The Personal Approach

Always had this, you know, a lot of times it’s been great, but sometimes it’s a challenge, is that we’ve always had pets, always had dogs. And it seems like, especially with the last two dogs we’ve had, they both have poodle in them. They’re both forms of doodles, a golden doodle and a Bernadoodle.

And the poodle makes them hypoallergenic, so it’s okay for me. But the poodle also makes them stubborn, so they don’t want to listen. So they’re harder to teach, so it takes more work to do.

And what they like to do is when you’re trying to get out the door at the last second, they would both sneak out and run out into the neighborhood, and they love to explore. And Charlie, we would spend a long time, like half hour, an hour, trying to lasso him, getting him rounded up and bringing him in, because he was just so excited to be out and free and in the neighborhood. And the bad news is, no matter how old you are, he’s faster than us.

We learned a couple of things. One was, I started taking the car to go get him. And I would open the back door and say, do you want a ride? And he loved having a ride so much, he would stop whatever he was doing and jump in the back of the car.

Now that doesn’t work so well with Mabel, because she does not like riding in the car that much. She wants to be with you, but she doesn’t really like riding in the car. There’s always some sort of panic attack while we’re riding in the car.

But what I learned is, although he’s faster than everyone in our house, you walk out there with the leash, and you just show it to her. And she just sits down wherever she is, waiting for you to come over there. And she doesn’t always get a walk when that happens, but she is so excited about a walk.

Charlie was excited about a walk too, but he didn’t stop for the leash. In fact, with Charlie, we had to spell it out. All right, should we go on a W-A-L-K? I think he got that part figured out soon too.

But Mabel loves going on a walk so much that, you know, when she was a little younger and I had no idea what to do to catch her, it was a bit of a panic moment. Because if you’re getting, you need to get somewhere in a hurry, but as soon as you show her the leash, she doesn’t even seem to leave the yard. But you have to be able to get the leash before she gets too far away, or you got to go hunt her down with the leash.

I say that because she loves walking with us. The cool thing about our faith that is different from any other faith in the world is that our God loves walking with us. I mean, it is so awesome in life when we have someone who is our travel buddy, or our road trip buddy, or someone who will go with us.

It’s so awesome when we have a walking buddy. Who’s your walking buddy? Who’s your friend or the one who will walk with you? And not just walking around the neighborhood. When you go through life and you have struggles, it was with the disciples.

If you think about the context of where we’re going to go, we’re going to talk about the walk to Emmaus and how foundational that is, not only for Cleopas and the other disciples, but for us in our life to realize that He walks with us too. Now, Cleopas and the other disciples, when you think about what they were doing when they got on the road to walk to Emmaus, that was about seven miles away from Jerusalem. Here’s the context.

If you remember just last week, what happened in the whirlwind. The whirlwind of having Jesus walk on this earth. Now, you’re going, how does Cleopas and this other disciple fit into this? They’re not one of the 12.

But remember earlier in Luke and Luke 10, if you take a few minutes and read Luke 10 this week, you see that there were 72, sometimes some books interpret it as 70, 70 or 72 disciples that Jesus sent out. So it wasn’t just the 12. It was the 12 who became apostles.

But there were 72 that went out in their mission, drove out demons, did these amazing things. And I imagine Cleopas and the other disciples were a part of that 70. They were there when all this happened.

They saw Jesus being arrested, beaten, crucified, and hung on the cross. He died. And they were with the disciples when all this happened.

And they even knew that Mary came back and told these crazy stories about Jesus rising from the tomb. But they must have left before Peter and John got back with any report. And this is where they were at in Luke 24.

Will you stand as your aid? 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. The Word of God, inspired by God, for the people of God. Thanks be to God.

Amen. You may be seated. Now, if you put yourself in the place of Cleopas and the other disciple, it is so awkward to say and the other disciple.

I wish Luke would have done a little more research and figured out who that other disciple was so I could say Cleopas and Isaiah or whoever it might have been. But Cleopas and the other disciple were sad. They were hurt.

They were down from. They were still under the impression that Jesus was dead, even though this was Easter day and Jesus had risen. They had not fully noticed yet and they did not understand it.

