We are continuing this morning with part two of our series, The Bible Never Said That. Last week, we talked about Peter, a man who had followed Jesus, walked with him, looked him in the eye, and declared,

"You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." (Matthew 16:16).

But then, in one terrible night, Peter denied even knowing Jesus. Not once, but three times.

Jesus was tried and crucified. His body was buried, and then the report came back that the tomb was empty and that the women had seen a vision of angels who said that Jesus was alive.

Peter ran to the tomb but did not know what to make of it all, so he went back to fishing. He went back to the boat, back to the family business, and back to the life he had lived before Jesus ever called him.

However, we saw that Jesus did not let him stay there, drifting out on the water, feeling defeated and empty, like somehow God had let him down. Jesus showed up on the shore and called out to them,

"Friends, haven't you any fish?" (John 21:5).

Then he directed them to throw the net on the right side of the boat, and they pulled in so many fish they could barely haul the net. Meanwhile, Jesus built a fire, cooked breakfast, and called Peter back, not with condemnation but with a question. Actually, three questions. He said, "Do you love me?" Three times he asked him to erase the three denials, and then he reinstated him, saying,

"Take care of my sheep" (John 21:16).

Today, we're going to look at another resurrection appearance. This one involves two disciples who were doing something very similar to what Peter did, except instead of returning to a career, they were going home. In other words, they were headed in the wrong direction, away from Jerusalem, away from the promise, away from the community of faith, and Jesus went after them.

But before we go to Luke’s gospel, before we join them on the road to Emmaus, I want to lay a foundation. Because Jesus taught something earlier in his ministry that will give us a framework for understanding exactly what was happening to these two disciples and what Jesus does about it. So, let’s turn to Matthew chapter 13, where Jesus is teaching a large crowd, saying:

"A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up." (Matthew 13:3-4).

"Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root." (Matthew 13:5-6).

"Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop — a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown." (Matthew 13:7-8).

When Jesus' disciples asked him to explain the parable, he told them that the seed is the Word of God and that the different soils represent different responses to that Word. Today, I want to focus on one type of soil in particular: rocky soil. Jesus explained it this way:

"The one who received the seed that fell on rocky places is the man who hears the word and at once receives it with joy. But since he has no root, he lasts only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, he quickly falls away." (Matthew 13:20-21).

In other words, he started well. He believed. He was excited. He received the word with joy. But when the heat came, when trouble arrived, when circumstances did not go as he expected, and when the thing he was trusting God for fell through. When everything seemed to collapse, his roots simply were not deep enough to hold him, and he fell away.

Now, keep that picture in your mind, because I want to take you to a road outside of Jerusalem, late in the afternoon on resurrection Sunday.

Luke tells us in chapter 24 that on the same day that the tomb was found empty, the same day the women came running back with news that Jesus was alive, that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem. They were talking with each other about everything that had happened (Luke 24:13-14).

And that’s when Jesus showed up. Luke says,

"As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them; but they were kept from recognizing him" (Luke 24:15-16).

In other words, Jesus didn’t stand at the city gate and call after them. But he went to where they were, moving in the direction they were moving, and he entered into their conversation.

"He asked them, 'What are you discussing together as you walk along?'" (Luke 24:17).

His question stopped them in their tracks. Luke tells us,

"They stood still, their faces downcast" (Luke 24:17).

This word, translated as “downcast” in the original language, conveys deep grief, like someone whose hopes have been crushed. Their faces were downcast because they had received the Word with joy, they had believed that Jesus was the one, but all of their hopes and dreams seemed to have died with him on the cross.

"One of them, named Cleopas, asked him, 'Are you only a visitor to Jerusalem and do not know the things that have happened there in these days?'" (Luke 24:18).

What a heartbreaking question: "Are you the only one who does not know the things that have happened there?" And yet, they were walking and talking with the very person these events were all about, and they had no idea; they didn’t recognize him.

Rather than revealing himself immediately, Jesus drew them out with a simple question.

"What things?" (Luke 24:19).

And so, they began to tell him everything that had happened.

"About Jesus of Nazareth," they replied. "He was a prophet, powerful in word and deed before God and all the people. The chief priests and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him" (Luke 24:19-20).

