How to read your Bible

Third Sunday of Easter, Year A

Luke 24:13-35

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Think about that. Put yourself on the beach, watching the waves roll up on the shore, and with every wave, a pattern presents itself. And that's exactly what we mean by Easter tide. It is six Sundays where we be where we relive the resurrection of Jesus each and every time, like a wave rolling on the beach. The first wave that we caught, that we rode upon, if you remember just a couple Sundays ago, was when the Marys found the tomb and the stone rolled away and the tomb empty. And the angel told them, Go and tell the disciples that Jesus is risen and that he will go meet them in Galilee. And what we learned when Jesus, the risen Jesus, encountered the women at the tomb, that he revealed himself and told them, Go give this message to the disciples. Then last week, we learned that the disciples, when they were locked behind closed doors, encountered the risen Jesus Himself. And the first thing that we learned that what Jesus did, being made alive, entered into their presence and gave them peace. But one of them was missing, Thomas. So the disciples go and tell Thomas that Jesus is risen. So on this third Sunday of Easter, as we continue to ride the waves of Easter tide, we learn once again an encounter with the risen Jesus. This time Jesus is incognito. He is walking with two disciples who had been with the other disciples somehow, somehow. And they're going, they're leaving Jerusalem and heading back home to Emmaus, seven miles away. But what we notice is in their hearts they're stirred up. They're recounting everything that they have learned, everything that they have heard from these other encounters with the risen Jesus, and they can't make sense of any of it. They don't understand it. They know that Jesus is a prophet, mighty in deeds, sent by God, that he was crucified at the hands of their rulers and chief priests, and yet this is the third day, the third day which he said he would rise again. They've been amazed by the report of these women who went to the tomb and said that he's alive, and how even Simon went to the tomb and some other disciple, John, that we know of, went to the tomb and confirmed that the tomb is empty. But what does this all mean? We were hoping that Jesus would be the one who would come and bring salvation, that he truly was the Messiah to finally do what God said he would do to save his people. And we are given a little detail by Luke. When Jesus asked him, What are you discussing? And they recount this. We are told that they stand looking down, sad. That's what happens when you are confused. That's what happens when what is presented to you don't fully understand. How is it that you that Jesus has saved us? How is it that Jesus can be made alive? How does all this work? And Jesus says something interesting in the midst of their sorrow. He says, Oh, you foolish men, how do you not know how these things have come to be? For the scriptures have been declaring it to you over and over and over again. And so our lesson for today is the lesson that Jesus himself teaches these two who were on the road to Emmaus. When he sits down with them and as he walks with them, he breaks open the scriptures and begins to explain every page that we read about. It was about Jesus him. And all of a sudden, our lesson becomes very clear. How are we to read our Bible? Now, this is very important. I think this lesson is very practical for us. If you were like me, you grew up with going to Sunday school because your grandparents took you there, and so you were forced to go to Sunday school each and every Sunday, and you were listening to the sermons, and the sermons that I listened to and the Sunday school lessons that I received was all about taking this book and inserting myself into it as the main character. This book I'm to read. And so it was very common. I remember when uh, you know, John 3.16, for God so loved the world. Instead of the world, insert your name. For God so loved Bruce. Oh, and it felt good. That was a good lesson. It's about me. It's wonderful. I remember thinking about Adam and Eve was a moral lesson about me that we learned from Adam and Eve not to distrust God, but take God at his word and be obedient to him. That's what I was learning. That it was a moral lesson for me. I remember learning about Cain and Abel and how brotherly hatred for each other was not good. It was very murderous. A moral lesson to not hate your brother, but to love your neighbor. Oh, that's very good. Wonderful. I remember learning about David and Goliath, right? And how it is that you, I was taught to be stirred up to courage, to defeat your enemies, whatever Goliaths you have in your life. It was a very good moral lesson for me. And that is, I think, as I now am a pastor, now that I have uh some experience of how things are being taught within the church today, might be where people land themselves. They open this scripture, and the first person that they read into the scripture is themselves. But our lesson today reveals something quite different. Is that the main character of this Bible is not you, it's Jesus. And if you can understand that difference, one stirs you up to faith in him, or one leads you to have more faith in yourself than you probably should. For you cannot save yourself. But if you believe more about yourself than you ought to, you might think that you can conjure up some kind of compartments within yourself and unlock them so that you can begin doing on your own effort more than you are able to. However, if you read the scriptures as Jesus, the main character, it stirs you up to believe in him and that the means by which he has saved you are right and good. And they stir you up to have more faith in him. Don't take my word for it. Take Jesus' word for it. In verse 27, Jesus is the one who is explaining the scriptures. This verse radically transformed my life. When I went to seminary, I don't know why, but this verse changed the way I saw everything. And all of a sudden I became more hungry about the scriptures and the gospel because it was as