Luke 24 13 - 27

 Luke 24 13 - 27

It was the best 2-hour sermon we will never hear. The seven-mile walk from Jerusalem to Emmaus would have taken about 2 hours and during that time Jesus would teach two disciples about Himself. The disciples’ confusion formed around a simple enigma: the place of suffering and the role of the Messiah. They apparently believed that as Messiah there would have been an endless progression of one good thing after another. They felt that suffering was inherently contrary to the life of one who was “mighty in deed and word in the sight of God”. 

The statement that God only brings good to us is problematic in that we often misunderstand what is “good”. When we are left to determine what is good we find ourselves in the same confusion as these disciples. We take our definition of good and attempt to apply it to God's authority and action and end up confused. Affluence, personal comfort, and peace are good or so we say, therefore these must be the will of God for us. Poverty, stress and oppression are bad and therefore can't be in the will of God. But what if neither of these two lists are in God's categories of good and bad? What if God's categories of good and bad are determined by our closeness to Him? Anything that distracts us or pulls us away from Him is bad, anything that causes us to focus on Him is good. The disciples and our confusion was/is the inevitable result of thinking our understanding of good is the same as God's good.

Jesus' response to their confusion was to go to the scriptures. Beginning from Moses Jesus pointed out how all the scriptures pointed to the suffering servant. Two hours would hardly have been enough time to address every Old Testament passage, but it was enough time to reach the heart of these disciples. How often we fail because we do not point to Christ through the scriptures. We appeal to books, psychology, authors, wise men, cultural traditions, and councils but we fail to do what Jesus did, “Beginning with Moses and all the prophets he explained..."

Lord, grant me the wisdom to look to Your Word to see the Christ. AMEN”