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. And he said to them, “What is this conversation that you are holding with each other as you walk?” And they stood still, looking sad. Then one of them, named Cleopas, answered him, “Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?” And he said to them, “What things?” And they said to him, “Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, a man who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and rulers delivered him up to be condemned to death, and crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things happened. Moreover, some women of our company amazed us. They were at the tomb early in the morning, and when they did not find his body, they came back saying that they had even seen a vision of angels, who said that he was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but him they did not see.” And he said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.

So they drew near to the village to which they were going. He acted as if he were going farther, but they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, for it is toward evening and the day is now far spent.” So he went in to stay with them. When he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. And he vanished from their sight. They said to each other, “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?” And they rose that same hour and returned to Jerusalem. And they found the eleven and those who were with them gathered together, saying, “The Lord has risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon!” Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he was known to them in the breaking of the bread.—Luke 24:13–35

Introduction

This is the third week of our four-week series entitled “Fill These Cities.” What is this series all about, anyway? This is a series that attempts to unpack our mission statement, “to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples through Jesus Christ.” In short, it’s about spreading. How are we going to unpack that? 

The Fill These Cities series looks in two different directions. We are looking downstream at our destination, the goal of where we want to be going in the future. We are also looking upstream for the directions as to how we can reach our destination. In other words, we should agree on where we are going and what we are doing to get there.

Yet another way to say it would be to talk about the difference between vision and venture. Destination dictates vision (where do we want to go?); directions give us a sense of venture (what will it take to get there?).

First, let’s look downstream at our destination. What is the goal of where we want to go? Fill These Cities. Fill them with what? We want to fill these cities with the glory of Christ.

Many names are being lifted up in our cities—we want his name to be lifted up above all the others. Why? This is where history is going. This is God’s invincible purpose and plan. Did you catch that? Next week we will focus on that fact: that this is God’s plan; it’s his destination, not ours. It is his idea, his plan, and his purpose. We are joining it. It cannot fail. The earth will be filled with his glory. God’s chief end is to glorify himself by enjoying his own Trinitarian glory. There is infinite enjoyment of the persons within the Trinity himself. God is supremely pleased to share this overflowing enjoyment with us. That is why the display of Christ’s glory is such good news for us. God’s glory and our joy find perfect fulfillment together. You can see it in Acts 8 when Christ was seen and savored and much joy resulted in that city. That is what we want. We want the Twin Cities to have this joy. We want this joy for all the cities. The joy above every joy is found only in the name above every name.

We started downstream and have been working our way upstream towards application. We started with spreading, then worked our way backwards to speaking. We said that there is no spreading without speaking. Then the second sermon took us back further upstream to the Spirit’s work. Speaking and spreading are both works of the Spirit. These cities won’t be filled unless we are filled with the Spirit.

Today, in this third sermon, we go even further back to seeing and savoring. Seeing and savoring have to come before speaking and spreading. Seeing and savoring are both works of the Spirit. Seeing, savoring, and speaking Christ by the Spirit is the only way to fill these cities.

I want to briefly introduce you to a few categories in Luke 24 where the disciples are on the road to Emmaus: slow of heart, burning hearts, burning feet, and burning tongues. After I understood what these categories meant, I realized that they paint me red; it was like typecasting. It is not hard to see ourselves in this story with this starting place.

To understand what those categories mean, let’s look at the progression of the story in our text for today. The disciples did not understand that they were supposed to stay in Jerusalem. They are leaving, but Jesus seeks them out. They do not recognize him (which is such a pregnant statement). Jesus later says that the problem is not with their physical eyes but with their hearts. Jesus calls them “slow of heart.”

Slow of Heart

And he said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?”—Luke 24:25–26

Slow of heart is the disciples’ and our starting place. The gravitational force of our fall into sin weighs on us. We are often foolish and slow to believe all that the Bible says about Jesus. We are sluggish, slow of heart, and not thinking about speaking or spreading his glory at all.

What do we need? We need what Jesus does for these two disciples. We need to see Jesus in all the Scriptures. In verse 27, Luke writes, “And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.” Jesus gives a survey of the Old Testament. Who wouldn’t sign up for that class? He basically says to the disciples, “Here is what all the scriptures say about me.”

Look at the transformation that takes place after that point. Seeing Jesus from the Scriptures moves them from the state of being slow of heart to having burning hearts (Luke 24:31–32).

Burning Hearts, Feet, and Tongues

And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. And he vanished from their sight. They said to each other, “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?”—Luke 24:31–32

The burning heart is a heart that sees and savors Jesus in the Scriptures. Burning hearts create burning feet and burning tongues.

