Spiritual Conversation

Well, good morning, everyone. When we come together on the Sabbath, in our homes, in our fellowship here, how much of our talk is concerned with spiritual matters and spiritual subjects? And not just on the Sabbath, but through the week. How is it that you conduct yourself as you talk, may have occasion to fellowship with other members?

And that may be somewhat limited because of our scattered nature and our busy lives. This may be the only day of the week you do get a chance to talk with one another.

And some of you ladies have started getting together occasionally for a luncheon, and that's wonderful. Debbie came up here last week to be a part of that with you, and you obviously have a need and a desire to do that, and that's great. But just think about that question. How is our speech and our conversation on the Sabbath or at any other time when we are with one another? How much of it is on spiritual matters or spiritual subjects? And how do we work with one another in that way? To answer that question, I want to take us this morning through a story that is recounted in the latter part of the book of Luke, chapter 24.

Luke chapter 24. This is a story that comes after the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We are in that period of time between the days of love and bread and the day of Pentecost, just probably about halfway in between, a little less perhaps right now.

This is a story that takes place, if you will, in between the Passover, Unleavened Bread period. And actually, technically, it does fall within Unleavened Bread, but if we back it up and say between Passover and Pentecost, this is when the story takes place. And there are a number of stories in the Gospels that recount the events and the experiences of the apostles and the disciples and Jesus prior to the day of Pentecost from the time that Christ was resurrected.

This is one of them. And it's a good time because this is that time of year in between the time these events took place to kind of focus on them, to look at the message, and to focus on it at this particular time. So I want to do this with this particular story here and answer the questions that I put to you here at the beginning.

This is the story of the road to Emmaus, of two disciples who were walking on the actual day after Christ was resurrected. That would be on Sunday, the first day of the week. Remember, Christ was resurrected just before sundown on the evening before, at the end of the seventh day. And we find that there are two disciples having a walk on a journey beginning in verse 13 of Luke chapter 24.

Let's begin reading here. We'll go through this account here and draw the lessons from it. It says, Behold, two of them were traveling that same day to a village called Emmaus, which was seven miles from Jerusalem. Now, scholars don't know exactly where Emmaus is today, other than what we have in this account. There's no village called Emmaus in the environs of Jerusalem today. But it's within a seven-mile radius. Draw the radius around Jerusalem and you would have what would be a few hours' walk to cover the seven miles where these individuals were going.

We don't know their names except for one. Cleopas will be revealed to us, but we never know the name of the other disciple here. We don't know if one's male, one's female, or what in this particular case. All we know is that they are two disciples. They are not of the apostles. They are not of the twelve, or by this time reduced by one to eleven. So they are disciples who had been followers of Christ. They had endured everything up to this point, and it appears that they still believed and considered themselves of this number. When Luke put his history of these events together here in what is called the Gospel of Luke, he latched on to this story.

This is the only place in the Gospels where this story is found. And he tells us by that that these were two faithful individuals who, at the time years later when he took the story, were still probably in the faith. And at this particular point, after the horrific events of this week of Christ's arrest, his trial, his death, and now his resurrection, they were still walking, if you will, and they were still interested in what he taught. And that's where they are. And so they are on the road to Emmaus. In verse 14, it says, they talked together of all these things which had happened. They talked. Now what were the things that had happened? Just what I mentioned.

The resurrection. They already knew that he had been resurrected. His death. Perhaps they had been standing along the road across, you know, a few hundred yards away when Christ breathed his last, and they saw the skies darkened. And they had heard about the tearing of this great veil in the temple between the Holy of Holies and the outer temple area, this event that had taken place.

And an earthquake, they had heard about people who had come up out of the graves when Christ died. You remember all those things that took place in Jerusalem. The moment that Christ died, a lot of things broke loose in that city. And they'd been on people's conversations in the marketplaces, in the streets, for the subsequent days. Here now, what, into the fourth day from that time. And so they were talking about it, what had happened. Now verse 15 tells us, it came to pass that while they communed together and reasoned.

Now just stop right there. In the space of this verse and a half, we are told that they talked, they communed, and they reasoned. Luke's making a point. You know, it's one thing to just say, well, here's two members off in the corner with a cup of coffee, and they're fellowshiping. What does that mean? Eh, what do you fellowship with somebody about? What do you talk about? Your events the past week, your job, your health, how you're feeling this morning, the weather, what's going on in each other's lives.

