After a tragedy and a great loss, there is a kind of calm. When all of the tears have been cried, the funeral service is over, and the mourning friends and family members have gone home, life has to slowly resume and we are left to ourselves to reflect on what has happened. Then we try to come to terms with reality, to accept things as they are now, not as we want them to be, and to understand what we have seen. But sometimes, try as we might, we do not understand. And that is what makes life so difficult. Perhaps we could handle those things that we can make some sense out of, even if those things are tragic and painful. Some things have a sense of inevitability, like the death of an aging relative. We can even do some of the grieving in advance and prepare ourselves for the blow. But then there are life’s sudden, swift kicks to the solar plexus that leave us doubled over and gasping for breath. These things defy all trite explanations and pat answers.
To those two disciples on the road to Emmaus, the Cross was one of those things. They were trying to come to terms with the fact that Jesus was dead, but they clearly did not understand nor could they explain what had actually taken place back there in Jerusalem. If we look at the Cross in its bare, stark reality, without any theological explanations, it does seem to be beyond understanding. It is simply a horrible tragedy, like so many other events in the sad history of the human race. We can perhaps, without any additional revelation, come to see Jesus as a brave, young martyr who was dying for his radical beliefs. And martyrs are noble, though sad, and they are capable of inspiring us, even shaming us for our lack of devotion, but martyrs are dead all the same.
Then where do we go? Back to the routine again. These two disciples headed to Emmaus. Peter went back to fishing. Life goes on. We should probably say it is the routine -- the frustrating, pointless, vain repetition that we call life -- that really goes on. Every now and then there is this little flash of something different, something new and exciting that stirs our souls and starts us hoping that maybe real life has begun and things will be different. But there is nothing new under the sun. Just the same old thing, over and over again.
But not this time! These two disciples were never going to be able to go back to their old routines again because something had happened that would give new meaning to everything under the sun. They were going to come face to face with Life. Christ has risen! Though they knew it not and everything seemed on the surface to be the same. But the Gospel is new indeed – news that something new has come into the world and things will never be the same again. Life has come and so now we can say that life does go on, because eternal life has been revealed.
Without the Resurrection, the Cross could not have been properly understood. Calvary was not just another human tragedy and Jesus was not simply a courageous, young martyr of another noble, yet hopeless, cause. There was a Divine purpose that had been in the works for a long time, even before Time itself. The Resurrection is the lynchpin of the Christian Faith. We do not worship a dead martyr. We walk with a risen Christ.
Jesus has entered a new mode, or level, of existence. The meaning of the Ascension, the essential sequel to the Resurrection, is that Jesus can now be anywhere and everywhere and is therefore always with His disciples wherever they may be – in a locked upper room, by the sea of Galilee, on the road to Emmaus, in a jail cell, or on the lonely Isle of Patmos.
Jesus Opens the Scriptures
These resurrection appearances are for the purpose of preparing the disciples to become witnesses. Jesus is going to send out these confused and timid souls who always seem to be a few steps behind where Jesus needs them to be. They weren’t ready for this mission. But Jesus will make them ready. They needed confidence and boldness. They needed to understand how everything that had happened fit together in God’s great Kingdom program. And so Jesus would spend 40 days with them, explaining the nature of the Kingdom of God, before He ascended (Acts 1.3). Jesus prepared them in much the same way He instructed these two disciples on the road to Emmaus. He opened the Scriptures to them.
That was what they were missing. They did not understand the Scriptures. They had not yet made the right connections between what was written in the Scriptures and what Jesus had done (John 20.9). There is no greater handicap than not understanding the Scriptures. But Jesus is not satisfied with ignorance in His people. He is the authorized Interpreter of Scripture. Not only that, He is also the message of the Scriptures. Jesus is the key to the entire Bible and if we do not understand this we will never be able to really understand.
On the Mount of Transfiguration Moses and Elijah appeared with Jesus (See Matt 17.3). Moses represents the Law and Elijah the Prophets. But God said “this is my beloved Son, you must listen to Him” (Matt. 17.5) Jesus is the greater revelation and the One the Law and the Prophets spoke about. The Gospel of Christ is in perfect agreement with the Law and the Prophets (Rom. 3.21).
