthy, physically healthy, emotionally healthy places where you're like, I'm gonna hit my mark.

I'm gonna just give you a quick example before I go into the second point. For me, Tuesdays at noon, prayer meeting is an anchor for my life. I'm there 90% of the time. I show up with a faithful group of others and we pray, we meet together and I just sit there and sometimes I'm like, I can't wait to get to the dock. It's like you're out to sea but that is a dock in my life.

You know, my family meal on Sunday afternoons when we're with the family, that is a dock in my life. I have these things and so these routines, the first thing I wanted to say to you is re-add the routines, the places on your map, go to Jerusalem, go to Galilee, stay away from the Emmaus. I'm using that in a pejorative term even though they might have lived in Emmaus.

The second one now is keep the conversation going. Go to verse 15 and 16. While they were talking and discussing together, Jesus himself drew near and he went with them. But their eyes were kept from recognizing him, circle recognizing him in your notes, and he said to them, what's this conversation that you're holding with each other as you walk? And they stood still looking sad.

They go on, we already read the rest of the story of what happens after that. A couple things I really like here. One, they were in conversation together. I find that conversation is, I mean healthy conversation, good conversation, is so powerful in regard to keeping my spirits up, to keeping me on track, into letting me know where I am on the map. Phil was up here a minute ago.

He's one of the guys I spend a lot of time with because he's our missions coordinator. I rarely have a conversation with that guy where I don't come away like very encouraged. Like he's just one of my people and I got multiple people that you feel that with that person. So they're talking and they're having this conversation and then the next thing that I love is they're having this conversation is that Jesus draws near.

That word is a Greek word. Draw near is, I'm gonna mispronounce it. I usually listen to it on the audio beforehand but I think it's angizo and the root meaning means to approach, to come near, to draw near obviously. The word shows up in both the literal and figurative senses. We'll look at a couple places it shows up in the scripture but this idea that when you're walking away through Jesus that he's pursuing you.

Man, isn't, don't you feel the other way? Don't you feel like when you're struggling like you just wanna run from him and he's like sitting there with his, you know, his splintered ruler just waiting to give you a few wraps, you know, on the knuckles and you have this guy and not believing, not seeing the fact, even though he might be unrecognizable, that he's pursuing you.

He's drawing you near and the next thing you see is as he draws near, he goes into the conversation but I wanna give that draw near just a literal proximity verse first. Luke 15, 1, you'll see it in your notes. Now the tax collectors and the sinners were drawing near to him. That's what I love about Jesus, right? He's the kind of person that sinners draw near to and he's the kind of person that draws near to you.

You are gonna have a mutuality of respectful and caring relationship when you have two parties who are drawing near to one another. I wanna say that to you that are in your marriages. Draw near to one another, keep the conversation going, stay in good routines, not unhealthy routines. These are the things that let us know where we are on the map. In James 4, 8, once again using the same word, angizo, and I pronounce it differently than I pronounced it the first time there so take note of that because I don't know how to pronounce it.

Draw near to God and what? He will draw near to you. Well this one, they're not even drawing near to him and he still draws near. That's the God that we find and he's there and then all of a sudden he engages them in a conversation. Jesus doesn't, you'll see this in your notes, Jesus doesn't wait for them to get it right. He steps into their journey. I don't know how it happened if like he pops up 30 feet behind, I don't know, he's hiding behind a rock, I don't know, right?

They're walking, next thing I know, I don't know how fast Jesus walks, I imagine pretty quickly, you know, and he walks up on them and he kind of just joins the journey and then he just starts asking questions. Basically, what's going on in your life? How are things? He wants to have those conversations with you and the interesting thing is that they are kept from recognizing Jesus' identity.

Now, this makes sense if it's his aunt and uncle. I mean, they probably would have, I mean, obviously they would have recognized him anyways but if he was their family, they definitely would have recognized him, right? If that is true and we're gonna believe just for this one hour that church history got it right on that one and that he speaks to them and they said and he begins this conversation and they're kept from recognizing him and then go to verse 18.

One of them named Clophas, that's how we know it's Clophas, Cleophas, Clophas, answered him, are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who doesn't know the things that have happened in these days? Like, are you clueless? You have no clue of what is happening? And Jesus is just begging the question. There's a couple things that I think is so interesting when we're on our own Emmaus journeys, right?

We're heading away, we're struggling. The first thing that's key is we don't see God. We don't recognize him, we don't see him, he's there but just because we don't see him doesn't mean he's not there. And the other thing, you begin to have questions that you don't really know the answer to or questions you don't understand why that person would feel that way.

It's just he begins to ask these questions and we become in this time of questions. We don't recognize him, and we're full of questions, full of not understanding of the things that had happened. I want to encourage you and this is the thing that really helped me this week because there was a lot going on this week. I need to go to my whole story. But I have a tendency to kind of shut down spiritually when things aren't going well or when I get burned out or if I get tired.

I just kind of like, I don't go running to sin, right? That was a lot earlier in my life but I kind of just shut down. Like, I'm just, what's the next pleasure, right? My coffee, my going to, you know, next basketball game, what can I watch on a movie? When can I just go do something I like? Let's go out to eat. When I, can I go get the, you know, the bean and cheese burrito I love up in Claremont, Brudos and Fries, $4.99.