You know, that's one thing to say they're fellowshiping. We're fellowshiping. And that can mean any number of things. But Luke gives us three words and three angles of a conversation, tells us that it's more than just a coffee talk. This is more than just casual conversation. This, brethren, is even more than sometimes our fellowship that you and I engage in with one another. These two disciples, these two members, are working over the most important events of their day. They're talking, they're communing, they're sharing their deepest feelings about it, and they reason, which means that they challenged one another. They questioned one another.

Is this what you really feel and see and understand about this? Yes, it is. How do you feel about it? How did it affect you? How is it going to affect the rest of your life? What are you going to do about this? Are you going to hang in? Are you going to be in a relationship with one another?

Now that this whole church issue has changed in their minds at the time, what was to them their church, their fellowship, it is a very deep conversation. How many of you love deep conversations? I don't mean just how you're doing, but I mean someone that you can sit down with and have a very, very deep conversation. I love those. I mean, yeah, a few of us do.

Probably all of us would raise our hands, but you need another cup of coffee. I have several people that when I get together with, I love to have a deep conversation with. One of the individuals in my life that probably I enjoy talking with as much as anyone was John Robinson. To have had a conversation at times with John about spiritual issues, church matters, life, could be a gut-wrenching conversation, it could be very illuminating.

I remember this goes back 16, 17 years. We had a church visit from Pasadena then, some ministers came through to visit, and they were friends with the Robinsons, and we all went out to lunch. The wife of the visiting pastor was a longtime friend of John and Alice, and she said, you know, John, I've been waiting for weeks to just have another good conversation with you. I recognize that type of relationship, and John and I had a number of those over the years. And we didn't always agree. We agreed to disagree at various times. But it was, you know, it was a, you could have some serious conversations where we reasoned, communed, and fellowshiped, and talked over various things. You have people like that that you would count your friends, I hope. And if you don't, I hope that you someday have the gift of those, that you can cultivate that with someone that you can talk with at that level about the deepest things of your life. It's your mate or your friend in the church. But this is what we are seeing here with these two individuals as they walked on the road to Emmaus. Now, in the latter part of verse 15, it says, Jesus himself drew near and went with him. Here's two people walking down the road, and then somehow out from behind a tree, behind a rock, like a young ambassador of old. Here, out pops Jesus.

Couldn't resist that. He draws alongside. He walks up from behind. What he did was he materialized in some fashion because he was a spirit being by this point. He was already in eternity. And he comes alongside, but they don't notice anything unusual about it. Like I say, he may have just kind of walked up from behind. You ever had somebody walk up from behind you, didn't know they were there, and they startle you? Well, this is what could have happened here. And it says he came and drew near, and he went with them. But their eyes were holding that they should not know him. They didn't recognize him. Now, why they didn't? Was it something in a sense that God just put a blindness over their eyes at that point? I don't know. That could be one possibility. It could be that his appearance at that particular moment just was disguised in some way. We don't know, but it just says that they didn't recognize him. So they didn't know who they were walking with. But they were walking with Jesus. Now, we could talk even at this point about what this means.

We're being told something at two different levels. This is a story that actually happened. Luke was a doctor, keep this in mind, which meant that Luke was trained in the scientific method of his day. It wasn't as sophisticated as ours. But he dealt with facts. He dealt with things that he could see when he was a doctor. He dealt with potions and medications and people's real injuries. He was a scientist of his day, which meant that he was not trained in spiritism, theology, or whatever.

He was trained in the science of his day. Again, not as rigorous as what we have. But he recognized this as a story that was true. But he's telling us what happened. But we read it, and we can read it from that point of view as well as reading it and understanding that there is a deeper spiritual meaning for us in terms of how God walks with us.

Keep in mind that one of the names for Jesus was Emmanuel from the Old Testament. And they shall call his name Emmanuel from the Messiah. A child shall be born and his name shall be called Emmanuel, which means, in essence, the word Emmanuel from the Hebrew means God with us. Jesus was God with them. Here he was literally walking with them on the road to Emmaus. And we have to realize that that is telling us that Christ walks with us today.

He pulls up alongside of us. He comes in at times, perhaps, but he comes in at times, perhaps, more closely than we may know than at other times. And he's there with us, and he's walking with us. But we can be like these two disciples in that we don't recognize that he's there. Or we don't recognize him. We don't recognize his influence.

