Reading the Bible with Jesus

[0:00] I'm going to invite one of our elders, Colin Armstrong, to come and to read to us from the scriptures this morning. That very day, two of them were going to a village named Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and they were talking with each other about all these things that had happened.

[0:40] While they were talking and discussing together, Jesus himself drew near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. And he said to them, what is this conversation that you are holding with each other as you walk?

[0:54] And they stood still, looking sad. Then one of them, named Cleopas, answered him, are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?

[1:07] And he said to them, what things? And they said to him, concerning Jesus of Nazareth, a man who was a prophet, mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and rulers delivered him up to be condemned to death and crucified him.

[1:24] But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things happened. Moreover, some women of our company amazed us.

[1:36] They were at the tomb early in the morning, and when they did not find his body, they came back saying that they had seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the woman had said, but him they did not see.

[1:52] And he said to them, O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken. Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?

[2:03] And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself. So they drew near to the village to which they were going.

[2:14] He acted as if he were going farther, but they urged him strongly, saying, Stay with us, for it is toward evening and the day is now far spent. So he went in to stay with them.

[2:25] When he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened and they recognized him. And he vanished from their sight.

[2:37] They said to each other, did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the scriptures? And then moving on to verse 44.

[2:47] Then he said to them, These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.

[3:00] Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures and said to them, Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.

[3:17] Amen. And may the Lord bless the reading and preaching of his word to us today. We're in our second week looking at the road to Emmaus story, where Jesus draws near to two travelers on the road.

[3:30] And last week we saw that in the very first part of the story, you have the resurrection. So in verse 12, Peter had looked into the tomb on Sunday morning and found that it was empty.

[3:42] And the women had been there before that, and they had seen angels. And when they saw the angels in verse 6 of chapter 24, the angels said, He is not here. He's risen. You won't find him here.

[3:52] So then the reader, Luke, the writer, invites the reader to ask, well, where is he? And this is the first resurrection appearance of Jesus, the road to Emmaus.

[4:04] So the reader is meant to ask, well, where is Jesus on Sunday, the day of the resurrection, that day, verse 13. And we don't see him in Rome going to Caesar's palace.

[4:17] We don't see him kicking the doors of the Roman praetorium where he had been tried. That's what I would have done. You don't see him going to the Jerusalem temple, walking into the most holy place with big crowds.

[4:29] Instead, you find him on a very ordinary road going to Emmaus, which we know nothing about, with two effectively unnamed people, the most ordinary thing that he could possibly do.

[4:41] And this is the day of the resurrection. The very first thing he goes to is to these two travelers on a common road going to an average village. And he meets the two on the road, and it's their road.

[4:54] They're probably going home to Emmaus. He meets them on their road and draws near to them. So in the Bible, just like we do in film and literature and music, we use the metaphors of the road, the path, the way to be just common metaphors for human life.

[5:11] So we're all walking down our road towards Emmaus in life. And the Bible uses that all over the Old Testament. And in the New Testament, we use it in famous music all the time, the road, the path. We're all traveling on a path, our own road.

[5:23] And that means that when Jesus draws near to these folks, he's doing so very literally in history, but also as a paradigm for the normal Christian life. So the reason that this is the first appearance that Luke records is because Jesus wants to show you what the ordinary Christian life is like.

[5:42] And the ordinary Christian life is when Jesus Christ draws near to you on your road, your path. And at first you can't see him because you're spiritually blinded. But then he brings you along the way by opening up the word to you, the scriptures.

[5:55] And then all of a sudden you realize I'm no longer walking on my road. I'm walking on his road. This is the path that he's paved. This is the road he's gone before me, the journeyman that's already gone before me and paved the way.

[6:06] And so I mentioned last week that in Luke and in his second volume, Acts, the book of Acts, the word road that's used here in the Greek text is the same word that's used six times across the book of Acts to describe early Christianity.

[6:21] So we didn't call Christianity, Christianity from day one. The word Christian wasn't the normal word until a little bit later. And instead, what did everybody call it? They called it the way.

[6:31] And that's just the Greek word for the road. And so all across the second volume, Luke, Acts, Acts, he uses the word the way, the road to talk about just what normal Christianity is.

[6:42] And that means here we've got this paradigm, this ordinary thing where these two fellas, these two people, we don't even know who they are really, are traveling along the road and Jesus meets them and he changes their life.

[6:54] They go from blindness to sight, how, and it says here that he opened the Bible and then he brought them to the table and they could see. And that's just the regular rhythms really of the normal Christian life.