But they were disciples of Jesus and they were walking on the road to Emmaus and Jesus walked up with them. When you are commiserating with somebody else and another capacity to talk to this person right now, this stranger, I can’t take on what they have. This is all about me and what I am going through.

And sometimes when we don’t realize it, God comes and walks with us. But we say, I don’t need a third wheel right now and we might not even know we are sending God away or we are not really there with God. Now, the heart of this of Jesus walking with these two disciples and God taking the personal approach by walking side by side with the disciples is historic all the way through the Bible.

But it also comes to the heart of what Westland theology is. Romans 2 verse 4 says, Or do you not presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? Now, when you are talking about this, God gives kindness to everyone. God gives grace to everyone.

God is omnipresent. That means God is everywhere. Is everybody on the page with that? That God is omnipresent.

God is here. God is there. God is in Islamic countries.

God is in warring countries. God is in the United States. But there is a difference between the omnipresence or God being presence and God being personal.

Does that make sense? In this sense, that God has prevenient grace. And this prevenient grace is God’s grace that goes out before us. This is based on the omnipresence of God.

That God’s grace is always there, like in Romans, with God’s presence before us. That he has riches of kindness. And that we don’t understand how much grace God has and how often God is trying to lead us to repentance and to come into his presence.

And when we have this prevenient grace and we respond to it, then once we have been justified by God with the justifying grace of God, we move on this journey with God of sanctification. And the sanctification is when God walks with us and it’s the personal approach that we see God. Now, Cleopas and the other disciples are like so many in the world that they were part of the disciples, but they were used to seeing Jesus in a physical form and in a strictly earthly form, not in his glorified body.

And it says while they were talking and discussing together the things that had happened, meaning they were commiserating together, they were hurting, they were down. And it says Jesus came up and just walked with them and took that journey with them. But their eyes were kept from recognizing.

Now, there are many ways in which we can look at this whole, the whole context of the road to Emmaus and see why they could not recognize Jesus. Some say it’s because after the resurrection, the other disciples didn’t recognize him right away. Mary didn’t recognize him when she first saw him in the garden.

And so there was something different about his appearance. There’s also speculation that he could change his appearance when he wanted to be recognized and he didn’t want to be recognized in that physical form. But there is something different that Jesus is trying to get to here than what we may be used to.

When someone says something mean or something that’s hard to hear, they often use the words, hey, nothing personal. And that means it’s probably personal. And when they say that, it’s trying to, we like so much in our lives and so many relationships in our life to keep an arm’s length.

I’m not going to let you get too personal with me. I’m not going to share my heart and my soul with you because you’ll discover my imperfections, my flaws, my things that make me not Christ-like. And it’s tough.

And we value intellectualness. And sometimes even with our faith, we accept the intellectual side. I understand.

I know about. I comprehend who God is. But we let that knowledge be the end of our life with God versus knowing God personally.

Knowledge does not substitute for knowing God. So their eyes were closed, but God’s heart is to walk with us. God’s heart is to have a personal approach with us.

Now just a few verses ago in Luke 19, when Jesus had the triumphal experience and he walked in and he cried and lamented over Jerusalem. Would that you, even you Jerusalem, had known on this day the things that make for peace. But now they’re hidden from your eyes because you did not know the time of your visitation.

God loved us so much that he chose to come down and walk on this earth with us. And the very people who were God’s people didn’t recognize him. They couldn’t see who God was when Jesus walked in the flesh and see that he was God making a personal visitation for us.

That can happen in our lives so many times too. In John 14 when Jesus was trying to explain to the disciples at the last supper that he was going to die and then he was going to rise again. But then he was going to ascend into heaven and he was going to send another like him.

He said, if you love me you will keep my commandments and I will ask the Father and he will give you another helper to be with you forever. Trying to tell them that even though Jesus’ physical appearance wasn’t going to be there with them, God’s presence was still going to be with them with the Holy Spirit. And what’s really cool in John, it goes on to say that, and he who loves me, here he is.

And another helper will be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees him nor knows him. Yet you know him for he dwells with you and will be in you. Jesus is trying to tell the disciples that even though the world doesn’t recognize God, you can recognize God when you receive the Holy Spirit.

