Did Ever Your Heart Burn Within You?

“And they said one to another, ‘Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the scriptures?’” (Luke 24:32)

Surely there are times when Christ comes near and we do not readily recognize Him. Something prevents us from seeing, from recognizing Him for who He is. Because our hearts are sad our vision is almost blindness. The voice is like music and the words profound; His talk is persuasive and His tone understanding and helpful.

Then comes the moment when the eyes of our understanding are opened and we instantly know it has been our Lord speaking to us. It is He who caused our hearts to sweetly burn within us. His explanation, His expounding, His interpreting to us the things in the Scriptures concerning Himself is enough to make the very heart to warm with delight and insight, to say, “Now I see, for He has made the difficult things plain, the obscure things clear.”

The walk from Jerusalem to Emmaus was several miles. On that day part of the trip surely seemed shorter than usual, as Jesus joined them on the road and walked with them and explained to them what they thought they already understood, but didn’t. They had believed the Scriptures throughout their whole lives, no doubt; but Jesus told them that they had not believed “all that the prophets have spoken,” a serious charge and one that might easily offend anyone who was quite certain that they did believe in all the Scriptures.  Yet the prophets had surely written of both the sufferings of Messiah and His glory, but these two disciples had not believed what they (along with many others) failed to rightly understand. Far from offending them, Jesus’ explanation began to set their hopeless hearts aflame. In the course of that time listening to the risen Christ, hopelessness gave way to faith, belief in “all that the prophets have spoken.”

They began to see what happened in Jerusalem in an entirely new light. Far from the tragedy they had perceived, the death of Jesus the Messiah was what God had always intended—all for the redemption of sinners, to reconcile us His people to Himself through the atoning death of His Son. The resurrection, as Paul would later preach at the Areopagus, is absolute proof that God was and is entirely pleased with the sacrifice of His Son. The Sin-bearer’s sacrifice was accepted by the One to whom it was presented, as the Father of our Lord Jesus validated His pure success on the cross “by raising Him from the dead” (Acts 17:31).

As we now read the Scriptures of the Old Testament, let us be sure to open our eyes to see and understand that the prophets spoke many things concerning the Lord Jesus. Do you believe “all that the prophets have spoken?” If you were there on that day, you would have heard for yourself as “… beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself” (Luke 24:27). Did ever your heart burn within you? –Pastor TSA