"A Encouraged Heart"

    Dear Friends in Christ,       

   This morning we bring to an end a run of 4 consecutive Sundays, each one of which had its own special theme or emphasis.  Three weeks ago was Palm Sunday, the day that Jesus rode into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey and the people hailed him as their king.  Unfortunately, later on that week their triumphant praises turned to tragic proclamations that the One they had so warmly greeted on Sunday should be executed on Friday.  Then two weeks ago we celebrated Easter, the highest of the high festivals of the church year because that’s the day we commemorate the most important and significant event that our world has ever seen or known, our Lord’s victorious resurrection from the dead.  Then last Sunday was Confirmation Sunday, when 4 of our 8^th graders were received into the communicant membership of our church.  And now today is Mother’s Day. 

   Well, when it dawned on me that all 4 of these Sundays were going to be coming up, one right after the other, I began to look forward to them and prepare for them with great excitement and anticipation.  But I suspect not nearly as much excitement and anticipation as a young woman who hears from her doctor for the very first time those 2 words that will change her life forever: “You’re pregnant.”  Indeed, nothing can match the joy and expectation that a young lady experiences when she realizes that she has growing within her another human being whom she’ll be able to hold and cuddle with once it’s finally born; a child to whom she’ll be able to read books and sing songs; a child who will be totally dependent upon her for the nourishment and love, the wisdom and guidance, the counsel and advice that a child needs to survive in this dog-eat-dog world.  Once she finds out she’s expecting, she buys maternity clothes for herself and oh so much clothes for her soon-to-arrive little one.  In fact, more clothes than that baby will ever be able to wear.  She goes shopping for a crib, a bassinet, a car seat, a high chair, a changing table.  She spends hours upon hours with her husband fixing up the nursery and getting it to look just right for that momentous day when they are able to bring their little one home.  And throughout her 9 months of pregnancy she finds herself living in a fantasy world of sorts and she dreams about what it will be like when she finally brings this brand new life into the real world.

   Then at last the day comes.  And along with it comes physical pain unlike any she has ever known before.  And she thinks, “I knew it was going to be rough, but I didn’t know it was going to be this rough!”  But that’s just the beginning.  For then come the sleepless nights, the seemingly incessant bouts of crying, the embarrassing situations that this little terror creates or causes, the disobedience and defiance that this child displays toward the one who gave it life, and the incredible pain that Mom experiences when other children say or do things that hurt her child.  And again she thinks to herself, “I knew it was going to be rough, but I didn’t know it was going to be this rough.”  Indeed, motherhood is strange, for it can produce the greatest joys in life, but, speaking realistically here, it can also bring about some of life’s most profound feelings of disappointment and disillusionment.

   But you know what?  You don’t have to be a mother to experience those emotions, do you?  I suspect we have all experienced disappointments to a greater or lesser degree at some time or another when what we were anticipating, when what we were looking forward to turned out to be much different than what we were expecting.  For example, when you got married, maybe you were expecting your marriage to be one exciting never-ending honeymoon, but it didn’t take long for reality to set in and for you to discover that this knight in shining armor or this princess charming that you had just committed yourself to for the rest of your life was just a normal human being with lots of faults and flaws.  Or maybe your disillusionment happened on the job, a job that may have started out so great, but that eventually turned sour when your employer began to place the almighty dollar over the well-being of its employees.  You may have even experienced disappointment with the church like one woman who went to her pastor one day and asked him what she should do with her memories.  When he inquired what she meant by that, she said, “I want to go to church, but when I was a little girl I was abused by a pastor.  And now every time I go to church, I remember.”

   Disappointment, disillusionment, despair.  Broken hearts, broken dreams, broken lives.  Things that are sadly all too common among even Christians in this day and age.  And things that were definitely being felt and experienced by the 2 disciples on the road to Emmaus in our text for today.  So this morning let’s take a look at their story and see what Jesus did to give them what I’ve referred to in my sermon title as “An Encouraged Heart.”

   For just a moment I want you to picture these 2 fellows as they walk the dusty road from Jerusalem back to their home in Emmaus.  Their feet shuffle, their heads hang, their shoulders droop, and perhaps every now and then a tear trickles down their cheek as they recall and reflect upon the events of the past few days.  “Why did the people turn against him?” they ask in reference to Jesus.  “Why didn’t he just come down from the cross, as they were taunting him to do, and let them see for themselves what kind of power he had?”  “Why did he let that bully Pilate push him around?”  “Why, why, why?”

   And as they search for answers to their why questions, a stranger comes up from behind and joins them.  Of course, we know this stranger is Jesus, but they don’t recognize him.  And you know what, my friends?  Disappointment will do that to you.  It will blind you to the very presence of Christ that you are yearning for.  It will turn your eyes inward rather than upward and outward so that even though God himself is walking right next to you, you won’t even be aware of it.

