Good News For Disappointed People

Good morning, Immanuel. Here is a comforting fact: Jesus is near to the brokenhearted.

“That very day two of them were going to a village named Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and they were talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing together, Jesus himself drew near and went with them. But their eyes were kept from recognizing him” (Luke 24:13-16).

If we had been there on that first Good Friday, we might have thought to ourselves, 'No one can come back from that.' All the things that Jesus had previously said about his body being destroyed and raised up again three days later would have been driven from our minds by the sight of his dead and mangled body. Not a single disciple appears to have anticipated Jesus' resurrection. The women who watched Jesus die on Friday showed up on Sunday, expecting to find his body in the tomb. Peter, the lead disciple, and others returned to their fishing boats, grieving and disoriented. Moreover, the two disciples mentioned in our text took their sadness on a road trip. We all have our ways of dealing with disappointment.

However we deal with our disappointment, here is a comforting fact: Jesus is near to the brokenhearted. 'While they were talking and discussing together, Jesus Himself drew near and went with them.' Someone might say, 'Maybe that’s true for some people, but it doesn’t feel like He’s near to me.' Okay, but it didn’t feel like He was near to these disciples either, at first. Notice verse 16: 'Their eyes were kept from recognizing Him.' So many of us can resonate with this feeling. We want to believe—we did believe once—but grief or doubt have since risen like a cloud, and we wonder now if there is even a God on the other side.

But we are never alone. That’s the point here: 'Jesus Himself drew near and went with them.' How does that work? The pattern of nearness that Jesus is establishing here is a post-resurrection pattern. By masking His identity, Jesus is essentially playing the role of the Holy Spirit, thereby heading off the objection that says, 'Oh, well, it was easy for them to believe; they had Jesus in the flesh.' No. From the very beginning of His resurrection ministry, Jesus Christ was declaring His God-sized capacities to be present with us! Through the Holy Spirit, the resurrected and ascended Christ connects with us in real time. This is why the Holy Spirit is called the Comforter. The Spirit of God is Christ with us—our continual comfort.