Mensa Otabil - A Strong Conviction
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Luke chapter 24, verses 31-32. Then their eyes were opened, and they knew Him, and He vanished from their sight. And they said to one another, "Did not our heart burn within us while He talked with us on the road and while He opened the Scriptures to us?"
The two disciples finally got to where they were going, to the village of Emmaus. And so they turned in to go to their home. The stranger they've been walking with wanted to carry on His journey. It was getting too dark in the evening. So they persuaded this stranger to come and stay with them overnight, and they did all of this still not aware that it was Jesus, but they had been impressed by His exposition of the Scripture. Probably they wanted to hear more. They felt that this was a person who could help them and explain their confusion to them, so they invited Him in, and He came in.
There is a lesson here that Jesus comes only when we invite Him, and if they had not invited Him, He would have moved on. There is a very important observation: many times we don't invite Him into our situation, yet we still want Him to be in our situation. If you want Him to be in your situation, you need to invite Him. So they invited Jesus, and He came in. They went home with Him, and they wanted to have a meal. As they normally did in every Jewish home, when they're going to have a meal, they had to bless the table. The blessing of the table involves the breaking of bread. So Jesus took the bread; they gave Him the honor to head the table. He took the bread, and He broke it, and the Bible says that when He broke it, their eyes were opened.
Now how that happened, we don't know, because these two disciples were not at the Last Supper to see the institution of Holy Communion. So they may not have been applying any spiritual meaning to what Jesus was doing. So what did they see? Probably, at that time, they saw the nails in His hands, or maybe God just opened their eyes. But just by the breaking of bread, their eyes were opened. The moment their physical eyes were opened to the physical presence of Jesus, He vanished from their sight. But this revelation or knowledge of Jesus started when He opened the Scriptures to them. It was when the Scriptures were opened to them that their spiritual perception was made alive, and they could recognize this as Jesus.
Then they said something very interesting: "Did not our hearts burn within us when He walked with us and opened the Scriptures to us?" This means that from the time Jesus came into their presence, they had felt something. They couldn't put their finger on it, but they felt something unusual within them. And then, when He started talking to them, something inside them was responding to what He was saying, but they couldn't understand what it was. Sometimes it happens to us; you can be in a service, the Word of God is going on, and you just feel something is happening to you. You can't put your finger on it. Or you are in a meeting, there's worship going on, and you just feel that something is happening; you can't put your finger on it.
Over time, God brings clarity to all these spiritual sensations that we feel. It is when they realized it was Jesus that everything they had been experiencing on the road made sense, and they were no longer sad. The important lesson to learn is that many times we go through things we don't understand. Then, in the end, God opens something to us, and everything in our past makes sense. That's why you don't give up until you reach the point where God opens your eyes, and then everything makes sense to you. I pray that you would have such an encounter with Jesus that your heart will respond to Him and your spirit will respond to Him.
Let's pray together. Say with me, "Heavenly Father, let the entrance of Your Word burn like fire in my heart, in Jesus' name. Amen and amen."