“Why is the Bible such a thrilling and powerful book? Simply because it is all about Jesus Christ. We might say that the Bible is Jesus’s autobiography. This book is his book. Genesis to Revelation are sixty-six mirrors, held up by the Spirit of God so that you and I might see Jesus in his excellence.”
“We struggle to see Jesus, though. Our eyes are not accustomed to looking for Jesus in whole swathes of the Old Testament. Even when we get to the New Testament, we end up making our Bible reading (and sometimes our sermons) all about ourselves. We forget Jesus as we handle his Word, or we make Jesus the supporting actor as we try to play the lead role in God’s drama. No wonder the Bile is a dull book, when we forget that Jesus is its center. It was never actually about us in the first place (nor it is an interesting miscellany of facts, rules, ideologies, or life tips). The Bible is Jesus’s book, all that God has to show us about his Son, and all that we need to come to his Son and to be transformed by him. Make the Bible anything less than the discovery of Jesus, and no wonder we can so easily be dull preachers and disciples.”
“Jesus rebuked his enemies for not realizing that the Bible was all about him (John 5:39-40). He did the same to his disciples (Luke 24:25-27). As my eighteen-year-old son said to me last night, with the confidence and off-hand directness so effortless for teenagers, ‘Jesus is (“is” in italics) the Bible.’ I’ve never put it like that, and that statement needs some qualification, but I quite like it.”
“When Jesus spoke about the Bible and his central place in it, his words sent shock and delight through his hearers. From his earliest sermons right through to his last, Jesus expounded his place in God’s plans and God’s Word. For his troubles, Jesus received death-threats, and then a death sentence (see Matthew 26:62-68; /p 41/ Mark 12:1-12; Luke 4:14-29; John 8:48-59). What Jesus’s enemies refused to see, his disciples finally realized, slow though they were, just like us.”
“The Emmaus road (Luke 24:13-49) is a path worn nearly smooth by the tread of preachers over the centuries. But however many sermons we’ve heard or even preached on it, its message is still startling and compelling. Luke masterfully retells Jesus’s strange appearance to those brokenhearted disciples. Because we readers know that Christ is risen, we can’t really enter the despair of the disciples. But listen to the dejection of their hearts: ‘we had hoped’ (v. 21). All their hopes in the Messiah were now broken. Maybe that was once our despair, and it’s certainly the quiet despair of many people.”
“Jesus’s way of comfort came through rebuke (vvv. 25-26). The disciples misunderstood the cross and doubted the empty tomb. That was because they didn’t understand the Scriptures and were lacking in faith. Where their hearts should have been burning at the message of a crucified and risen Messiah, they were instead numb with grief. The risen Christ needed to teach them his gospel, and with that instruction all become clear.”
“The risen Lord still brings the same transformation. The men on the road had just left Jerusalem, but soon they were coming back to it in the evening. They were willing to take to the road, even at night. That morning they had been brokenhearted, but in the evening they returned with burning hearts (v. 32) to be committed messengers of the risen Christ, the Christ of all the Scriptures.”
“The point of the narrative for us today is that if we want to see the glory of Christ, we must go to his Word. The Emmaus story ends with Christ disappearing—but his Word remains. He makes himself known through the Scriptures. No other means will tell us about the truth of Christ.” /p 42/
“Our job as disciples who are also preachers is to discover that Jesus is at the heart of all Scripture. When we make that personal discovery, then our hearts will start to glow; and once they glow, they will soon start to burn. We want to trust Jesus Christ, giving all that we are to all that he is in his gospel love. We want to praise him as the Lord of all glory, who suffered the pains of hell in our place at the cross. Our calling as disciples is to guard our burning hearts with the help of the Holy Spirit. Our calling as preaches is to get that fire started in the hearts of those we preach to, as trust in in him and praise for him are expressed in proclaiming him. As long as we are bringing Christ in all the Scriptures in the power of the Spirit, then we will not fail. That is what we turn to next.”
Lewis Allen, The Preacher’s Catechism, foreword by Sinclair B. Ferguson, Crossway, Wheaton 2018, pp. 40-42.
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