Luke 24

Today’s Passage: Luke 24

The tomb is empty. Everything in this book has been walking toward that sentence, and now here it is, told with the same unhurried care Luke has given every other page. It begins before dawn with women carrying spices, which is to say it begins with people who came expecting to finish a burial. They find the stone rolled away, and no body, and two men in radiant apparel who ask them the question the whole chapter turns on: why do you look for the living among the dead? Then the women remember, and run, and tell, and are not believed. Peter runs anyway and comes away wondering. From there Luke does something none of the other Gospel writers do. He slows the story down and gives most of his final chapter to two people whose names hardly anybody knows, walking a country road to a village called Emmaus, talking over the worst weekend of their lives, while a Stranger falls into step beside them and asks what they are discussing. What follows is one of the most tender scenes in all of Scripture: a seven-mile Bible study given by the risen Son of God to two people too grieved to recognize Him, ending at a supper table where He takes bread and breaks it and their eyes are opened at last. Then Jerusalem, and a room, and Jesus Himself standing among them saying Peace be with you, showing hands and feet, asking for something to eat and swallowing a piece of broiled fish in front of them so no one could ever say they had seen a ghost. And then a commission, a promise, a walk out to Bethany, and hands lifted in blessing. The book ends the way it began, in the temple, with worship.

As you read, hold this: He is not here; He has risen, and the living Christ walks seven miles beside two heartbroken men to open the Scriptures and show them that the suffering and the glory were written about Him all along.

Luke 24:1–8 (BSB)

¹ On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women came to the tomb, bringing the spices they had prepared. ² They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, ³ but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. ⁴ While they were puzzling over this, suddenly two men in radiant apparel stood beside them. ⁵ As the women bowed their faces to the ground in terror, the two men asked them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? ⁶ He is not here; He has risen! Remember how He told you while He was still in Galilee: ⁷ ‘The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.’” ⁸ Then they remembered His words.

He has risen. Stop there before you go a step farther, because everything you have and everything you hope for stands or falls on those three words, and they are true. The grave that has swallowed every human being who ever drew breath opened its mouth on the Son of God and could not hold Him. Death met its Master. The stone that men set to seal an ending was rolled back, not to let Him out but to let the world in and see. Praise God for the morning of the third day. Praise Him that the tomb of Jesus of Nazareth is the one grave on this earth you may walk into and find nothing, because the body that was laid there is alive and enthroned and will never die again. Every promise in this book was cashed on that Sunday. Every sin He carried was proven paid. Every believer who has ever been lowered into the ground has a receipt for their own rising, signed here.

Now notice the tenderness in how the news is given. The women are terrified, faces to the ground, and the messengers do not scold them for the fear. They ask a question instead, and it is a gentle one: why do you look for the living among the dead? Then they do not hand these women a new revelation. They hand them an old one. Remember how He told you while He was still in Galilee. He had said it, more than once, plainly, that the Son of Man must be delivered up and crucified and on the third day rise again. The word must is worth your attention. It was not an accident that overtook Him and not a tragedy He failed to dodge. It was a necessity, laid down before the world was made, and He had walked into it open-eyed. Luke had already set the prediction on the page for us in his ninth chapter, and the women had heard something very like it with their own ears.

"“The Son of Man must suffer many things,” He said. “He must be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and He must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.”" Luke 9:22 (BSB)

Then they remembered His words. That is the first act of resurrection faith in the New Testament, and it is not a vision or a feeling. It is memory. They had the words all along; grief had simply buried them. It will happen to you too. In the dark you will forget what God has plainly said, and the mercy that reaches you will very often come in the form of somebody saying, remember how He told you. Hide His words where the dark cannot get at them.

Luke 24:9–14 (BSB)

⁹ And when they returned from the tomb, they reported all these things to the Eleven and to all the others. ¹⁰ It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles. ¹¹ But their words seemed like nonsense to them, and they did not believe the women. ¹² Peter, however, got up and ran to the tomb. And after bending down and seeing only the linen cloths, he went away, wondering to himself what had happened. ¹³ That same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem. ¹⁴ They were talking with each other about everything that had happened.

Luke names the women, and then he tells us the truth about the men, and he does not spare them. The report seemed like nonsense, and the word he chooses is a blunt one, the kind of word a physician might use for the raving of a delirious patient. They did not believe the women. Those are the apostles, the men who would shortly turn the world upside down, and on the first Easter morning they sat in a room and dismissed the best news ever carried by human lips as the babbling of hysterical friends. Sit with how honest that is. If the church had been inventing this, it would have made its founders look better and its witnesses more respectable. Instead the women are named and vindicated and the apostles are recorded as stubborn, because Luke set out to write what actually happened for a reader who needed to know the certainty of it.