if I was reading the whole Bible again for the first time. It was retraining my mind to not see myself, but to see Jesus. For the Bible is a book about God, not about you. It's first and foremost God expressing Himself to humanity to say, this is who I am, and this is how I have saved you, and you must trust in it. Now we can partake of the Bible and see some things of how it benefits us. It directs us, it guides us to those ends. But Jesus says this in verse 27, he says, then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, Moses is known to have written the first five books of your Old Testament. And then all the prophets, all the minor prophets of the Old Testament, he explained to them the things concerning himself in all of Scriptures. Jesus takes the time, having been raised from the dead, to explain to these disciples that are confused with all the events that they were eyewitnesses to or had been recounted to them. How do I make sense of this? And Jesus began to explain that every page has been unfolding. It's a catalog of how I am going to come and how I would save. All of a sudden, you learn to read Scripture in a different way. Adam and Eve is no longer a moral lesson of distrusting God, but Adam and Eve points to the reality of how the second Adam would come and do finally right things for his bride. Instead of letting her eat of the forbidden fruit, he would protect her, he would guide her and guard her. We learn how Jesus is a better Adam than Adam by reading Jesus in Scripture. We learn in Cain and Abel, right? The brother, the second one born who gave a better sacrifice, was loathed by his brother, hated and despised by his brother. And isn't this not what had happened to Jesus, betrayed by his very own disciple, Judas? Then we learn about Abraham, Father Abraham, who leaves his father's home and goes to a place that God would show him, and he is to sojourn and journey in a land that would be given to him eventually. Isn't this not what Jesus has done? Hasn't he not left his father's throne above, taking the form of a servant, and sojourned among us, accomplishing his father's promise that he would give new life and a promised land to all who will believe in him? Don't we learn from David and Goliath how Christ has cut off the head of Satan and death and sin. It's not a moral lesson for us, it's a picture of Jesus in all the ways that he is going to accomplish our salvation. We've been told all along in this catalog of who Jesus is, the types. He is kind of like David, he's kind of like Abraham, he's kind of like Adam, he's kind of like Moses. And God has been revealing these little types all along until Jesus shows up, and then we get the greatest aspects of them all in one person. And that stirs us up to cherish and believe and to understand how it is that we come to be saved through Him. And that's what Jesus wants these two disciples to experience and encounter. That all of Scripture is about Him, everything. And just because we don't understand, how can the Song of Solomon, which is an episode, a poem between a husband and wife, how does that speak about Jesus? But Jesus says, nonetheless, it's about him. And that's how we are to read our Bibles. We first and foremost read it, learning about Jesus, who he is and what he's done for us, before we get ourselves, insert ourselves into the story. But not only does Jesus teach this, but the passage itself teaches us why we ought to be reading our Bibles in this way. Consider what we've been doing for the last few weeks, riding this Easter tide wave. Notice a pattern here. Maybe I'm the only crazy one that sees it, but notice the pattern. The risen Jesus encounters the ladies first and foremost at the tomb and then goes and gives them a message and says, now go and tell somebody about this encounter. Tell them what I'm telling you. And then we have Jesus coming among his disciples, except for Thomas. And he tells his disciples, I give you peace. Peace be with you. He talks about the forgiveness of sins and retaining sins. And what do the disciples do with their encounter of the risen Lord? They go and they talk to Thomas who wasn't present. And then here, on the road to Emmaus, when Jesus finally reveals himself and vanishes, what stirs their hearts next to do? But to go back to Jerusalem, seven miles away, to take another seven-mile hike, and it's already evening, and go and tell about their encounter with Jesus. I think there's a pattern that rises to the surface that teaches us how we are to read our Bible. We not only read our Bible first and foremost to learn about Jesus on every page, but what we have learned about Jesus on every page, we are also to go and share our experience, our encounter with Jesus and his word, and go and share it and discuss it with others. Think about how different accounts in all the Gospels. We were talking about this a couple Wednesdays ago, and how John kind of highlights different things than Luke does, and Luke highlights different things than Mark and Matthew, and we seem to have all these different perspectives of the same event. That's because they were told by various people who encountered the risen Jesus and they compiled it. It's because people were discussing for themselves all that Jesus was revealing to them. Why does this matter? Because we are told that you grow spiritually by isolation. That you can go home and as long as you're praying, as long as you're doing your daily devotions and reading scripture, that that is good enough. You will be growing in your faith and you will be discipled into the image of Christ. But this pattern reveals that you can't just in isolation read your Bible alone, that there is something that you should be sharing with the gathered community. That you have, that Jesus has revealed something to you this week that he wants you to go and tell everybody about your experience and your encounter with him. How you have learned on page one where he was and where he is and what he did. And this is how Jesus has desired for his body, his people, to grow is that they have to talk. They should be discussing with each other about his word that it's about