[7:08] It's strange that, I think it's strange that, surprising maybe, extraordinary that he could have just unveiled himself to them. He could have just appeared as the resurrected Christ and opened their eyes.

[7:23] He absolutely could have. But instead, he actually chose to do a probably three to four hour Bible study. And this is undoubtedly the greatest Bible study that there's ever been.

[7:35] And that's the normal rhythm of how Jesus chooses to change lives. And that's why he wanted to show us this in the very first resurrection appearance. The normal way Jesus chooses to change lives is not by kicking down the door of the Roman praetorium, shining in light.

[7:51] It's by opening the scriptures, the Old Testament here, and just explaining them to people. And that, what we said last week is very much the thesis this week. And that's that for some reason, the Lord wants you to hear him from the Bible and believe before you ever see him.

[8:13] So he wanted them to see him in the scriptures before they could ever see him at the table physically. And that is the pathway that you've got to hear him in the word and believe him.

[8:25] So that one day you will eat at the table with him and see him. And so how does Jesus change lives? Through the word. That's what we, it's very simple. But let me talk.

[8:36] I could finish, right? But I'm not going to, I've got time left. Let's, let's, let's explore it. He does so first by in this passage, teaching us about the burning heart.

[8:47] Secondly, the dull heart. And finally, the heart of the Bible. So first the burning heart. So in verse 32, at the end of the passage, after he had been opening the scriptures to them, teaching them the Bible on the road to Emmaus.

[9:00] And when he sat down at the table and they finally see him, they say, they look at each other and they say, did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road? So they realized that as he was explaining the old Testament to us on the road to Emmaus, our hearts, they, they didn't yet know that this was the resurrected Christ, but still their hearts were burning, starting to burn.

[9:21] What does that mean? It means that as he taught the Bible, there was a fire that got lit in the soul and the heart. And they started to hunger for something. Now we use that metaphor all the time. Um, the Puritans called it the heart ablaze.

[9:35] And that's what they were starting to experience is the heart ablaze, very distinct from the cold heart. Uh, we talk about it as heartburn. Heartburn is not always bad. There's a, there's a good kind of heartburn.

[9:46] And that's when you get sort of fired up about something, jazzed up about something, and you really want something, you long for something. You could talk about heartache. There's good heartache and bad heartache, right?

[9:58] Uh, bad heartache, we, we say when there's a breakup, a relationship ends in our lives, we have heartache, but there's a good heartache. And that's the heartache where you really long for something.

[10:08] You ache for it. You yearn for it. Today, we've got good heartache for Scotland football, but we know that there could be the other type of heartache. It could come, right?

[10:19] We know those types of heartache that both sides here, what was happening was as Jesus explained the old Testament to them, they were having heartache, heartburn. And a fire got lit in their souls and they couldn't exactly explain it, but they were yearning for something and hoping for something.

[10:34] And what was it? We learned last week that they had said, we had hoped he would be the one to redeem Israel, but then he died. And they believed at that time, there is no such, such thing as resurrection from the dead.

[10:48] They thought their Messiah was just dead. We had hoped. But now as this man opened the Bible, the heartburn was, could this be true? And so this is like Blaise Pascal, the great French mathematician philosopher in his pensée, his little short sayings.

[11:05] He says that when you come to scripture, when you come to start to believe in God, at first, you're afraid that it might be true. Because you know, you would have to turn your life upside down, but then along the way, you start to wish it were true.

[11:18] And that's what they're experiencing. They're starting to, their heartburn is starting to say, could this actually be real? That there is a redeemer. Now, some of you today here, I think, because I know, because I talked to you, are in that exact position where you have come to a point where you say, I'm afraid this might be real.

[11:41] And even for a couple of folks here, it's not just that you're afraid this might be real. You actually have begun to wish that the stories of the gospels were true. And I know talking from folks who have been there and have said, I just don't know what to do next.

[11:58] I don't know what it means to believe. And I think one of the issues that often happens is that you're looking for, you're looking for the same thing all of us are looking for. And that's that you want fireworks, you know, you want drama.

[12:11] You want sight when the normal operation of how God changes lives is not yet through sight, but through hearing. And so you say, you know, I'm starting to wish this were true, but I need an encounter.

[12:24] I need God to come down. I need him to show up. I need him to speak a word to me, as people say. I need to hear something and see something audibly, visibly. And does God ever do that?

[12:35] Yes. I mean, he came, Jesus came to Paul on the road to Damascus and he shone down in light and he knocked Paul off of his horse and blinded Paul and then pulled the scales from his eyes.

