NOTE:
This is a manuscript, and not a transcript of this message. The actual presentation of the message differed from the manuscript through the leading of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, it is possible, and even likely that there is material in this manuscript that was not included in the live presentation and that there was additional material in the live presentation that is not included in this manuscript.
ENGAGE
I want you to think this morning about an eye opening experience or journey that you’ve had in your life.
It might be something positive like the time that Mary and I first went snorkeling and had our eyes opened to the life that exists just under the surface of the ocean. For the first time we saw coral and fish and eels and other sea life that you just can’t see until you stick your head down into the water.
Or it might be something that was much more negative, like the first time I can remember being exposed to the ugly racism and bigotry directed at people merely because of their skin color. Having been blessed to grow up in a home where we never saw that kind of behavior and having watched my dad hire minorities of all kinds and then treat them just like all his other employees, when I first saw that is not how everyone treated people who are different than them, it was a shock.
Or it might just be a longer journey where your eyes still continue to be opened. For me that certainly describes my journey to becoming a pastor, something that never even crossed my mind until well after my college days. As I look back on that journey now, I can see how God just kept opening my eyes to what He wanted for me over many years.
TENSION
I often find that Christians think that finding God’s will for their lives is a complicated process and even seem to think that God is making it difficult for them to know how God wants them to live their lives. But as we’ll see this morning, that just isn’t true. God has provided the resources that are necessary for our eyes to be opened to who Jesus is and His purposes, plans and ways for our lives. But it’s up to us to apply those resources in a way that He can use them to open our eyes.
TRUTH
Today, we will continue with our sermon series that is titled “40 Days with Jesus”, in which we are taking a look at the various encounters Jesus had with His followers in the 40 days between His resurrection and His ascent to the Father. We began last week with His encounter with Mary Magdalene at the empty tomb. This week, we’re going to look at the next recorded encounter which occurred sometime in the afternoon on that same Sunday.
You’ll find our passage in the last chapter of the gospel of Luke – chapter 24. That is right before the beginning of the gospel of John. It’s a rather long passage, but we need to read the entire text in order to make sure we have the entire context for the principles we’ll be drawing form the passage.
[Read Luke 24:13-35]
Two disciples, a man named Cleopas, who is not mentioned anywhere else in the Bible, and his unnamed companion are on their way from Jerusalem to their home in Emmaus, about seven miles away. Undoubtedly, they had been in Jerusalem for Passover and while they were there, they had witnessed and heard about all the events surrounding the crucifixion of Jesus.
As they are walking along and discussing those events, Jesus appeared on the scene and began to walk with them. Other than the fact that He just appeared out of nowhere, that wasn’t really uncommon as people often engaged in conversations with strangers as they walked between villages.
But the two disciples did not recognize Jesus. Although many have speculated about why that was, the text implies that Jesus was the one who had blinded them to His identity. As the passage progresses, it’s pretty easy to figure out why Jesus did that. Had He revealed Himself at that point, those two disciples would not have heard another word that Jesus said. They would have gotten so wrapped up in the emotional experience of seeing His resurrected body that all they would have wanted to talk about is the details of how Jesus had risen from the grave and they would have still missed the why of the resurrection.
Jesus, as He often had done during His earthly ministry, asks a question, not because He didn’t already know the answer, but because He wanted to use that question to direct the conversation to what He wanted to say to these two men.
Cleopas apparently thinks that Jesus has probably just been visiting Jerusalem for Passover and he can’t believe that he hasn’t heard about this man named Jesus who had been crucified.
Jesus asks another question. And Cleopas’ answer in verses 19-24 reveals why it is necessary for Jesus to open their eyes. Notice what his answer reveals about who he thinks Jesus is. He calls Jesus a man and a prophet who was mighty in deed and word. He tells about how his own Jewish religious leaders had arranged for the crucifixion of Jesus. Most importantly, he reveals that they had hoped that Jesus was the one to redeem Israel. But now that He was dead, that no longer seemed possible.
