unexpected crucifixions

Let's go to the Word of the Lord in Luke chapter 24, in verses from 13 to 27, and I want us to meditate on unexpected crucifixions but also unexpected resurrections. And here in this text we are told that: "Behold, 2 disciples" not the 11 or 12 that we are used to thinking of but 2 followers of Jesus, "went on the same day" that Easter Sunday, "went on the same day to a village called Emmaus which was about sixty stadia" away, right? Jerusalem, "and they were talking among themselves about all those things that had happened in Jerusalem."

"It happened that while they were talking and arguing among themselves, Jesus himself approached them and walked with them, but their eyes were veiled" that is to say, as if their understanding was covered so that they would not recognize them, "and he said to them: " What conversations are these that you have among yourselves while you walk and why are you sad?"

"Answering one of them whose name was Cleopas said to him: Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who has not known the things that have happened in it in these days? Then he said to them: What things?"

"Of Jesus Nazareno who was a male prophet" listen to that "he was a male prophet" in the past tense, right? "mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how the chief priests and our rulers handed him over to sentence of death, and crucified him, but we hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel." I want us to stop there at that verse 21, "but we hoped that He was the one to redeem Israel." Bless the Lord His Holy Word.

I have always been fascinated by the account of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, on various occasions through many Easter Sunday sermons, three, four times perhaps in thirty-odd years I have preached on this particular message because it has a lot of content, a lot of teaching for our life, practical teaching. It's like a little what they call a "vignette" in dramatic art, like a little drama, a little square within the larger narrative of the Resurrection, a little episode of real life.

Because in this case it is not about the disciples we know: Peter, John, James, right? the famous disciples, the twelve, Judas also in some way, it is not about those disciples but about other practically anonymous followers among Jesus. These disciples were part of hundreds of other people who identified with Jesus, they were followers, they were evangelicals we can say but they were not the leadership, they were not the main ones. They were people with a certain sympathy for the Lord and they had followed Jesus with certain hopes, they were pious people and they thought that: wow, maybe this is the one we have been waiting for so many centuries.

And that's why I think this narrative is so interesting and so important because it's easier for me to identify with those than with the great disciples, we could be one of us who is returning home and normal, ordinary people, and which reflect what hundreds of the Master's other followers not as well educated and well educated as the Lord's closest followers must have been thinking and experiencing, and notice that even they, the older disciples, were experiencing the same sense of disappointment and disappointment. being disappointed, things had not turned out as they expected and now they return to their village sad, that is why the Lord says: Why are you so sad, why are you so downcast? they were obviously defeated.

Has anyone ever felt defeated in their life, felt like wow, things didn't turn out the way I expected? Have you ever left Church disappointed thinking you were going to receive a charge of energy or something like that and you return home as depressed as you left?

And these men represent the people of God, that is why I believe that this passage was chosen by God to record it, because these people had no right to be in the narrative, they had not done anything exceptional, but God wanted to minister to them too, God wanted to remind them that He has a purpose with simple, normal people, who have never preached a sermon, who are not destined to do great things in the economy of the Kingdom of God but God is interested in what they think, in what they feel, he wants them to have a personal experience with the Resurrection of Jesus.

That expression of theirs intrigues me, right? "but we hoped", they are speaking in the imperfect past tense. When they talk about Jesus they say he was a prophet, he was a prophet, right? They have already downgraded him, he is not the Messiah but "he was a male prophet" because he has died, he is buried and he has already lost his Messiah credentials as they were expecting.

We expected, wow what a pity! we who had bet on that horse and were disappointed. We hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel, we believed that this candidate was going to win the Presidency and what a shame, we had to save the champagne and the whistles that are used and return home unsuccessful, right? but we know that everything that Scripture contains has an instructive purpose, right? What is it that God wants to teach us through this particular passage?