[12:47] But it's so important to know that 99 out of 100 of us in this room that follow Jesus did so because of an experience like the Emmaus road, not the Damascus road.

[13:00] Right? You, what you actually need is you say, I wish this were true, but I don't know what to do next. And what you need to see is that you just need the Emmaus road. You just need to actually look and see Jesus Christ is present in the Old Testament.

[13:13] And then take a step of faith. Now, the second thing that Jesus does with us here is he tells us the problem we have and the problem that prevents us from doing that.

[13:24] And that's that we have dull hearts. So, verse 25, these guys, we know from the passage, these guys did have faith. They had been following Jesus. They were disciples.

[13:35] They believed in him to some degree, but they didn't understand everything. And their faith had been dulled and they were cold and they didn't believe in the resurrection at this point.

[13:46] But then in verse 25, after explaining, hearing them talk about that, Jesus says, Oh, foolish ones, slow to believe all the prophets have spoken. Now, the commentators say that you can translate foolish a little bit softer to something like, Oh, dull ones.

[14:05] I don't know if that's actually softer, but they say that's just a little softer. Oh, dull ones, he says, slow of heart to perceive, slow of heart to believe. Now, what is Jesus saying there?

[14:16] He's saying that every single one of us wants sight, but we've been told in this season of life that we're to come by faith without yet seeing.

[14:29] And that it's really hard for us because the human heart is, by way of our condition, spiritually blind. And we want to see, we want to have an audible sound or a visible appearance of God.

[14:41] And so he says to them, the prophets told you everything you needed, but you're slow to believe. And that's the normal rhythm and the heart condition because these guys are believers.

[14:54] They believed in him. They had followed him. So some of us are here today and we were saying, I wish it were true, but we're waiting for fireworks when we just need the Emmaus road.

[15:05] So many of us, more of us here today will be like these guys who have believed and have followed him, but the heart is prone to wander and prone to coldness.

[15:15] And so you today come and say, you know, the fire is not really there for me right now. I'm feeling a cold and dull, oh, dull one. And you say that I am one of those.

[15:27] I don't have the fire in my soul. So you can remember that when you came to faith and you started walking the road with Christ as he encountered you, that you were on fire. You felt the fire stirring in your soul.

[15:39] And then, and this happens so regularly that six months in and one year in, you started just living your normal life and the rhythms of the Christian life started to show up. And you realize the Emmaus road is not always fire.

[15:52] It's not always drama. It's not always revival. And that's when walking that road with Christ became incredibly difficult. And you feel a coldness in your life. And you come today and say, I've been walking with a coldness and a dullness in my heart for quite a long time.

[16:06] And again, it can be the temptation to say, Lord, where's the Damascus road? Knock me off my horse. You know, give me, give me light from heaven so that I can fill the fire again.

[16:22] And again, what we need to see is 99 out of a hundred times. What we need is the Emmaus road, not the Damascus road. You need, what does he do? What does he do to bring the fire back into your life?

[16:33] He does a Bible study. He does a Bible study. The greatest Bible study that there's ever been in human history. Let's focus on that as we finish the third point. The heart of the Bible, how Jesus really changes lives and gives us faith.

[16:46] Now I want to give you, I want to tell you, draw out six things that Jesus says. Fear not that number six. This is not two, three point sermons that I'm starting.

[16:58] These are, we'll roll right through them. Six things that Jesus says about how to read the Bible, about the Old Testament here that can, that changes life, that he does use to change our lives.

[17:08] Number one, and boy, how much this matters for us. The first thing he does is he, he opens the word instead of showing himself to them. Now, this is just a review of, of what I've already said this morning and last week.

[17:20] But again, I want to repeat it because he, he could simply unveil himself to them in the story, but he chooses to unveil himself slowly through explaining the Bible to them.

[17:31] He wants them to hear him and believe before they ever see him physically. And that means that Jesus has given us the normal means of grace, an open Bible as the primary way he's going to change people's lives.

[17:46] That matters so much for us because nothing has changed. That's still the ordinary rhythms that, that the Lord uses in our lives. Secondly, he treats Moses and the prophets here as authoritative scripture.

[18:00] So if you look down at verse 25 to 27, you'll see that he says to them, Odull one, slow to believe. And then there's the language, all the prophets have spoken. And then all the prophets have spoken.

[18:12] He's talking there about the old Testament. Then was it not necessary that the Christ would suffer necessary according to what? The old Testament necessary. According to the old Testament, that Christ must die on the cross, suffer these things and rise from the dead, enter into glory.

