"A Restored Heart"

Dear Friends in Christ,

   I came across a true story recently about someone I’m sure you’ve all heard of before, though I will not reveal his full identity until the end of the story.  His name was Phineas Taylor.  When Phineas was born, his grandfather presented him with a deed to an island.  His very own island.  It was called Ivy Island and was located in Connecticut.  When he was old enough to understand, his parents began to tell him about it and how one day he would actually be able to go and visit his island.  As a young boy, Phineas spent a great deal of time fantasizing  about this piece of real estate – how one day he would be lord over his own territory, build a house there, start a farm, raise some cattle, and rule over his own domain.

   Finally, when he was 10, his father agreed to take Phineas to see his island.  Three sleepless nights preceded the expedition, so excited was he at the prospect of seeing this piece of land that he had up to this point only been able to dream about.  As he and his father neared the island, Phineas couldn’t take it any longer.  He jumped from the wagon and dashed through the meadow, leaving his father far behind.  He raced to the crest of a hill where he could get a bird’s eye view of his island, his kingdom, his long-anticipated empire.  But what he saw caused his heart to sink.  For there, sprawled out in front of him was 5 acres of snake-infested marshland.  Though his grandfather had called it the most valuable land in Connecticut and his father had referred to it time and again as a very generous gift, it was pretty obvious even to the eyes of a 10 year old boy that it was absolutely useless and worthless.  And when Phineas heard his father and the hired hand who had accompanied them roaring with laughter, he realized that Ivy Island was a joke, a most cruel and awful joke.

   Well, Phineas didn’t find it funny at all.  Nor did he forget what had been done to him that day.  In fact, that disappointment shaped what he would do with the rest of his life.  He, the one who had been deceived, made a career out of deceiving others.  The little boy who had been fooled learned how to make a living out of fooling others.  In fact, he may have even fooled you a time or two.  For you don’t know him as Phineas Taylor.  Rather, you know him by his initials as P.T.  You don’t know him as the owner of an island.  Rather, you know him as a promoter and an entertainer.  You know him as the one who coined the phrase, “There’s a sucker born every minute,” a saying he learned from personal experience.  You know him as P.T. Barnum.

   But you know, what happened to poor Phineas has really happened to all of us to a greater or lesser degree.  We’ve experienced profound disappointment, profound disillusionment when what we were anticipating didn’t turn out to be what we thought it would.  For example, maybe you were expecting your marriage to be one exciting never-ending honeymoon, but it didn’t take long for reality to set in and for you to discover that your knight in shining armor or your princess charming was just a typical human being with lots of faults and flaws.  Or maybe your disillusionment happened on the job, a job that may have started out great but that turned sour when your boss or the management began to place the almighty dollar above the well-being of their employees.  You may have even experienced disappointment with the church like one woman I recently read about who went to her pastor one day and asked him what she should do with her memories.  When he asked her what she meant by that, she said, “I want to go to church, but when I was a little girl I was abused by a pastor.  And now, every time I go into a church, I remember.”

   Disappointment, disillusionment, despair.  Broken hearts, broken dreams, broken lives.  Things that sadly are all too common among even Christians these days.  Things that were definitely being felt and experienced by the 2 disciples on the road to Emmaus late in the afternoon on that first Easter Sunday.  So let’s take a look at their story and see what Jesus did to give them what I’ve referred to in my sermon title for today as “A Restored Heart.”

   I want you to picture these fellows for a moment as they walk the dusty road from Jerusalem to their home in Emmaus, about 7 miles a way.  Their body language says it all.  Their feet shuffle, their heads hang, their shoulders droop, and perhaps every now and then a tear trickles down their cheek as they discuss the events of the past few days.  “Why did the people turn against him?” they ask in reference to Jesus.  “Why didn’t he just come down from the cross, as they were taunting him to do, and let them see for themselves what kind of power he had?”  “Why did he let Pilate and everyone else that day push him around?”  “Why, why, why?”

   And as they search for answers to all those why questions, a stranger comes up from behind and joins them.  Of course we know it’s Jesus, but they don’t recognize him.  And you know what, my friends?  Disappointment will do that to you.  It will blind you to the very presence of God that you are yearning for.  It will turn your eyes inward instead of outward and upward.  And even though God himself is walking right next to you, you won’t be aware of it.

    But despair can do something else to us.  It can also harden our hearts.  It can make us cynical, cold, callused, so that even when good news does come, we refuse to accept it or believe it for fear of being disappointed again.  That’s what happened to these 2 disciples.  In vv.22-24 of our text they tell of how the women came to them earlier that day with the news about the empty tomb and a vision of angels who said that Jesus was alive.  But from the way it’s written and the attitude they were displaying, it’s obvious these 2 disciples did not believe the good news the women brought.  Like the old saying goes, “Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, shame on me.”  They weren’t about to risk more pain and more hurt by believing this fanciful story that these hysterical women had cooked up.  No, they were too smart for that.  And so they wallowed in their despair.  They groveled in their disappointment.

