And *he* said to them, O senseless and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken!
Two disciples walk away from Jerusalem in gloom. The risen Christ joins them, and they do not recognise Him. His first word is not comfort but rebuke. So why does He blame their hearts and not their circumstances? And what had they failed to believe?
Their grief looked like a fair response to a crucifixion. The Lord traces it elsewhere.
This unusual Stranger spoke to them tenderly and faithfully, with surprising words: "O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken!" (v.25). Their own lack of faith in the Word of God had led to their discouragement. After all, the Old Testament prophets had given clear witness to the sufferings and death of the Messiah of Israel.
They were not unbelievers. They believed part of what the prophets said. That partial faith was the problem.
Such is the real secret of unbelief in believers. They fail because they do not believe all. With only a partial view of divine truth, they easily exaggerate one point or another. And since they do not read Christ throughout Scripture, they tend to dodge the rejection in the world that disciples must accept, or at least go through, if they follow the Master. They will share His glory later on just as surely.
The same narrow reading is still possible today.
They had their favourite texts and dwelt on them. They had not taken in all the Scriptures, and had not realised that He was the theme of them all. If we realise that, we shall pay greater attention to the Scriptures. We shall read them more often, and not stay with our favourite texts.
Which part of the prophets' witness had they left out?
There was one thing they all seemed to fail to grasp about Christ, and that was the necessity of His sufferings. It was foretold that the Christ was to be the centre of all the coming glory. But it was also foretold — and this is where the difficulty came, a difficulty with thoughtful Jews even today — that "the Christ must suffer." They could believe all those glowing prophecies about Him, the throne, the dominion and the glory. But when it was said He would be wounded for their transgressions and bruised for their iniquities, they seemed unable to connect that with the Messiah, the Christ who is yet to reign so gloriously.
Their minds were already full — of the wrong thoughts.
They were occupied with their own thoughts about Christ instead of God's thoughts. With minds full of human thoughts they were unable to grasp divine thoughts — they were "slow of heart to believe" all that the prophets have spoken. Unbelief lay behind their disappointment. Unbelief turned their feet away from the Lord's people. Unbelief set their tongues reasoning, filled their hearts with sadness, and held their eyes shut, so that they could not recognise the Lord.
The rebuke is the first step in a work of restoration.
Finding out what is in our hearts does not restore us, important as that is in the work of restoration. We do need true thoughts of our own hearts, to learn how we wander onto a wrong path. But we must have true thoughts of His heart, so that our feet may be brought back to a right path. This is the way the Lord takes with the two disciples. Having exposed all that was in their hearts, He reveals all that is in His heart. And revealing what is in His heart turns their "slow hearts" into "burning hearts."
One Person ties the whole Bible together.
The theme here is "Himself," and truly His name runs like a golden thread through every part of God's Word. Oh, dear friends, have your hearts found that out? Christ is the centre of Scripture; He is the centre of all the thoughts and purposes and counsels of God. If you do not have Christ simply before your soul you can never understand the Scriptures.
The charge gets turned around today.
Sadly, these days a man is counted a fool if he does believe all that the prophets have spoken. In many learned circles — and in not a few religious circles too — the man who says openly, as every true man should, that he believes every line of Holy Scripture with all his heart will almost surely meet a sneer of contempt.
- Cause — Their sadness came from unbelief, not from their circumstances. The prophets had spoken of His sufferings long before they happened.
- Partial — The rebuke rests on one word: all. Believers fail by keeping a few favourite texts and skipping the rest.
- Skipped — What they had left out was the suffering Messiah; they held the glory and could not join it to the wounds.
- Heart — The slowness sits in the heart, not just the head. Minds full of their own thoughts about Christ cannot take in God's thoughts.
- Burning — He exposes their hearts in order to reveal His own. The slow heart becomes a burning heart, and the golden thread through all Scripture is Himself.
Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into his glory?
Two followers of Jesus were walking away from Jerusalem to the village of Emmaus, in grief. They were sure the cross had ended everything they hoped for. The risen Lord answers them with a question, not with proof that He is alive. That question turns the cross from an accident into a necessity.
The disciples knew their Scriptures. Their problem was that they believed only part of them. They welcomed the promises of a reigning Messiah. They had no room for a wounded one.
There was one thing they all seemed to fail to grasp about Christ, and that was the necessity of His sufferings. It was foretold that the Christ was to be the centre of all the coming glory. But it was also foretold — and this is where the difficulty came — that the Christ must suffer. They might believe all those glowing prophecies about Him: the throne, the dominion and the glory. But when the prophets said He was going to be pierced for their transgressions and crushed for their iniquities, they seemed unable to connect that with the Messiah who is yet to reign so gloriously.
The verse turns on one word: necessary. His suffering was not bad luck, and not a plan that went wrong.
In the world as it is, Christ could not help but suffer; and everyone who is perfected shall be as He is. It is morally inevitable. God's own nature makes it so, and the Word requires it as well. It could not be otherwise, God being what He is, and man a sinner held in bondage to the enemy.
A crown was once offered to Him without a cross, and He turned it down.
He has indeed come — but not to claim those rights. Instead He let man have his hour, and let the power of darkness assert itself, so that He might carry out redemption by His death. Satan, who has wickedly seized the crown, even offered it to Him during the temptation in the wilderness. He refused it. He would not take that short and easy way to glory. He chose the hard road that lay through death and resurrection.
Their hope had been a Messiah who would break Rome's grip. What they receive on the road is something larger than what they had wanted.
He drew out their thoughts to lead them into the truth. The sorrows of His rejection seemed impossible to explain, and did not fit what they expected. Yet He led them to see that the divine Word itself required those sorrows... They had looked for redemption by power. Now, in His suffering to the very limit, the Just for the unjust, they learn redemption by blood. And not this only: a new life out of death and above it, given to us in Him, with Satan's power in sin and its consequences defeated for ever.