Reading the Scriptures and not coming to Christ is to miss the whole point. It is like visiting Paris and missing the Eifel Tower! Jesus warned the religious leaders about this serious error. “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life” (John 5:39-40). This is not an innocent mistake but is actually evidence of unbelief. Jesus exposed what people really believed about the Scriptures. “For if you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me” (John 5:46). The religious elites knew the Scriptures but not the Author of the Scriptures.
C.S. Lewis is one of my favorite authors. But his works are filled with philosophical arguments and intricate allegories. What if I could talk with C.S. Lewis while I read the books he had written? Do you think that would give me some insights I would have missed on my own? If I could speak with the author of the book I could know his intended meaning. I can’t talk to C.S. Lewis about his books. But I can talk to Jesus about His book. Jesus is a living Presence who can walk with us and teach us. That is the significance of the Resurrection. The Emmaus Road experience can be ours today.
Why We Fail to Understand Scripture
Studying the original language and the principles of hermeneutics are insufficient. If we really want to understand Scripture we must know the Author of Scripture and the One who is Himself the focus of the Scriptures. We don’t learn about Jesus like we learn about American history or the multiplication table. There are certain facts that I can learn intellectually, but these have no impact on my life. But this knowledge of Jesus is intensely personal. We must be willing to listen to Jesus, to follow Him closely, and to submit to what He teaches. If we are not willing to do these things then Jesus cannot teach us.
Rather than learning from Jesus there are many who would rather keep their personal freedom, or what they think is freedom. They are free from Jesus at least. The paradox of freedom is that we must submit ourselves to Christ and to His teaching in order to be free. “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:31-32). Bob Dylan was right. “You have to serve somebody.” The more we serve Jesus, the more liberated we become. We were never meant to be our own master, just like a fish was never meant to live out of the water. “Thou hast made you for thyself and our hearts are ever restless until we find rest in Thee” (Augustine).
Those who resist Jesus are making themselves slaves to their own carnal mind with its dark ignorance and raging passions. “For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God” (Romans 8:7-8). This is a moral problem. There is a part of us that naturally resists God and His Word. We are children of our father Adam and we live in a world infected with the Devil’s spirit of rebellion against God.
The World is proud of its unspiritual wisdom and laughs at the foolishness of the Cross (1 Cor. 1.18-31). Simply explaining spiritual things in simple language or translating the Bible into the language of the street will not by itself overcome this natural resistance we have to God. This is why Jesus had to tell a Biblical scholar, an expert in the Law of God, that he needed to be born again before he could really understand heavenly things and perceive the Kingdom of God (John 3.3-12). The Kingdom of God is spiritual, but we are unspiritual. “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Corinthians 2:14-15). The purely human way of thinking is not God’s way. Unless we get some help from Heaven, and unless there is some kind of radical change in us, we will never understand the things of God.
Not only is the carnal mind a hindrance to our understanding of the Scriptures and the truth of God, we must also overcome religious traditions. Traditions can nullify the Word of God, rendering it powerless and ineffective in our minds (See Matt. 15.1-9). And the influence of false teaching that we have heard can linger in our minds like cobwebs in the corners of an old house. At some point we have to clean house and make room for the Master to come and live there.
Jesus has His own agenda. If we want to pursue our own interests we must do so without Jesus. People who read the Bible as if it is about them and their earthly lives, i.e. how God can help me get what I want out of my life, will never be taught by Jesus. We have to take up our cross, which means we must die to our own plans for life, before we can follow Jesus and learn from Him (Matt. 16.24). God has His own plan. He is building His Kingdom, not our kingdoms. God’s wonderful plan for your life is for you to die to all the wonderful plans you have for your life. His plan and what He is building is infinitely better than anything we could have dreamed of anyway. God is not going to give us our dreams, He wants our dreams to die so that He can give us an entirely new vision.