How does Christ walk with us today? Well, he walks with us in spirit. Many scriptures that I could turn to discuss this, that Christ walks with us in spirit. Perhaps I should turn to one just to note, let's just set this. Let's hold your place here and turn over to Romans 8. Romans 8. Beginning in verse 1, it talks about walking according to the Spirit in Romans 8, verse 1. There's no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

And without going into all of this, let's just jump down to verse 9. It says, You are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not his. And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you. There are other scriptures we could turn to that says the same thing about Christ in us.

It is by the Holy Spirit that Christ dwells in us and that we are his, and he walks with us and he teaches us and he leads us. That's what's going on. And this is a deep lesson for us to take from this, even if these two disciples did not recognize Jesus, he was there and we may not always recognize his lead and his guidance in our life, but he is with us. Christ walks within his church, within and among his members, and he is in the midst of his churches throughout history.

And he is in us through the truth that we understand of the days of Unleavened Bread. That as we put in that Unleavened Bread each day of the period of the seven days, we're symbolizing the fact that Christ's perfect life is in us by his Spirit as we take in that Unleavened Bread.

That's the important symbol that we remember from that. And as I said on the Holy Day, the last Holy Day, we celebrate Christ's resurrection for seven days through that period of time. That's not just a one-time, one-off event for us. We keep it for seven days and we do understand, we do celebrate, we do commemorate the resurrection of Jesus Christ, very much so through the keeping of the days of Unleavened Bread.

And so going back here then to Luke chapter 24, let's pick it up in verse 17. He said to them, what kind of conversation is this that you have with one another as you walk and are sad? They were discouraged. They were upset. But he wanted to know about their conversation. Now, it's not that he didn't know what their conversation was.

He did know what it was. Perhaps he was drawn to them. I've been mulling this section over here over the past few days. Why these two disciples? Why not two other members? It may be that, again, Christ said, we're gathered together in my name. There I will be in the midst of them. So here we're at least two. But they were interested in the things of the Spirit. They were interested in what these things meant and how it implied to their life.

And that's then where he was. He came to them. Sometimes we might well ask, if we're not exercising and using and listening to and drawing close to the Spirit of God, is Christ walking with us? Is He not near with us? It's a question for us all to ask in light of what we see here and to understand, again, what drew Him to these individuals at this particular moment. Then the one in verse 18, the one whose name was Cleopas, answered and said to him, Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem and have not known the things which happened there in these days?

Again, they didn't recognize who He was. And Cleopas, the only one we're given a name, says, Have you been living in a cave? Have you been just totally cut off? Did your internet connection go down? You haven't been able to check in? Did you see this on CNN News? Everybody, in other words, is talking about it. This is what you're being told. Everybody in the streets of Jerusalem has been talking about this for these days. When they went to get their loaf of bread, when they went to get their quart of milk, this is what they were talking about in the shops. This is what was being discussed on the street corners. And everyone knew.

And so He said to them, He plays dumb in verse 19, What things? What things? What is it? Now, these individuals were discouraged. They were saddened over what had taken place. And yet, in that sadness, they were trying to figure out exactly what it all meant. And so He said to them in verse 19, What things? And they said to Him, Concerning Jesus of Nazareth. So they begin to move into explaining, as if they were talking to a total stranger who just walked in out of the Judean desert, what had taken place.

And here's what they say about Christ. The things concerning Jesus of Nazareth, which was a prophet, mighty in deed and word before God and all the people. The emphasis here is on the Spirit working through Christ to do the work. They focus, as Luke seems to do so much in his writings, they focus on Christ being a prophet who was mighty in deed before God.

If you would turn back to Luke 4, just hold your place here and notice back in Luke 4. In verse 1, this is where Jesus in Nazareth, actually verse 18, is where I want to go, Luke 4 and verse 18, He was in Nazareth, His hometown, and went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, verse 16, to stand up and to read. And he read from a section of Isaiah, and he opened the book and he found the place where it was written.

Verse 18, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and the recovery of sight to the blind, and to set at liberty those who are oppressed to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. But verse 18 tells us that He did this in the power of the Spirit of God. God's Spirit moved Him in His actions.

Again, hold your place in Luke 24 and go to Acts chapter 10. This is very often a phrase used to describe the actions of Jesus and how He did His work. Acts 10, verse 38, Peter is talking here to the Cornelius in his household, this Gentile who was being called, and he begins to explain about the work of Christ and how in verse 38, God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him.

This emphasis through Acts and particularly in Luke's gospel is on the fact that what Jesus did was in and by the power of the Holy Spirit, and it was mighty deeds. Now, it mentions that He was a prophet in verse 19 of Luke 24 going back there. He was indeed a prophet, and He prophesied of many things to come. Matthew 24, the famous Olivet prophecy where the disciples asked Jesus what will be the signs of your coming at the end of the age, is a very long, detailed prophecy.

The whole book of Revelation is a prophecy from Jesus Christ. So Christ was indeed a prophet, and many things He said were prophetic in nature, and He was in that line of the prophets, and He was the greatest of the prophets from beginning in Moses all the way forward, but He was more than a prophet through His death and resurrection. None of the prophets were ever resurrected. All the prophets died. Many of them died violent deaths of martyrdom, but none of them were resurrected. Jesus was. So He was greater than a prophet, although greater than all the other prophets in that sense by what actually His work and His life did, and it kind of summed up the work of the prophets.

Back in Luke 24, these members then go on to make their explanation of what had taken place that, verse 20 of Luke 24, how the chief priests and our rulers delivered Him to be condemned to death and have crucified Him. And so they recount that story of His arrest, the conspiracies that took place, the false witnesses that were brought forth, and the story to death. And then verse 21, but we trusted that it had been He which should have redeemed Israel. And beside all of this, today is the third day since these days were done.

So what they are saying in verse 21 is they were looking at the dimension of Christ of the prophecies about the Messiah of a restoration of Israel, a restoration of the Davidic dynasty, and all the glories of ancient Israel as a nation throwing off the Roman yoke. They were looking for that because He says, we trusted that it had been He which would have redeemed Israel. They were looking for that redemption and restoration then, and it didn't happen.

Instead, He died to the most gruesome, ignominious, shameful of death, the most humiliating experience that anyone could go through in that time by being crucified. And they were trying to sort it all through. They were trying to understand it all. And they said this is the third day since these things have happened. And so what on this particular day, after the resurrection, which should have been a day of joy, it was still one of bewilderment for these disciples.

They still hadn't put it all together. Which shows that for you and I, putting it all together in terms of the life, the death, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ is an ongoing experience for you and I to get it together and understanding all of that. And putting that in the context of the kingdom of God, the message of that kingdom being brought to this earth, the announcement of a world-ruling kingdom at the hands of Christ, the coming Messiah, but understanding fully all the dimensions of Christ's death and His life in us today and how that works is something that we spend a lot of time virtually all of our life reasoning, talking, and communing through and understanding.

If only we look at the hope of the kingdom of God, the sure hope of that kingdom, and all the evils of this world being erased through Christ's return, if that's all and only what we focus on, then we are not fully understanding the full dimensions of the gospel and the message of Christ. My years as a pastor, I've noticed at times people can focus only on that part of the message as a crutch, as an excuse for not facing the reality of their life today and dealing with it in a meaningful way, to work through the challenges and the difficulties of a life that has gone exactly as one had hoped, of failed relationships, or of years of a bad marriage, or children that didn't turn out the way we thought they would turn out, or life that threw us a bunch of curves for whatever reason.

You and I have to wrestle with our lives each day. We have to get up, go to work, we have to live with our mates, we have to raise our children, we have to make a living, we have to deal with one another, we have to try to live godly in this present evil world.

And to do that, we've got to reason, commune, and talk about these things. Now our ultimate hope is the kingdom of God. But if we put all of our eggs in that vision and we don't adequately deal with what's in front of us, then we will make some more mistakes. And we will miss really a big dimension of the gospel.

These individuals were in danger of making that mistake, of just looking for everything to be wiped away. All these Roman soldiers shipped back to Rome, booted off into the Mediterranean, to fend for themselves, Israel being restored, King David come back somehow, and Israel being brought back to its glory according to all the prophecies. That's what they were looking for in Jesus. And they didn't get it. And now they were trying to figure it all out. And these two individuals and the rest of the church of their period in the first century spent the rest of their lives trying to figure it all out. They really did. And some did, and some didn't. Just like today some do, and some don't. Again, how many times over the years in my experience in the ministry have I seen people who come into the church with the excited and the vision of the kingdom of God but don't get the tools together to make the daily life right?