And even though Cleopas was present when the women came back from the tomb to report that Jesus’ body was gone and had heard the women tell about how the angels said that Jesus was alive, these two men still did not understand that Jesus was alive and why that was significant.
In verse 25, Jesus diagnoses their problem:
“O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken!”
The Bible uses the word “fool” a bit differently than the way we use it in our culture today. While there are a number of different characteristics of one who is a fool described in the Bible, the main identifying trait of a fool is that he or she does not understand God. So in that sense, these two disciples certainly are fools. And Jesus also identifies why they are fools – it is because they did not believe all the prophets had spoken – the key word here being “all”.
It wasn’t that these men had never read or heard the Scriptures. It wasn’t that they never went to synagogue to hear the Scriptures taught. It’s not even that they didn’t believe the Scriptures. The problem is that their understanding of the Scriptures was incomplete. So they had no place in their theology for a Messiah who would suffer and die, even though that was clearly taught in the Scriptures.
That is a problem that still plagues our culture today. We have all kinds of erroneous theology that has been developed by those who take a piece of Scripture out of context and don’t consider the entire Bible. And if we’re not careful, we can easily find ourselves doing the same thing.
Before we see how Jesus remedies their problem, let’s pause here to identify the main idea from today’s passage:
Jesus opens my eyes when I understand Him
through the lens of all the Scriptures
Jesus proclaims that it was necessary for the Christ, the Greek equivalent of Messiah, to suffer and die before He entered into His glory. And then, as they walked along that road, He began with Moses, a reference to the first five books of the Old Testament and the proceeded through all the prophets to explain how all those Scriptures pointed to Him.
It's not hard to imagine what that conversation must have been like. The trip from Jerusalem to Emmaus would have taken a couple of hours by foot, so there was plenty of time for Jesus to explain the Scriptures to these two disciples.
I imagine that He began in Genesis where God took the life of an animal to make garments to cover the sin of Adam and Eve. And then He probably talked about God’s promise to Eve in Genesis 3:15 that one day her offspring would overcome the serpent who had deceived her.
I’m sure He talked about how Abraham’s sacrifice of his son Isaac was a picture of how the Heavenly Father would one day send His own Son to be sacrificed for the sins of mankind.
And then as He proceeded to the prophets and their portrayals of the Messiah. I have to think that He spent quite a bit of time on Isaiah’s prophecies of the suffering servant, lingering for a time on Isaiah 53.
The two disciples would later say that their hearts burned within them as Jesus took time to explain the Scriptures to them. They were so delighted in God’s Word that the trip must have gone by quickly even though they had to have been exhausted after the events of the last few days. In fact, they were so wrapped up in Jesus’ teaching that when they get to their house and invite Jesus to stay with them something very interesting occurs.
When Jesus entered the house, we read that He broke bread and blessed it and gave it to the disciples. That would be like if I invited you to come over to my house and I just sat back and watched you, as my guest, prepare the meal. It’s hard to know for sure why Jesus does that here, but give the context, I think it’s reasonable to assume that even though these two disciples were tired and hungry after a long day, they were so engrossed in Jesus’ teaching that they wanted to hear more and they just forgot about eating.
Have you ever gotten so wrapped up in God’s Word like that? Have you ever delighted in it so much that you missed a meal or forgot to take care of some task on your to-do list?
So Jesus, being compassionate, just pauses for a moment to meet their physical needs. I do not think, as some have claimed, that this is somehow a parallel to the Lord’s Supper and that is the reason that the disciples recognized Jesus when He broke bread and that there is therefore some kind of special revelation of Jesus that comes to us when we take the bread as we observe the Lord’s Supper. I think this was just a simple act of compassion. And now that Jesus has accomplished what He set out to do – to show how the Scriptures reveal a Messiah who suffered and died for the sins of mankind – He now reveals His identity to these two disciples.