There is comfort in this for anyone whose faith has ever come slowly. The resurrection did not depend on the disciples’ readiness to believe it. It was true while they were calling it nonsense. It was true while Peter stood at the mouth of the tomb, staring at folded linen, and went away wondering to himself rather than shouting. God was not waiting for their faith to catch up before He raised His Son, and He is not waiting for yours to be impressive before He keeps His word to you. The empty tomb was a fact in the world at dawn, whatever anyone in Jerusalem happened to think of it by breakfast. And then, quietly, Luke turns the camera. Two of them, that same day, walking out of the city, still talking it over. The greatest chapter in the Gospel is about to be given to two people the church would otherwise never have heard of.

Luke 24:15–21 (BSB)

¹⁵ And as they talked and deliberated, Jesus Himself came up and walked along with them. ¹⁶ But their eyes were kept from recognizing Him. ¹⁷ He asked them, “What are you discussing so intently as you walk along?” They stood still, with sadness on their faces. ¹⁸ One of them, named Cleopas, asked Him, “Are You the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in recent days?” ¹⁹ “What things?” He asked. “The events involving Jesus of Nazareth,” they answered. “This man was a prophet, powerful in speech and action before God and all the people. ²⁰ Our chief priests and rulers delivered Him up to the sentence of death, and they crucified Him. ²¹ But we were hoping He was the One who would redeem Israel. And besides all this, it is the third day since these things took place.

Jesus Himself came up and walked along with them. Read that slowly, because it is the whole gospel in a sentence. The risen Lord of glory, fresh from the grave, with all authority in heaven and earth in His hands, spends the afternoon of His resurrection day walking at the pace of two devastated nobodies going the wrong direction. He does not appear in the temple courts to vindicate Himself before the men who condemned Him. He does not go first to Rome. He goes out on a dirt road with two people whose hopes have collapsed, and He walks. And He asks a question He already knows the answer to, the way He always does, because He wants them to say it out loud. What are you discussing so intently as you walk along? They stop dead in the road, with sadness on their faces, and one of them says, in effect, where have you been? Everyone knows.

Then comes the sentence. But we were hoping He was the One who would redeem (λυτρόω) lutroō, pronounced loo-TROH-oh. Strong's G3084, to redeem, to ransom, to buy out of bondage by paying a price. The verb behind “redeem” is lutroō, and it comes out of the slave market and the prisoner-of-war camp. A lutron was the ransom price, the money laid down to buy a captive out of bondage and set him free, and lutroō is what you do when you pay it. It is an expensive word. Nobody is redeemed by good wishes; somebody hands over the price. In the Greek Old Testament it is the word for God bringing Israel out of Egypt with an outstretched arm, and that is precisely the hope these two had carried: a Messiah who would break Rome’s grip the way Moses broke Pharaoh’s. What they could not yet see is that their hope was not too large but far too small. He had come to redeem, and the ransom had been paid three days earlier on a hill outside the city, but the captivity He broke was not Rome. It was sin and death, and the price was His own blood. Peter would later write that we were ransomed not with silver or gold but with the precious blood of Christ, and he uses this very word. So the two on the road were right and wrong at once. He was the One who would redeem. He had just done it, and they were mourning the invoice. Israel. There may not be a sadder line anywhere in Scripture, and there is certainly not one more of us have said. We were hoping. Past tense. The hope is spoken of like a thing that has died and been buried along with Him. Notice that everything they say about Jesus is true as far as it goes. A prophet, powerful in speech and action, delivered up by the rulers, crucified. They have their facts straight and their hearts broken, and they are walking away from Jerusalem because as far as they can tell the story is over. And here is the thing you must not miss: the One they are grieving is standing right there, alive, listening to them mourn Him. Their hope had not died. Their hope was walking beside them asking questions. If you have ever said we had hoped, if you have prayed for something and buried it and gone home, understand what this road is telling you. The disappointment was real. The information was incomplete. He was nearer than they knew, and He was not finished.

Luke 24:22–27 (BSB)

²² Furthermore, some of our women astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning, ²³ but they did not find His body. They came and told us they had seen a vision of angels, who said that Jesus was alive. ²⁴ Then some of our companions went to the tomb and found it just as the women had described. But Him they did not see.” ²⁵ Then Jesus said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! ²⁶ Was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and then to enter His glory?” ²⁷ And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, He explained to them what was written in all the Scriptures about Himself.

