The Eye-Opening Walk

Text: “Then their eyes were opened and they knew Him; and He vanished from their sight” (Luke 24:29).

I wonder if we had lived in the days when Jesus was born and walked upon the face of the earth if we would have had any difficulty accepting the things Jesus taught and did. Would we have given much thought to a baby born in a stable? Would we have even known anything about his birth?

Would we have believed that a woman could become pregnant without ever having been with a man? Whoever heard of conception by the Holy Spirit? Up until that time, the question had never come up.

We do not understand why many things in the world happen. We read the Scriptures and accept them by faith. We do not try to prove God’s Word using our scientific knowledge. We accept and believe God’s Word as the truth.

We believe God spoke to many men throughout the years and inspired them to record for future generations His words that we read today. We would not know anything about how life started if Moses had not recorded the words of creation in the book of Genesis. God revealed to Moses the story of creation, the story of Adam and Eve, the story of Noah, the story of Abraham, the story of Isaac, and the story of Joseph.

There are some people today who do not believe these stories. They say that creation occurred over many years and not in seven days as we know the 24-hour day. Some say that there is no way in the world that Noah could build a boat 450 feet long, 75 feet wide, and 45 feet high. Four hundred fifty feet is the length of one and one-half football fields.

Noah and his family found grace in the eyes of the Lord and together they were obedient and built the boat. They not only built the boat or the ark, but they built it to the specifications God requested.

Many people of that day probably thought Noah was some kind of a nut, but that didn’t make any difference to Noah. Other people were not being obedient to God. Life was wild. People were doing things not acceptable to God. “Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence” (Genesis 6:11).

Other people must have been warned about what was on God’s mind, but chose not to believe. Judgment was about to come upon these people and only eight people would be saved; Noah, his wife, and Shem, Ham, Japheth and their wives. Judgment did come; “…on the seventeenth day of the second month – on that day all the springs of the great deeps burst forth, and the flood gates of the heavens were opened. And rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights” (Genesis 7:11-12).

In Noah’s day it was difficult for people to believe that God is God of his word. Today, many people do not consider God’s Word or believe that what His Word says will happen, sooner or later.

Many people do not believe that sin is real and that there is a penalty for sin. Some people do not believe the story of Adam and Eve and how sin entered the world through disobedience. They say they live a good life and do not do anything bad, but Scripture says, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).

I have heard people say that there is no heaven and there is no hell because God is good and we have nothing to worry about. If we were no good, God would not have created us. The fact is: at creation, everything was good, but then disobedience entered the picture. Once man disobeyed God, man became separated from God. In other words there was a void between man and God. Man was now sinful, but God was not.

Every person born after Adam and Eve is born with a sinful nature. God did not want this to happen, but truth of the matter is it did happen. God was not happy with man, but by the same token, God did not totally give up on man.

God had a plan and that plan was to give man another chance. God’s plan was the plan of Redemption. God’s plan of Redemption would give man another opportunity to become righteous in His sight.

God’s plan was to send His Son into the world to pay for all the sins committed and all those that would ever be committed. Since man has a sinful nature, man is going to sin on a daily basis. The important issue here is that man has a choice to sin or not to sin due to the rejection or the acceptance of the Holy Spirit.