[18:26] And then with the beginning with Moses, the Torah, the first five books of the Bible and all the prophets, he interpreted to them all the things in the old Testament concerning himself. So he enters into the Bible study.

[18:38] But the second thing I want you to see is that he calls Moses and the prophets scripture. So Jesus Christ, the redeemer looked at the old Testament and said, that is God's word.

[18:52] That is an authority in my life. And that is fundamental for us to see because every single person in this world is looking for an authority. And what the contemporary order of life tells us is that, that the final authority is ultimately left with us.

[19:09] And there's a massive paralysis that takes place in us where we're left to think that what's right and wrong and what I should do with my life and what I should think about the question of meaning and existence is all left up to, to my opinions.

[19:22] And that will leave us in a state of paralysis. It's very important to see that Jesus Christ, the redeemer in the middle of history, looked at the Bible and called it scripture, the writings, his authority. And he does that by looking at the law of Moses and the prophets, meaning every single bit of the old Testament.

[19:39] Now, if you were to be asked as a Christian, why do you believe that the Bible is your authority? We believe it for all sorts of reasons.

[19:51] We could say, well, look, we know we have the right Bible because of the manuscript tradition, you know, far better than Plato's Republic or the Iliad or the Odyssey. We know we have the original text.

[20:02] You could talk about the inner harmony of the text, how it all fits together from garden to garden, from Genesis to Revelation. You could talk about the fulfillment of prophecy. But do you know what the theologians have said about the main reason we believe in the Bible?

[20:17] It's because the Bible tells us that Jesus Christ, who rose from the dead, said that he believed in the Bible. And you say, well, that's a bit circular.

[20:28] And it is. But all final authorities are actually a little bit circular. See, if you don't believe in authority like God's word, then you have to say, well, the final authority actually lands with my opinions on what's right and wrong in this world.

[20:41] And that means that you're resting on your emotions and your intelligence to tell you that your opinions are the final arbiter of your of all your decisions. And that's also circular.

[20:51] And instead here we see Jesus saying, look, if the risen Lord believed the Bible, then you've got to believe the Bible. If Jesus rose from the dead and he believed in the Bible, you've got to believe in the Bible.

[21:04] Thirdly, we're told here in verse 27 that he interpreted the Bible to them. He opened up the scriptures and interpreted it. Very briefly, the word interpret, you see here, we learn that the Bible does have to be interpreted.

[21:21] And that's what Jesus did. He actually had to show them what it means. The word to interpret is a metaphor, the Greek word that's used here for a journey. So it's like you've gone into the text and you've gone through the grammar and the syntax and the paragraphs and the stories, and you've gone through a journey and then you draw the meaning out of that.

[21:41] So the word to interpret means to go through a journey with the text. And so what we're, I think what we're being offered here is the idea that when you walk on the road, the path, the way with Jesus, you're being invited to, for the rest of your life, have it as the normal way that God lights a fire in your heart to journey through the text as he journeys with you, as you journey with him and draw out the meaning.

[22:05] So you don't, you don't put the meaning in interpretation means that you've got to draw the meaning out. And we can't miss today that this is so basic that we can sometimes push past it, that the normal rhythms of the Christian life, the road to Emmaus, the road that you're walking on is that you're called to live a life of interpreting the Bible and walking through the Bible and journeying through the Bible as you walk across your journey.

[22:33] It's a really common thing today to turn and say, I want my spiritual life to be so much more full of aesthetics than word.

[22:44] So you'll probably be very familiar with the statistics that tell us that lots of people are converting to Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. The truth is it's not nearly as much as gets talked about.

[22:56] But why? Well, often people will say because they want worship that's full of sight. But there's so much good about sacred space. There's so much good about seeing and we long to see, but it's so important to see that the normal pattern of the Bible is that God wants us to live the Christian life mainly by hearing until we see him one day in the new heavens and new earth.

[23:20] Now, what does that mean? That means that you're being actually called to live by faith. So what is faith? It's to believe in something you can't yet see. And that's why in this order of existence, you've been invited to hear before you see.

[23:31] Do we forget sometimes that we're actually supposed to be living by faith? It's not supposed to be easy. We've been invited by God to hear him in order to believe him until one day when we see him.

[23:45] Now, the fourth thing and the most important thing we're told here is that beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he taught them how the Bible, the whole Old Testament concerned himself.

[23:56] And then if you jump down to verse 44 to 47, what's mentioned there is when he meets with the 11, he opened up to them the law, the prophets, and the Psalms and explained how the whole Bible was about himself.

