Ep. 249. Luke 24 | The Road to Emmaus
EPISODE 249
THE ROAD TO EMMAUS: LUKE 24
It is no secret that I have many "favorite" chapters in the Bible. The list grows a little longer each year. This is absolutely one of them. There are two important things for us to glean from this chapter that shape for us how we read the Gospels.
First, it becomes very clear from this chapter that the disciples did not yet realize who Jesus was. Not fully anyway. The two men on the roadway here say, "We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel." Did you catch that "We had HOPED?" When Jesus died, they thought their hope of redemption was gone. They still didn't understand his words that he had to die and then be raised from the dead. That truth still escaped them. They still needed to come to an understanding of the Scriptures that foreshadowed Christ. Peter himself was still missing the whole truth.
Second, we can't miss the importance of Jesus opening up the mind of the disciples to understand the Scriptures. With the two men on the road, "Beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself." Then later with the rest of the disciples, "Everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled." Jesus came to fulfill the Scripture. We saw that in his birth and early years, and we saw that a couple of days ago in his death. We even saw that in Matthew 8 through his healings in the crowd. Still, somehow, we get to Matthew 5 and think that when Jesus said he didn't come to abolish the Law but to fulfill it, he must have meant the rules.
We argue from Matthew 5 that Jesus didn't come to abolish "the rules" but to "fulfill them." Please think about how twisted we've gotten that text. We say that Jesus didn't come to abolish the Law, by which we tend to mean the rules but to fulfill it. Then, we tell people the importance of following the rules. We tell people that Jesus fulfilled part of the Law, the part that would require us to bring a sacrifice, go through ceremonial cleansing or avoid bacon. But then we tell people Jesus didn't fulfill the moral law. Apparently, we still have to do that part. Then we tell people that doing the Law can't save us, but it is still necessary especially the Ten Commandments. But we insist Jesus fulfilled the Law. But only part of it. And we have to do the rest.
Or, now, just go with me on this: as Jesus was introducing the New Covenant, he was being accused of denying all that the Law, Prophets, and Psalms proclaimed, so he says, "I didn't come to abolish the Law (the Old Testament in its entirety) but to fulfill it (in its entirety)." Maybe that's why the New Testament book of Matthew took so much time to point out that everything Jesus was doing was to "fulfill" the Scripture. What would Matthew 5 look like to us if we used the rest of Matthew and Jesus' words in Luke 24 to understand what he meant by "fulfill the Law."
Now, instead of having to do theological gymnastics and insisting that Jesus only came to fulfill part of the Law, we can declare with confidence that Jesus came to fulfill ALL that the Scripture declared about him. The encouraging part of that is that passages in the Old Testament indicate his second coming and the fullness of the Kingdom of Heaven. If Jesus came to fulfill ALL the things in the OT written about him, and if he fulfilled all the things written about his first coming down to the smallest detail, then we can rest confidently that he WILL fulfill all the things written about him pertaining to his second coming.
ADDITIONAL READING: Matthew 16:11; Psalm 119:130; Matthew 5:17-18