And they rose that same hour and returned to Jerusalem. And they found the eleven and those who were with them gathered together, saying, “The Lord has risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon!” Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he was known to them in the breaking of the bread.—Luke 24:33–35

I love the fact that seeing and savoring is what God uses to stoke the fire for other believers as well. Don’t think that only unbelievers need help seeing the glory of Christ. We all need the flicker in our hearts to be fanned into a flame of Christ’s blazing beauty. We will come back to that point when we close with communion. 

Application

What will it take to fill these cities? Nothing short of a culture of outreach. What is a culture of outreach? A culture of outreach is when the whole church speaks the name of Jesus. You speak the name of Jesus because as a Christian you bear his name; his name is your name. Speak it at home, at work, in the neighborhood, wherever you go. In the same way, our gatherings at church, the songs, the sermons, the prayers, and the ordinances all speak the name of Jesus. Don’t buy the lie that says, “Preach the gospel and if necessary use words.” Eric Geiger says that the idea of preaching the gospel “and if necessary use words” is like saying, “Feed the poor and if necessary use food.”

Let me make a quick side note. Did anyone catch God’s providence at work here at Bethlehem? It just so happens that Mack Stiles is our global outreach speaker in a few weeks. He wrote what I think is the best book on a culture of outreach and evangelism. There will be a dinner and Q&A on October 16 where he is going to be speaking. Guess what he is talking about? Creating a culture of evangelism. I pray that we pack that event out. It is the perfect follow-up to these verses and this sermon.

Let me address the biggest obstacle to the church speaking the name of Jesus: slow hearts. When the whole church has slow hearts, there is little speaking and little spreading. The most obvious objection as we look at our slow, sluggish hearts might go something like this, “Jesus showing up and personally teaching me the Bible, like he did with the disciples on the road, is the solution for being slow of heart. But that does not happen today so what am I supposed to do? I have no hope for my sluggish heart.”

I want to address this objection used a “fill chart,” like a flow chart but regarding the filling that the Spirit performs in our hearts. I will pinpoint some practical steps we can take as we are filled with the Spirit.

An Outreach Fill Chart for the Church

Let me describe this “fill chart.” We all begin slow of heart, but when the Spirit fills us, our eyes are opened to see and savor Jesus. Our hearts become burning hearts as we see Jesus’ glory and we cannot help but have burning feet that go and burning tongues that speak. As we are filled, are going, and are speaking, the name of Jesus spreads. See how name of the chart is fitting? As we are filled by the Spirit, there is movement along the chart; slow hearts change, we see, savor and burn, feet go, tongues speak, and finally the name of Jesus spreads.

We want a culture of evangelism here at Bethlehem. It is not enough to have outreach programs in which people ask, “What is the church doing to reach ______?” Evangelism is not the job of the “paid professionals” of the church. We pastors and staff exist to equip you to do the work of ministry. How can I speak of Jesus when I find myself Monday morning with a slow, sluggish heart that doesn’t want to speak or spread anything?

The solution is the same today as it was when those two disciples walked on the road to Emmaus. We need to see Jesus. We don’t see him by staring up at the sky or going for a walk in which you just wait for him to appear beside you. Even the disciples did not recognize or truly see Jesus until he explained how all the scriptures were about him. That is because he is found and seen in all the Scriptures. We go to the written word (the Bible) to see the incarnate Word made flesh, Jesus (John 1:14). We pour out our pleas in prayer to see him, but without the Spirit, we won’t recognize Jesus; we won’t be able to see him with the eyes of the heart.

We pray to the Father that the Spirit would give us strength in our hearts to see the glories of Christ, the result of which would be filling, being filled with God’s fullness. Paul provides us with a prayer in this Trinitarian style in Ephesians.

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.—Ephesians 3:14–19

Paul’s prayer in Ephesians 1 is similar in talking about the eyes of the heart needing to be opened. Here is the picture: we pray to the Father, the Spirit opens the eyes of the heart, and we get to behold Christ in the word of God. The Father commands, the Spirit rolls up the shades and the light of Christ’s glory comes streaming in to fill up the heart. The light that fills the heart soon warms the heart, creating heat so that we soon have burning hearts. 

Showing us Christ is the special job description of the Holy Spirit. Jesus described this well when he said, “He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you” in John 16:14.

So we want to seek Christ by seeking the Spirit. This could be called “seeking the Spirit indirectly.” The Spirit does not reveal himself in Acts apart from Christ. That is why he has sometimes been called “the shy member of the Trinity.” He does not reveal himself, and he does not exalt himself; he reveals and exalts Christ. I love how John Piper says this same point. 