And then they said something that reveals exactly what kind of soil they had been:

"But we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel" (Luke 24:21).

“We had hoped.” Past tense. A hope that has given up. A hope that has packed its bags and set out on the seven-mile walk toward Emmaus.

They had believed, but their belief was built on an expectation of how God was supposed to work. And when God worked differently than they expected, their faith didn’t have roots deep enough to survive it.

"And what is more, it is the third day since all this took place. In addition, some of our women amazed us. They went to the tomb early this morning but didn't find his body. They came and told us that they had seen a vision of angels, who said he was alive. Then some of our companions went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but him they did not see" (Luke 24:21-24).

These two disciples had eyewitness testimony of the empty grave and a vision of angels, yet the report still wasn’t enough to hold them. The facts of the resurrection stood right in front of them, and they were still heading the wrong way. And so, Jesus says to the who of them,

"He said to them, 'How foolish you are, and how 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?” (Luke 24:25-26).

And then, watch what Jesus does. He doesn’t perform a miracle to get their attention, nor does he reveal himself in some dramatic way. The Word who was in the beginning, the Word who was with God, the Word who was God, the Word who became flesh and made his dwelling among us, opened the Scriptures:

“And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself" (Luke 24:27).

And so, mile after mile, as they walked, Jesus taught them. From the books of Moses—Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy—and then through the rest of the Old Testament prophetic writings, Jesus unfolded the Word of God to two discouraged, walking-away disciples.

He was doing something to the soil of their hearts. He was going deeper, giving their faith something to root itself in that was stronger than their circumstances, stronger than their expectations, and stronger than their disappointment. Because that’s exactly what rocky soil needs, the problem was never the seed; the problem was the depth.

And so, Jesus walked alongside them in their discouragement, doing the work of the plowman, turning up the ground, going deeper, and preparing them to hold what they were about to receive.

Isn't that the same thing he does with us? He comes after us. He catches up and walks alongside us. He meets us right in the middle of our discouragement, and he doesn't lead with a rebuke — he leads with the word of God.

He opens the Scriptures, and something begins to happen. Like a plow breaking up ground that has grown hard and fallow, the Word goes to work. The prophet Hosea said it this way:

"Break up your unplowed ground; for it is time to seek the Lord, until he comes and showers righteousness on you" (Hosea 10:12).

And that is exactly what Jesus does. He showers the Word over ground that had gone dry, and the soil that was too shallow to hold anything begins to deepen. The roots find their way down and what had no room for hope begins to make room.

And those roots do not stop at the surface. They keep going, reaching down until they find water. David described this man who meditates on God’s Word day and night as one who is

"Like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither" (Psalm 1:3).

That is what Jesus is doing when he opens the Word and walks with us. He is not just softening the surface; he is driving the roots down toward the stream so that when the heat comes again, and it will come, that person is no longer dependent on favorable conditions.

The prophet Jeremiah says, “He will be like a tree that doesn’t fear when heat comes, its leaves are always green, it has no worries in a year of drought, and it never fails to bear fruit” (Jeremiah 17:8).

When we are planted, when we dwell in him and he in us, we are connected to something that runs deeper than our circumstances, deeper than our doubts, deeper than our worst day.

Look at what happened as these disciples approached their destination:

"Jesus acted as if he were going farther" (Luke 24:28).

But something in them had changed. Something shifted on that road, and even though they did not yet know who he was, something in the way he had opened the Scriptures had stirred a fire in them that they could not walk away from. And so they urged him strongly,

"Stay with us, for it is nearly evening; the day is almost over" (Luke 24:29).

They invited him in, opening the door to a stranger, so he went in to stay with them (Luke 24:29). But when he sat down at the table with them, something quietly shifted, and the guest became the host.

Without anyone saying a word, the host became a guest at their own table as Jesus took the bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them (Luke 24:30).

In that moment, in the breaking of the bread,

"Their eyes were opened, and they recognized him" (Luke 24:31).

The same hands that had been nailed to the cross, the same hands Thomas gazed at, were now breaking bread at their table. And in that moment of recognition, when everything came together,

“Jesus disappeared from their sight" (Luke 24:31).

