The Welcome. Welcome to Truth for Life where we are beginning a series titled When the Church was

young. In this study we'll be exploring some of the challenges faced by the early church

and how many of those same challenges still confront us today.

Alistair Begg begins today with the reaction of the disciples after Jesus crucifixion.

What was it that changed their despair into hope and joy?

Alistair begins in Luke chapter 24.

I've had a couple of lines from a song going through my mind all week. The lines are,

it's all over now. Nothing left to say, just my dreams, and the fading sound of the orchestra as the story dies away.

Luke is very careful to tell us that it was on the very same day that the events of the

resurrection had been discovered that these two individuals, one of them was called

Clopas, which makes me think it was probably a husband and wife team, because in

John Chapter 19, Clopas is around the cross along with his wife Mary.

And the two of them were now exiting Jerusalem going back to Emmaus. Perhaps that's

where they lived. It was a journey of some seven miles. And just as we would expect the two of them were walking down the road and

their conversation was full of as Luke tells us in verse 18 all these things that had happened in Jerusalem.

This couple, along with others, had high hopes of Jesus of Nazareth.

Everything had been pointing in the direction of the fact that he was none other than the

Messiah.

That's what they say when they encounter him

unwittingly. In verse 19 they tell Jesus not knowing it's Jesus about Jesus. This Jesus, they tell him, was a prophet powerful in word and deed before God

and all the people. And the expectation that they shared as First Century Jews was

that when the Messiah came he would actually bring to bear upon life a totally

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