And the Holy Spirit is in you and the Holy Spirit is working through you. And then the Holy Spirit will guide you, will walk with you, will teach you, will draw you into the presence of God. It’s such an amazing thing.

You know him for he dwells with you and will be in you. But the world does not see him. They have to respond to that pervading grace.

Now when we go on and look at Exodus 33 that Dana read earlier. Exodus 33 is just so foundational for me and my faith. When I was trying to get to know God and I was just reading the Bible for the first time.

It was pretty cool because it only took to the book of Exodus when I realized, oh, the whole Bible is about God trying to come near the people. And the people running away from God. But then God finding another way to come near them, to be with them, to walk with them, to love them.

But the people distancing themselves from God after a certain amount of time. Moses said to God as they were meeting in the tent of meeting. And of course, Joshua, son of Nun was there with Moses.

And even when Moses would leave the tent of meeting, Joshua would stay there and Joshua would walk with God too. Moses said, my presence will go with you. And God said, my presence will go with you and I will give you rest.

And Moses said to him, if your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up. From here. After knowing God so much, Moses would have chosen slavery.

Over not being with God. God not walking with them. It’s such an amazing thing to see God throughout history trying to walk with us.

To walk with us as his people. As the ones who love him. Helen Rosebeard told a story about how she was coming home from church one evening.

And she said, I was struggling to recognize God’s guidance for my life. Is that an unusual occurrence or can anybody relate to that? I was struggling to recognize God’s guidance for my life. Suddenly I drove into a dense fog and could see nothing.

Poking my head out of the window, I noticed a tiny light from the road ahead. And as I inched my car forward, it blinked out. And there were some other headlights that took its place.

Some yards ahead, I crawled along following just the short distance I could see. One light after another until the fog cleared. She said, then I realized that this is how God guides me.

He shows me how far I need to go at any given moment. And step by step, I move from one light to the next. Confidence of God’s guidance.

I let go of the need to see his complete plan. And again, God walks with us step by step. I mean, it’s the same God.

It’s the same God who would walk with Adam and Eve in the cool of the garden. I love those verses where it says he would come down and he would walk with them in the cool of the morning in the garden. A morning walk with God.

I don’t think you need a tree of knowledge to trade that for a morning walk with God. It’s the same God who met with Moses in the tent of meeting and walked with Israel across the Red Sea that had been parted for them. It’s the same God that Moses passed on to Joshua.

Joshua led the Israelites through the river and they came to their homeland in Israel to finally be free. It’s the same God who came to earth and walked among us in Jesus Christ. Walked with the disciples.

Walked with them and taught them and loved them. Showed them miracles. Showed them life.

Showed them what life is like with God. It’s the same God that just showed up on the road when Cleopas and the other disciples were sad and depressed and struggling and walked with them in the midst of their life. It’s the same God that shows up with us every day.

Sometimes we recognize God. Sometimes we don’t. Sometimes it’s just God showing up and we sense it in our heart.

Sometimes it’s God sending a friend to lift us up. Sometimes it’s God working through someone we don’t even know that well to transition us in our lives. But it’s the same God who takes the personal approach just like with Cleopas and the other disciples.

Who takes the personal approach with God to just show up and walk with us when we think it’s the most difficult thing we can face. God is personal and God is present. And God will walk with us not just on the road to romance but through everything we have to face in our lives.

We just need to receive the Spirit so we can recognize Him. So we can open our eyes and we can realize the blessing we have. The same God walks with us.

Let’s pray. Almighty God, thank you so much for Jesus. Thank you for showing us in these verses that you love us.

That you are personal. That you don’t want to be in our life. You want to be with us no matter what we face in life.

You want to be with us on a casual morning walk. But you want to be with us to walk us through the most difficult things we may be facing. When we’re hurt and we’re down, you show up.

Open our eyes to recognize you. Help us to see you. Help us to let you in.

And help us just to walk with you. Because you’re present. You’re omnipresent.

So you are right here with us right now. Not at some point in time but right now. I just pray that we can recognize that.

And we can always walk with you. In Jesus’ name. Amen.