Suddenly, all of it made sense: the Scriptures he had opened on the road, the hope they thought had died, the report of the empty tomb. And they said to each other:

"Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?" (Luke 24:32).

In other words, they hadn’t fully realized it, they hadn’t understood what it meant, but their hearts had been burning the whole time.

It’s just as the prophet Jeremiah said, because he knew that feeling, he tried to hold it in, but he said:

"His word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot" (Jeremiah 20:9).

And that’s exactly what the Word of God does when Jesus opens it to you because it doesn’t always announce itself loudly. Sometimes it just burns quietly and persistently until suddenly you can’t pretend the fire is not there. You can’t ignore it any longer.

Look at verse 33 and see what these two discouraged disciples did next.

"They got up and returned at once to Jerusalem" (Luke 24:33).

Immediately, they got up and made the trip seven miles back to Jerusalem in the dark because when you have truly encountered the risen Christ, you cannot stay where you are. You can’t keep walking away; you repent, you turn around, and you go seven miles back.

And so they went back to the other disciples, to the upper room where the disciples were gathered, with the doors locked for fear of the Jews.

"There they found the Eleven and those with them, assembled together and saying, 'It is true! The Lord has risen and has appeared to Simon!'" (Luke 24:33-34).

"Then the two told what had happened on the way, and how Jesus was recognized by them when he broke the bread" (Luke 24:35).

Here’s what I want you to see this morning. The Bible never says that God will abandon you, turning his back on you, if you give up and walk away. It never says that when your hope is crushed, your expectations are shattered, and you can’t make sense of what God is doing, you might as well walk away. In fact, the Bible says the opposite.

"If we are faithless, he will remain faithful, for he cannot disown himself" (2 Timothy 2:13).

You see, God’s faithfulness is not dependent on ours. Even when we are headed in the wrong direction, traveling seven miles toward Emmaus, the Bible tells us exactly what Jesus does. He comes after us!

In other words, he is the Good Shepherd, and when one sheep wanders off, he doesn’t cut his losses and move on. Instead, he leaves the ninety-nine and goes after the one until he finds it (Luke 15:4). And that is not just a casual pursuit; it is a relentless, tireless, leave-everything-behind kind of love.

The Bible says that nothing can separate you from that love. Not your worst decision. Not your deepest doubt. Not the road you took walking away from Jerusalem. The apostle Paul said it this way,

"I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8:38-39).

That list is exhaustive and complete because God wanted to make sure you knew that absolutely nothing could separate you from his love.

There are no exclusions, no loopholes, and he says he is not finished with you. The work he started in you didn’t stop when you walked away. It wasn’t canceled when you gave up. Instead, the Bible says,

"He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus" (Philippians 1:6).

In other words, what he began, he will carry it on and see it through to the end. That is not the language of a God who gives up; that is the description of a God who comes after you, walks alongside you, opens the word, breaks up the ground, drives the roots down deep, and does not stop until what was walking away is running seven miles back.

As we come to a close, maybe that is you this morning. Maybe the thing you were trusting God for didn’t happen the way you expected. Maybe the heat came, and something in you withered. You’ve been walking toward Emmaus for a while now, moving away from the faith community, away from the Word of God, away from the hope you once had.

I want you to know that you are not an enemy of God. You are for him, not against him. You are someone whose roots did not run deep enough when the trouble came. And Jesus is walking alongside you right now. He’s been in this conversation the whole time, and he is asking you the same thing he asked those two disciples on the road: “What are you talking about? What happened? Tell me about it.”

He’s not done with you. He never was. The Bible never said he would leave you if you walked away. In fact, it says just the opposite.

So if he started something in you, just like those two disciples on the road to Emmaus, make this your prayer. “Lord, stay with me. It’s getting late, and I don’t want to walk this road alone anymore.”

Open your heart and invite him in right now, because he said,

"If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me" (Revelation 3:20).

In that moment, he will break the bread. Your eyes will be opened, your heart will burn, and you’ll find yourself running back toward everything you thought you had left behind.

                                                                                                                                                                            

Graphics, notes, and commentary from LifeChurch, Ministry Pass, PC Study Bible, Preaching Library, and Sermon Central. Scripture from the New International Version unless otherwise noted.