Just, when's my next thing, right? No, it's legit, dude. $4.99, Brudos and Cheese, go get that bean and cheese burrito. I say it's the best in the city. My whole life, I don't, I don't, I think the days of me, like, I don't want to say for sure because you never know what you're going to do, but the days of like, oh, I'm going to go back to the bottle because I'm upset about something.

I mean, I mean, that's been 40 years behind me, almost 35 years, whatever it is. Yeah, yay, yay, yay. All that, but, but the point is, I can just as easily, just like, just stop talking to God. I just, I don't, I just want to get away. I need a break, the whole thing. And what I thought this week when I read this, I thought, just keep talking. Keep the conversation going.

So, there was a podcast I really wanted to listen to. Somebody said to me, I'm like, that looks amazing. And I felt like my spirit turned worship on. I'm like, but this is more interesting to me at the moment. So, I hit the worship, you know, and I'm listening to some worship. I don't even like the style of the worship, but I'm just listening to it, you know what I mean?

And then I just kept talking to God. I just kept saying, Lord, I don't, I don't, I don't really want to pray. Can you get me to where I want to pray? I just, and I just, I just, I just forced myself to keep talking to him. I just kept talking. I kept listening. I opened up my Bible because I know he speaks there and I didn't really want to open my Bible, but I opened it up and I began to read the Bible because I realized that conversation is so often where the restoration begins.

And so, I began to talk. I began to listen and pretty soon, a couple days ago, maybe yesterday or the day before, I was like, yeah, I'm going to crack my quiet time again. I'm going to get up. Everything, everything else is going to wait straight into the Bible. Then by this morning, I got up, I was looking forward to it again. It, the way I got off my Emmaus road, which was just a road of like, basically like self-indulgence, right?

Just do what I want to do when I want to do it and I'll do it on my time. I'm just going to free run my spiritual. I'm going to free run everything. If I want to do a prayer time, I'll do it. If I don't, I don't. The way I got away from that was keep the conversation going and this was such an incredible point. Conversation with God will help lead you back to your routines.

There's a story I was reading and there's a movie that came out called The 33 and in 2010, there was these Chilean miners and if you remember, there was a, the mine collapsed and they were down there and it was in complete darkness. A couple of them had the headlights but they had to, you know, they only had so much battery in the headlights and so the way that they survived, these 33 guys, is they decided, okay, here's what we're going to do.

There was no light. There was no entrance. They were, you know, 250 feet down, I think and it was, all hope was lost basically. They said, okay, here's what we're going to do. First of all, we're going to give each other positions. Some guy became the chaplain. He wasn't really a chaplain. He said, we're going to have prayer meeting every single day. They said, okay, you're in charge of the food.

They had enough food for two days. They made it last, I think it was like 49 days or something like that. They had little samples. They could begin to show up and then they begin to communicate. We're going to sing together. We're going to talk together because it's in the dark so we're going to continue to speak to each other to know that we are alive.

Then finally, they got a drill down there with the size of a straw and they ran it down and they pushed a note through like all this down below and it just said, are you okay? They said, we're here and we're alive and they put it there. They said, the reason we survived, they eventually got to them. Here's a picture of them after they were rescued. You'll see that.

Maybe you remember that from 2010. They said, we're alive because we got into our routines. We kept hope. We kept discipline and we kept talking. I thought, man, when I heard that, I was like just looking for it. Even this morning, I'm like, Lord, just give me something that can really sum up this message that really helped me this week. It was that. If you are on an Emmaus Road right now, if you're on a place where the communication is stopped and you're in cities you shouldn't be in, I want to encourage you to keep talking to God.

Keep walking back to the places, to the places that you know that you were called to be because eventually that will lead us to the upper room where the Holy Spirit falls and you'll be back on track. Amen? Let's stand if you would. We're going to have our prayer team come forward. If you need prayer today, we want to pray with you. If you have never made a decision to follow Jesus, up front here is a place where you can come pray and we can pray with you to have eternal salvation, to be a follower of Jesus, to go to the places that he has called you to go.

We'll see you be baptized. We'll see you be discipled and move into a life in Christ. So these people up front that will pray for you, if you need prayer for healing, we have oil to anoint you with oil. If you're discouraged, if you're down, if you want to pray for somebody else and stand in the gap with one of our prayer people, do that as well. If you extend your hands, I want to bless you.

Lord, we want to bless your people. We call upon your name, God. So many of us get discouraged. And for those here that are in that moment, they're in that place, they're walking away, they're disillusioned, maybe they're discouraged. Something has happened in their lives, God. They need to get the conversation going and you're right there saying, hey, what's going on?

What's been happening? You're like, haven't you heard? My life's a mess. No, tell me more. No, let's have a meal. Let's spend some time together. And then they recognize you, Jesus. You will be recognized. And I pray that Jesus' spirit, the Holy Spirit, would fall upon you, would fall upon these situations and would draw you near to that leather chair, to that seaside place, to that church, to that chapel, to that relationship that is right, to the word of God, to the places that you need to go.

Because today is the day of your restoration, the day that you turn back to Jerusalem, the day that you put your face towards the cross where the Holy Spirit might fall on you. So I bless you now that you might be changed forevermore. And as you go out to make a change in the world, in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. We love you. If you need prayer, come get it, or get some acai and send some kids to Africa.

Bye-bye.