And that synergy is a critical thing to happen. Sadly, a lot of those people aren't with us anymore because of their disappointment, frustration, a number of different matters.

Jesus was right there to help these two, and he's right there to help us.

We have to understand that he's walking with us on our road to Emmaus.

Do we recognize him? Do we see that he's there? Do we know how to access him? And so, verse 22, going back here to Luke 24, Yes, and certain women also of our company made us astonished, which were early at the sepulcher.

So they recounted that there had already been witness that the sepulcher was empty.

When they found not his body, they came saying that they had also seen a vision of angels, which said that he was alive. And certain of them which were with us went to the sepulcher and found it even so as the women had said, but they saw him not. And, of course, all that had been recounted in the earlier part of chapter 24. So they now had had an eyewitness account given to them that the tomb was empty. The stone had been rolled back, and it had been verified. And remember, Matthew's account tells us that there was a guard placed on the tomb by Pilate around the clock 24-7 guard for that period of time so that nobody would steal his body. They were well aware of the statements that had been made that he would die and come back to life.

He said, destroy this temple and I'll raise it again in three days.

So Pilate put a guard there to make sure that none of the followers of Jesus would come and steal the body away, then make some outrageous claim. But in spite of that, Christ was there until the very moment that he was resurrected, and that story is told in Matthew. So that account, again, was known, and the tomb was empty. But still to them, they hadn't worked it all through. It hadn't proved the important points to them.

And in verse 25, He said to them, O fools, and slow of heart, to believe all that the prophets have spoken. Now, that's not very politically correct, is it? Not very sensitive for Jesus to say, you fools. He could have been knocked off the airwaves real quick.

O fools and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken.

They, their hearts weren't quick enough. They hadn't picked it up yet.

Ought not Christ the Messiah to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory.

This is the question He put to them. The Messiah, spoken of in the Scriptures, was told that He was shown to have to go through these sufferings. And so He began in verse 27, at Moses and all the prophets. He expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself. So He began to go all the way back to Moses. Now, that means the book of Genesis, because Moses was the author of the book of Genesis. So He went all the way back and He began to recount one episode, one Scripture, one teaching after another through the prophets, probably mentioning Psalm 22, Isaiah 53, the suffering servant. And all of those that specifically mark and told the things that the Messiah would have to go through, the mockings, the scourgings, the beatings, the death, the suffering, and He expounded to them the things concerning Himself. So Jesus does a number of things here, and He really sets up a precedent for teaching, because when you look in the rest of the Old Testament, the writings of Paul and Peter and the others, you will see that they continually go back to the Old Testament to use Scriptures and bring them forward to explain to people who Jesus was, and to make the connection that Jesus was the fulfillment of these. But to do so, they had to go back to the Old Testament, because, as we call it, that was all they had. That was their Bible then. Keep in mind, Luke and Acts and Revelation hadn't been written at this point. And when Jesus was going to the Scriptures, He was going to the Scriptures we call the Old Testament, but they weren't old to them. They were current, which means they were the Scriptures, their Bible, and they didn't have it neatly bound like this. The Scriptures then were written on scrolls, and Christ didn't even have a scroll, probably. I can well imagine that He didn't have a scroll, and He was just recounting it from His memory, which He could do, and you and I probably can't do. We need our books in front of us, and we need our little tabbed Bibles and little marking places and everything else to help us get to where we need to be at times when we look into our Bibles, as we all do. I wish I had the mind of Christ that well to be able to just, you know, quote all the Scriptures, but I don't. So if you can't, they'll feel frustrated. It's just part of life. We have to, God in His grace gives us a book.

And so He began to preach the gospel from the Old Testament, which is another point to remember.

The gospel of the kingdom of God, the gospel of Jesus Christ, can be preached from the Old Testament. You can preach for days just out of Old Testament Scriptures about the gospel of the kingdom of God, the gospel of salvation. Now, you use all the Old Testament, all the New Testament, too. But all Jesus was preaching from here was the Old Testament, which shows us that we need to highly value the Old Testament and not look at it as something that was superseded, done away with by anything in what we call the New Testament.

Because here Jesus expounds to them all the things concerning Himself from those very Scriptures. Now, in verse 28, let's pick up in Luke 28, because now the scene begins to shift. Now they draw near to the village, Emmaus, where they went.