They even have the evidence. They report the women’s news, they report that companions went and confirmed the tomb was empty, and they trudge on down the road anyway, because a report you have not believed does you no good at all. But Him they did not see. Then the Stranger speaks, and His rebuke is sharp but not cold. O foolish ones, and slow of heart. He does not say slow of mind. The problem was never intelligence; it was a heart that would not run to catch up with what God had said. And mark carefully what He rebukes them for. Not for failing to believe the women, and not for failing to recognize Him, but for being slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken. The evidence they were held responsible for was the Scriptures they had been raised on. It had been written down for centuries. A suffering Servant, pierced for transgressions, numbered with the criminals, and then satisfied, and then given a portion among the great. Was it not necessary? The cross was never the wreck of the plan. The cross was the plan, and the glory on the far side of it was always the point.

And now watch what He does about it, because this is the most astonishing thing in the chapter and we walk past it too fast. He is standing there in a resurrection body. He could end the whole conversation in one second by simply letting them see His face. Instead He keeps Himself hidden and He teaches them the Bible. Beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, He goes through the whole of Scripture and shows them the parts about Himself: the promised seed, the ram caught in the thicket, the Passover lamb, the bronze serpent, the prophet like Moses, the son of David whose throne would not end, the Servant who bore our griefs. Two hours of it, at least, and not one word of it recorded. That is a sermon anyone would give a great deal to have heard, and God did not preserve a syllable of it. Perhaps because He has given us the same Scriptures and expects us to find Him there. What the risen Christ gave His grieving disciples first was not a sight of His face. It was an exposition of the Word. Do not despise the ordinary means He chose that day. He is still opening the Scriptures, and He is still in every one of them.

Luke 24:28–32 (BSB)

²⁸ As they approached the village where they were headed, He seemed to be going farther. ²⁹ But they pleaded with Him, “Stay with us, for it is nearly evening and the day is almost over.” So He went in to stay with them. ³⁰ While He was reclining at the table with them, He took bread, spoke a blessing and broke it, and gave it to them. ³¹ Then their eyes were opened and they recognized Jesus—and He disappeared from their sight. ³² They asked each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us as He spoke with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?”

He seemed to be going farther. He does not force Himself on them. He walks past the gate, and He waits to be asked. There is nothing false in it; He genuinely would have gone on, and He genuinely wanted to be invited, and He puts Himself in the position of a Guest who might be let go. That is the courtesy of God with a human heart. He comes near, He warms us with His Word, and then He leaves room for us to say stay. Their invitation is not eloquent. It is only, stay with us, for it is nearly evening and the day is almost over, the plain hospitality of a Middle Eastern household that will not send a stranger out into the dark. But it is enough. So He went in to stay with them, and everything that follows in this chapter comes from a door held open by two exhausted people who were not willing to let Him walk on.

Then the table. He had been the invited Guest all afternoon, and now, in another man’s house, He quietly takes the place of the Host. He takes the bread, speaks the blessing, breaks it, and gives it to them. Those four verbs have been in this Gospel before, on a hillside with five thousand hungry people, and in an upper room three nights ago. And in that moment their eyes were opened (διανοίγω) dianoigō, pronounced dee-ah-NOY-goh. Strong's G1272, to open thoroughly, open up fully. The verb here is dianoigō, built from the plain word for opening with a prefix that intensifies it: to open thoroughly, to open all the way through, to force apart something that was shut fast. It is used of a womb opened for a firstborn son and of ears unstopped for a deaf man, and Luke is fond of it. Watch how many times it turns in this one chapter, because it is the hinge the whole day swings on. Their eyes were opened at the table. He had opened the Scriptures to them on the road. And in a few verses He will open their minds to understand what they had read all their lives. Three doors, all of them opened from the outside, all of them opened by Him. That is the quiet theology of Emmaus. These men were not stupid and they were not lazy; they had the sacred text, they had the eyewitness reports, they had the risen Christ Himself walking beside them in broad daylight, and none of it was enough until He opened them. Nobody argues himself into seeing Jesus. Ask Him to do the opening. He is very willing, and He is the only one with the key. and they recognized Him, and He was gone. Think about where this happens. Not in the temple, not in a blaze of glory on a mountain, but at supper, over broken bread, in a village nobody can now find on a map. So much of this Gospel has happened at tables. He ate with Levi and his disreputable friends, and with Pharisees who watched Him, and with Zacchaeus, and with Martha fretting in the kitchen, and He told stories about a father who threw a feast for a son who had come home. Luke has been showing you all along that this Savior is known at close quarters, over food, among ordinary people. And now the risen Lord of the universe reveals Himself the same way, with His hands full of bread.

