Sermon For Sunday Morning

When The Road Opens Up

Every Sunday morning, something is at stake that is far greater than we often realize. People walk through the doors of a church carrying the weight of a difficult week. Some come with questions they have never spoken out loud. Some come out of habit, some out of hunger, and some are not entirely sure why they came at all. And the question that hangs over every gathering of God's people is simply this: will Christ be made known here today? Will we leave this place having truly encountered him, or will we walk away unchanged?

That question is not new. It was asked on the first Sunday after the resurrection, and the answer God gave on that road outside Jerusalem is the same answer he offers every time his people gather around his Word.

Turn with me to Luke 24, beginning at verse 13. Two disciples are walking away from Jerusalem on the day of the resurrection. They are heading to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles out. They are not celebrating. They are grieving. They had hoped that Jesus of Nazareth was the one who would redeem Israel, and now he was dead and buried. Yes, some women had reported the tomb was empty, but these two men had not seen him. They were walking away from the city of promise with their heads down and their hopes shattered.

Verse 15 tells us that as they walked and talked, Jesus himself came near and began to walk with them. But verse 16 says their eyes were kept from recognizing him. He asked them what they were discussing, and one of them, Cleopas, answered with something like disbelief: Are you the only visitor in Jerusalem who doesn't know the things that happened there in these days? They told him about Jesus. They told him about the cross. They told him about the empty tomb. And then Jesus, still unrecognized, opened the Scriptures to them. Beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted for them the things concerning himself in all the Scriptures.

Then they arrived at the village. Jesus acted as though he would go on, but they urged him to stay. He came in and reclined at the table with them. He took the bread, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to them. And in that moment, verse 31 says, their eyes were opened and they recognized him. And he disappeared from their sight. And then they said to one another, Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking with us on the road and while he was opening the Scriptures to us?

They got up that same hour and returned to Jerusalem. Seven miles back in the dark, because they had seen the Lord.

That is the shape of every genuine Sunday morning. The road. The opening of Scripture. The recognition of Christ. The burning heart. The response that sends us back into the world.

Now hold that passage in your mind and listen to what Paul writes to Timothy in 2 Timothy 4, verses 1 through 5. Paul is near the end of his life. He writes with the weight of a man who has run the race and knows the finish line is close. And what does he charge Timothy to do? Preach the word. Be ready in season and out of season. Correct, rebuke, and encourage with great patience and teaching. He warns that a time will come when people will not tolerate sound doctrine, when they will accumulate teachers for themselves according to their own desires and will turn away from the truth. And against that tide, Paul's charge is clear: keep your head in everything, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.

These two passages together give us the shape of what Sunday morning is meant to be and what it is meant to produce. And the central claim I want to set before you today is this: when Christ is truly present in the opening of Scripture, hearts are changed, and changed hearts cannot stay still.

Let's walk through that claim together.

The first thing we see on the Emmaus road is that Christ opens the Scriptures to those who are walking in confusion and grief. These two disciples knew the facts. They had heard the reports. But facts without Christ at the center leave us cold. It was not until Jesus himself began to explain the Scriptures that something started to happen inside them. He showed them that the suffering of the Messiah was not a tragedy that interrupted God's plan. It was the plan. The cross was not a defeat. It was the fulfillment of everything Moses and the Prophets had been pointing toward.

That is what Paul means when he charges Timothy to preach the word. He does not mean to deliver information. He does not mean to give a motivational address or a moral lecture. He means to open the Scriptures in such a way that Christ himself becomes visible in them, because that is what the Scriptures are for. Jesus said in John 5 that the Scriptures testify about him. Every Sunday morning, the preaching of the Word is meant to be an act of making Christ visible to people who may be walking in confusion, grief, doubt, or spiritual hunger.

And here is the pastoral reality: some of you came in this morning carrying something heavy. Maybe it is a relationship that has broken down. Maybe it is a fear about the future that you cannot shake. Maybe it is a quiet, nagging sense that your faith has grown cold and you are not sure how to warm it back up. The Emmaus disciples felt all of that. And the answer was not a new program or a better strategy. The answer was Jesus walking beside them and opening the Word.