In seeking to be filled and empowered by the Spirit we must pursue him indirectly—we must look to the wonder of Christ. If we look away from Jesus and seek the Spirit and his power directly, we will end up in the mire of our own subjective emotions. The Spirit does not reveal himself. The Spirit reveals Christ. The fullness of the Spirit is the fullness that he gives as we gaze on Christ. The power of the Spirit is the power we feel in the presence of Christ. The joy of the Spirit is the joy we feel from the promises of Christ. Many of us know what it is to crouch on the floor and cry out to the Holy Spirit for joy and power, and experience nothing; but the next day devote ourselves to earnest meditation on the glory of Jesus Christ and be filled with the Spirit.—John Piper, Christ Conceived by the Holy Spirit

Therefore, being filled with the Spirit means being filled with the light and heat of Christ’s glory so that it becomes like a fire shut up in our bones that cannot be contained. The word about Christ becomes like a fire within that must be spoken and shared.

            If I say, “I will not mention him,
or speak any more in his name,”
            there is in my heart as it were a burning fire
shut up in my bones,
            and I am weary with holding it in,
and I cannot.—Jeremiah 20:9

Being filled with the Spirit is being filled with fire for Jesus. Burning hearts create burning feet and burning tongues, which go and tell others about Jesus. The Spirit lights those words on fire so that the savor of our Savior spreads. It is shared between me and a newfound brother or sister in Christ. This is treasuring Christ together—when the savor of the Savior is shared. Here is my rhyme to help me remember this: 

Stare in prayer
‘til stirred to share
so his savor spreads
and becomes shared. 

The result is treasuring Christ together. What would happen if every member of Bethlehem shared the good news and led someone to Christ? You do the math. Pray that God would replace slow hearts for the burning hearts, feet, and tongues that it will take to have a culture of outreach as a whole church.

Culture of Outreach: Prizing the Prompts of the Spirit

I don’t want you to think of the Spirit’s work as merely part of a process. Sometimes the Spirit wonderfully gives powerful prompts for the needs of the moment. Martyn Lloyd-Jones said that the quickest way to quench the Spirit is to fail to obey an impulse to pray. Impulses to pray come from the Spirit, not Satan. Obey them. This is very personal to me, so let me tell you a story from my life.

Once I was driving home from working at UPS. I worked the night shift during my doctoral days and didn’t get enough sleep. I was driving home at about 4:30 and falling asleep at the wheel. I tried everything to stay awake. I turned up the radio and tried to sing along. I even slapped myself. The next thing I knew I woke up in my driveway. I was more than a little shaken. I didn’t know how I got there. I walked inside the house now wide awake, and I noticed the strangest thing: my wife was wide awake too. She would normally be asleep, but instead, she was sitting up in bed waiting for me. She said, “Hi, honey, how was your drive?” I said, “It’s funny you should ask. I really struggled to stay awake on the drive home. I don’t know how I got here.” She said, “yeah I figured . . .” “Ok," I said, "please continue!” “Well,” she said, “I woke up at about 4:30 very suddenly and felt this intense prompting to pray. I figured you must be struggling on the road since that is around the time you normally come home. So I prayed for you.” I think I am still alive because my wife did not fail to obey the Spirit’s prompting to pray.

The same thing is true when it comes to sharing Jesus. I have read stories of people that were not wanting to share Christ when they felt prompted to share with someone walking by. One story I vividly remember was a time when someone didn’t even want to share but asked the guy anyway, saying, “Hey, you don’t want to hear about Jesus, do you?” The person responded, “Oh, I have been hoping someone would tell me about Jesus!” He said he started walking in the Spirit really quick at that point.

Last week we heard about how C.H. Spurgeon was so surprised by the way God chose to save people through his speaking. He attributed it to the Spirit’s power and to the prayers of his people. When asked about the secret of his success in ministry he replied, “My people pray for me.” Are you praying for a mighty rushing wind of the Spirit to blow through Bethlehem? Oh that spreading would break out from our seeing, savoring, and speaking. But we must pray because we need the Spirit. Let us beware of quenching him. Let us obey every Spirit-empowered prompt of prayer or prompt to share.

A Culture of Outreach: Church Planting as a Movement

When you think about spreading, do you think more about Bethlehem or the whole scope of the kingdom? It would be short-sighted if all that spreading meant was increasing our weekend attendance. A culture of outreach requires that we think in church planting terms.

Think about the statistics for a moment. All denominational studies show that 80–90% of the growth of an established church is transfer growth, the shifting of people from one church to another. A church plant, on the other hand, gets 60–80% of its growth from unchurched populations. Church plants are better at reaching the unchurched. Period. This is not even a controversial statement. 

