Hermeneutics is the science of interpretation. This science is needed to understand literature because when reading literature we try to understand what a written text means. Therefore, it is a very crucial thing when we apply it to the Christian life because, as Christians, we believe that our God has spoken to us in a book. So our goal in studying Scripture is to find out what the intended meaning of the author was. Or, to say it another way, our goal in studying Scripture is to find out how to understand what God was and is communicating to us in his book.
It would be nice to think that God himself had simply told us, “This is the way that you are to understand what I have written to you.” If such a thing had happened, everything about bible study would become a lot clearer, the answer to life’s questions about everything would be answered, and great would be our joy.
Well, the great message that I want to proclaim to you today is that God has come to us and has told us how we are to understand his book. He has personally told us what he was writing about and what we should see as we read these pages. He has told us in Luke 24.
This story picks up on the very day of the resurrection. Jesus had been dead three days in the tomb and the women had just told the disciples that when they had visited his tomb he was not there. However, the two men in this story were not excited; they were sad. They obviously had discounted any miracle in the women’s story and had just assumed that the body of the Lord had been taken. They were sad because they had been looking for God to send a redeemer to redeem his people from their sin and captivity. The redeemer they were looking for, however, was not the kind of man who would come and be killed at the hands of the Roman authorities; he was going to be a king.
Therefore, as the resurrected Christ appears to them and inquires as to their sadness, they reveal to him that their sadness stems from a dashing of their hopes when they proclaim to Jesus, “But we were hoping that it was He who was going to redeem Israel” (24:21). Then Jesus begins to tell them of how the Old Testament had told of these things. Finally, because no one realized who he was, he opened their eyes to see who he was and later in the chapter would open the eyes of some other disciples to understand the Scripture.
As Jesus reveals who he is to the two men, one of them makes a statement that I find quite ironic in this context. As he realizes that he had just unknowingly walked with the Messiah and heard him expound the Scripture, he says to the other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while He was speaking to us on the road, while he was explaining (lit. “opening”) the Scriptures to us” (24:32)?
What I find ironic is that as Jesus opened the Scripture to them, he was opening the Scripture for us. And just as these two men did not initially realize the blessing they were receiving that day, so have we missed the blessing that we have received from this recorded conversation. We have been given the hermeneutical key to understanding the Scripture, and so many of us have neglected it for years. What did Jesus show those men (and us) about the Scripture that day?
Because most of us know that the New Testament is written about Jesus, maybe I need simply point out that the Old Testament is written about Jesus as well. That is exactly what Jesus told these disciples that day. Luke records in verse 27, “And beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, He explained to them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures.” Then in verse 44 Jesus says to the disciples, “These are My words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all the things which are written about Me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” And as verse 45 says that he opened their eyes to understand the Scripture; so he opens ours.
The Old Testament was written about Jesus. The Old Testament drips with Jesus. It is not a collection of writings from which we merely learn moral lessons; it is about Jesus.
By saying the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms, Jesus is simply dividing up the whole Old Testament into categories. So don’t think he is saying anything less than that all of it is written of him. This is not the first time that Jesus says this. As the religious leaders were challenging Jesus’ claim that he was God’s Son, Jesus said in John 5, “You search the Scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is these that bear witness of Me … Do not think I will accuse you before the Father; the one who accuses you is Moses, in whom you have set your hope. For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me; for the wrote of Me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words” (5:39, 45-47)?
Is that not convicting to us when Jesus says that they wouldn’t believe Moses. The thought is that there is no doubt that the Scripture speaks of Jesus; it is simply that we do not believe. That is exactly what Jesus tells these two men on their way to Emmaus. After these two men tell Jesus of their despair in thinking that Jesus wasn’t the Christ after all, he doesn’t say, “Well, I see how these events could have thrown you because it is pretty subtle in the Scripture.” Nor does he say, “You guys have done well, but it’s pretty hard to understand and you have to be pretty smart.” Rather, he says, “O foolish men and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken” (24:25). He says their problem was that they were slow to believe the facts presented by the prophets of what would come in the Messiah.
According to Jesus, it is clear that the Old Testament speaks of him, we just must be willing to believe what it says. So, if that is the case, what specifically does it say of him?
The Old Testament tells us the gospel. It tells us that the Messiah would come, suffer, rise again from the dead on the third day, and that repentance for forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in His name to all the nations. To think anything less is to believe something directly contrary to Jesus’ statement in verses 46-47.
The redemptive work of Christ’s suffering is the very topic that Jesus tells the two men on their way to Emmaus that they are slow to believe, despite the fact that it was spoken of him in the prophets.
Therefore if the message of Scripture is the story of redemption,1 then Jesus’ work of taking the punishment of our sin, thus dying on the cross, and raising from the dead is the unifying thread that weaves its way throughout this book. Jesus is the reason that though the Bible is sixty-six collected books, yet it is one book with one message. This fact is precisely why Paul can say that he determined to know nothing among the Corinthians but Christ crucified while also telling the Ephesian elders that he had preached to them the whole counsel of God. For in proclaiming the whole counsel of God (the whole of Scripture) one will be proclaiming Christ crucified (and risen, ascended, etc.).
This point might seem a bit repetitive, but I want you to see that in some sense, though the Old Testament contains a historical account that is not all called “prophecy,” in some sense all of the Old Testament is prophetic. And the prophetic message is fulfilled in Christ.
This is exactly what Jesus is saying in Matthew 5:17 as he says, “Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish, but to fulfill.” The Greek word meaning “fulfill” (playrow) is always used in the sense of prophecy in Matthew. Therefore, what Jesus appears to be saying is not, “I did not come to abolish the Law but to sustain it” but rather, “I did not come to abolish the Law but to be the prophetic fulfillment of it.” This is what we must see to read the text as a Christian.
I used to believe the lie that Jesus came on the scene and brought a whole new thought from the Old Testament Scripture and that if you had been an earnest studier of the Scripture that you would have been thrown by his teaching. It is not this, but rather, if you had been reading the Scripture through the eyes of faith, you would have seen Jesus as the perfect fulfillment of everything that it had foretold.
I will end this message returning to the point from which I began. If we are going to correctly interpret Scripture, then we must see the Scripture dripping with Jesus Christ. For he, himself, has told us that all of it was written of him and his work of redemption.
Therefore, as we read our Bibles, we should not wait for the New Testament in order to see Jesus. We should see him and his work of redemption unfolding throughout Scripture. To come up with any other hermeneutical key is to try to be wiser that Jesus, and I don’t advise trying to be wiser than the one who created and sustains your very life.
In the upcoming weeks, I am going to be preaching through the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament) and maybe straight through the Old Testament as a whole. And as I do, I pray that God would open our eyes even as he did those men that day and that we would understand the Message our Author was speaking in his Word. However, I pray that in our own reading of the Scripture we would see this as well that our hearts might continue marvel at the glories of our Christ proclaimed throughout his Word.
May we read, study, and proclaim the truth of the whole counsel of God, for in doing so, we will be preaching Christ and him crucified. Amen.