Resurrection Revealed on the Way FROM Jerusalem

Luke 24:13-33

Good morning. Please open your Bibles to Luke chapter 24.

For the past month, we’ve been following Jesus on His journey to Jerusalem. From Luke 9 on, He “set His face like flint” toward the cross. He was focused. He was intentional. He knew exactly what awaited Him.

But today, we celebrate the fact that after the cross, there was an empty tomb.

Three days later, Jesus rose again from the grave.

Luke 24 opens with the women—Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and others—coming to the tomb expecting to anoint a body. But no body was there.

Two angels told them that Jesus had risen. They ran to tell the disciples, but verse 11 says, “these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.”

Peter ran to see for himself. And again—no body. But this time, no angels. Verse 12 says he “marveled”… but it doesn’t say he believed.

Have you ever heard something that sounded too good to be true?

Sure you have.

You get an email from a prince in Nigeria who wants to give you ten million dollars. You see a Facebook Marketplace listing for a ’68 Camaro for a dollar. And you’ve probably learned the hard way—if something sounds too good to be true… [pause]

…it usually is.

Well, Peter wasn’t the only one who thought the resurrection sounded too good to be true.

In our passage today, we’re going to meet two more followers of Jesus—Cleopas and another unnamed disciple, possibly Mrs. Cleopas—who begin this story doubting…

…but end it face to face with the risen Christ.

Let’s walk through it together.

Before we do, let’s pray. [pray]

The Direction of Disappointment (v. 13)

Here’s how the story begins: Luke 24:13-14 says that

Luke 24:13–14 ESV

13 That very day two of them were going to a village named Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, 14 and they were talking with each other about all these things that had happened.

Notice what’s happening here: For the last fifteen chapters, everything has been either in Jerusalem or on the way to Jerusalem. But now, for the first time, we see something happening on the way from Jerusalem.

This is Sunday afternoon—the very day Jesus rose.

Now, there are practical reasons for them to be leaving. Like many others, they had come to Jerusalem for Passover, and the feast was over.

But there are also deeper reasons.

Jerusalem was supposed to be the city of peace. But these two disciples were anything but at peace.

They were hurting. They were disappointed. They were disillusioned.

Just a week earlier, they may have been in the crowd shouting, “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!” They may have stood along the road as Jesus carried His cross. They may have watched Him die.

And now—they’re leaving.

They are walking away from Jerusalem— from peace, from hope, from every promise they thought had just been broken.

And without even realizing it, they are walking away from the very place where God has just done His greatest work.

We don’t know exactly where Emmaus was.

But we do know what Emmaus was.

It wasn’t Jerusalem.

It was an escape.

Let me ask you—where do you go when you’re hurting? What do you turn to? Who do you run to?

Pain and disappointment are universal. And it’s no sin to want relief from them.

But too often, we run to things—or people—that end up causing even more pain than what we were trying to escape.

Beloved, hear me on two things.

First, your place of pain may be the very place where God is doing His greatest work in you.

Second, if you are walking away from pain, I want you to pay close attention to what happens next.

Because while these two disciples were walking away… Jesus was already on the road to meet them.

2. The Blindness of Expectation (v. 16-24)

Look at Luke 24:15-16

15 While they were talking and discussing together, Jesus himself drew near and went with them. 16 But their eyes were kept from recognizing him.

That verse fascinates me.

For one thing, it pokes a hole in the skeptic’s argument that the resurrection appearances were just hallucinations brought on by wishful thinking.

Because if you’re going to hallucinate someone you know… wouldn’t they look like the person you know?

If I imagine Jeff Williams, he’s not going to look like Timothee Chalamet. He’s going to look like Jeff Williams.

And yet, the Scripture says they were kept from recognizing Jesus.

So the question is—what kept them?

Was it something supernatural?

Maybe. In fact, most commentators say that God prevented them from recognizing Him.

And that could very well be true.

But let me suggest something to you—not as a contradiction of the text, but as a window into their experience.

Maybe what they were feeling played a role in what they were seeing.