And as soon as that happened, Jesus vanished. The two disciples then talked to each other about how their hearts had burned as Jesus had opened the Scriptures to them as they walked along the road. Again, I ask you, “When was the last time that your heart burned as you spent time in the Scriptures?”
And even though it was probably night by now and these disciples had to be exhausted, they were so energized by their encounter with Jesus that they turned around and walked 7 miles back to Jerusalem to tell the apostles what had just happened to them. And as they were relaying that information, we read in the very next verse that Jesus just appears among them.
Jesus opens my eyes when I understand Him
through the lens of all the Scriptures
APPLICATION
If that is true, and I believe that it is, then we probably ought to use our remaining time to see what we can learn from these two disciples and their encounter with Jesus about…
HOW TO SEE JESUS IN THE SCRIPTURES
1. Read the entire Bible
It is so easy to just pick and choose the parts of the Bible we like best or those parts that are easiest to understand and then ignore the rest. That is what the two disciples had done when it came to what the Bible taught about the Messiah. They, like most of their fellow Jews, liked the idea of a conquering Messiah who would free them from the tyranny of the Roman government, so they focused on the passages that would support that view of the Messiah and then they just ignored the other passages that pictured the suffering servant who would die to cover the sins of mankind.
This is the reason that we continually emphasize the importance of having a Bible reading plan that systematically covers the entire Bible. It really doesn’t matter whether you read through the Bible in a year or two years or four years, but the important thing is that you have a plan that takes you through every book of the Bible eventually.
That doesn’t mean that from time to time you can’t do what many of us are doing this year and just read through the New Testament for a year so we can go deeper there. But I know that for me personally next year, I’ll go back to a plan where I’ll be reading the Old Testament, too.
I would just say that for most people, trying to start in Genesis and read straight through to Revelation can be a challenge, so it’s probably best to pick a plan that alternates between the Old and New Testaments or which includes readings from both each day. But the most important thing is to have a plan.
2. Set aside my preconceived ideas about what the Bible teaches
Another way to put this would be: Don’t let what you think you know about the Bible keep you from understanding what it actually says.
Unfortunately, that is what these two disciples did. They let their own preconceived ideas about the Messiah blind them to the whole picture of the Messiah that God had presented in the Scriptures. But they were certainly not alone. The Jewish religious leaders had certainly perpetuated that thinking by their opposition to Jesus. And even the apostles fell prey to those ideas, and it wasn’t until they finally saw the resurrected Jesus that they understood how wrong those ideas had been.
That is still a tremendous danger in our culture today. It is so common for people to come to the Bible with their own preferred theology and then try and make the Scriptures fit with that particular view of God. That can happen on a large scale when people hold to theologies like Calvinism or Arminianism. If you’re not familiar with those terms, you should probably be thankful because you won’t be swayed by those theologies.
And it can happen on a narrower level. Probably the best example of that is how people view the end times and divide themselves into various camps like premillennial, post-millennial and amillennial, or pre-tribulation, post-tribulation or mid-tribulation rapture and then try to make the Scriptures fit whichever camp they are in.
And it can also occur on a more individual basis because there is a natural tendency on our part to view the Bible through the lens of our own sin, our own desires, and our own preferences. And as a result we transform God into who we want Him to be. And then we “cherry pick” a few verses here and there to support our opinions.
So I need to approach the Bible with “fresh eyes” and ask God to help me see the Scriptures from His perspective and not my own.
3. Regularly receive good Bible teaching
I have no reason to doubt that these two disciples regularly attended the synagogue where the Scriptures were taught. But the problem was that the teaching they received there just reinforced their own preconceived ideas. That made it even harder for them to understand the kind of Messiah that Jesus was going to be. And it wasn’t until Jesus Himself opened the Scriptures that their eyes were opened.
