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25 He said to them, “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! 26 Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?” 27 And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself. 28 As they approached the village to which they were going, Jesus continued on as if he were going farther. 29 But they urged him strongly, “Stay with us, for it is nearly evening; the day is almost over.” So he went in to stay with them. ~ Luke 24:25-29
We return to the Lord Jesus conversing with the two believers on the road to Emmaus. Their faith had taken a severe blow when the Lord Jesus was crucified and buried. We are reminded in Romans 10:17 that “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” This explains why the Lord Jesus opened the Word to these two men as the three of them walked to Emmaus. Their real problem was not in their heads but in their hearts.
In v.25 of today's text we read, "He said to them, “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken!"
Their basic problem was they did not believe all that the prophets had written about the Messiah. They saw Messiah as a Conquering Redeemer, but they did not see Him as the Suffering Servant. As they read the Old Testament, they saw the glory but not the suffering, the crown but not the cross.
Perhaps the Lord Jesus started at Genesis 3:15, the very first promise of the Messiah in the Bible, and traced the promise through the Scriptures. He may have lingered at Genesis 22, which tells of Abraham placing his only dearly loved son on the altar. Surely He touched on the Passover in Exodus, the Levitical sacrifices, the tabernacle ceremonies, the day of Atonement, the serpent in the wilderness, the Suffering Servant in Isaiah 53, and the prophetic messages of Psalms 22 and 69.
Perhaps He went to Zechariah 12:10 and reminded them that Zechariah had said, “One day Israel would look on Him whom they had pierced.” They were the ones who really did the piercing, though the spear was in a Roman soldier’s hand.
The key to understanding the Bible is to see the Lord Jesus on every page. Notice that He did not teach them doctrine or prophecy; He taught “all the Scriptures concerning himself.”
It is just like the Lord Jesus to appear to an obscure disciple, one named Cleopas. He is anonymous to us, we know absolutely nothing about them. In a wonderful act of condescension, the Lord Jesus appears to and teaches perhaps the least of His followers. The Lord Jesus always has a heart for the least.
The death, burial and the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ are the most important events in the history of this world. The Lord Jesus reminds these young believers that anybody who didn’t see these events in the Old Testament is needlessly foolish and ignorant. Their problem was they had satisfied themselves with a limited understanding of the Bible.
In v.28 we read, "As they approached the village to which they were going, Jesus continued on as if he were going farther."
These two young believers did not yet recognize the Lord Jesus. Even after all of this teaching, they still did not know this was the Lord Jesus walking with them.
In v.29 we read, "But they urged him strongly, “Stay with us, for it is nearly evening; the day is almost over.” So he went in to stay with them."
These two may not have recognized the Lord Jesus just yet but they did recognize the importance of hospitality, so they invited this stranger to stay the night with them. But, this isn’t about hospitality, this is about more teaching. They wanted to learn a lot more from this stranger.
In their culture, evenings were spent reclining at a table and filled with hours of conversation. And this could have gone on endlessly as far as they were concerned. Their curiosity was piqued. Curiosity does not spring from the heart of man, but is activated by the Spirit of God. In Proverbs 1:7 we read, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.”
Curiosity is simply a response to God’s creative movements in our lives. Problem is we are too ignorant to His ways of developing curiosity within us. Curiosity is a key ingredient of learning. It leads to knowledge but also to the ability to make connections among various pieces of information. Curiosity is increased by entertaining questions which stimulate inquisitiveness.
Our longest and hardest journeys are not the journeys that take place outside of us but the journeys that take place within us. In fact, most of our journeys in this world are designed to distract us from the vital journeys that must take place within us if we are going places with God. To get us to value the journey within, God often uses things to develop our curiosity abilities. Sadly, most often these things that God uses are most often so unwanted by us that we fail to see God's genius in them.
Curious first-century crowds rushed to hear the Lord Jesus teach and see Him heal. Curiosity initiated interest that led to understanding, hope, faith, and healing. Curious about the future, the disciples asked the Lord Jesus, “Tell us, when will these things happen, and what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?”
Often we find ourselves frustrated with God, thinking He has not arrived in the clutter in our lives, only to discover that what we thought was unwanted clutter was His way of developing curiosity in us, a curiosity that leads us to see Him more fully as we will see in our next blog tomorrow.