[24:10] Now, this is the only place, verse 44 to 47, in the whole New Testament where the threefold order of the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, is mentioned. And so when he talks about Moses, the prophets, and the Psalms, that's because in the Hebrew Bible, before it was translated to English, that was the three-part order.

[24:32] Moses, the five books of Moses, and then the prophets, and the prophets don't begin with Isaiah, they begin with Joshua in the original Bible, the original Old Testament. And then the Psalms are the beginning of a section called the writings.

[24:46] So Jesus, in Second Temple Judaism in this time, they would have understood the Bible. That way you can go by that order, that type of order at Waterstones.

[24:57] It's called the Tanakh, the Torah, the Nevi'im, the Ketuvim, the law of Moses, the prophets, and the writings. Same exact Old Testament as ours, but just slightly reordered. But do you see what he's saying?

[25:07] He's saying that he went through the Torah, the first five books, all the books of the prophets from Joshua down through Ezekiel and Jeremiah, and then Psalms and Ruth and all the way to Chronicles, the very end of the Hebrew Bible, and said, showed them how the whole Old Testament was about him.

[25:26] Now, we don't have exactly what he said. We don't know where he took them to, but seven miles to walk to Emmaus. And I would imagine that if I'm walking with Jesus to Emmaus during the greatest Bible study that ever took place, I'm stopping him along the way and saying, wait, hold on a second.

[25:43] Take me back through that again. You know, it takes about three and a half hours to meander for seven miles. So this could have been a five-hour journey. A five-hour Bible study with Jesus Christ through the Old Testament would have given you a good bit.

[25:56] It could have really provided a lot. And I don't know where he took you, but you can read the rest of the New Testament and see how the apostles read the Old Testament to understand what he later taught them about the Old Testament.

[26:09] So I imagine that he probably took them to a place like Leviticus 16, to the day of atonement, when the priest takes two goats and he sacrifices one goat and he sprinkles the blood of that goat on the walls of the temple to cleanse it from human corruption that's been brought into it.

[26:27] And then he turns and he puts his hand on the other goat and says, you now bear it. Bear the sins of God's people. And he sends that goat out into the wilderness. Why? Because sin does not belong in the midst of God's holy city.

[26:39] So he sends the goat out into the wilderness to wander, not to die, but to wander. Why? Because it's saying the blood of bulls and goats isn't working. It's not enough. We're waiting for the day when the true lamb of God will bear the sins of God's people.

[26:55] The true lamb of God will be sent outside of the city into the wilderness, bearing the sins of God's people. And that's from the Torah. That's from the law of Moses. I would imagine he took them to a place like Isaiah 53.

[27:08] And he said, he bears the sins of many. He will carry our transgressions. And then he took them over to a place like Isaiah 56. And he said, the Messiah, I offered my back to those who would beat me.

[27:22] I offered my cheeks to those who pulled out my beard. And he took them through Isaiah 53. And he said, surely he has borne our sins. And he was stricken for our transgressions.

[27:35] He has borne the weight of human sin. And, you know, verse 44, when he's explaining it to the other 11 disciples, he mentions, these are the words that I told you while I was still with you.

[27:48] What is he saying there? He's saying, I explained to you that the Old Testament was about me when I was doing my ministry, but you didn't see it at the time. And now I'm going back through it. And there was a moment. Here's one.

[27:59] Just one example. When he was with them, they said, teacher, show us a sign. And he said, this generation seeks out after signs, but seeks after what? Seeks after sight.

[28:10] They wanted to see something great. And he said, but all you need is to go back and read Jonah. Remember that? He said, read Jonah and how Jonah was cast down into the heart of the sea for three days and nights.

[28:22] So the son of man must be cast down to the earth for three days and nights. And, you know, these guys stopped him along the way. And they said, they didn't know it was Jesus, but they said, wait, so you're saying that in the book of Jonah, the whole reason Jonah actually exists in human history is because he was always pointing forward to the one, the true and better Jonah, who would go down into the heart of the sea of our sins and be down in the earth for three days and then come back from the dead again.

[28:47] And he would have said, yeah, that's called typology. No, he wouldn't have said that, but we say that now. That's called typology. And you see, he sat there and did the greatest Bible study in world history, showing them how it's always been spoken.

[29:00] I mean, the greatest moment is when he says in verse 26, was it not necessary that according to the prophets, the Messiah, the Redeemer must go into suffering and then enter glory?

