Hello Church family,
I know that it has been a while since our Easter service, but it’s still on my mind. You’ve probably moved passed it, but this is not the case for me, mostly due to the burden that I feel in unloading a wonderful passage of Scripture that I feel in my heart after studying it for a good week. It’s never easy for me to preach and then simply move onto the next topic. In fact, I always feel like I could preach the same sermon a couple of times.
For that reason, allow me to recap one of the important truths that God blessed me with in my study of Luke 24.
Hopefully you heard about how God prevented His disciples from truly seeing His identity for Who He was while they walked on the road with Him. “Their eyes were kept from recognizing Him” (v26). But it was not until after Jesus opened to them the Scriptures and explained how He had to suffer for them through Old Testament Bible references that finally they recognized Who this man was that walked there beside them the whole time. And just as they could not initially recognize Jesus because “they’re eyes were kept from recognizing Him” (v16), now suddenly “their eyes were opened” (v31) making it possible for them to recognize Jesus for Who He truly was.
One of the truths that you find in this section of Scripture is a “revealing and concealing” reality to how the Holy Spirit works.
Just as surely as He opens up eyes, He also prevents them from being opened until a providential point in time.
This passage of Scripture (Luke 24) is a pre-lude to showing how folks “see” Jesus after His earthly ministry. We “see Him” through the Scriptures with the illumination of the Holy Spirit. Even when the disciple’s hearts “burned within them” as Jesus opened up to them the Scriptures (vv25-27, 32), it signaled the work of the Holy Spirit as He is often compared to or symbolized as a flame or fire in Scripture (Think what happened at Pentecost).
The point is that our relationship with Jesus is based upon His Word (the Scriptures) and the Holy Spirit making us alert and cognizant to His Spirit’s presence through His Word. It’s not that the Scriptures need to “come alive” mysteriously or mystically, but we need to come alive to His Word, so that we can truly hear Him and develop a love for Him.
The New Covenant benefits of the Spirit are beginning to come into effect in Luke 24 as the Holy Spirit is making these men who were “dead in their sins… alive” to hear and feel His Word and understand the identity of Jesus (Look at Eph. 2:1-6!).
I’m harping on this because there are people around our life who are like these disciples, walking with Jesus their whole life in Church contexts or home contexts (maybe some of them are your grown children), but not truly aware of Who Jesus is in their life. They have not yet received “eyes to see” Jesus or understand His mission for them through the lens of Scripture. They have heard the Bible many times, but don’t really understand Christ. And actually, it’s true in an absolute way that God has been preventing them from “recognizing Jesus.”
Therefore, the biggest thing that you and I can do is PRAY. Pray for them. And the way that we can pray is by saying, “God, would you reveal Your Son Jesus to __________(fill in the blank).” This is what Jesus speaks about in Matthew 11:25-27. God has the power to open up blind eyes spiritually speaking.
In 2 Corinthians 4:4, the devil is accredited to blinding eyes too. And this is just another reason to pray, knowing that we do not have the power to open up somebody’s blind eyes to beholding Jesus!
Finally, thank God that He has opened up your eyes (Luke 24:31) to see Jesus and understand His suffering/glorifying mission through Scripture (vv25-27!).
Thank God that He has done Luke 24:45 on you: “then He opened up their minds to understand the Scriptures.”
And ask God to continually enhance your vision. This is what Paul prays for the Church in Ephesians 1:17-18:
“that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, 18 having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know…”
I pray that we as a Church would develop by God’s power, better eyes to see and behold Jesus through the Scriptures and to grow burning hearts through the ministry of God’s Spirit for Jesus, the One Who all of the Bible points towards in His sacrificial love and atonement for our sins.
I pray that this would be your experience as you read the Bible and as we gather together again this coming Sunday to hear from God’s awesome Word.
With love in Christ,
Aaron
