It Was Written: On The Christocentric Nature Of Scripture
Luke 24.13-49
Introduction
“I see dead people.” This is the most famous line from M. Night Shyamalan’s most famous movie, The Sixth Sense. This film follows a child psychologist, played by Bruce Willis, who is treating a patient, played by Haley Joel Osment, who can see and talk to the dead. The big reveal at the end is that Bruce Willis has been dead the whole time (sorry if that’s a spoiler, but the movie came out 22 years ago; it’s on you if you haven’t seen it!). When you go back and watch the film again with the knowledge that Bruce Willis’ character has been dead the whole time you see things you didn’t see the first time. The story is exactly the same but when you have the knowledge of the ending, you experience the story in an entirely different way.
The same principle is at work in the Bible. The Old Testament is about God’s creation of everything, the fall of his creation into sin because of Adam, and God’s promise to redeem his creation and his people. As we turn to the pages of the New Testament the mystery is revealed that God’s plan of redemption was all about his Son Jesus Christ. What the Old Covenant elect saw only in shadows and types, gives way to the substance of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
So when you go back and read the Old Testament with the knowledge of the ending, with the knowledge that it was all about Jesus all along, you see things you didn’t see before. Just like watching The Sixth Sense with the knowledge of a deceased protagonist utterly illuminates and enriches the film, so reading the Old Testament with the knowledge of the gospel completely illuminates and enriches Genesis – Malachi. The Old Testament is not merely Hebrew Scripture; it is Christian Scripture. It is not a collection of stories about Israel; it is the story of Jesus Christ. B.B. Warfield used the illustration that the Old Testament is a treasure filled room dimly lit. The gospel of Jesus is a light. When the light is brought into the room it doesn’t create new treasure, but reveals treasure that was there all along.
We have just completed our sermon series through the covenants. Next week we begin a new series on the book of Malachi. This morning is our transition. Before we begin our series through Malachi we must remind ourselves of the central presupposition for reading the book of Malachi – it is all about Christ. The Old Testament is all about Christ and the book of Malachi is all about Christ. In Luke 24 Jesus explains that the Old Testament is all about Christ.
I don’t know much about much. Some of you are engineers, or teachers, or nurses, or graphic designers, or administrators, or homemakers, or any number of things and you know more about all that than I’ll ever know. But if there’s one thing I better know it’s that the Bible is all about Jesus. I did my doctoral work in Expository Preaching and I wrote my dissertation on Christ-centered preaching. There are few things I’m more zealous about than that the pulpit of Christ Community Church delivers exclusively Christ-centered sermons.
In Luke 24 Jesus himself declares that the Bible is Christ-centered. Our sermon summary this morning will guide us through this text. The sermon summary is a sentence that summarizes the point of the sermon and here it is: The Bible has the power to change our hearts because the whole Bible is about the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of our sins. We will divide this sermon summary in two and we will see how this text reveals to us that the whole Bible is about the gospel of Jesus Christ.
The Bible has the Power to Change our Hearts
As we pick up our text in Luke 24.13, remember the setting. Luke 24.1 opens with the women coming to Jesus’ tomb on the first Easter Sunday morning. The tomb is empty and an angel tells them that Christ is risen indeed. The women tell the disciples and Peter ran to the tomb to find it empty.
Verse 13 continues the Easter narrative: that very day two of them were going to a village named Emmaus. Two of Jesus’ disciples were making the seven-mile trek from Jerusalem to Emmaus talking about the events of Good Friday. And then the resurrected Jesus Christ is revealed to us for the first time in Luke’s Gospel. Jesus interrupts them but Scripture tells us their eyes were kept from recognizing him (vs. 16). God sovereignly blinds them to the reality that they’re speaking to the risen Christ.
Jesus inserts himself into their conversation, and notice how they respond. Luke says they stood still, looking sad. These men are devastated. They had given years of their life to ministry with Jesus. They had believed with their whole heart that the hopes and fears of all the years had been met in Jesus of Nazareth. Then he died.
These disciples are shocked and maybe even a little disgusted with Jesus’ question. They respond, “are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?” And they go on in verses 19-24 to pour their hearts out about how they had hoped Jesus was the promised one, but he was crucified. And now they don’t even know where his dead body is. Their worldview had been shattered. Their hope smashed.
We see the deepest need of every human heart in Jesus’ response to their depression: “O foolish ones, and slow of heart.” Later when Jesus appears to the disciples he says in verse 38, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts?” Of the handful of dialogue that Luke ascribes to the resurrected Christ, twice he reveals that the problem is their heart. They were slow of heart to believe the Bible.
Notice also two things when Jesus goes to the village with the guys for the night: (1) there is a Eucharistic echo. Jesus took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them. This is almost word-for-word the same thing Luke wrote about the last supper:
And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me” (Luke 22.19).
Luke is writing to the church decades later that would be taking the Eucharist every Sunday, like we do. And it is at this point that Jesus disappears and they realize that they had been with the resurrected Christ. Luke is showing us that Christ is revealed not only in Word but also in sacraments. The sacraments are the sign and seal of the New Covenant. They are tangible expressions of the gospel. Listen to what NT Wright says in his little commentary on Luke:
“Scripture and sacrament, word and meal are joined tightly together, here as elsewhere. Take scripture away, and the sacrament becomes a piece of magic. Take the sacrament away, and scripture becomes an intellectual or emotional exercise, detached from real life. Put them together and you have the centre of Christian living, as Luke understands it.”
Father Thomas McKenzie was an Anglican priest in Nashville. He died in a car accident on August 23rd at 50 years old. Christianity Today had an excellent obituary that included this quote from one of his writings,
“The Church only has two things to offer the world: Word and Sacrament. These two, together, are how we proclaim the Gospel. The Word is the voice of the Gospel, the Sacraments are the body. The only reason for the Church to exist is to proclaim the Gospel, in word and deed. We’ve been about this work for 2,000 years, and I don’t expect us to stop until Christ’s return.”