The second thing we see is that recognition comes in the breaking of bread. The disciples had listened to Jesus explain the Scriptures for miles, and something was stirring in them, but they did not yet know who he was. It was at the table, when he took the bread, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to them, that their eyes were opened.

Now, this is not a passage about the Lord's Supper in a sacramental sense. But it is a passage about what happens when the Word proclaimed meets the act of worship and fellowship. There is a moment in genuine Christian worship when the accumulated weight of the Scripture opens into clarity. When what you have been hearing with your mind drops into your heart and you suddenly know, not just believe, but know that Jesus is alive and present. That is what happened at that table. That is what Paul is guarding when he tells Timothy to preach with great patience and to do the work of an evangelist. He is guarding the conditions under which that recognition can happen.

Ask yourself honestly: when is the last time your heart burned? When is the last time you sat under the preaching of the Word and felt something move inside you that you could not manufacture on your own? That burning is not emotionalism. It is the Spirit of God bearing witness to the truth of Christ. And it is available every time the Scriptures are faithfully opened. Do not let familiarity steal that from you. The disciples on the road had heard about Jesus for years, and they still missed him until he opened the Word to them. Familiarity is not the same as recognition.

The third thing we see is that recognition produces response. This is where Luke 24 and 2 Timothy 4 come together with real force. The moment those disciples recognized Jesus, they did not sit at the table and reflect quietly on the experience. They got up that same hour. Seven miles back to Jerusalem in the night. They found the eleven and told them everything. What happened on the road. How he was known to them in the breaking of the bread.

That is the movement Paul is describing when he tells Timothy to do the work of an evangelist and fulfill his ministry. The Word is not preached so that people can accumulate spiritual experiences and keep them to themselves. The Word is preached so that people who have encountered the risen Christ will go and tell someone. The burning heart always leads to moving feet.

This is the witness the world needs from the church. Not a polished presentation. Not a perfected argument. Just the testimony of people who have walked a hard road and found that Jesus walked it with them, who have sat at the table of the Word and had their eyes opened, and who cannot keep that to themselves.

If you are a believer this morning, the question is not whether you have had that experience. The question is whether you are living from it. Are you walking with the awareness that the risen Christ is present with you on whatever road you are currently traveling? Are you bringing people to the place where the Scriptures are opened? Are you willing to say to someone in your life, Come and see? That is the work of an evangelist. You do not have to have a title to do it. You just have to have a burning heart.

And if you are here this morning and you are not yet a believer, or you are not sure what you believe, I want you to hear this: those two disciples on the Emmaus road were not looking for Jesus. They were walking away. And Jesus came to them anyway. He walked beside them in their grief and confusion. He opened the Scriptures to them. He sat at their table. That is the nature of the God we preach. He does not wait for you to have everything figured out before he draws near. He comes to you on the road. And the invitation of this morning is simply to let him open the Word to you, to let your eyes be opened to who he is, and to let that recognition change the direction of your life.

The Emmaus road ends not with two discouraged disciples walking away from Jerusalem, but with two witnesses running back toward it. That is what Sunday morning is for. Not just to fill a seat, but to have your eyes opened. Not just to hear a message, but to recognize the Lord. Not just to leave the same way you came in, but to go back into your week with a burning heart and something worth saying.

The road is open. Christ is present in his Word. The question is whether we will recognize him today, and what we will do when we do.

Let us pray.

Father, we ask you to do what only you can do. Open the Scriptures to us. Open our eyes to see Christ in them. Let our hearts burn with the truth of who he is and what he has done. And when we leave this place, send us back into the world as witnesses who have seen the Lord. In the name of Jesus, amen.

Sources Consulted

The Holy Bible, Christian Standard Bible. Holman Bible Publishers, 2017. Luke 24:13-35 and 2 Timothy 4:1-5.

Bock, Darrell L. Luke 9:51-24:53. Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament. Baker Academic, 1996.

Mounce, William D. Pastoral Epistles. Word Biblical Commentary, vol. 46. Thomas Nelson, 2000.

Green, Joel B. The Gospel of Luke. New International Commentary on the New Testament. Eerdmans, 1997.

Stott, John R. W. The Message of 2 Timothy. The Bible Speaks Today. InterVarsity Press, 1973.