Sometimes, I am amazed by what God points out to me when I spend time in his Word. It is completely true that Scripture is living and vibrant. Every time you read it, you can find something new, something that you may have never noticed before. This happened to me recently, as I was researching some words for another study.
Our church is currently in a sermon series that we have called Upside Down, where we are looking at God’s view of money, finances and stewardship. What God gives us about this topic in his Word is completely flipped from most of what we hear from the world’s perspective.
I was studying a passage in Malachi 3, preparing for a sermon, and was digging into the meaning of the phrase “windows of heaven” or “floodgates.” As I dug into the passage, I determined that the idea of an “opening” was really what God was trying to convey to Israel, and to us. So I expanded my study, and began looking for passages that spoke of openings.
One of the passages I found is from the final chapter of Luke, where a couple of disciples have an encounter with Jesus on the road to a town called Emmaus. How many times have I read this passage? How many times have I wondered what it was like for those two disciples as they encountered Jesus? How many times did I miss this process by which we often learn more about God and his work and will in our lives?
Luke details the event, and right in the middle of it, there are three openings, which I think are progressive in nature, helping us to see know God wants us to understand. Luke explains three different actions, or openings.
Two disciples are on the road walking from Jerusalem to the small town of Emmaus, which was probably located six or seven miles northwest of Jerusalem. In verse 18, Luke identifies one of these disciples as a man named Cleopas. The other may have been his wife, Mary, although Luke doesn’t say. These two were probably headed home after the crucifixion, having been followers of Jesus, and now that he had been executed, they had no reason to stay in town.
I wonder just how devoted they were as followers of Jesus while he was alive. In their conversation with an unrecognized Jesus, they related the details of the crucifixion and the burial, and they told their traveling companion the wild tales from that very morning, about how the body was not in the tomb, and how some ladies claimed he had been resurrected.
This apparently didn’t interest them enough to stick around and see if it was true. They left town. Perhaps they didn’t believe in the resurrection. Perhaps their hopes were shattered beyond their ability to cope with rumors that they assumed to be false. For whatever reason, they didn’t go to the tomb to see for themselves; instead, they left Jerusalem.
And that’s when Jesus began to teach them just who he was and why he came. In verses 25 and 26, he stated, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” And from there, he taught them just what Moses and the other Old Testament prophets had to say about himself, and related it to these two disciples.
This is where we begin to see three openings, three ways in which Jesus moves them deeper into their discipleship, deeper into their understanding of who he is.
First, is the Opening of Scripture.
Jesus walks these two disciples through the Old Testament. He opens the Scriptures and reveals to them just who he is, and what his purpose is. That’s how this works a lot of the time. The first thing God does is open his Word to us, showing us things about himself that we need in order to grow in our faith and in our following. In verse 32, these two disciples stated, “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?”
Second, is the Opening of the Eyes
Back up to the previous verse in Luke 24, verse 31. This verse is before verse 32, but it depicts an action that occurred after Jesus walked them through the Old Testament Scriptures. Through all of this, the two didn’t recognize who Jesus was. Until he prayed. Look at what Luke says, “And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him.”
After God opens up Scripture, he opens up our eyes to see Jesus. In fact, back in verse 16, Luke tells us that they were intentionally prevented from recognizing Jesus. I suspect that this is because they weren’t ready for that yet. They needed to understand some things first, and so Jesus opened the Scriptures before he opened their eyes to see him for who he is.
Third, is the Opening of the Mind
After they recognize Jesus, he disappears from their sight. They immediately turn around from the place they had stopped to spend the night and returned to Jerusalem. There, they found where the rest of the followers of Jesus had gathered and shared their experience with them. In the middle of this, Jesus appears to them all.
After confirming his reality, “he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures” (verse 45). From there, he gives them the commission to take that understanding to others, to take the message of the Gospel out into all the world. And as soon as Pentecost occurs, in Acts 2, they do exactly that.
That’s how God operates quite often. He uses openings. First, he opens his Word to us. Through that, he opens our eyes to see Jesus. And from there, he opens our minds to understand. The next step is ours: obedience.
Question: How has God opened the Scriptures, you eyes, or your mind in the past? How did you grow from that experience? You can leave a comment by clicking here.