Well what I say right? first look at the drama again: things have not happened as their religious teachers had told them they should happen and that little educated people, little understood in the depths of the Gospel and the things of God, "the Master has died." They expected that He was not even going to go through death, much less die and rise again, even though the Lord had told them all this, right?

The Master is dead, three days have already passed since he was crucified and buried. None of this was in the movie script that they knew from Scripture and what they had interpreted from what they had been taught. Messiah was supposed to come in all His Glory on a great white horse and strong, come as a conquering King, defeat Israel's enemies, in this case the Romans who had oppressed them for years, reinstall Israel like the powerful nation that it had been during David's time, and they could enjoy a renewed economy, a new political power and they thought: wow, since we were with Jesus there at the beginning, it will also touch us, I'm going to go to make a request and Jesus will say: Yes, that is one of My followers, give him the position, they were hoping that everything would go very well.

You remember this, right? of the disciples who were fighting for positions because they said: when the Lord is in His Kingdom, He is going to put me on the right, and me on the left, that was the scheme they had, right? they saw no complexity, no problem that would interfere with their plan for a powerful Christ to come and just set everything up as it should be.

The problem with these men was in their simplicity, their simplicity, how excessively simplistic they were being with respect to God's plans for humanity and for history. In his scheme there was nothing about crucifixions, arrests, torture of the Messiah, whippings, nothing about complex processes between one event and another, it was going to be a jump, let's say from the Wednesday that the Lord is there or from the entrance triumphant on Palm Sunday at the entrance to Jerusalem when they hail Him "Welcome Son of David who comes in the Name of the Lord" and throw branches at His feet and all this, they thought: from there directly to the glorification of the Messiah; they were not counting on the Thursday of the arrest, the agonizing night of the Lord in the Garden of Gethsemane, they were not thinking about the scourging, His agony in the courtyard of the high priest, their way through Jerusalem by way of the cross, the painful way, they were not they thought of none of that, that was not there, they could not.

There were scriptures that said this but they did not know how to interpret them, they had only focused on the mighty Messiah but they had not seen the scriptures that said: no, He has to go through this first, this and that, right? Everything according to his scheme was positive and of exclusive benefit to Israel. But God had a much more complex plan in His mind and God had already warned them over and over again, He had told them: The Messiah has to die and be rejected, and then rise again on the third day, the Lord had told them very clear but they had conveniently forgotten that part, as we do many times.

Do you know that sometimes you hear what you want to hear and you don't hear what you don't want to hear? and there are things that violate our expectation of how things should be so much that it's like the mind can't process them. You hear the language, you hear the grammar but psychologically it is as if they spoke to you in Chinese, you are not prepared to accept that, and so are many of us brothers.

When we enter the Gospel, we enter with very simplistic ideas of how the Christian experience should be, and in fact, many leaders cooperate with that mentality that: look, come to the Gospel and everything will turn out well for you, and everything will be prosperity and celebration. , and blessing, and you will always get away with it and God will grant you everything you ask for, if you tithe, forget that this multiplied money will come to you, you will have two Mercedes Benz in the marquee, a house big, very pretty and well-behaved children and you are going to have a successful career, and everything is going to work out for you; and we forget that Scripture contains many passages that tell us that: "In the world you will find affliction" for example, right? that there have to be things in between.

The resurrections must also be preceded by crucifixions, that before Easter Sunday there must also be moments of crucifixion. And they had forgotten about this, they did not even suspect.

What's more, after the resurrection, after they discovered that the Messiah had indeed risen, okay, I understand I am and I am willing to accept that He had to die, glory to God, He rose again, but what happens? that after that there would come at least two thousand and fifteen years of history. We are still at the Second Coming and interestingly many of the first disciples believed that the Lord was going to come a second time immediately, shortly after He ascended everything was going to happen and that they would all be alive to receive the risen Christ for the second time, and still two thousand plus years later the Church is still in progress, it is being worked on, God is working in the world, in history, in our lives, martyrs are being crucified right now, evil seems to be growing everywhere .