They were coming to the close of their journey. And He made as though He would have gone further. He said, well, you guys enjoy the rest of your day. I'm going to continue on. Maybe we'll meet again. But verse 29, they constrained Him. In other words, they said, hey, whoa, hold on. This has been interesting. Let's not be so quick. Stay with us. Abide with us. Don't leave us. Jesus. They were peaked in terms of curiosity.

They had enjoyed His company. They were enthralled by His teaching and His words. Abide with us. Stay with us. Don't leave us, Jesus. They didn't know that that's what they were saying. But there was something compelling about His words and His message. They said, don't go. Toward evening, the day is far spent. Stay a spell, as they say down south. Don't rush off. Pull up a chair. And He went in to tarry with them or to stay with them, to wait with them.

So they went into their home. And it came to pass as He said at meat, that He took bread. They sat down to have a meal. He took bread. He blessed it. He broke it. And He gave it to them.

Now, this is reminiscent of the Passover meal. It's not a Passover meal. It's not the Lord's Supper. It's not an excuse to just do the Lord's Supper whenever you want to do it. That's not at all what this occasion should be used for. It was a meal. But in what He did during the meal with the bread and the blessing, it triggered something in their minds. It reminded them of something. And verse 31 tells us, this is when their eyes were opened.

And they knew Him. Now, it is connected with bread. Christ is the bread of life. John goes through in his gospel to explain what Jesus had taught about Him being the bread of life. And the bread that He gave is the bread that we need to feed on. So, there are obviously interesting connections right here to that.

And this is when their eyes were opened. And they looked at Him across the table. And what do you think they said or did? I imagine their jaws dropping. And in their best Gomer pile phraseology said, golly. If not literally, at least in their own mind, they were dumbfounded. They realized, you know, took their glasses off. This is Jesus. This is when they recognized Him. This is when the blinders were removed.

This is when His visage changed. I don't know. But this is when they knew Him. And that's when He vanished out of their sight. Fascinating thing to just kind of imagine and visualize this taking place in your own home. He vanished out of their sight. Just like in the movies. He just kind of evaporated. Went into a transmogrifier.

What is it in Star Wars that they went into a transporter? And just, you know, boom! He's gone. And that's what happened. Now, in verse 32, they said one to another. This was the last conversation in the room here, at least that they had. They were told, Did not our heart burn within us, while He talked with us by the way? And while He opened to us the Scriptures.

This is where the story ends, very abruptly. Jesus disappears, and then Cleopas and his companion reflect on their feelings of the last hour, two hours, whatever it may have been. As they had been with Jesus. Didn't know it until that very moment. And then He was gone. They couldn't ask any questions. They couldn't do anything else. They didn't hear Him, see Him anymore. And they were left to, again, continue the reasoning, the talking, and the communing. And what we are told in terms of what they came up with and what they did was to talk about this burning in their heart and in their mind. Now, they went on, and I'm not going to go through the rest of this, they went and they rose up and said, and they returned to Jerusalem that very hour and found the 11, and those who were with them, and they gathered, and they said, The Lord is risen, and He's appeared to Simon, and they told Him about the things that had happened on the road and how He was known to them in the breaking of bread. So they had to rush back to Jerusalem and tell their story, to confirm His resurrection. What I want to conclude here with is just a focus for a minute on their statement where in verse 32, Did not our heart burn within us while He talked with us by the way and while He opened to us the Scriptures? This is really talking about how the words of Jesus and this experience impacted their life at that moment in time and how important the words of the Scriptures, the presence of Christ, and their own fellowship conversation about that deeply impacted their life. It burned within us while He talked with us by the way. Put all of this together and understand what is being said. These disciples are no different than you and I.

Hopefully. Because hopefully we talk about and are consumed by the Word of God.

And it burns within us.

And we want to talk about it. We want to talk about spiritual things. We desire to share those with other people in a conversation that goes more than just, hi, how you doing? Or how was your week?

But we seek out those people. We seek out that time and we make the time and we talk about and we reason and we commune with someone very close to us who shares these deep feelings.