   Notice, though, what Jesus did.  He first of all came to them.  He didn’t sit back and say, “Why can’t these 2 bozos get with the program?  Why are they so hard to convince?”  Instead, he met them at the point of their pain.  I think that’s worth noting, for even though Jesus had just defeated Satan and destroyed the power of death and the grave, he didn’t sit back and rest on his laurels.  He didn’t retire from service.  Instead, in his newly glorified and resurrected body, he met these 2 grief-stricken followers right where they were.

   And when he kind of played dumb and asked them what they were talking about and why they were so sad, they explained to him that when Jesus died, all of their hopes and all of their dreams for them and their nation died with him.  In other words, unfulfilled expectations were at the heart and core of their disappointment.  Or to put it another way, they were upset because God didn’t do things the way they wanted him to do them.  And all I can say in response to that is aren’t you glad he didn’t?

   For the Jews wanted Jesus to free their nation from the tyranny and power of Rome, but God wanted to free them from the tyranny and power of sin.  He preferred that his people be temporarily oppressed than eternally lost.  So when forced to choose between battling the forces of Rome and the forces of hell, God chose the battle he knew we couldn’t possibly win on our own.  And in the process he said no to what they wanted and yes to what they needed.

   Kind of like author Max Lucado did with his 6-year-old daughter when she made a rather unusual request of him one day years ago.  It seems she wasn’t happy with her dad’s chosen profession.  She wanted him to leave the ministry.  When he asked why, she said, “I like you as a preacher, Daddy, but I really wish you sold snow cones.”  It all made sense to her.  In her 6-year-old mind the happiest people in the world that she could conceive of were the men who drove snow cone trucks.  They play music.  They ring that bell.  They sell goodies.  They make children happy.  What more could a man possibly want?  And though Max heard his daughter’s request, he did not heed it.  Why not?  Because he knew better.  He knew it would be hard to support his family on a snow cone man’s salary.  Or to put it another way, he knew more about life than what she did.

   And guess what, my friends?  The same holds true of God.  He knows a whole lot more about life and what we really need than what we do.  And that’s where trust comes in.  That’s where remembering and reviewing God’s glorious track record comes in.  And that’s exactly what Jesus does for the 2 men in our text.  Notice in v. 27 it says: “And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.”  Isn’t that interesting?  Jesus’ cure for a broken heart is the story of God, a story which he told these men beginning with Moses and ending with himself.  Why did he do that?  Why did he go back 1500 years and relate the history of God’s people since that time?  I’m not really positive, but perhaps he did it because he wanted these 2 disciples to hear what we all need to hear when we’re disappointed.  And that is that God is in control.  That life’s mishaps and challenges are not a reason to bail out but a reason to simply sit tight.

   Many of you have probably heard of Corrie Ten Boom.  She’s a woman who had some absolutely horrible experiences during the Nazi holocaust.  And she once said, “When the train goes through a tunnel and the world gets dark, do you jump out?  Of course not.  You sit still and trust the engineer to get you through.”

   Those are great words of advice for what we need to do when our world gets dark.  We need to trust the Engineer.  We need to remember that just because our world is falling apart doesn’t mean that God’s world is.  We need to do what God tells us to do in Ps. 46:10 when he says, “Be still, and know that I am God.”   And the best way to do that is to read his story as found in the Bible.

   For when you do that, you will see the POWER of God as he parts the waters of the Red Sea and allows his people to pass through on dry ground and escape their enemies.

   You’ll see the PROVISION of God as he feeds them with manna from heaven and brings forth water from a rock.

   You’ll see the PLANS of God as he tells his people to march around the city of Jericho once a day for 6 days and then 7 times on the 7^th day, then to blow their trumpets, and watch the walls come tumbling down.

   You’ll see the PROMISES of God being fulfilled in a tiny infant born to a teenage Jewish peasant girl and placed in a lowly manger.

   You’ll see the PRIORITY of God as he sacrifices his own Son on a cross so that we might be able to have forgiveness, peace, and salvation.

   You’ll see the PASSION of God as he blows Satan out of the water on Easter morning and blasts to smithereens the gates of death through the resurrection of Christ.

   So my friends, are you dealing with disappointment and discouragement in your life right now?  Are you in need of a restored heart?  If so, don’t panic.  Don’t jump ship.  Don’t give up.  Rather open this holy Book and read the story of God.  Let him remind you over and over again that he’s still on the throne.  He’s still in control.  And it ain’t over until he says it’s over.  Amen.