Grief has a way of clouding our vision. Ask anyone who has experienced deep loss. When grief sets in, it’s hard to see clearly.

And so do expectations.

A good detective story will lead you to suspect one person all along… and then in the final scene you realize—you missed all the clues pointing somewhere else.

Not because the clues weren’t there…

…but because you were looking for the wrong thing.

And that’s exactly where these disciples are.

Look at verse 21: “But we had hoped…”

That’s the key.

They had an expectation of what the Messiah would do. They had a picture of how the story was supposed to go.

And when Jesus didn’t fit that picture…

they couldn’t see Him—even when He was walking right beside them.

You can continue:

And before we move on too quickly, we need to sit with that for a moment—because we’re not as different from them as we might think.

It’s possible to miss the real Jesus… because we’re expecting the wrong Jesus.

Skip down to verse 21:

“But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.”

That little phrase—“we had hoped”—tells you everything.

They weren’t wrong to believe He was the one who would redeem Israel. They were just wrong about what that redemption would look like.

They had the right Savior, but the wrong script.

And Jesus was redeeming Israel, just not in the way they expected.

Not through political power—but through a cross.

Not by conquering Rome—but by conquering sin and death.

And because He didn’t match their expectations…

they couldn’t recognize Him—even when He was right in front of them.

Sometimes we expect a Jesus who is going to fix everything out there—change the culture, straighten out the world, win the right battles—and we can miss the Jesus who is far more concerned with changing hearts… starting with ours.

And it works the other way too.

Any time we find ourselves saying, “Well, the Jesus I know would never…” we need to stop and ask—is that the Jesus of Scripture… or is that a version of Jesus shaped by my preferences?

Because here’s the truth:

If your version of Jesus always agrees with you… always affirms you…always fits neatly inside your expectations…

you may not be following the Jesus of the Bible.

You may be following a Jesus you’ve imagined.

And that’s exactly where these disciples are.

They’re walking with Jesus, they just don’t recognize Him, because He doesn’t match the version of the Messiah they had already decided on.

And that’s why what Jesus does next is so important.

He doesn’t say, “Just look at me and believe.”

He takes them to the Scriptures.

3. The Revelation of Scripture (v. 25-27)

English Standard Version Chapter 24

25 And he said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! 26 Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” 27 And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.

What did Jesus call them out for? Notice he didn’t say “you’re slow of brain to learn what the Scriptures say.” He said they were slow of heart to believe it. Their problem was not a lack of information. It was a lack of understanding. Cleopas and the other disciple knew the facts. They knew Jesus had died. They knew the tomb was empty. They had even heard the reports of angels.

But they didn’t understand what it meant.

So beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, Jesus patiently interpreted what the Scriptures said.

Bible study with Jesus. Can you even imagine? Imagine having that passage from Isaiah 53— about the Man of Sorrows interpreted by the Man of Sorrows Himself! The One who bore our sins and carried our transgressions! The one by Whose stripes we are healed. No wonder that by the end of this story they would look at each other and say, “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures” (v. 32).

Before Jesus opens their eyes, He opens the Scriptures.

Oh, how we need that today!

Sometimes we look at our circumstances, and nothing makes sense.

But if you want to see Jesus clearly, you don’t start with your circumstances. You start with the Word of God.

Because you will never understand the work of God until you open up the Word of God.

And I promise you—when you come to the Scriptures like that… your heart will begin to burn.

Because the Word of God is not dead ink on a page. Hebrews 4 says it is living. It is active.

That’s what they were feeling on that road.

Their understanding was changing… their hearts were waking up, and they wanted more.

They still didn’t know who He was—but they knew they didn’t want Him to leave.

And when Jesus acted like He was going farther, verse 29 says they urged Him strongly, “Stay with us.”

That’s a prayer Jesus—Immanuel, God With us— loves to answer. Because He has always been the God who draws near.

Jesus came in to stay with them. And what happens next is the hinge of the entire story.

4. Recognized in Relationship

Ultimately, these two disciples recognized Jesus. But I want you to pay attention to when it happens. verses 30-31 with me:

Luke 24:30–31 ESV

30 When he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them. 31 And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. And he vanished from their sight.

