Sunday message · Better:Jesus is Greater series
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Message Summary
Pastor Phillip Santillan opens the Better: Jesus is Greater series, which leads up to Easter, by reflecting on a family conversation: it is natural not to feel connected to someone you don’t really know, even when you feel you should. Many Christians feel that way about Easter, he says. They believe Jesus is alive, yet the day can pass with more excitement about candy and egg hunts than the resurrection, and Phil admits he has had Easters like that himself. So for five weeks the church will rediscover how Jesus is better than anything we could hope in and greater than anything we could imagine.
Rather than looking only at Jesus’ earthly life, the series explores how all of Scripture, Old Testament and New, points to him, beginning in Luke 24:13–35. On the day of the resurrection, two grieving disciples are arguing on the seven-mile walk to Emmaus when Jesus joins them unrecognized. They tell him they had hoped he was the one to redeem Israel. Phil asks whether their story is ours: we may know plenty about Jesus and still be disappointed that he hasn’t changed our circumstances as we hoped.
Jesus doesn’t correct them right away. He asks, “What things?” and lets them tell their story, which Phil sees as Jesus caring more about showing how much he cares than proving how much he knows. Then he calls them slow of heart to believe the prophets, asks whether it was not necessary for the Christ to suffer and enter his glory, and, beginning with Moses and all the prophets, explains what all the Scriptures say about himself.
Phil connects this to Luke 2, where Mary and Joseph search for the twelve-year-old Jesus and find him in the temple, and he says it was necessary for him to be in his Father’s house. Drawing on N. T. Wright, Phil notes that Luke uses the same word in both stories, each about finding, after three days, the Jesus you thought you had lost. Finding him usually involves a surprise, because discipleship always involves the unexpected.
In Luke 24:28–35, the two urge Jesus to stay, and when he breaks the bread their eyes are opened. Their hearts had been burning as he explained the Scriptures, and they hurry back to Jerusalem in the dark. Phil wishes he could have heard that Bible class, which he imagines as a litany of Jesus as the true and better Adam, Abraham, Isaac, Moses, David, Esther and Jonah, and the real Passover lamb.
He closes with the series’ two questions. Who is your Jesus? If he is only a man who lived about thirty-three years, he will leave us disappointed, but he is the Alpha and Omega, through whom the world was made and in whom all things hold together. And where is your Jesus? On a dashboard or a necklace, a vending machine for our own pursuits, or at the center of life, “more than the consultant for the choices we make,” the compass guiding every decision so we live on God’s mission?
Questions about the road to Emmaus
On the day of the resurrection, the risen Jesus joined two grieving disciples walking from Jerusalem to Emmaus, but they didn’t recognize him (Luke 24:13–16). They told him they had hoped Jesus would redeem Israel. Beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained what the Scriptures said about himself; when he broke bread with them, their eyes were opened, and they hurried back to Jerusalem (24:27–35).
Luke names only one of them, Cleopas (Luke 24:18); the other is not named. They were followers of Jesus who had hoped he was the one who would redeem Israel, walking home in grief on the day he rose (24:13, 21). Pastor Phil asks whether their story is ours: we can know plenty about Jesus and still be disappointed that he hasn’t changed our circumstances the way we hoped.
Emmaus was a village “about seven miles from Jerusalem” (Luke 24:13), sixty stadia in the Greek, roughly 11 kilometers. Luke mentions it only in this story. The two disciples walked there on the day of the resurrection, and after recognizing Jesus at supper they got up that very hour and walked back to Jerusalem, even though it was nearly evening, to tell the Eleven (24:29–33).
That all of Scripture points to Jesus, and finding him often comes with a surprise. Jesus opened the Scriptures to two discouraged disciples, “beginning with Moses and all the Prophets” (Luke 24:27), and their hearts burned as he spoke (24:32). Pastor Phil leaves two questions: who is your Jesus, and where is he, on a dashboard or at the center of life, “more than the consultant for the choices we make”?