I know it can be hard when you're by yourself. Either widowed or a widower, single, or your mate is not in the church. All the more reason to find and to network and to make those relationships so that those things can be done. I think one of the benefits of you ladies who desire to get together occasionally in the ladies book club is a proof of this, to talk about these things and use the vehicles of the Bible and a story that is based on a book that is based upon a biblical character or a biblical theme so that you can reason and commune and talk through these things and work through. And I know that, at least for the book club, some of the books that, well, all the books that you are going to read are not written technically by a converted mind. And yet they are dealing with spiritual subjects. I believe, my wife believes, and I think many of you do, that you are mature enough and you are wise enough to separate the weak from the chaff of those and to dwell and focus on the things that help you in your life and your walk with God and your relationships with one another. You should be and you can be. We're all bombarded with messages from all different sources every day of our lives that we have to sift through and sort through.

And we should be able to sit down and do that off of a book or a magazine article or something else that we have a movie or anything else, whatever it might be in our life, and not be drawn away, not be watering down the truth or have to fall prey to anything like that, but because we are desiring of conversation, teaching, instruction that draws us to the scriptures, that draws us to the to the meaning of life. There's a wonderful statement back in the book of Jeremiah that flows in with the feeling these two disciples had. Jeremiah had the same feeling, and it comes out very briefly and sharply in Jeremiah chapter 20. Jeremiah chapter 20. This is a point in Jeremiah's prophecy where he was kind of worn out. He felt God had deceived him in verse 7. He said, You've deceived me, and I was deceived. You are stronger than I and have prevailed. He said, I am in derision daily. Everyone mocks me. For since I spoke, I cried out. I cried violence and spoil, because the word of the Lord was made a reproach to me and a derision daily. Jeremiah's message was not well received. He took a lot of opposition and persecution because of who he was and what he said. And he was basically saying to God at this point, You know, you didn't tell me it was going to be this rough. You didn't tell me I was going to have to stay with it this long. And I would get this type of reaction. And he was basically coming down to verse 9. He said, I will not make mention of him nor speak anymore in his name. He was offering his resignation. He said, I quit. I quit being a prophet. Hereby I resign as a prophet. I resign as a Christian. I resign as a church member. It's too hard. I didn't bargain for this. And so for a day, a week, a month, we don't know. He kind of just hung up his prophet's mantle. But at some point, he said in the latter part of verse 9, it came to this conclusion. But his word was in my heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones. And I was weary with forbearing and I could not stay.

I had to come back to church. I had to come back and find people who believed like I did.

I had to seek out conversation and fellowship with people who were of the same mind.

I couldn't stay away from it. That's what Jeremiah was saying. I have this message I've got to give it. You and I may not be standing on a street corner shouting a message of warning, but we still have that message within us. And it has to be discussed, reasoned, communed, one way, one fashion with somebody else. That's why we come to church each week. That's why we are here.

And this is what Jeremiah was saying, because it was like a burning fire shut up within his bones. Well, you go back to Luke 24 and what these two disciples were saying in verse 32 is that this message burned within them while he was with them and while he opened to them the Scriptures. And so we have to ask ourselves again, how do we talk about God in our life? Are we walking with Him?

Do we have a very strong foundational relationship with God? Do our conversations with each other ever get to a point where we move beyond the daily grind, the daily needs, and we talk about things of substance. Not that the other things are wrong. That's not my point. We will always flow in and out at various times, but if it's all we talk about when we're together, then we're missing another dimension of our relationship. We are missing a dimension exemplified by these two figures, these two members who were on the road to Emmaus when Jesus came up near them and began to talk with Him and begin to walk with Him. He walks and He talks with us by His Holy Spirit. Don't come up to me and tell me next week or next time I'm here that Jesus was walking with you through the mall.

Or wherever else you may have been. I don't want to hear that. We're on the golf course or wherever you may go. And you saw Him and you sat down and had a meal with Him.

We'll have another talk if those things get to that point.

But that doesn't deny that He is not with us and through His Spirit that He does talk to us and move us to good works, to good actions, to service, and very real by His Spirit. That's a subject for another sermon in itself and the working of the movement of God's Spirit in our lives and how we know and should respond to that and walk indeed to walk within the Spirit.

But we've got to take this example and understand that we're like these two members. We're going about our daily lives and we need to ask ourselves what we're talking about, how we're understanding the movement of God's Spirit in our lives. Because we're just like these two disciples here, these two members who we're sorting it all through. We're sorting it all through over more than just a few hours' walk on this road. We're sorting it all through by days and decades of membership and devotion to God. But we're sorting it all through together as we walk on the road to Emmaus.