How many of us today will ask ourselves: Lord, where are You? where are Your purposes? How is it possible that one hundred and fifty young people perish in a school, beheaded, cut off, tortured, that Your children are still persecuted, there are martyrs, in the Middle East, in other parts of the world? terrible things that are happening in our cities that one says wow like evil is winning, the Church is retreating, Lord where are you, where are your purposes?

And perhaps you look at your own life and you see that it is not so easy, you come to Church and have a good time of victory and success but then trials also come, and one day they tell you that you are going to have to take pills for the rest of your life because you have a health condition, or you lose your job, or you have a time when you don't have enough money to pay the debts, and you say: Sir, hey, I didn't sign for this, this is more difficult than usual. I thought, but the Word of the Lord is very clear and tells us: Hey, this is part of the process. That is there and we have to get used to this part too.

These disciples, they did not think that these things were going to happen and so they return to their house as defeated but God had a precious plan for their lives. We also have to be careful with those simple schemes, we have to remember that God has a greater plan but that He is working.

Many of you, myself, when we entered to serve the Lord or to walk in the path of faith, one would have thought that many things were going to happen in a different way. If they had asked me if I was going to be pastoring a Church thirty years ago I would have laughed brothers, my plans were different: to be teaching at a university, smoking a pipe there, an elegant professor with a very cool jacket there, so very elegant, and glory to God that when I see you I feel: God had an even better plan and I am happy to see this people that, you are also in your own battles, your own processes.

I want to encourage you in the Name of the Lord, never give up, no matter how difficult life may seem, no matter how many difficulties there are, God has a precious plan for you, for your families, for your children, for your future, and even if things get difficult and it seems that Christ did not rise He has a plan, stay there. Don't go to Emmaus too fast, you know? don't go to Emmaus too fast.

I want to conclude with these points that I want you to remember about the applications that we have to learn from this. Number one, I've already said these things but I want to point it out in a more specific way, listen to this: God's processes for our lives will generally be more complex than we suspect or desire.

If you are in the ways of the Lord and I speak to many young people, for example, who still have decades, many decades ahead of them, remember, young people, that God has a more complex process than you might think. Life is going to be more difficult, more complex, there is going to be much more process and treatment of God in your life than you think, you are going to have times of difficulty, trial, fear, terror, failures, things maybe sometimes They are not going to turn out as you expected, but don't worry because that is going to be part of a plan of God that is very complex in the way He does His things.

Do not try to write the script that He has for your life, let Him do it because when God does things he does them well, simply get into that plan and live it, every day, by faith, take that blank page that I talk about it, take a blank page, sign your name below and tell the Lord: Father, whatever You want to write on that page is Your business, I am going to bless you, I am going to love you and I am going to believe that I will never be defeated because Your Word says that for those who love you all things work for good. You have a purpose.

As the Word of the Lord says: "My ways are not your ways nor are My thoughts your thoughts." "Things that eye has not seen and ear has not heard are those that God has destined for those who love him and those who believe in him." And in those things destined for you there are things that perhaps are not so good and others are very good or better than you expected, but I want to tell you that at the end of all the net result is going to be glorious, it's going to be good, trust in the Lord.

When we enter the ways of the Lord we have to remember the words of Jesus to Peter, that fiery Peter, young, full of life, believing that he could eat children raw, and the Lord tells him: Peter remembers, when you were young you you dressed as you wanted, you went to the disco when you wanted, you stuck your stick there when you wanted, but you know what? When you're old, he says, when you're older, someone else will dress you and take you where you don't want to go, and he says that speaking of the death that awaited Peter, it was a martyr's death.

And so I encourage you in the Name of the Lord: enter the Christian life knowing that God has a narrative that is bigger and broader than you think but believe and trust in the Lord, and every day renew your trust in Him and that He knows what He does, "Whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord" says the Word. So that's a lesson, right? God's plans for your life will always be more complex but likewise they will also be more glorious than what you expect.

