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You should be able to find a Bible somewhere near you on the seats. You may need to share, but could you please turn to Luke 24.13-35 which is on p1061. As you will see, that section is headed "On the Road to Emmaus". The action here takes place just after the resurrection of Jesus, before the disciples have understood what has happened. Two of them are on their way to Emmaus. They are joined by someone they do not recognise. He walks with them and talks with them until the truth dawns on them that this mysterious but deeply impressive stranger is none other than Jesus alive again. My own title is "Jesus and His Disciples" and you will find that on the outline which is on a white sheet which also has my main headings and some space for any notes that you might like to make. You will see that my first heading is this: First, JESUS WALKS WITH HIS DISCIPLES That journey to Emmaus is another piece of the overwhelmingly strong evidence that Jesus is alive. Have you seen the latest TV ads that attempt to persuade us not to drive so fast? They show clips from home videos of a number of young people, laughing and full of life. Since those home videos were made, each one of them has been hit by a speeding car and killed. No doubt the parents have allowed the videos to be used in the hope that other young lives will be saved, though they will never see their own children again. They want to say to us: "Our children are no longer alive. You will never meet them. For the sake of other children, please change the way you drive. Don't break the speed limit." Remembering past incidents can be moving and powerful in its impact on our lives today. Think of this passage from Luke's Gospel about Jesus' appearance to those disciples on the Emmaus road as just a little bit like a clip from the home videos of God the Father. It is being shown to us to convey a message. And that message is intended to change our lives. But the message is not "This child of mine is dead and you will never know him." The message is "This Son of mine was dead. But look, he is alive again. If you follow him he will walk with you just as surely as he walked with Cleopas and his friend that day on the way to Emmaus." Verses 13-14:

Now that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem. They were talking with each other about everything that had happened.

They were not particularly special people. They had been disciples of Jesus during his earthly life but he was now dead as far as they knew. Apart from this incident we know nothing about them. We only know the name of one of them - Cleopas, as v18 tells us. Their minds and no doubt their emotions were full of all that had been happening in Jerusalem, which had culminated in the appalling crucifixion of their master Jesus. I'm sure his death did not have the impact of the death of Princess Diana, but it does seem to have been the talk of Jerusalem. And as they walked and talked, Cleopas and his friend were going over and over what had happened, trying to make some sense of it, and not succeeding. By now they knew that the tomb was empty. As they later say to the Stranger (v22-24):

In addition, some of our women amazed us. They went to the tomb early this morning but didn't find his body. They came and told us that they had seen a vision of angels, who said he was alive. Then some of our companions went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but him they did not see.

"Him they did not see". He wasn't there. What were they to think. The women were claiming that he was alive, but how could that be? They were confused. They did not know what to make of it. So they talked about it, without understanding. You can talk about Jesus and still miss the heart of the Christian faith. You can have discussions about the death and resurrection of Jesus late into the night, but that is not discipleship. It is a good thing to do, especially if such discussion is not uninformed speculation but is based on the factual accounts that make up the Bible. But being a disciple of Jesus - being a Christian - is not a matter of talking about Jesus. It is knowing Jesus. It is being with him. Verse 15:

As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them

Jesus himself. Not dead. Not history. Not merely a subject for discussion and souvenir editions to be stored away in the attic. Jesus himself, alive, came up and walked with them. This little clip of Gospel video is an image of what being a Christian is all about. We do not see him as those two did (mind you they did not recognise him at first). He is not with us physically now, though the day will come when we do see him face to face. But instead he walks with us by his Spirit. A Christian is one who walks in step with the Spirit of Jesus. "Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit" says the apostle Paul in Galatians 5.25. Jesus walks with his disciples. That is my first point. The second thing we need to take to heart is that Jesus listens to his disciples. That is my next heading: Secondly, JESUS LISTENS TO HIS DISCIPLES A father came in from work one day to find his small son busily drawing. "What picture are you drawing?" he asked. "God" said boy, as his father looked on, smiling. "You can't draw God" he said, "no one knows what he looks like." "They will soon" came the reply, "I've nearly finished." How do we know what God is like? It's no good making it up, imaginative as we may be. We have to look at the picture that God himself has shown us, and that is Jesus. What Jesus is like, God is like, because Jesus is the Son of God, with his Father's likeness. Look at how Jesus deals with these two disciples, and be confident that God is concerned with what is on your mind. The first thing Jesus does as he gets into stride alongside the disciples is to ask them questions to get them to open up to him. Verses 17-19:

He asked them, "What are you discussing together as you walk along?" They stood still, their faces downcast. One of them, named Cleopas, asked him, "Are you only a visitor to Jerusalem and do not know the things that have happened there in these days?" "What things?" he asked. "About Jesus of Nazareth," they replied. "He was a prophet, powerful in word and deed before God and all the people.