And then their own words about the road, which is one of the loveliest sentences believers have ever spoken: were not our hearts burning (καίω) kaiō, pronounced KYE-oh. Strong's G2545, to kindle, to set on fire, to burn. Kaiō is the ordinary Greek word for kindling and burning, the verb you would use for lighting a lamp or setting a fire on a hearth. It is a physical word, not a poetic one. What these two are describing is not a warm mood but something more like combustion: an inward heat that was struck up while Christ handled the Scriptures in their hearing. And notice what lit it. Not a miracle, not a voice from heaven, not the sight of His wounds, but the exposition of the Word by the Christ who is its subject. Jeremiah once said that the word of God was like a fire shut up in his bones that he was weary of holding in. Something of the same kind happened on the Emmaus road. It is worth saying plainly, though, that they did not trust the burning as their evidence. They named it only after their eyes were opened, and then they used it to interpret the afternoon rather than to prove it. Feelings make a poor foundation and a wonderful companion. Let the Word do its work, and do not be surprised when the fire follows. And if you have sat under Scripture lately with no warmth at all, keep sitting. The road to Emmaus was long before it was glorious. within us as He spoke with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us? They had felt it while it was happening and had not known what it was. Something in them had caught fire while a Stranger walked them through Moses and the Prophets, and only afterward could they name it. Take that as a mercy for your own dry seasons. There are hours when the Word is being read and you cannot see His face, and the warmth is there anyway, doing its work, and you will understand what was happening only when you look back on it.

Luke 24:33–39 (BSB)

³³ And they got up that very hour and returned to Jerusalem. There they found the Eleven and those with them, gathered together ³⁴ and saying, “The Lord has indeed risen and has appeared to Simon!” ³⁵ Then the two told what had happened on the road, and how they had recognized Jesus in the breaking of the bread. ³⁶ While they were describing these events, Jesus Himself stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” ³⁷ But they were startled and frightened, thinking they had seen a spirit. ³⁸ “Why are you troubled,” Jesus asked, “and why do doubts arise in your hearts? ³⁹ Look at My hands and My feet. It is I Myself. Touch Me and see—for a spirit does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have.”

That very hour. They had begged Him to stay because the day was almost over and the road was unsafe after dark, and now they are back out on it, walking seven miles the other way in the night, because news like this will not keep till morning. That is what an encounter with the risen Christ does to a person’s plans. And when they come panting through the door with the greatest story of their lives, they are met by a room already shouting the same thing: the Lord has indeed risen and has appeared to Simon! Simon. Peter, who had denied Him three times by a fire and gone out and wept bitterly, and who had run to the tomb that morning and come away only wondering. Somewhere in that Sunday, in a meeting Scripture does not describe and no one overheard, the risen Lord went and found him. He is still doing that. He goes and finds the one who failed worst, privately, before anything is said in public.

And then, right in the middle of the storytelling, He is simply there. Jesus Himself stood among them. His first word to a room full of people who had abandoned Him is peace. Not a reckoning, not a word about the courtyard fire or the garden or the running away. Peace be with you. Let that settle over any believer who has ever wondered how the Lord looks at them after a fall. They are terrified anyway, certain they are seeing a ghost, and He answers their fear with His body. Look at My hands and My feet. It is I Myself. The scars are the identification. He kept them. The risen and glorified Christ carries in His hands and feet the marks of what it cost to redeem the people standing in front of Him, and He offers those marks as proof that He is not a phantom. Touch Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have. Whatever else the resurrection is, it is not a lovely idea about His influence living on. A body came out of that tomb. The same body, changed and glorified, but the same, with the same wounds and the same voice, real enough to touch. Do not let anyone thin that down for you. Our hope is not that the soul survives. Our hope is that the grave gives back what it took.

Luke 24:40–45 (BSB)

⁴⁰ And when He had said this, He showed them His hands and feet. ⁴¹ While they were still in disbelief because of their joy and amazement, He asked them, “Do you have anything here to eat?” ⁴² So they gave Him a piece of broiled fish, ⁴³ and He took it and ate it in front of them. ⁴⁴ Jesus said to them, “These are the words I spoke to you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about Me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms.” ⁴⁵ Then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.

Still in disbelief because of their joy. Luke the physician has watched enough people receive impossible news to know exactly what that looks like. It is not the unbelief of the hard heart; it is the unbelief of a man who has wanted something so badly for so long that when it finally arrives he cannot make himself hold it. Some of you know that condition. And see how gently the Lord treats it. He does not rebuke them for being too happy to believe. He asks for supper. Do you have anything here to eat? They hand Him a piece of broiled fish, and He takes it and eats it in front of them, and the God of heaven chews and swallows ordinary food in a crowded room so that these people will never be able to talk themselves out of it afterward. There is something almost humorous in the homeliness of it, and something deeply kind. He knew they would spend the rest of their lives being asked whether they had only seen a vision, and He gave them an answer they could hold: we watched Him eat.