Number two: God is not interested in benefiting us as much as using us. God is not only interested in benefiting us, but He also wants to use us. Why do I say this? Because the disciples, Israel itself thought that everything that was going to happen in the drama of the Messiah was for their benefit and for their use, and that everything was simply to restore the kingdom of Israel, its national power, but God wanted to use Israel He wanted to use the disciples, he wanted to use the Gospel narrative to bless not only Israel at that point in their history but to bless countless generations after them until today, 2015. He wanted to bless not only Israel but the Aztecs, who They were over there in Latin America or perhaps emigrating from the East to go to Latin America, Africa, India, North America, Australia, Asia, there the Chinese and the Japanese, He wanted to bless all humanity.

That little piece of land was simply the starting point, and God wanted to use these men and that is why He had to put them through the crucifixion mill, and they too were going to be crucified in many ways, some literally, others were going to pass through trials and difficulties until God formed them to prepare them, like Peter that God put him through trials and defeated him many times so that Peter then became a true apostle, wrote two letters as beautiful about suffering as First and Second Peter So they had to go through those processes.

Brother: remember that God is interested in using you and that is why many times He allows you to go through difficult situations. He allows that fiery man, full of strength who is believed to be the last, God also wants to put him there through an illness that weakens him a little so that he becomes an elder of his Church, a loving father, a husband who supports to his wife, a counselor. To that woman who is scared by anything, God wants to give her a few scares so that she learns that the floor does not pass and that she is strong and that she can resist, that she gets ahead, and that God has for her the spirit of Raquel or of Déborah, or Esther's, or Ruth's and that He wants to use her for His glory and He wants to train her, treasure her like the sword that has to be put into the fire and then into cold water so that she gains tension and resistance, and God passes us .

Because? because He is not interested only. If God gave us only good things, brothers, how would we develop the virtues of Christ? patience, faith, hope, resistance in the midst of trials and difficulties, how could we advise a young man who is saying: oh, I don't know what is going to happen to my life and I am, I don't know if I'm going to graduate from high school, whatever, and you tell him: no boy, I went through the same situations as you, I also doubted my own identity when I was your age and God brought me forward, and he put me through fire and water, and here I am, and that's how it will happen to you, don't worry, God has good plans. How can we do those things if we have not been afflicted ourselves?

So God allows many things in the life of man and as we have said so many times: sometimes afflictions, trials, crucifixions are God's plan to strengthen us and prepare us to use ourselves.

God is not interested in your being both comfortable and powerful for His use, an instrument in His hands. Remember that and when you are going through trials tell yourself: God is preparing me, He is strengthening me, He wants to use me for His Glory, amen? how He wanted to use these disciples.

Thirdly and something similar but not the same, that God not only wants your benefit but also your progress, your growth and He is investing in you, and everything that happens in your life is for the purpose of making you more and more like Christ Jesus, that's what God wants most. He doesn't want to just give you good things and that's all, He also wants you to grow up and become a man, a powerful woman in God.

Fourth, that we must enter the Gospel accepting everything that God has for us and even in the midst of the test or precisely in the midst of the test, the risen Christ is with us at all times. The apostle Peter says in First Peter chapter 4: "Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial that has come upon you as if some strange thing had happened to you, but rejoice because you are partakers of the sufferings of Christ."

When we are going through trials, difficulties, when life does not turn out as we thought, when the narrative of our resurrection becomes more complicated and includes resurrections, remember that God wants you to be a participant in the experience of Jesus, there is something mystical and mysterious in that fact. God does not want you to miss out on the privilege of suffering with the Lord and vindicating and validating His experience.