He was already glorious long before Bethlehem, so the phrase needs care.
What glory is this? He is Himself the Source and Centre of glory, so nothing could be added to Him. But His death and resurrection brought a whole new order of things into being. He takes His place at the Head of that, in the full power of redemption glory.
William Kelly draws the same line, and shows why it matters to us.
His glory is the consequence of His sufferings. I am not speaking, of course, of His personal external glory. That is another thing. I speak of the glory He takes as man, for this is what brings us in — although it could not have been, had He not been God.
After the question He opened the Scriptures to them, from Moses onward. The way He did it shows how the whole Bible is put together.
He Himself — all homage to His glorious Person! — is the divine centre of all the things contained in the Scriptures from cover to cover. He is the golden chain that joins every part of the inspired book, from Genesis to Revelation, into one marvellous and magnificent whole.
The pattern He set is not His alone. It runs on into the lives of those who follow Him, with one great difference.
And truly the saints' way to salvation lies along the same road (Rom. 8:17): "provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him." There is only this advantage: He went first and beat the road flat. Now we can cross it, though apart from Him it would have been impassable to us.
- Must, not might. His suffering was not a plan that failed. God's own nature demanded it, and the Word had said it.
- Refused shortcut. In the wilderness Satan offered Him the crown without a cross. He chose the hard road through death instead.
- Blood, not power. They wanted a Messiah who would break Rome; He gave them redemption by His own blood, the Just for the unjust.
- Glory as man. Nothing could be added to His eternal Person. As man He entered a new place: Head of a new order won by resurrection.
- Same road. Suffering first, then glory: that is the believer's order too. He walked the road ahead of us and made it passable.
And having begun from Moses and from all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.
The two disciples walking to Emmaus had lost hope, because their Messiah had died on a cross. Now the risen Lord walks beside them unrecognised and opens the Old Testament to them — why the Scriptures, and not a sight of His face?
The two names are not a short reading list. They are a way of naming the entire Hebrew Bible.
The phrase "Moses and all the Prophets" takes in the whole of the Old Testament. "Beginning with Moses" means the five books of Moses — Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. Then come "all the Prophets," and "He interpreted to them in all the Scriptures" — that is, the Old Testament Scriptures — "the things concerning Himself."
That starting point settles a question people still argue over: who wrote those first five books.
He spoke with great care of Daniel as "the prophet" near the close of the Old Testament, and of Moses at the beginning as the writer of the law. He does not simply leave the Jewish view of Moses unchallenged. He affirms it, and He insists on it Himself, again and again, in the plainest terms.
If Christ runs through the Scriptures from Genesis onwards, He is not one theme among many. He holds the whole book together.
He Himself — all honour to His glorious Person! — is the divine centre of all the things contained in the Scriptures from cover to cover. He is the golden chain. It binds every part of the inspired volume, from Genesis to Revelation, into one marvellous and magnificent whole.
What He showed them reached beyond the passages we call predictions. The same teaching is open to us today.
This would include types (pictures) of Himself, of His sacrifice and of His resurrection glory, as well as direct prophecies. How marvellous this long discourse must have been! Yet it was only for these two, however much we might wish someone had written it down for us. But it is the work of the Holy Spirit today to take the things of Christ and show them to us. So, by diligent faith and submission to Him, we too may learn the same things.
He was alive and walking beside them. He could have settled everything by pointing to the plain facts. He opened the Scriptures instead.
Jesus hears their sad story from their own lips. He brings out the state of their hearts. Then He opens the Scriptures, instead of just pointing to the facts as evidence. This use of the Scriptures by our Lord is very significant. The word of God is the truest, deepest and weightiest testimony — even when the risen Jesus Himself stood there as its living proof in person... From then on it was not a question of a living Messiah on the earth, but of One who had died and risen, now seen by faith in the word of God.
Notice what He withheld as much as what He gave.
The written Word was enough to have taught them about all that had happened. First He rebuked them for being slow of heart to believe it. Then He turned them back to it. He would settle their faith on what God had already given. He gave them no fresh revelation. They must stand on the written word of God. That done, He made Himself known as risen from the dead... What He sought for those two, He seeks for still, that souls should take God at His word, and rest on what He has revealed. The sooner a soul does that, the sooner it will have peace with God.
The story He drew out of the Scriptures has two parts in a set order. Human thinking would gladly drop the first.
To reveal the love of His heart He expounds "to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself". And as He expounds He passes before them the touching story of His sufferings and His glories. The disciples, with their poor human thoughts, would have spared Him the sufferings. That would have kept His glories from Him.
The change in these two men was a change of subject.
The two disciples had been thinking of the things concerning themselves. The Lord leads them to "the things concerning Himself". Their desire was to bring Christ into their circumstances. He would lead them into His, and have them know Him as the Risen One outside this present evil world.
Anyone who has been moved by good teaching about Christ can guess a little of what that walk was like.
Think what it must have been to hear Him going through the Scriptures from Moses on, and from type, shadow, figure, offering and sacrifice, picking out what told of Himself, and so explaining it that their hearts began to burn. No wonder — the fact was this: they had never met such a Stranger, they had never had such teaching, and never had such company before.
- Scope. "Moses and all the Prophets" means the whole Old Testament. Christ started at page one and left nothing out.
- Centre. Across that whole range He is the one subject: the golden chain binding every part of the volume into one.
- Method. He opened the Scriptures instead of simply appearing. He wanted their faith to rest on the written word, not on what they could see.
- Order. What He drew out was sufferings first and glory after — the very sequence their hopes had reversed.
- Result. He turns hearts from their own concerns to Himself, and has them know Him as the Risen One outside this present world.