Jesus said to them, “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself. Luke 24:25-27
Jesus, just that day risen from the dead, joins a couple of his disciples as they walk from Jerusalem to a village called Emmaus. They don’t realise who he is. They are sunk in gloom, and he asks them what’s wrong. Don’t you know! they exclaim. Haven’t you heard about the crucifixion of Jesus? You must be the only person around who hasn’t!
And then these painfully sad words: “...we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel.”
We had hoped... Ah - they are downcast because of shattered dreams (you know the feeling?). They had pinned their hopes on this man Jesus - indeed, they had become convinced that he was the long-awaited Messiah of the Jewish nation. And now... he was dead.
What does Jesus do? You might have expected him at least to be sympathetic. But no - in fact he gives them a bit of a telling off: “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?”
That seems hard, doesn’t it? True, he doesn’t leave it there. No, as he walks with them he goes right back to “Moses and all the prophets” and explains to them “what was said in all the scriptures concerning himself.” And as he does this, something very wonderful happens...
But wait a minute... don’t those disciple still have a right to feel that his scolding was a little unfair? Where in the books of Moses are Jesus’ sufferings and glory foretold? Where precisely “in all the prophets”? Where “in all the scriptures”?
Oh yes, once he had explained it to them it was crystal clear. But doesn’t it seem a little unreasonable to expect them to understand it all before it had been explained?
Yet Jesus is perfectly serious. Sorry, but they should have foreseen what was going to happen, even if not in all its horrible details. These were Jewish people, and they were well schooled in the Jewish scriptures - what today we call the Old Testament.
It’s true that the Old Testament never gives an explicit prediction of the cross and resurrection. No prophet ever writes anything remotely like, “A day is coming when God will send the Messiah in the person of his own son. His name will be Jesus, and he will be put to death and raised again.” No.
But what the Old Testament does give is a long, often sad, account of how Israel, God’s chosen people, experienced suffering and vindication as a pattern over many centuries.
And what it also gives is a hint, or suggestion - amounting in effect to a promise - of a particular individual who will one day take upon himself the identity of “you, Israel, my servant” (Isaiah 41:8-9, 42:1, and throughout chapters 41-45) - as if the whole nation is summed up in him.
In a truly remarkable high point to the book of Isaiah, the “servant Israel” is narrowed down to that one individual. It will be his role to bear the suffering of the whole nation. The key passage is Isaiah 52:13-53:12 (and what a passage it is!). True, Jesus isn’t mentioned by name - but to whom else can these radiant words refer?
I think that we can be pretty sure that on that road to Emmaus, while Jesus may have begun with Moses, he will have come to a climax with these verses!
The reason Jesus is disappointed with his disciples, then, is just this. If they had only been in tune with the ways in which their God worked throughout history, and, of course, if they had only absorbed what Jesus had taught them throughout his time with them, then the terrible events of that weekend wouldn’t have puzzled or surprised them. This is the way of Almighty God! - to bring his people to glory through humiliation and suffering. And it is perfectly embodied in Jesus.
The little word “all” - “all the prophets... all the scriptures” - is key. It doesn’t mean that every single verse of the Old Testament can be related to Jesus (don’t, please, go looking for him in Ezra 10:29 or Ecclesiastes 9:5!); what it does mean is that scripture as a whole builds up a picture of a holy, powerful, loving - and suffering - God who, at the climax of history, bursts upon this world in human form.
This is the message that caused the hearts of the disciples on the road to Emmaus to “burn within them” Luke 24:32). And this is the message in the light of which you and I can live.
Let’s do it, then!
Lord Jesus, please help me to see you “in all the scriptures”. As I puzzle over many of the words of the prophets, enable me to detect that pattern of suffering-to-glory, and to understand how it is wonderfully perfected in you. And so may my heart also burn within me. Amen.
Jesus, just that day risen from the dead, joins a couple of his disciples as they walk from Jerusalem to a village called Emmaus. They don’t realise who he is. They are sunk in gloom, and he asks them what’s wrong. Don’t you know! they exclaim. Haven’t you heard about the crucifixion of Jesus? You must be the only person around who hasn’t!
And then these painfully sad words: “...we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel.”
We had hoped... Ah - they are downcast because of shattered dreams (you know the feeling?). They had pinned their hopes on this man Jesus - indeed, they had become convinced that he was the long-awaited Messiah of the Jewish nation. And now... he was dead.
What does Jesus do? You might have expected him at least to be sympathetic. But no - in fact he gives them a bit of a telling off: “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?”
That seems hard, doesn’t it? True, he doesn’t leave it there. No, as he walks with them he goes right back to “Moses and all the prophets” and explains to them “what was said in all the scriptures concerning himself.” And as he does this, something very wonderful happens...
But wait a minute... don’t those disciple still have a right to feel that his scolding was a little unfair? Where in the books of Moses are Jesus’ sufferings and glory foretold? Where precisely “in all the prophets”? Where “in all the scriptures”?
Oh yes, once he had explained it to them it was crystal clear. But doesn’t it seem a little unreasonable to expect them to understand it all before it had been explained?
Yet Jesus is perfectly serious. Sorry, but they should have foreseen what was going to happen, even if not in all its horrible details. These were Jewish people, and they were well schooled in the Jewish scriptures - what today we call the Old Testament.
It’s true that the Old Testament never gives an explicit prediction of the cross and resurrection. No prophet ever writes anything remotely like, “A day is coming when God will send the Messiah in the person of his own son. His name will be Jesus, and he will be put to death and raised again.” No.
But what the Old Testament does give is a long, often sad, account of how Israel, God’s chosen people, experienced suffering and vindication as a pattern over many centuries.
And what it also gives is a hint, or suggestion - amounting in effect to a promise - of a particular individual who will one day take upon himself the identity of “you, Israel, my servant” (Isaiah 41:8-9, 42:1, and throughout chapters 41-45) - as if the whole nation is summed up in him.
In a truly remarkable high point to the book of Isaiah, the “servant Israel” is narrowed down to that one individual. It will be his role to bear the suffering of the whole nation. The key passage is Isaiah 52:13-53:12 (and what a passage it is!). True, Jesus isn’t mentioned by name - but to whom else can these radiant words refer?
I think that we can be pretty sure that on that road to Emmaus, while Jesus may have begun with Moses, he will have come to a climax with these verses!
The reason Jesus is disappointed with his disciples, then, is just this. If they had only been in tune with the ways in which their God worked throughout history, and, of course, if they had only absorbed what Jesus had taught them throughout his time with them, then the terrible events of that weekend wouldn’t have puzzled or surprised them. This is the way of Almighty God! - to bring his people to glory through humiliation and suffering. And it is perfectly embodied in Jesus.
The little word “all” - “all the prophets... all the scriptures” - is key. It doesn’t mean that every single verse of the Old Testament can be related to Jesus (don’t, please, go looking for him in Ezra 10:29 or Ecclesiastes 9:5!); what it does mean is that scripture as a whole builds up a picture of a holy, powerful, loving - and suffering - God who, at the climax of history, bursts upon this world in human form.
This is the message that caused the hearts of the disciples on the road to Emmaus to “burn within them” Luke 24:32). And this is the message in the light of which you and I can live.
Let’s do it, then!
Lord Jesus, please help me to see you “in all the scriptures”. As I puzzle over many of the words of the prophets, enable me to detect that pattern of suffering-to-glory, and to understand how it is wonderfully perfected in you. And so may my heart also burn within me. Amen.
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