Paul says that we are called to complete the sufferings of Christ and that many times through those crucifixions a grace is released. I believe, for example, that these martyrs that we have seen in the Middle East and that we have now seen in Africa on several occasions already, mysteriously, we know that it is the devil who wants to steal, kill and destroy, but God is using him. I believe that of those lives blinded in the Name of Jesus because they were Christians, they did not sign for it when they accepted Christ but, mysteriously, the death of the martyrs says the Bible is precious in the eyes of God.

The Bible says that the death of the saints is precious in the eyes of the Lord, and there is something that that spilled blood fills a cup and that mysteriously releases a blessing for humanity. The lives of those young people and those people were not poured out in vain, there is something very precious, God was with them there at that moment, you know? I believe that there were angels to enter them directly to the Throne of God, and we also brothers.

When we suffer in Christ and for His glory, we are participating in something very precious. It says: "So that also in the revelation of His Glory we may rejoice with great joy. Verse 14 of First Peter 4 says: "If you are reproached for the name of Christ" I would also say: if you are tested, if you are put in agony and suffering for the Name of Christ, "know that you are blessed because the glorious Spirit of God rests upon you."

My brother, my sister: I want to tell you that when you are going through a trial and a difficulty and you think that you cannot go on any longer, you do not have enough strength, I want to tell you that in a way that you cannot understand Christ is there, the glorious Spirit of the Lord rests on your life and God is there to tell you: keep going, do not give up because you are almost coming to victory, God will be there with you as he was with the disciples.

These two men went to Emmaus defeated, disappointed, failed to return to their ordinary life after having great illusions and they did not know that the Lord himself was by their side informing them, explaining to them. When you are going through difficulties, when the crucifixion comes and you did not expect it, talk to the Holy Spirit, as these two men spoke, the Holy Spirit will be asking you: what do you think of this, why do you think it is happening to you? what did you expect was going to happen? What can you inquire about what I have for you?

The Lord is going to be with you, the Lord is going to walk with you on the road to Emmaus, that is why I think it is so important. Because in a sense we are now on the road to Emmaus or we are in Emmaus, we are in the normality of life but the risen Christ is there with you and with me.

Remember tomorrow when you go to work again, the Lord will be with you at the factory, in the office, at school, at home while you wash the dishes, the Lord will be talking to you. If you are going through tribulations or tests, if life has not given you everything you expected, if your marriage is not working the way you want, if your finances are not all you want, if your body is not as healthy as you thought it was going to be when you were eighteen years old, don't worry the Lord says: I am glorifying myself in all that. I am resurrected within you, I live within you, I am using all the processes of your life to create a man, a powerful woman. Step into My plan and give Me time for Me to reveal the perfect plan I have for you.

And what is interesting is that these disciples enlightened by the risen Lord return to Jerusalem to share with the other disciples that the Lord has risen and we have to do the same when we leave here, we are going to share with others the drama and the good news of the Resurrection.

I would like that next year when we are here on Easter Sunday we have to have three services instead of two just so that the harvest is greater, do you know that that can happen? Do you know that God can use someone like you, like me, normal people, a housewife, a student, a worker in a factory, a taxi driver, an ordinary young man, God can use you to share the news of a Christ who lives within you and who is risen.

Share the experiences, share the work that God is doing in your life, share your vitality in the face of trials and difficulties and that they see a man, a woman who trusts in their God and who trusts that God is working in their drama, invite them to come to church.

That is why God put this passage, because this passage is for normal people, ordinary people, not the great Peter, not the great John, not the great James who was going to write Epistles and other things, no. Two ordinary, simple evangelical men and the Lord took time to enlighten them, enable them and then release them to share the story of salvation.

Do not take yourself too small my brother, my sister, the risen Christ is interested in you being a carrier of His message to others, become someone who is a radical Christian. I encourage you this year to speak, testify about what God has done and is doing in your life and brings others, the Lord wants to use you too, he wants you to go and say: you know what? I thought not but the Lord has risen, the Lord is in my life, the Lord has a purpose, he is working in me, he has good things for me, he has them for you too, hallelujah, glory to the Name of the Lord.