On the road to Emmaus the risen Jesus joined two of His disciples who were debating the things that had happened over the past several days, trying to make sense of them in light of their hope in Him as the Messiah. They could not understand where His body was if He had been raised, assuming it must be as they had known Him after the flesh, so they wrongly imagined that they would certainly recognize Him if they saw Him. But His mortal body sown in death had been raised an imperishable body, not bound by time and space, so they in fact didn’t recognize that it was actually Him who had joined them. For their eyes, holden in this physical realm, could not see that behind this manifestation of His spiritual body, it was Him. They clearly understood that Jesus was an extraordinary man of all men, a prophet, and had hoped that He would redeem Israel, which ironically His death accomplished, but in a much greater way, though different, than they imagined. They also even understood Jesus’ prediction that He would be raised again on the third day, that it was then the third day, and His tomb was found empty that morning by some women who claimed to have had a vison of angels who said He was alive. Still though, because “Him they did not see” (Luk 24:24), they, along with the rest of Jesus’ disciples, couldn’t believe it. What did Jesus, in appearance as the traveler whom they didn’t recognize, then say to them in reply? See Luk 24:25-27. Although they didn’t recognize that it was Him, what did they later confess was the effect His words had upon them? See Luk 24:32. What should we learn from this about one way we might discern that the Lord is speaking to us through His Spirit as we meditate upon His word or it is being expounded to us by His servants?
When He called them foolish men, was He necessarily being derogatory to reproach them, as when He spoke of the foolish who built their house upon the sand (Mat 7:26), or the foolish virgins (Mat 25:2), or called the religious leaders fools and blind men (Mat 23:17)? Note that the word used here (ἀνόητος) means literally not thinking or not perceiving, whereas a different word (μωρός) is used in these other contexts that means stupid and is always used as a term of reproach. See Rom 1:14, Gal 3:1,3, 1Ti 6:9, and Tit 3:3 for the other NT occurrences of ἀνόητος, which are instructive. Besides not carefully thinking through everything that the prophets had spoken about the Christ so as to better understand the truth of His resurrection, what else did Jesus say in Luk 24:25 was hindering them from believing? Who seems to have been the only disciple of Jesus who was not slow of heart to believe, even though he didn’t understand it? See Joh 20:8-9. What one word, central to all our religious expression, do we use to describe the opposite of being slow of heart to believe? See Heb 10:38-39, 11:6. Have we faith to believe all that God has spoken to us in His word, even when it appears impossible to our eyes? Cf. Mar 9:22-23, Luk 18:27. What can we do to increase our faith and so become less slow of heart to believe all that God has said? See Rom 10:17; cf. Psa 77:11-15.
Whereas the disciples, steeped just as we are in worldly thinking, simply couldn’t imagine any victory in such a crushing defeat as the cross, what single statement did Jesus make to upend their thinking so they could begin to understand the true victory He had actually accomplished there? See Luk 24:26; cf. 1Pe 1:10-11. Although we think of glory in terms of our enemies being defeated after the manner of the world and made to suffer for their affront to us, how much more glorious was Christ’s victory for having suffered the things He did to reconcile each one of us, the enemies of God, to Himself? In what way then did the crown of thorns and the robe with which they mocked Him literally become for Him a crown of glory? As we take up our cross to follow Christ, is that the sort of glory we are willing to partake of, or do we wrongly imagine that we can somehow become a partaker of His glory without also becoming a partaker of His sufferings? See Rom 8:17, Phil 3:10-11. Do we understand that Christ’s glory to which He calls us to share as participants is not one of simply joining Him in His victory, but also joining Him in the same sort of sufferings through which that glorious victory can only be achieved for ourselves? See Mat 16:24-25, Luk 6:22-23, Act 5:41, Rom 5:3, 1Pe 3:14, 4:12-14, 5:1,10; cf. 2Co 12:9-10, Jam 1:2-3,12. In what way was it this understanding that allowed the Church to turn the world upside down to establish Christ’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven? See 2Co 4:6-18 (esp. 2Co 4:10,17), Col 1:24, 1Pe 2:18-23. Understanding the true nature of Christ’s glory, what might we better understand about what Jesus meant when He said He would come in His glory (Mat 16:27, 25:31, Mar 8:38)? Should we necessarily understand it as is typically imagined in a worldly sense that He will come in might and power to finally give His enemies and ours their comeuppance? Or is it possible that He has come in that same glory throughout history, and continues to come in His glory every time His followers through His Spirit follow in His footsteps to proclaim the truth, often suffering as a consequence just as He did, but in this manner defeating His enemies, and ours, just as He did at the cross?