A five-day-per-week study

June 9 – Luke 24:13-35

Read and believe in Jesus.

“Did not our hearts burn within us while He talked to us on the road, while He opened the Scriptures?” Luke 24:32

The Gospel according the Luke.

REVIEW – Jesus was resurrected early on the first day of the week (Sunday). A group of women came to do a thorough job of annointing His body with spices and ointments. (Joseph was hurried on Friday when he placed Jesus’ body in his tomb because it was almost the Sabbath.) /But the women found the tomb empty. Then a pair of angels appeared. One asked them the most amazing question. “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” He told them to remember what Jesus had said about rising from the dead. The women ran to tell the disciples, who pooh-poohed their account. But … after they left, Peter (and John) ran to the tomb to find it exactly as the women had said.

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Luke 24:13-24.

Later on the same day, when the women and the apostles received the good news that Jesus had risen, we meet two more of the Master’s disciples. They were returning home from Jerusalem to Emmaus after Passover. One was named Cleopas (possibly the husband of one of the Marys who stood at the cross, see John 19:25).

As they walked, they talked about everything that had happened in Jerusalem that week: 1) Jesus’ triumphant entry on a donkey, 2) His amazing teaching, 3) His arrest, trial, and ultimate horrible crucifixion, with the darkness and earthquake, 4) Joseph’s merciful act of burial, and then 5) the news about His resurrection. It was all just too much to take in.

As they walked, a man joined them on the road. Jesus kept His identity from them as they went, listening, then questioning what they were talking about.

They stopped, amazed, and Cleopas asked, “Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?“

“What things?” Jesus asked them, urging them on.

“Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, a man who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people. We had hoped that He was the One to redeem Israel! And now, some of the women amazed us, saying they saw a vision of angels who said that He was alive!

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Luke 24:25-27.

“O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken!” said Jesus tenderly. “Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into His glory?

And beginning with Moses (five books of the Law) and all the Prophets, He interpreted to them in ALL Scriptures the things concerning Himself.

(Some of the Scriptures would have included an explanation of the sacrificial system, with its offerings and death. He would have pointed them to the prophetic passages that spoke of crucifixion, like Psalm 16, 22, and 69, Isaiah 52-53, Zechariah 12-13, and even explained such passages as Genesis 3:15, Numbers 21:5-9, Psalm 16:10, Jeremiah 23:5-6, Daniel 9:26, as well as many more.)

OH, WOULDN’T YOU HAVE LOVED TO HEAR THAT TEACHING AS THEY WALKED ALONG? This is why we should study the Old Testament too. It’s rich in the things that point to Jesus.

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Luke 24:28-32.

When they came to their house in Emmaus, Jesus acted as if he would travel farther, but they urged Him strongly to stay with them for the night. Jesus agreed.

When he was at the table with them, Jesus took the bread, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to them. (OH, that must have seemed SO familiar!!) And at that minute, Jesus “opened their eyes to recognize Him.” And then He vanished.

Amazed, cheered, and with more understanding of all the events as they finished the simple meal, they said over and over, “Did not our hearts burn within us while He talked to us on the road, while He opened to us the Scriptures?”

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Luke 24:33-35.

And they got up that same hour and returned to Jerusalem. And they found the Eleven and those who were with them gathered together, saying, “The Lord has risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon!” Then the two from Emmaus told what had happened along the road, and how He was known to them in the breaking of bread.

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What a time of rejoicing that must have been. Jesus really was alive. And those who hadn’t witnessed His appearing yet longed for it to happen to them too. (And it would soon.)

Oh, and don’t you know that special appearance to “Simon” (not Peter) was surely a sweet time, when the distraught disciple who had denied his Lord three times, as predicted, was tenderly assured that he was still Jesus’ own sure possession. Such grace. Such love.