[29:10] What is he saying? He's saying the most obvious, the most clear, the most visible thing in the old Testament that's about him is that he must go to the cross and then rise from the dead, that the cross was preached all throughout the history of the old Testament over 1500 years.

[29:24] Now that tells us, and I have to finish, that tells us that the New Testament, pardon me, the Old Testament is the New Testament concealed.

[29:38] And the New Testament is the Old Testament revealed. And the best way this is ever explained to me is that think about the Bible like a bicycle wheel. And on the outside, on the rim of the bicycle, you have thousands of events, psalms and hymns and historical events, the Exodus and the Kings and the Chronicles, thousands of events.

[29:59] And then there's spokes all leading to the center, the hub. And those spokes are all of God's promises, all the thousands of events being held up, but all of God's promises in the very center of that bicycle wheel is Jesus Christ.

[30:14] And so you got to read the Bible by going through the events, reading the promises, finding the center in Jesus, and then reading it back out again. So you read the Old Testament to get to Jesus.

[30:25] And then once you get to Jesus, you read the Old Testament in light of him to understand it fully and completely. And in this most, this great Bible study, and I've lost the plot on my numbers, so we're done with all six.

[30:40] And the greatest Bible study that's ever been given, I just want to say as we finish, we've got to be willing to read the Bible like Jesus read the Bible, right? We've got to read the Bible in the light of Christ, the way Christ read the Bible in the light of Christ, if we want to read it rightly.

[30:54] And boy, if I was to be the author of world history, that's a scary thought. You know, I would have said, I would have said, if God would have said to me, you know, I'm going to transform people's lives for these 2000 years by getting them to read the story of Jonah, by getting them to read David and Bathsheba and seeing how that was actually pointing to a child that would be born, leading to a child that would be born.

[31:20] I would have said, I think we can go bigger. I think we can do something different. And the foolishness of God is wiser than the wisdom of all humanity, right? And that he has chosen the most ordinary thing, the Emmaus road to transform all of human life.

[31:35] And that's that he wrote a book and he keeps opening up hearts and changing people's lives by way of the book. And that means that we've got to be willing to say, I'm going to internalize it.

[31:45] I'm going to take it in. I'm going to make this a priority for my life because this is the thing he has chosen to change my life with, of showing me how Jesus has always been doing what Jesus would do from Genesis all the way to the New Testament.

[31:59] That's how he's chosen to change our lives. It's the Emmaus road. John Calvin, listen to what 26 year old John Calvin says about this when he writes a preface to Pierre Olivier Ton's translation of the New Testament in France.

[32:15] 26 year old John Calvin, he said this, Christ is the true Isaac. Christ is Jacob, the watchful shepherd. He is the compassionate brother, Joseph.

[32:26] He is the priest Melchizedek. He is the lawgiver, Moses, the guide, Joshua, the noble King David, the peaceful King Solomon, the strong Samson who by his death overwhelmed all the enemies.

[32:40] If one were to sift the law and the prophets, he would not find a single word which would not draw us and bring us to him. Then Calvin says, this is what the Old Testament teaches us.

[32:51] He was sold to buy us back. Jesus became captive to deliver us. He was condemned to absolve us. He was made a curse for our blessing. In him, death is dead.

[33:02] In him, mortality has been made immortal. Do your hearts not burn within you when you realize that 1500 years before Jesus Christ ever came into this world, the Bible was preaching him?

[33:19] Do your hearts not burn within you to know that? That this is real. This is history. The promised one of the Old Testament is the son of God who came into the middle of history and he came for you.

[33:29] And so right now, even in this moment, he is opening up the scriptures to you. He's doing that through the power of the Holy Spirit. You've got to internalize the word.

[33:39] You've got to come. You've got to receive it. You've got to believe in him in order to see the word truly. And you've got to see the word truly in order to believe in him.

[33:51] Let us pray. Father, we ask that you would change our lives by way of the word. We thank you, Jesus, for this most wonderful Bible study where you showed us Christ yourself in all of scripture, the Torah and the prophets and the writings.

[34:08] And so we ask today that you would set a fire in our hearts for coming back again to the Bible and finding it precious, finding the word sweet as honey, searching for Christ, searching for you in all the right ways through the Old Testament into the new.

[34:23] Not so that we can be great at Bible studies, but Lord, so that we can see our redeemer and see that you have called us by faith in this season until one day we have sight. So, Lord, give us faith, strengthen our faith that we really are called to believe by hearing in this moment.

[34:39] And we pray that in Christ's name. Amen.