He already knows what's happening, of course, but he wants them to talk to him about what is going on in their lives, and what is preoccupying them. So he listens to their questions which are so ignorant because they do not know who it is they are talking to. He listens to their summary of who they thought he was and what they thought he had been doing during his earthly ministry, which they only half understood at best. They had no real idea of his own majesty, or of the scope of his saving work. He listens to their hopes which had been disappointed because they had been misplaced. Verse 21: "We had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel." Well so he was, but not in the way they imagined. The plans of Jesus were far bigger than they knew. And he listened to their confused amazement as they told him about the extraordinary story the women were telling of an empty tomb and angels saying that Jesus was alive. Ignorant questioning; misunderstanding; disappointed and misplaced hopes; confusion: it all sounds just like the kind of stuff we come out with most of the time. And yet Jesus listens. That is the wonder of the gift of prayer that he has given to his disciples. It is not just that we can talk to him. It is that he listens to us, and he understands us. That is uncomfortable, but it is also wonderful. He sees right through our foolishness. But how good it is that he does not ignore us, or scorn us, or hang up on us. One Sunday a vicar was doing a children's talk, using a telephone to illustrate the idea of prayer. "You talk to people on the telephone but you don't see them on the other end of the line, do you?", he began. The children shook their heads. "Well, talking to God is like talking on the telephone. He's on the other end, but you can't see him. He's listening though." Just then a little boy piped up and asked, "What's his number?" We don't need a telephone number to get through to God. We just need to know Jesus. He walks beside us by his Spirit. We can talk to him at any time. He wants us to keep talking. He always listens. He always understands. Hebrews 4.15-16 puts it like this:

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathise with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are - yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

Jesus listens to his disciples. But he does not leave us in our ignorance and confusion. He teaches us, too, and that is my next heading: Thirdly, JESUS TEACHES HIS DISCIPLES Let me say five things about the way Jesus teaches us. First, he begins where we are. Because he knows us and listens to us, he knows what we need to learn and where he must start. Which generally means he needs to start from a long way back. Verse 25: "How foolish you are and slow of heart to believe all that prophets have spoken!" Hard words for them to hear. As the risen Jesus says elsewhere: "Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline" (Rev 3.19). Foolish and faithless sums up where they were, and I don't think we dare to imagine that we start anywhere different. But he does not say "I cannot be bothered with you. I have taught you and your friends for three solid years and still you know nothing. You will never learn. Go away." Instead, he begins to teach them. Secondly, he teaches them about himself. Verses 26-27:

[Jesus said] "Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?" And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.

The most crucial lessons that we have to learn in the whole of our lives are not the lessons we learn doing University courses, or at College, or in evening classes. They are lessons about who Jesus is, what his work is, and how we are to respond to him. The rest pales into insignificance in comparison. Thirdly, Jesus teaches from the Bible. That seems an amazing thing. Even the Son of God himself, when he wants people to understand the truth, opens up a Bible (as it were) and starts to explain it: "And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself." It's not really so amazing though. The Bible, after all, is the Word of God, so it is not surprising that God in the person of his Son would want us to get to grips with it and begin to understand it. And as Jesus himself makes so clear, all of the Scriptures point to him. Fourthly, Jesus teaches by the Spirit. We cannot understand the Bible or see who Jesus is without God's help. Left to ourselves we are spiritually blind, just as those disciples were blind to who the Stranger was who was walking with them. Even when the truth is staring us in the face, we do not see it. But Jesus, by the Spirit, opens our eyes to see him and to understand the truth. At first (v16) "they were kept from recognising him." But later, when the Spirit decided that the time was right, (v31) "their eyes were opened and they recognised him." Jesus said about the Holy Spirit: "He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you." Jesus teaches by the Holy Spirit. Fifthly, Jesus teaches us through the mind to the heart. Do you envy those two disciples their private Old Testament seminar with the risen Jesus? Do you say to yourself "If only I could have been there along with them, how exciting that would have been. My faith would be so much stronger." It was indeed an amazing experience for them, and we get a powerful insight into what they felt as we overhear them talking to one another afterwards. Verse32:

They asked each other, "Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?" They got up and returned at once to Jerusalem.

