The first sermon about Jesus' life after His resurrection was delivered by Jesus himself. These verses tell of Jesus' encounter with two believers walking to Emmaus after His crucifixion. We see that as they are walking Christ approached them, unrecognized, and listened to them and their confusion about what had happened over the past few days to Jesus of Nazareth. They shared with Him the events about Jesus being crucified and the empty tomb.
In verses 25-27 Jesus delivers the gospel message.. 25 Then he said to them, “Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! 26 Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” 27 Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures. Jesus used the scriptures, the prophesies, the Word of God to teach these two men about Himself.
I find it interesting that He taught from the scriptures. He interpreted the Word of God which reveals Christ and in verse 32 we see the impact of God's word... 32 They said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?”
Jesus knew and shows us here that the Word of God speaks to our hearts.. " so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it." (Isaiah 55:11) We look for inspiration and direction from lots of books and put our trust in the teaching of others, when it is God Himself and the Bible where the true inspiration and direction can be found. Pastors today download sermons from the internet and buy sermon material online and the result is churches are dying. Scriptures point to and teach about Christ. Too many churches teach about us and how we are to live, how we are to eat, how we are to give, how we are to be, when God gave us His word so that He can transform us into His likeness.
We all, and especially pastors, need to spend more time in the scriptures seeking the truth of Christ so that OUR HEARTS WILL BURN WITHIN US AS THE SCRIPTURES ARE OPENED TO US!
Discover and Proclaim the Truth of The Bible which is: "For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him may have eternal life." (John 3:16 NRSV). Jesus came to humanity to proclaim and give evidence to that love and He has commanded us to do the same. We, who believe, must not merely be followers, but we must be proclaimers of the Gospel Message and we can only do that by being filled with the love of God.
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