The resurrected Jesus Christ here models for us the importance of both the Word and the sacraments.
(2) Notice what the disciples say when they realize they had been with the resurrected Christ. “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?” When Jesus explained the Old Testament was about the gospel, when Jesus broke the bread, their hearts burned. This is the third time in this post-resurrection pericope that addresses the need of the heart. The Word and the sacraments are heart changing. God has given them to his people to renew and sustain our hearts.
Jesus doesn’t say, “Foolish ones and slow of mind to understand all that the Bible has said.” He doesn’t rebuke them saying, “Foolish ones and slow to do all the Bible commands.” No, their deepest problem is that they’re slow of heart to believe. And that’s what Jesus came to heal. Jesus is showing them that his resurrection will be applied first to their hearts. It’s another way of saying what the prophet Ezekiel promised. One of our Elders Bob Owens read it in the call to worship; the promise of a new heart.
The good news of the resurrection of Jesus Christ is that the New Covenant has been inaugurated. All who repent of their sin and trust in him will be given a new heart that beats for Christ. The Holy Spirit raises dead hearts enabling people to repent and believe. This good news is found in the Bible alone. And so this text reveals that the Bible has the power to change our hearts because the Bible contains the gospel. It can regenerate dead hearts and it can continue to reform Christian hearts through the sanctifying work of the Spirit.
Because the Whole Bible is about the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ for the Forgiveness of our Sins
And it’s not just the New Testament that reveals the gospel of Jesus Christ it is the whole Bible. The Bible has the power to change hearts because the whole Bible is about the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins. In Luke’s Gospel Jesus’ main point of teaching post-resurrection is that the whole Bible is about the gospel. Jesus tells them their biggest problem is that they’re slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken.
When Christ appears to the disciples collectively he says,
“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.” 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 (Luke 24.44-47).
Let’s be clear: Jesus is saying that the entire Old Testament is about the gospel. He is not saying that parts of the Old Testament are about the gospel, but that the entire Old Testament is about the gospel. In the first century Israel’s Bible was our Old Testament but it was formatted differently. It contained the same books, but in a different order. Their Old Testament started with Genesis and ended with Chronicles.
When Jesus says the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms, he’s talking about the whole Old Testament. Their Old Testament had three divisions: the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings. The Law: Genesis – Deuteronomy. The Prophets: Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the 12 Minor Prophets (Hosea – Malachi). The Writings are Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Lamentations, Daniel, Ruth, Esther, Ezra-Nehemiah, Job, Daniel, and Chronicles. Jesus calls the Writings the Psalms because it was the most prominent of the Writings.
Notice Luke says that he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures. Sinful human minds cannot understand the Bible unless Jesus opens them to understand the Bible. Maybe you’re not a Christian and you can’t make sense of parts of the Bible, especially sexual ethics or Old Testament passages about war and conquest. Pray and ask God to open your eyes to see Jesus. If you’re a Christian who struggles to see Christ in all the Bible or even to understand certain passages. You’re in good company. Even Peter wrote that some of St. Paul’s writings are hard to understand (2 Pet 3.16). Pray and ask God to open your mind to understand his Word.
Jesus goes on to say that it is written in the Old Testament that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead. There is no verse in the Old Testament that says that so what is Jesus saying? Like the Sixth Sense the truth was there even if you didn’t see it at first.
We see the gospel from the very beginning when on the third day of creation God caused life to rise up from the ground:
God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth.” And it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the third day (Gen 1.11-13).
We hear it for the first time explicitly in Genesis 3.15 when YHWH promised that the seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent. We see it in Genesis 22 where Abraham is called to sacrifice Isaac and they get to the mountain on the third day. We see it in Exodus 19 when Israel comes to Mount Sinai on the third day after their Exodus. We hear it in the Prophets. Hosea 6.1-2 predicts that YHWH will resurrect Israel:
Come, let us return to the Lord; for he has torn us, that he may heal us; he has struck us down, and he will bind us up. After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will raise us up, that we may live before him.
There’s a shadow in the writings when Esther prepares the banquet for the king on the third day (Esther 5.1). And that’s just to name a few! The entire Old Testament is the promise of the gospel of Jesus Christ that is fulfilled in the New Testament. And Jesus says that this message isn’t merely prediction for prediction’s sake. It is so that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations.
Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. He lived a truly human life, yet without sin (Heb 4.15). His sinless, law-abiding, covenant-keeping life earned righteousness before God that Adam lost for all of us. On the cross Jesus took God’s just wrath for our sin and he died. On the third day God raised him from the dead vindicating his life and death and securing victory over sin and death forever. If you will turn from your sin and trust in Christ alone you will be saved. Tim Keller describes the gospel in this way: “We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope.”
Your sins can be forgiven because Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures. He was buried and raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures (1st Cor 15.3-4). If you’re not a Christian repent of your sin and trust in Christ alone because everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved (Rom 10.13). If you are a Christian keep repenting of your sin and keep trusting in Christ every day. Submit to the ministry of the Word and sacrament every week here at church. Read your Bible every day. The Bible has the power to change our hearts because the whole Bible is about the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of our sins.
Conclusion
The big reveal at the end of The Sixth Sense is that Bruce Willis was dead the entire time. The big reveal of Luke 24 is that Jesus Christ is alive and that his death and resurrection was the plan the entire time. Haley Joel Osment may have seen dead people, but in Luke 24 we see a resurrected person. And he is the light of the world that reveals the treasure that’s been there all along. The Bible has the power to change our hearts because the whole Bible is about the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of our sins.