I want to share with you my $100 bill moment. I should first explain what I mean by that phrase.

My daughters were once out on a walk with a couple of awesome babysitters. On this walk, one of my daughters found a $100 bill. They tried to ask around and ask the office if anyone had lost it. Eventually the park office told her to keep it. She decided to give it to our helping hands fund. Talk about blessing a dad’s heart!

Let me describe what I think is a $100 bill moment here at Bethlehem. I was thinking one day about different church planting movements that have a network, like Acts 29 and Sovereign Grace. Then it suddenly dawned on me: We are a church planting movement with a network name. A network of churches represents a movement held together by key convictions that define the network. Those movements were birthed by a mother church. Not many people realize that Bethlehem birthed a network, the TCT Network.

Our network is called TCT. TCT stands for “Treasuring Christ Together.” What key conviction binds us together? Christian hedonism is the key conviction that serves as the rallying cry of these churches. We exist as a network to Treasure Christ. Why is the word “together” part of the network name? We believe that we can treasure him better when we treasure him together. He is too great of a feast to satisfy only a few. Many need to come to the feast and be filled. This treasure is too great to hoard; the treasure must captivate many with its unparalleled beauty and value.

The TCT network currently has fourteen churches. The exciting thing about this movement is that Bethlehem theology sets it ablaze. Each church has to ascribe to the Elder Affirmation of Faith, a document created by pastors and staff of Bethlehem. Each church in the network joyfully ascribes to Bethlehem theology and aggressively pursues church planting. The work is too big for Bethlehem. We can’t reach everyone. Church plants are proven to reach more people because they can reach different types of people in different places.

Just a few weeks ago, Kempton Turner preached on how he is moving forward with the planting of a church in East St. Louis. The best thing that we can do for East St. Louis is send Kempton to them to plant A City Of Joy church. We want them to see, savor, speak, and spread the name of Jesus by being filled by the Spirit.

But then I had another $100 bill moment. I realized that unlike many other church planting networks, Bethlehem has birthed a network that is connected to a college and seminary. I am not sure why we have never intentionally made the most of that connection. It feels like connecting a power cord and an extension cord together to get the power to spread further.

Think about it. A prerequisite for church planting is leadership development. Where can we find leaders that have this Bethlehem theology as part of their DNA? Look no further than our seminary. We have now started a church-planting track within the seminary and hope to be more helpful and strategic in stewarding these students as gifts of grace. Rather than saying at graduation, “Hope you can find a church,” we will have church planting residents on each campus and try to target them for specific locations. Some will go across the nation, but some like Hope Community Church, end up across the street. And they have reached more people for Christ than we could on our own. This year, we are sending Kempton to plant in East St. Louis, and we have another church plant on the horizon that I can’t wait to tell you about.

Bethlehem, we are poised to become a church that more strategically and aggressively plants other churches rather than trying to keep all of our growth and all of our gifts to ourselves. I believe that our three campuses are going to become launching pads for church planting throughout the Twin Cities, our state, our nation, and even to the ends of the earth. This all fits into the vision and title for this series, “Fill These Cities.”

This vision of spreading is much bigger than our church, but it is not less. Specifically, it is not less than building a building for our South Campus. We want to have three places from which to plant churches, not just one or two.

Here is another factor. John Piper’s ministry over the years has attracted so many gifted young men who have been trained. Bethlehem Baptist Church is like a dandelion that the Spirit can blow on and scores of gifted preachers can be made. Then those preachers can plant churches in which 60–80% of growth will be conversion growth.

Our goal is not to see how deep we can stack our bullpen. We need to see how broadly we can send these gifted men out in a manner worthy of God for the sake of the name. That is what happened at the church at Antioch. They became a church-planting church.

We need to be kingdom-minded at this point. Will the painful sacrifice of a small number of Bethlehem leaders and Bethlehem members keep us from the greater joy of greater kingdom gains? Tim Keller says it this way:

Are we going to rejoice in the 80%—the new people that the kingdom has gained through this new church, or are we going to bemoan and resent the three families we lost to it?” In other words, our attitude to new church development is a test of whether our mindset is geared to our own institutional turf, or to the overall health and prosperity of the kingdom of God in the city. Any church that is more upset by their own small losses rather than the kingdoms large gains is betraying its narrow interests.—Tim Keller, Why Plant Churches, p. 5.