Today we live in a culture where there are more Bible study resources available than ever. On my smart phone I have more language tools and commentaries available than I had in an entire bookshelf when I first became a pastor. And I can download sermons from almost any preacher in the world and listen to them as I drive in the car or work out at the gym. And every one of you have access to all those same tools.
So, some of you may be asking, what’s the benefit of showing up here every Sunday to listen to me teach? After all, there are undoubtedly smarter, more educated pastors who are much better communicators than I am that you could just watch or listen to in the comfort of your home. And there is nothing to prevent you from using the exact same tools I use to just study the Bible on your own.
Let me share a couple reasons why I think it’s important for you to be here regularly:
1) In Ephesians 4, we read that God has provided the church with gifted men who are to equip all disciples to do the work of ministry. I need to be careful how I say this because I don’t want to come off as arrogant, but I am confident that God has gifted me with the ability to teach His Word specifically to the people here at Thornydale Family Church in a way that will equip all of us to do the work of ministry.
So while I am grateful to occasionally hear that other pastors have used some of my sermons as a resource in developing their own sermons, I believe that the messages that I preach each week are guided by God to be exactly what this local church body needs to hear from God each week. And I think the same thing is true for the messages preached by other pastors. Those messages are just what their churches need to hear. So while you can certainly benefit from listening to or watching the sermons of other pastors, that is not a substitute for the teaching that goes on here each week.
2) When I study the Bible on my own, it is so easy to just skip over the parts that I don’t like or that I feel aren’t relevant to me. But that is a lot harder to do when someone else is teaching. Sure, it’s possible to use selective hearing, but over time you will undoubtedly be exposed to some things from the Bible that might be painful or convicting, but that you need to hear. In fact, I would go so far as to say this: If you haven’t heard something from me so far this year that made you mad or challenged you or caused you some pain, then either I haven’t done my job adequately or you haven’t been listening.
4. Look for Jesus
Probably all of us have experienced driving down a certain familiar road almost every day without ever noticing some particular place along the way until we’re actually looking for it. To some degree, finding Jesus on the pages if Scripture is a lot like that. We can read the Bible regularly and still miss Jesus if we’re not looking for Him.
The words of God to the prophet Jeremiah are instructive here:
You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.
(Jeremiah 29:13 ESV)
Jesus is not hiding from us in the Bible. He desires for us to see Him there. But in order to do that, we must be looking for Him. I’ve found that the best way to do that is just to pray a short prayer before I read the Bible, asking God to reveal Himself and His Son, Jesus, and to show me what He wants me to take away from my reading.
Jesus opens my eyes when I understand Him
through the lens of all the Scriptures
ACTION
As you consider the four principles we’ve talked about this morning, I’m going to challenge you to focus on the one that is holding you back the most from allowing Jesus to open your eyes as you understand him through the lens of all the Scriptures. Would you just circle that particular principle on your sermon outline and then would you spend some time in prayer this week, asking Jesus to help you apply that principle as you read the Bible?
INSPIRATION
I want to close this morning with a warning and a word of encouragement.
First the warning:
You are responsible for understanding Jesus through the eyes of all the Scriptures. If you don’t do that, it is not the Scripture’s fault and it is not someone else’s fault. Jesus can be seen clearly in every book of the Bible if you will take the time to dig deep and seek Him there.
And now the word of encouragement:
Jesus wants you to see Him on every page of the Bible. He is not hiding from you. If you look for Him, you will find Him. And when you find Him, that will be an eye opening experience like none other you’ve ever had.
Discussion Questions for the Bible Roundtable
1. What are some reasons people find it difficult to read the entire Bible? What are some practical ways to overcome those barriers?
2. What are some areas where Christians tend to approach the Bible with their own preconceived ideas? How do we make sure those ideas don’t blind us to the truth?
3. We have more Bible resources available to us today than ever before, so why it is still necessary to regularly sit under good consistent Bible teaching?
4. What are some practical ways to look for Jesus as we read the Bible?