   But despair can do something else to us.  It can also harden our hearts.  It can make us cold, cynical, and calloused, so that even when good news does come, we don’t accept it or believe it for fear of being disappointed again.  That’s what happened to these 2 disciples.  In vv.22-24 of our text they tell this “stranger” of how some of their women friends came to them earlier that day with the news about the empty tomb and a vision of angels who said that Jesus was alive, that he had risen from the dead.  But from the way it’s written and the attitude they were displaying, it’s pretty obvious they didn’t believe the good news the women brought.  Like the old saying goes, “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.”  They weren’t about to risk more heartache and more hurt by believing this fanciful story that these hysterical, grief-stricken women had cooked up.  No sir, they were too smart for that.  So they chose instead to wallow in their despair, to grovel in their disappointment.

   Notice though what Jesus did.  He first of all came to them.  He didn’t sit back at a distance and watch these fellows, thinking to himself, “Why can’t these 2 bozos get with the program?  Why are they being so stubborn?  Why are they so hard to convince?”  Instead he met them at their point of pain.  I think that’s worth noting, my friends, for even though Jesus had just defeated and destroyed the power of death and removed the penalty of sin for all mankind, he didn’t just sit back and rest on his laurels.  He didn’t retire.  Rather he wrapped his resurrected body in human flesh once again, put on human clothes, and searched out hurting human hearts, just as he had done throughout his ministry.

   And when he played kind of dumb and asked them what they were talking about and why they were so sad, they explained to him that when their friend Jesus died, all of their hopes and dreams for themselves and for their nation died with him.  In other words, unfulfilled expectations were at the heart and core of their disappointment.  Or to put it another way, God didn’t do things the way they wanted him to do them.  And all I can say in response to that is, aren’t you glad he didn’t?

   For the Jews wanted Jesus to free their nation from the tyranny and power of Rome, but God wanted to free them from the power and tyranny of sin.  So when forced to choose between battling the forces of Rome or battling the forces of hell, God chose to fight the battle he knew we couldn’t possibly win on our own.  And in the process he said no to what they wanted and yes to what they needed.       

   Reminds me of a request that a 6-year-old girl made of her father one day who was also a pastor.  It seems she wasn’t very happy with his chosen profession.  She wanted him to leave the ministry.  She told him, “I like you as a preacher, Daddy, but I really wish you sold snow cones.”  It all made sense to her.  In her very limited and inexperienced 6-year-old mind the happiest people in the world that she could conceive of were the men who drove snow cone trucks.  They play music.  They sell goodies.  They make kids happy.  What more could a man possibly want?  And though that father heard his daughter’s request, he did not heed it.  Why not?  Because he knew better.  He knew it would be hard to support his family on a snow cone man’s salary.  He knew more about life than what his daughter did.

   And guess what, my friends?  The same holds true for God.  He knows a whole lot more about life and what we really need than what we do.  And that’s where our trust in him comes into play.  That’s where reviewing what I like to call God’s glorious track record can become so helpful.  In fact, that is exactly what Jesus does for the 2 men in our text.  In v. 27 it says: “And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.”  Isn’t that interesting?  Jesus’ cure for their broken hearts was the story of God, a story which he told by beginning with Moses and ending with himself.  Now why did he do that?  Why did he go back 1500 years and review the history of God’s people since that time?  I’m convinced he did it because he knew these 2 disciples needed to hear what we all need to hear when we’re disappointed.  And that is that God is in control, that life’s mishaps and disappointments are not a reason to bail out, but rather a reason to simply sit tight and hold on to the God who has proven his love and faithfulness to us in more ways than we can ever recount or remember.

   Sometimes in my sermons you hear me refer to Corrie ten Boom and I have good reason for doing that.  She knew what disappointment was like.  She knew what it was like to face discouragement, disillusionment, and even death for during WW II she found herself in a Nazi concentration camp.  But she once said: “When the train goes through a tunnel and the world gets dark, do you jump out?  Of course not.  You sit still and trust the engineer to get you through.”

   And that’s what we need to do when our world gets dark, my friends.  We need to trust the engineer to get us through.  We need to remember that the God of heaven and earth is still in control.  And the best way to do that is to open his Book, this holy Book that we call the Bible, and read his story.  For as we do so, here are just a few of the things we’ll see.

   We’ll see his POWER as he splits the waters of the Red Sea and allows his people to pass through on dry ground and escape their enemies.  We’ll see his PROVISION as he feeds them with manna from heaven and brings forth water from a rock in the wilderness.  We’ll see his PROMISE as it’s fulfilled in a tiny infant born to a teenage Jewish peasant girl and placed in a lowly manger.  We’ll see his PRIORITY as he sacrifices his own Son on a cross so that we might be able to have forgiveness, peace, and salvation.  We’ll see his PASSION as he blows Satan out of the water on Easter morning and blasts to smithereens the gates of death and hell through the resurrection of Christ. 

   So my friends, are you dealing with disappointment and discouragement in your life right now?  Has life in some ways or perhaps many ways failed to live up to your expectations, whether you’re a mother, a father, a husband, a wife, a son, a daughter, a child, a Christian?  Do you want the kind of encouraged heart that Jesus gave to the 2 Emmaus disciples?  If so, don’t panic.  Don’t jump ship.  Don’t give up.  Rather read the story of God and let him remind you over and over again that he’s still on the throne.  He’s still in control.  And as the resurrection of Christ that we celebrated just 2 weeks ago proved so clearly, it ain’t over until he says it’s over.

   Amen.