The travelling day was well and truly over by then, but now they knew that Jesus was alive, and they remembered how the Word of God had seemed to ignite a fire within them as Jesus taught them. Nothing was ever the same again. Do you envy that experience? You really do not need to. To be sure, we cannot yet see Jesus physically in his resurrection body. But if we are his disciples, the day will come when we do. And as we have seen, Jesus walks with us too. He teaches us too, from the Bible by the Spirit, and that teaching ignites fires in our hearts too. That was the experience of the great evangelist of the eighteenth century, John Wesley. He was in London, on May 24 1738. He wrote in his journal:

"In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where [some]one was reading Luther's preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter after nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death."

The power of that encounter stayed with him for the rest of his life. I was thirteen when the Holy Spirit first ignited a fire in my heart as I began to learn from the Bible. This is much more than an emotional experience though it can be that. This is a fire that never goes out as the Holy Spirit makes us aware that the Bible is Jesus himself speaking to us, teaching about himself. If that fire is not yet burning within you, then ask Jesus to give you his Holy Spirit and teach you about himself as you get to grips with the Bible. Find someone, or a small group of people, with whom you can learn together, and get stuck in to studying the Bible. If you stay with it, and if you are prepared to believe and obey the truth that you find, then your life will be transformed just as the lives of Cleopas and his friend were transformed. To be a disciple of Jesus is to have an open Bible and a burning heart as he teaches you about himself. Then my final heading is simply this: Finally, JESUS STAYS WITH HIS DISCIPLES One Christian father recalled how he gave his four year old daughter money both for sweets and for the collection plate at church. Later on he saw her with some sweets, and asked if she had given some money to God when she had been at church. "No", she replied, "He wasn't there." The fact that we do not see Jesus should not fool us. He is there. Before they realised the Stranger was Jesus, those disciples urged him: "Stay with us, for it is nearly evening; the day is almost over" (v29). And he did. And they shared a meal and as the Stranger broke the bread and gave thanks, they realised just who the Stranger was. We have an advantage over them. Then, Jesus, risen but not yet ascended to heaven, stayed for a while and then left. The disciple today has a promise from Jesus that he will not leave ever: "surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age" he says. That's Matthew 28.20. And in Revelation 3.20 he makes another promise to those who are prepared to come to him as Saviour and as Lord: "Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me." Michael Buerk's TV programme "999" has a certain horrible fascination. If you haven't seen it, it's full of people trapped in scenarios of such danger that you wouldn't even dream about them in your worst nightmare. I had no idea there were so many ways people could escape death by the skin of their teeth. But if you want sound advice to keep in mind in case you find yourself surrounded by grizzly bears whilst caught in a forest fire with a severe attack of asthma and with a child choking on a sweet in your arms, this is the programme to watch. For those who have eyes to see, it is also full of lessons in what being a Christian is all about. Don't know if Michael Buerk realises that. But that above all is why I find it compelling and moving. The other day they had the story of a young African man called Zulu. As a result of his own folly, Zulu managed to find himself literally up the creek without a paddle. But the creek was the mighty torrent of the Zambezi at the foot of the Victoria Falls. And not only was he without both his kayak and his paddle, he was also half way up a dangerous cliff with one slender tree for support. He had got trapped in the gorge, tried to climb out, and fallen back as the loose rock gave way under him. His leg was severely broken, and after a long night he was getting increasingly dehydrated in the intense daytime heat and sun. He saw a search party looking for him and screamed and screamed for them to come to him. Eventually they spotted him. One of them had the expertise to climb up to him. He put Zulu in a harness, lifted him onto his back, and abseiled down the cliff carrying him on his back. All Zulu had to do was to hold himself steady and avoid blacking out. An unconscious burden would have been even harder for his rescuer. His rescuer risked his own life, but modestly denied any heroism. He was just glad to have been in the right place at the right time. Jesus is our rescuer. When it comes to our journey to eternal life, it is true to say that he does not merely walk alongside, keeping us company. He carries us. He puts us across his strong back and takes us to eternal safety. All he asks is that we follow his instructions and hang on to him. And he will stay with us. However dark the night around us may get, he will always be there with his disciples - walking, listening, teaching until, at the very end of the age, we arrive safely home with him by our side.