If we are unwilling to take up our cross, if we are slow of heart and unresponsive to the Lord’s Word, or if we refuse to trust Him, then our understanding will be hindered and deficient. If our hearts are not right then we will have to confess along with the Psalmist that “I was brutish and ignorant; I was like a beast toward you” (Psalm 73:22). Animals run on instinct, not on understanding. So it is good to be reminded to “be not like a horse or a mule, without understanding, which must be curbed with bit and bridle, or it will not stay near you” (Psalm 32:9). Don’t be like that generation of rebellious Israelites in the wilderness who heard the Word of God, but turned away from Him in their hearts (Hebrews 3.12; 4:2). We can listen without really hearing.
How Jesus Helps Us Understand
The problem with the two disciples walking to Emmaus was not that they were unwilling to listen to Jesus. They had been disciples of Jesus and had followed Him in order to listen to His words. Clearly they did not understand what the Christ would do, probably having a political and earthly understanding of the Kingdom. They told Jesus dejectedly that “we had hoped he was the one who would redeem Israel.” He had redeemed Israel, but not as they expected. That earthly, political vision of the Christ and his Kingdom needed to be shattered because it was a false hope that did not come from God.
But that misunderstanding does not mean that they were not devoted to Jesus. It is possible to be a devoted follower of Jesus and yet have an incomplete understanding. However, Jesus does not mean for His people to remain ignorant. We must learn to recognize the difference between a person who is devoted to Jesus, yet lacks understanding at some point, and someone who is disinterested. A person who is disinterested can expect to receive nothing from Jesus. But Jesus can work with a person who is interested, yet lacks understanding. Remember that there was a time when each of us lacked understanding of the Scriptures and the Kingdom of God. We may still have areas of deficiencies that we are perhaps not even fully aware of at this time. (Remembering that we don’t have a perfect understanding will help us be more patient and merciful to those who are not at our level. In fact, we might not really be at the high level we think we are and should not become puffed up with pride because of our knowledge.) Jesus did not appear to these disciples because they were disinterested in order to scare them into becoming interested. Jesus does not work like that. He did not appear to His enemies but to His friends and those who believed in Him and followed Him, though they did not yet understand what had happened.
However, this process of learning from Jesus was a difficult thing. Some people oversimplify what it means to learn about the Kingdom of God, as if it is something that just requires a few weeks in Sunday school class. Others think it is just an intellectual exercise and if you study long enough or go to the right theological school then you will have this perfect understanding of the things of God. That is an illusion. In fact, this simplistic or academic approach can actually be a setback and can keep a person from really learning from Jesus. I am not saying that we don’t have to study the Bible and use our minds. I am saying that this is not all that we need.
Before we can really learn from Jesus there will probably be some preparations that must be made. The farmer must prepare the soil before he plants the seed, or the seed will fall on hard ground and never penetrate the soil. There are areas of our hearts and minds that must be plowed up before the Word of God can be planted there. We may have character flaws that must be addressed, old ways of thinking that need to be removed, and selfish desires that have to be crucified. These kinds of things cannot be removed just through academic information. And even after we are born again these things are not instantaneously rooted out of our lives. The Lord will have to prepare us by showing us those areas of our lives that are deficient. This means He will allow us to go through times of failure, disappointment, and pain so that the weaknesses in our character can be uncovered and then corrected.
We often interpret this kind of instruction as the Lord’s displeasure with us, or that He is not with us at all. This is the Lord’s discipline. It is the Lord saying something like “this particular way of thinking, those goals, and that desire that you have all need to be put away. You did not get those things from me. And because you did not get those things from me, you will ultimately be disappointed when those things fall through. But what I want to give you will never fall through or disappoint you. You will have to let those things go, even if it is painful, so that I can give you something which can never be taken from you.”
The pain comes from loving and valuing the wrong things. The World has switched the price tags and told us that there is value in things that are not from God and will pass away, breaking our hearts in the end. But Jesus will never break your heart. It is the false hopes and vain promises of the World that will disappoint us, not the Lord. It is not the Lord’s purpose to make all of our earthly hopes and dreams come true. The Lord wants to give us an entirely different vision and a completely new Hope that is beyond anything this World can offer. The problem is that our desires are too weak and our thinking is too small. If the Lord is busy breaking things up in our lives, it is not because He wants to hurt us. He is tearing something down so that He can build. Let Him have His way. Work with Him, not against Him.