him. And that's how people grow in knowledge. I heard this when I was in college one day, and again, I'm just kind of like a dummy sometimes, but certain phrases speak to my mind. That I'm just like, of course, duh, that's obvious. And a gentleman said to me, You're not given knowledge to keep for yourself. You're given knowledge to share with others. And I was like, that's right. What good is it just for me to benefit from knowing something? How much better is it for everybody to benefit from knowing the same thing? And that is what the early church, these 3,000 that we just read in the book of Acts that were gathered together and that Jesus was adding to every day. Do you know what they spent their time doing? We just read it. They fellowshiped together. They talked about the apostles' teaching, they prayed together, they broke bread together, they discussed the scriptures. Our New Testament are nothing but a bunch of letters sent from all the churches back and forth, and they would stand and then we'd read it because they're sharing their knowledge about who Jesus is and what he's done. And how can we do that if we're only at home, lying on our bed with our Bibles open and keeping and recording in our journals all that the Lord is revealing, but we don't share that with each and every one of our brothers and sisters. There is something this week that you've probably discovered about Jesus that the Lord has intended for me to know. I have the privilege that when I study the scriptures, I get to speak on what the Lord has revealed to me in order to lead his church in the ways she should go this week. But we are to do that together. This is why the scriptures say, build each other up. How do we build each other up? First and foremost, if the word of God changes our life and it is the means by which we are saved, that should be on the edge of our tongues to share with people. And I will tell you, Miss Deb's not here, but if she were here, I get like illuminated and like just extremely happy when she just shares her thoughts with me or asks a question and we sit in dialogue. Wednesday nights has become one of my favorite times, is because we don't open up another passage of scripture. We will be reading the same Emmaus Road and we will talk about it and discuss it, and I'll ask everybody what has the Lord Jesus Christ revealed about himself to you? Let's talk and discuss, because there's probably fruit that I need to eat from that Jesus has given you, and vice versa. This is how he holds his people in unity. This is how he grows his people together so that we're all growing and being stirred up with one another. And so you might be thinking, well, Bruce, are you just saying that we need to be part of Bible study each and every day of our lives together? Ideally, I think that's what Jesus has in mind. That his people are constantly together, that he's in their midst, and they can't stop talking about him. I get so tickled when I see Jesus again through a story I just never understood. And Jesus says, check that out. That's me right there. And I have to like vomit it on, and Melissa just has to put up with it because I'm like, I'll run, I'll interrupt, I'll go put down whatever you're doing. I know you're working, you're on the clock, but it doesn't matter. I have some exciting news to tell you. And I'm probably the only one that's seen this. I don't know. And I might be crazy, but this is what Jesus has revealed to me, and I can't stop. And I desperately want to get everybody to that point so that all of us together can be growing in our faith. David's brought up some things on Wednesday that I never even thought about. Greg does the same thing. Jerome, every once in a while, stumps me, and I'm like, I don't know, Jerome, you go figure it out. But it's good, that's how we grow. I am I am, we don't grow alone. We do a little bit, but we grow the most when we're together like this. And we discuss and we fellowship and we build each other up. So how do we read our Bibles? We read them, understanding that Jesus is all about Jesus. Our interpretation, our understanding is about Him and how He has saved us. Two, we read our Bibles, knowing that we need to be speaking it to each other, discussing it with each other. This is the lesson that we found ourselves in. Two disciples walking together and they can't stop but rehearse everything that they have learned and experienced. And then Jesus gives them the grand finale and reveals to them everything in the scriptures, including the Psalms. We often don't read our Psalms, we think it's just a bunch of songs or prayers that we need to use to pray to God. And it is that. But it's first and foremost about the words of Jesus. They're Jesus' songs, they're Jesus' prayers. And they and He is teaching us how we can pray because they're His words. So this week I encourage you. We have Sunday school where we have this opportunity to gather together and discuss these passages. We have Wednesday nights to discuss these passages. And don't tempt me with a good time and say, Bruce, we need a Bible study every night. I will do that. I will be present and I will be giddy. And so if there's donuts and cookies, I mean, I might as well take me to heaven right now. I just want us to be a family that really loves the Word of God and sees it the way Jesus has taught us to see it. And to grow from each other and not minimize just how beneficial it is for us to gather and do these things. Because it seems to be patterned in the scriptures that the disciples themselves, who built the church upon their shoulders, like Jesus asked them to the apostles' teaching, that they stirred and motivated everybody. Hey, we have. To do this together. We're not alone in this. We're not a bunch of individuals. We are a community. We're a body with hands and feet and a torso, and our head is Jesus, and we're a bride together. Not alone, but together. So I pray that this week we can begin doing that, thinking about what we can do as a church, as a family to do these things. And learn to read our Bibles, maybe again for the first time. In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.