Then He preaches the same sermon He preached on the road, now to the whole room. Everything must be fulfilled that is written about Me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms. That is a Jewish way of saying the entire Hebrew Bible, every scroll of it, and He claims all of it as testimony about Himself. Not most of it. Not the obviously messianic bits. The whole book, from the first promise in the garden to the last word of the last prophet, aiming at Him. And then verse forty-five, which is one of the quietest and most important sentences in the New Testament: Then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures. The same verb again, the same opening from the outside. They had memorized these texts as boys. They had heard them read aloud every Sabbath of their lives. And still their minds had to be opened before they could see who had been standing in the middle of them the whole time. Praise God that He does this. Praise Him that He does not merely hand us a book and leave us to our own dull hearts, but comes and opens the shut thing Himself. This is why we pray before we read. Not as a formality, but because the Author is present and willing, and understanding His Word has always been a gift He gives rather than a prize we take.

Luke 24:46–53 (BSB)

⁴⁶ And He told them, “This is what is written: The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, ⁴⁷ and in His name repentance and forgiveness of sins will be proclaimed to all nations, beginning in Jerusalem. ⁴⁸ You are witnesses of these things. ⁴⁹ And behold, I am sending the promise of My Father upon you. But remain in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.” ⁵⁰ When Jesus had led them out as far as Bethany, He lifted up His hands and blessed them. ⁵¹ While He was blessing them, He left them and was carried up into heaven. ⁵² And they worshiped Him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy, ⁵³ praising God continually in the temple.

Here is the shape of the message the church has carried ever since, and He gives it in one breath: the Christ suffered, the Christ rose on the third day, and in His name repentance and forgiveness of sins is now proclaimed to all nations. Look where it starts. Beginning in Jerusalem. The city that had just crucified Him is the first city on the list to be offered pardon in His name, and the men sent to offer it are the ones who ran away. That is the gospel through and through. And look where it goes: to all nations, out past the covenant people to the Gentiles, to Greeks and Romans and Ethiopians and to a Gentile physician named Luke who would one day write it all down. The Savior who was announced to shepherds, who read Isaiah in a backwater synagogue and said the Spirit was upon Him to preach good news to the poor, who let a Samaritan be the hero of His best-known story and a tax collector climb a tree to see Him, ends His earthly ministry by throwing the doors open to every nation on the earth. You are witnesses of these things. They are not asked to be clever or persuasive. They are asked to tell what they saw. So is every believer since.

But not yet, and not alone. Remain in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high. He will not send them out on their own strength, and He does not send you out on yours either. The promise of the Father is the Holy Spirit, and Luke will open his second volume with the fulfillment of it, when the same men who could not stay awake in Gethsemane stood up in that same city and preached until three thousand were cut to the heart.

"But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”" Acts 1:8 (BSB)

And then the last picture. He leads them out to Bethany, the village of Mary and Martha and Lazarus, where He had so often been welcomed, and He lifts up His hands and blesses (εὐλογέω) eulogeō, pronounced yoo-log-EH-oh. Strong's G2127, to speak well of, to bless. Eulogeō is a compound of eu, well, and logos, a word: literally to speak well of, to say a good word over someone. From it English gets eulogy, though we have shrunk that down to something you say over a coffin, while the Bible uses it for something you say over the living. When people bless God it means praise, giving Him back the good words He is owed. When God blesses people it is never merely nice sentiment, because His good word actually accomplishes what it says. Aaron was taught to lift his hands over Israel and put the name of the LORD on them: the LORD bless you and keep you, the LORD make His face shine upon you. Now here is the true and final High Priest with His hands raised over His people, doing exactly that, and then ascending mid-blessing. And watch how the word travels through this one chapter. He spoke a blessing over bread at a table in Emmaus, He blessed His disciples at Bethany, and then they went back to Jerusalem praising God in the temple, which is this same family of words coming back the other way. He blesses; they bless Him in return. That circle, God speaking good over us and our speaking good of Him, is what worship is, and it is what you were made for. them. That is the last thing they see Him do. Not point a finger, not deliver a final warning, but lift priestly hands over a company of forgiven failures and bless them, and while He is still in the act of blessing, He is carried up into heaven. The blessing was never finished; it was only lifted higher. He is doing it still, at the right hand of the Father, praying for His people, and He has not lowered His hands yet.