On the road, their hearts were burning. But at the table, their eyes were opened.

Jesus is not just understood through explanation—He is recognized in relationship.

This is confirmed by how Cleopas and the other disciple explain this to the Eleven:

Luke 24:33–35 ESV

33 And they rose that same hour and returned to Jerusalem. And they found the eleven and those who were with them gathered together, 34 saying, “The Lord has risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon!” 35 Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he was known to them in the breaking of the bread.

I want to go on a little side quest right here and talk about something I had always misunderstood verse 33. All my life, I had read this as Cleopas and the other disciple found the Eleven and said to them, “The Lord has risen and has appeared to Simon!”

Scholars are all agreed that the “Simon” here is Simon Peter. And that always struck me as odd, because I thought, “Why would they have to tell Simon that Jesus had appeared to him if he, Simon, was already in the room.

I finally realized that it wasn’t the two disciples telling the Eleven disciples about Simon.

It was the Eleven telling them! They are welcoming them in to a party already in progress!

I wonder what would have happened to those two disciples if the Eleven had not confirmed the truth to them. If they had said, “Look, we are still trying to sort this out. Nothing is official. We are just gathering information.”

Would they have wavered? Would they have said, “Oh… well, maybe we didn’t see what we thought we had seen after all.”

But no— they come into the party! People are laughing, hugging, sharing stories. Peter and John are arguing with each other about who got to the tomb first.

So Cleopas and his buddy join in: “Yeah! Let me tell you what happened to us!”

They shared how they recognized Jesus in the breaking of the bread. But I want to suggest to you that they also recognized Jesus in the fellowship of the disciples.

Two nights ago, we had our annual Good Friday service out on the hill. It was a beautiful night. We all brought bag chairs ad blankets. We ate hot dogs and sang worship songs. Kids were playing, people were laughing. It was good to be together.

Then, as the sun was setting, we shared Communion together. And I want you to know— I could sense the presence of Jesus just as clearly as we ate hot dogs together as I could when we shared communion.

Because Christ is recognized in relationships.

And hear me on this. I know there are a lot of people in this room this morning who may not come to church all that often. And we are so glad you are here. And as a pastor, I want you to feel the joy of being with God’s people today. It is true that you can hear good sermons on YouTube. You can listen to worship music on the radio.

But Christ will never fully reveal Himself to you apart from the fellowship with other believers.

He is recognized in relationships, both vertically— you and God— and horizontally: you and God’s people.

5. The Road of Repentance (v. 33)

We’re going to bring this in for a landing, but I want to revisit something that’s easy to miss in verse 33: “They rose that same hour and returned to Jerusalem.”

We know from the beginning of the story that they were about 7 miles out from Jerusalem. And when they are convincing Jesus to stay with them in verse 29, they say, “It is nearly evening and the day is now spent.”

And yet, once they recognize Jesus, once the burning in their hearts has changed to seeing with their eyes— they don’t waste any time finding somebody to tell.

This is what repentance looks like. Repentance is a change of direction, or more accurately, a change of mind that leads to a change of direction.

For these two disciples, this isn’t repentance from rebellion. It’s a change in their understanding.

Before this moment, they were discouraged. Confused. Disillusioned. Before this moment, Jerusalem was where their hopes died.

Now, it’s where the story is just beginning.

What changed?

Simple: They met Jesus.

And some of you are on that road right now.

Not really running from Jesus, but just quietly walking away.

Because something didn’t turn out the way you hoped. Because somewhere along the line the church hurt you. Because somehow, Jesus no longer felt central in your life.

And maybe what needs to change is not your situation, but your understanding of what God is doing in it.

And if Jesus is revealing Himself to you today— through His Word, through His people, then the call is simple:

Turn around.

Come back.

Come back to Him. Come back to His people. Come back to the place where you once believed.

Cleopas and the other disciple started the day walking away in disappointment.

But when Jesus was revealed, they turned around and ran back with joy.

You can make the same turn today.