The amazing thing is how patient the Lord is with us. If we look back down the Road we have traveled we can remember places where the Lord gave us a lot of grace and was very gentle with us. There were times when we were stubborn and we are ashamed of how foolish we have been. But the Lord was still walking with us. He was still working on us. We probably didn’t always know what He was up to, and we may have even been too blind to recognize His presence, but He was there beside us on the Road. He was there with us in every circumstance and situation. He was there working with us in the form of other people whom He was using to teach us, even though we may not have recognized Christ in them. But He was there nonetheless. This is why the Fellowship of Saints is so crucial. Jesus is not just revealed to me but to us.
The Burning Heart Experience
No one should think that I am advocating some kind of subjective, mystical approach to understanding the Bible. There have always been people who claim to have some kind of special line of communication with Jesus that no one else enjoys and the way they understand the Bible, while being different from everyone else, is the one true interpretation. This is the stuff coming from the cults. The Bible cannot mean just anything we want it to mean and there is no replacement for carefully studying the Scriptures. There are those overly spiritual people who tell us not to worship the Bible or to put down the Bible and get to know the God of the Bible. The people who try to discourage us from knowing the Scriptures are either trying to twist it themselves or are just lazy and want a shortcut. There is no shortcut to spiritual understanding that bypasses our personal involvement and the use of our God-given faculties.
One of the things that the Jewish people had that we don’t have today, even in the Church, is a familiarity with Scripture. The Jews were always reading Scripture and they treated it with great seriousness and reverence. That does not mean they always understood it. But when Jesus began to open the Scriptures to these two disciples on the road to Emmaus, He was not talking to men who had never read the Scriptures. The text of Scripture was already in their minds, like a seed that has been planted in the soil. It was Jesus who brought that seed to life and made it grow. Jesus will do this again for the Jewish people in the future. And He will do it for us today.
Even for those who are familiar with the Scripture, it can lay around in our minds in broken fragments. It is like a giant jigsaw puzzle with the pieces lying scattered across the dining room table. How do we put this picture together? If the Bible is the Word of God we can expect God to have given us a single, consistent, coherent revelation and not some kind of hodge-podge that goes down a thousand rabbit-trails. So what is the Word, or the message, that God has given to us in the Bible? Men have argued about this for centuries. Only Jesus has the answer. Jesus IS the answer.
“And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.” I wonder what Jesus said to them as they walked along the road? We can use a little sanctified imagination. Maybe Jesus told them that He is…
• The Seed of the Woman who had just bruised the Serpent’s head
• The Seed of Abraham through whom God was about to bless the world
• The Passover Lamb who had just been sacrificed
• The Prophet that Moses promised would come
• The Great High Priest who has opened the way into the Holy of Holies
• The true Tabernacle in which the glory of God came to dwell among men
• The true Joshua who will take His people into the Promised Land
• The true Kinsman-Redeemer of Ruth
• The Son that was promised to David who would sit on His throne forever
• The King that God has set on His holy hill of Zion in Psalm 2, against whom the nations would rage
• The One whom God had briefly forsaken on the Cross, as predicted in Psalm 22
• The Wisdom from God that is greater than that of Solomon
• The Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53
• The guarantor of the New Covenant promised in Jeremiah 31, put into effect by His own blood
• The Son of Man that Daniel saw approaching the Ancient of Days to receive an eternal kingdom
• The Sign of the prophet Jonah
As He opened the Scriptures to them their hearts began to burn within them. Their hearts burned with recognition – they knew the voice of the Lord --though their eyes did not know him and their minds were slow to understand. It was a voice they thought they would never hear again and yet they were hearing it. Hearing is always more important than seeing. Faith comes by hearing. It was their faith in the risen Lord that gave those first disciples the boldness to preach that Jesus was the Christ promised in the Scriptures.
We should not expect to see Him like they did. He has ascended and is not going to be seen until He comes again. But we can still hear His voice. He is still speaking from heaven. He is still speaking to us through the Scriptures, if we will listen to His voice. We do not see Him, but He is with us, and is still speaking to us. “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son” (Hebrews 1:1-2). Are you listening to Jesus? If you are, then I welcome you to The Fellowship of the Burning Heart!
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