No Culture of Outreach Makes a Movement into a Monument

Here is another reason why a culture of outreach is so essential. A church that lacks a culture of outreach moves from being a movement to being a monument. This is a disturbing trend in church history that we must guard against. Sometimes a local church has thrived under a specific pastor’s leadership. He attracts a following, and the Lord brings blessing. If that church is not careful, the trajectory is to move from a man to a movement to a machine to a monument.

Churches become monuments for different reasons. Some become monuments because of success at a specific time. The church becomes a monument almost like a time warp that makes the church feel like a museum for the past. I have seen churches in the South that feel like they are calibrated to reach the 1950’s. If the 1950’s ever come around again, there will be a revival in those churches.

Bethlehem’s glory days of growth were the late 1990s through about 2008. We are not trying to bring back the 1990s. We want the fullness of the Spirit’s power to blow now like it blew then. We need hearts that are alive with the fire of the unchanging gospel so that we speak its truth in a way that addresses the needs of our current culture.

A good example is what is happening next Saturday night an event we are having here, Called Out Of Darkness. While much of Minnesota and our country celebrates National Coming Out Day, we will have counter-cultural testimonies about how Jesus can call people out of homosexuality. Our culture says that change can’t happen, that freedom is doing whatever you feel. But the Bible says change and true freedom does happen, in Christ, and there will be brave, bold testimonies to say that 1 Corinthians 6:9–11 is still true.

Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.—1 Corinthians 6:9–11

The danger for us all is to look with earthly eyes rather than the eyes of faith.

For churches, the specific danger is that we will take our eyes off the gospel and turn our eyes upon numbers, becoming a monument rather than a movement. A movement is in danger of slowly sliding towards being a monument when the mission subtly shifts to building something big. We build the big thing in the name of Jesus, but the name of the thing slowly becomes bigger than the name of Jesus. Usually this involves the use of propaganda to build a big name so either a man’s name or a church’s name starts showing up more than the name of Jesus.

Sometimes other people don’t help the matter either. How many times have people called this place John Piper’s church? This is the Lord Jesus’ church. John Piper and the rest of us belong only to him, our faithful Savior. That spurs my desire for Bethlehem to be more known for its people than its pastor.

Church planting helps us celebrate the echo effect of many voices that are all trumpeting the same truth of Christ’s glory. A monument highlights only one man’s voice. Rather than celebrating the truth with many voices, one man becomes a celebrity and they rely on his voice.

Our mission is to make a name for Jesus, not Bethlehem. We want to fill these cities with the name of Jesus. We want to spread his fame. Building a bigger Bethlehem is not the mission. When the size of Bethlehem becomes the end goal of the mission, then the mission has come to an end.

Conclusion

Communion

Communion reminds us of two things: the reality of the family of God and the reason we are part of it. First, we are one family and one body together. We are all under one head. There is no one here who is elevated over another. If you think that you are better than someone else here, you have forgotten how you came to be part of this family; you didn’t earn your way in. We need reminders of Christ’s righteousness or we will start to tilt toward trying to be righteous by ourselves.

The Christian lives wholly by the truth of God’s Word in Jesus Christ. If somebody asks him, Where is your salvation, your righteousness? He can never point to himself. He points to the Word of God in Jesus Christ, which assures him salvation and righteousness.—Dietrich Boenhoffer, Life Together, pp. 17–19.

How confusing would it be if someone asked for directions, and we all pointed different ways? Communion is essential for a culture of outreach because this meal points in one direction. Where is our salvation? It is found only in Jesus. We trust and hope in his work alone, not ours at all. We don’t point at ourselves as above any here; we don’t point at others as below any here; we together point at the cross, his broken body and shed blood. Together, let us stoke the fire of confidence in Christ as we together proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

Application Guide for “Fill These Cities – the Church”

Text: Luke 24:13–35

Main Point: Seeing and savoring have to come before speaking and spreading. Seeing, savoring, and speaking Christ by the Spirit is the only way to fill these cities. 

Outline:

Slow of Heart (v. 25–26)
And he said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?”

Burning Hearts (vv. 31–32)
And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. And he vanished from their sight. They said to each other, “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?”

Burning Feet and Burning Tongues (vv. 33–35)
And they rose that same hour and returned to Jerusalem. And they found the eleven and those who were with them gathered together, saying, “The Lord has risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon!” Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he was known to them in the breaking of the bread. 

Application Questions:

1. What is a culture of outreach?
2. What hope do we have when our hearts are sluggish and slow? How do we get burning feet and burning tongues today?
3. How do we avoid quenching the Spirit?
4. Why is it so important for Bethlehem’s culture of outreach to be a church devoted to church planting? What is the difference between a movement and a monument?