Sermon Tone Analysis

NOTE:

This is a manuscript, and not a transcript of this message.

The actual presentation of the message differed from the manuscript through the leading of the Holy Spirit.

Therefore, it is possible, and even likely that there is material in this manuscript that was not included in the live presentation and that there was additional material in the live presentation that is not included in this manuscript.

Engagement

In March 1984 police detective Robert Cunningham went to eat at his usual hangout - Sal’s Pizzeria in Yonkers, NY - where Phyllis Penzo had waited tables six nights a week for the prior 24 years.

When he decided to settle his tab, Cunningham offered Penzo a deal instead of a tip.

He took a lottery ticket out of his pocket and offered to split the winnings wither her.

On April Fool’s Day, Cunningham called Penzo art 9:00 a.m. to tell her they had just won $6 million dollars and that she was entitled to half that amount.

At first she thought it was a joke, but once she realized Cunningham was serious she woke her husband to tell him they were rich.

And true to his word, Cunningham, a 30 year police veteran with an annual salary of $30,000, kept his word and split the jackpot right down the middle.

For both Cunningham and Penzo, that was certainly news that seemed too good to be true.

If that story sounds familiar, it is the event that inspired the 1994 film, It Could Happen to You, starring Nicolas Cage and Bridget Fonda.

Tension

Most of us have probably been presented opportunities that seem too good to be true.

Maybe it was an investment opportunity that promised great returns with little or no risk.

Or it was one of those emails that promised a huge inheritance if you could just help the other person get their money out of the country.

So with all the scams out there, most of us probably live by the motto “If something seems to be too good to be true, it’s probably too good to be true”

We might even be tempted to think that about the event we are celebrating this morning - the resurrection of Jesus.

And if we did, we’d be in good company because the group of disciples who saw the resurrected Jesus on Sunday evening certainly thought that, even after Jesus appeared in person to them.

Truth

This morning, Ryan spoke about the encounter Jesus had with two men on the road to Emmaus.

After that encounter, Cleopas and the other unnamed disciple returned to Jerusalem where the remaining eleven apostles and some other disciples were hiding from the Jewish authorities.

They told that group everything that Jesus had said to them and how they had recognized Him when Jesus broke bread with them.

Let’s pick up the account:

As this group is sitting around in a locked room talking about what had happened to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, Jesus appears in their midst.

Although He proclaims, “Peace to you!”, the disciples are understandably startled and frightened and they conclude that they are seeing a ghost.

But Jesus, knowing what they are thinking, shows them his hands and feet and invites them to touch Him to prove that He is physically present with them.

But the disciples are still confused.

In verse 41, we find these interesting words:

And while they disbelieved for joy...

This is a confusing phrase that is not found elsewhere in the Bible.

And it almost seems to be a contradiction.

On one hand the disciples don’t really believe it is Jesus, but on the other hand they are filled with joy at seeing Him.

The reaction of the disciples provides us with the main idea I want to pursue this morning:

The gospel is nearly too good to be true news

If we had just left those blanks empty and said that the gospel is good news, most of us would have probably said, “Of course it is”.

But here is why I’ve added the qualifiers.

If you are already a disciple of Jesus, the danger is that you might lose your sense of awe and wonder about the gospel.

It’s possible that you might begin to just take it for granted.

On the other hand, if you’re not yet a disciple of Jesus, the gospel might very well seem to be too good to be true.

I’m going to use this passage to address both of those groups this morning.

For these disciples, the physical presence of Jesus did seem “too good to be true”.

While the disciples had great joy because Jesus was with them, they also couldn’t wrap their minds around the idea that the man they had watched be executed by the Roman authorities just a few days earlier was now alive.

But that is completely understandable.

Think about how you would respond if some loved one who has passed away suddenly showed up at your house and invited you to touch them.

You’d probably “disbelieve for joy”, too.

I love how Jesus responds here.

He doesn’t scold the disciples.

He doesn’t rebuke them for their unbelief.

He doesn’t call them stupid.

He doesn’t raise His voice.

He simply asks a simple question: “Have you anything to eat?”.

Why would He ask that?

How as that going to help their unbelief?

After all, if showing them His resurrected body and inviting them to touch Him didn’t do anything to relieve their unbelief, what would?

But when Jesus took the piece of fish He was offered and ate it, He was demonstrating that He did indeed have a physical body and was not just a ghost.

Ghosts don’t eat.

We don’t know exactly what Jesus’ resurrected body looked like.

We do know that it was recognizable.

We know that it was indeed a physical body and not just an apparition.

But it had also changed from the body He had before the crucifixion.

It could apparently walk right through walls.

But what is not in doubt is the fact that the resurrection was true.

Jesus had died and been buried but now He was alive.

In other words, what seemed too good to be true was actually true.

Even though we don’t find the word “gospel” in this account, the idea of the gospel is certainly present here.

I think most of the time we use the word “gospel” we tend to think of it as merely some theological or religious term.

It is most often used in connection with the task that Jesus has given to all His disciples, so we talk about “preaching the gospel” or “sharing the gospel”.

And that is certainly an appropriate way to use that word.

But the gospel is far more than that.

The Greek word from which we get our English word “gospel” literally means “a good message” or “good news”.

But it is actually even more than that.

It was a superlative that was seldom used in Greek literature outside of the New Testament because it has the sense of “nearly too good to be true news”.

And that didn’t happen often in their world and it doesn’t happen in our world very often either.

HOW TO MAKE SURE I DON’T MISS THE “NEARLY TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE” NEWS

Look for Jesus in His Word

Jesus understood that doubts are vanquished by the truth.

So, just like He had done with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, He took these disciples through the Scriptures.

Obviously, none of the new Testament had been written at that time, so the only Scriptures that were available are what we call the Old Testament.

The Jews frequently referred to those Scriptures with the same phrase Jesus uses here - the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.

And Jesus shows these disciples how all three sections testify to the fact that He would die to make it possible for their sins to be forgiven and then rise on the third day to prove that He had the right and the power to overcome sin and death.

Today, we obviously encounter Jesus throughout the New Testament.

Those of you who have joined us in our reading plan this year are certainly seeing Jesus in the gospels.

But this passage reminds us that Jesus is also present throughout the Old Testament, too.

That is one reason we have always encouraged you to make sure you’re reading the entire Bible.

Recently, a prominent pastor said that as Christians we should “unhitch” from the Old Testament.

But based on what we see here, we should do exactly the opposite.

We should embrace it.

Fortunately, when we read the Bible and look for Jesus, we have one advantage that those disciples who were with Jesus didn’t.

We have the Holy Spirit, the author of the Bible, dwelling permanently in our lives and one of the things He does for us is to help us to understand what we are reading.

Here is what Jesus had to say about that role of the Holy Spirit:

The more we see Jesus in the Bible, the more confidence we will have that the gospel, although it might seem too good to be true, is actually 100% true.

Look for Jesus in our world

This is something we talked about a lot at our Monday morning Bible study this week.

Even though it’s not addressed directly in this passage, I think it is so important that we need to talk about it for a few minutes.

Unlike the disciples, none of us has physically seen the resurrected Jesus, so we have to rely on their eyewitness accounts.

But I think God did create us with a need to experience things physically and emotionally, too.

We can’t see or touch Jesus physically, but we can see His hand in the world He has created around us if we’ll just look.

That will probably be different for each of us, but let me suggest a few ways this might occur: