Then he said unto them, O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken: Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory? And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.
LUKE 24:25–27
I would like to call your attention to a well-known incident in the life of the early church, an incident that is described by Luke in chapter 24 of his Gospel. I want to look with you at the whole picture of the two men taking the journey from Jerusalem down to Emmaus. It is very important, as we consider this incident, that we should remember the circumstances in which it occurred. We must remember that this happened after the resurrection of Jesus had taken place, and its whole significance is really to be found in that fact. It is something that actually happened, and it happened to two who belonged to the company who had lived most intimately with our Lord.
As we look at these two men on the road to Emmaus, I am going to invite you to look also at the state of the modern church. For here, it seems to me, is an only too accurate portrayal of the condition of the Christian church, speaking generally, at the present time. We were trying in our last study to consider the New Testament teaching concerning the doctrine of the church. Now we are going on to look at a picture of the church in a state of discouragement, a state, indeed, of dejection and perhaps even hopelessness.
I said in the previous study that there are many compelling reasons for studying the doctrine of the church, and one of the reasons that I gave was that those who are outside the church get their impression of Christianity and of the Lord Jesus Christ and, indeed, of God himself from what they see in us. It is not surprising that they should arrive at their assessments and their judgments in that way. We are the people who make these great claims. We claim to be the people of God. We claim to be “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet. 1:4). We claim to be special and unique, people who have an answer to the great problems of life. So they very naturally look at us, and they judge all we stand for and all we claim to believe by what they see in us. And I think there can be very little dispute that it is because of what they see in us that so many are outside the Christian church at the present time.
Now I know there are many who, looking at the state of the church today, feel that the one thing for us to do is immediately to consider what methods we can employ in order to win outsiders. That is a perfectly right and good thing to think about. But they start with that. They say, “Here we are, and there are the people outside who are indifferent to the church,” and immediately they begin to consider means and methods of interesting and attracting outsiders. And some of them seem to be prepared to go to almost any lengths and to borrow any measures conceivable from the world itself in order to do something to get hold of these people. Now while I am in entire agreement with evangelism and would be among the first to say that the primary task of the Christian church is evangelism, I do, nevertheless, suggest that when we start immediately to think of the methods, of what we can do, to attract those who are outside, we are starting at the wrong point.
I suggest rather that the first question we should ask is, why are those people outside? And I have already given my own answer to that question. Indeed it is the answer they themselves give. They are outside very largely because of what they see in us who are inside. So I suggest that the first question that ought to be engaging us is this: what is wrong with us? What can we do about ourselves in order that we may attract the world outside instead of repelling it? Surely this is the first step. Instead of assuming that all is more or less all right with us and considering means and methods of winning outsiders, we should be concerned about dealing with whatever it is in us that is repelling them. We must bring ourselves into such a condition that we become an attraction and create within them the desire to be among us and to share the things we enjoy. That is why all this is so important for us.
For some reason or other we seem to be giving the impression to the world outside that one of the main effects of becoming a Christian is to make one miserable and to create problems and difficulties. Let me put it to you in a very simple picture. Look at the people who want to attend some game or other on a Saturday afternoon. Watch them as they prepare to go to that event. They keep their eye on the clock. They are anxious to be there on time, in fact before anything starts. And watch them as they go there. They are all rushing. They want to see everything from beginning to end. So they hurry along with great enthusiasm. Then watch them and listen to them while the game is being played. You hear them shouting and see them smiling. You see them almost in a state of ecstasy. They are almost beyond themselves, they are so enjoying it and are so thrilled by it all. And when the game finishes, watch them as they go home. They are all talking with animation, one commenting on this and the other on that. They are smiling. They seem to have had a marvelous time, and it has occupied them for hours. That is the picture, is it not, of the world indulging in its pleasures and in the things in which it believes.
Now take a look at Christian people, church members. Sunday morning arrives. What is the picture? Well, they are rather doubtful about whether or not they really will get up to go to church. After all, they lead busy lives, and a man must have some rest sometime! They did not say that on Saturday, but this is how they feel on Sunday morning. Going to church really is a bit of a burden, and their hearts are not in it. But in the end they decide they will go. After all, it is a matter of duty. So they get up. Are they anxious to be at church before anything starts, and do they want to make sure they get the best seats so they won’t miss anything? You know the answer! The people on Saturday afternoon had only one complaint, and that was that the game came to an end too quickly. Is it like that with Christian people when they come to church on Sunday? Do they complain that the service ends too quickly? And what is the congregation like during the service? Are they moved with enthusiasm? Are they alive and alert and watching and waiting and listening? And how do they sing and join in? Is it similar to what happened on Saturday afternoon? Then watch them as they go home. Do they give the impression that they have been doing something wonderful and amazing? That they have had the richest and the highest experience that it is ever possible to have in this world? Are they talking with enthusiasm to one another about some aspect of the glory of the gospel or something that was made clear in the preaching of the Word?
We are far too much like these two men on the way to Emmaus. And that is why I am calling your attention to this whole subject. It is not only the pulpit that matters; it is the individual Christian. We are living in days when it is ceasing to be the habit, or the thing to do, for people to attend a place of worship. People are talking already about “a religion-less Christianity” or Christianity without the church. So we must meet this acute problem, and the question is, are we ready?
It is my contention that the main responsibility at the moment rests upon the individual church member. It does not matter how wonderful a preacher your church may have if nobody will come and listen to him. And, after all, the preacher will be judged by the character of the congregation. And when church members give the impression that going to church is depressing or against the grain, then it is not at all surprising that those who are outside are not interested and have no desire to come to listen to the preacher or to attend an act of worship. In other words, I believe that we must look seriously at this picture that is recorded for us in the last chapter of the Gospel of Luke.
Look at these two men. Remember, the resurrection has just happened. But here they are, walking in a dejected condition on the road to Emmaus. Now we know that our Lord has realized that these men are miserable because when he joins them he says to them, “What manner of communications are these that ye have one to another, as ye walk, and are sad?” (v. 17). How does he know they are sad? He has not heard what they are saying. The answer is that if you feel sad, you look it. The man who is sad is a man who takes a certain stance, and everything about him suggests misery, whereas the man who is happy and alert and joyful shows it by his whole demeanor. And I suggest that the Christian church gives a melancholy impression to the world today because she is in a state of melancholy.
It seems to me that the best approach, therefore, to this whole incident is to look at it in terms of the state of the hearts of these two men and then apply that to the state of the heart of the church today. And in this paragraph we are told three things: the first is that each man has a sad heart (v. 17); the second is that they are slow of heart (v. 25); but, thank God, the third thing is the burning heart (v. 32).
And here we have a summary of this whole message. The great need of the church today, in our sadness and in our slowness, is to discover the secret of the burning heart. This is something, of course, that has been true of the church many times before. The church seems to go through these various phases from time to time and from century to century. And you will find that the great periods in the history of the church—revival and reformation—are always characterized by this burning heart, the condition in which these men ended. And so I say again, the great need for us is to discover what we have to do in order that we may have this burning heart, for the moment the church gets this, the problem with evangelism and the problem of the outsider are both solved. The moment the church gets on fire, the world is interested. It is interested in the phenomenon. We were looking in the previous study at Acts 2. The moment those disciples in the upstairs room were filled with the Spirit, this fire of the Holy Spirit, everybody came rushing to look at them. And it has happened in the same way throughout the running centuries.
Let us look, then, at these two men walking along the road to Emmaus. Why are they sad? That is the first obvious question to ask. Let us make our own analysis, and then we can look at our Lord’s analysis of them because, fortunately, he analyzed them as well and dealt with them. Let us start with our own analysis. Why are these men in this dejected condition on this particular afternoon on the resurrection day of all days? Here is the tragedy of the situation, that this was possible. What was the cause? Well, these men really give themselves away. This is what I read: “Two of them went that same day to a village called Emmaus, which was from Jerusalem about threescore furlongs.” Now take notice: “And they talked together of all these things which had happened. And it came to pass, that, while they communed together and reasoned . . .” (vv. 13–15). This is the cause of the trouble. There they are, walking on the road to Emmaus. And what are they talking about? Not the resurrection. No: “all these things which had happened,” the wonderful three years they have had with him. One remembers this sermon, and another remembers the other sermon, and then this miracle and that miracle. They go over the past history, and they talk of what has already taken place. And while they are doing this, they are unhappy and miserable and dejected.
Is this not a perfect picture of the church today? So often we just spend our time talking about the great days that once were, the things that some of us even remember. Those of us who are older are particularly prone to this trouble. We look to the past and talk about the past, and we begin to idealize it, and the more we do so, the more unhappy we become. Tradition is excellent, but when you live on it, and when you become depressed by it, you already have a wrong attitude toward it.
In addition to that we have the terms “communed” and “reasoned.” The two disciples are trying to understand the position in which they think they are. This is what Cleopas says when our Lord comes and challenges them: “Art thou only a stranger in Jerusalem, and hast not known the things which are come to pass there in these days?” (v. 18).
And then we read:
And he said unto them, What things? And they said unto him, Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, which was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people: and how the chief priests and our rulers delivered him to be condemned to death, and have crucified him. But we trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel. (vv. 19–21)
They are reminding themselves of this person, the Lord Jesus Christ, all his preaching and the extraordinary power that he manifested in his miracles. But, alas, he died in utter weakness, and his body was taken down and laid in a tomb. That is what they are talking about together, and they are reasoning about this—how to explain it, how to understand it, how it could have happened. But everything they say betrays a terrible fallacy.
Whenever I read this passage, I am always reminded of the annual assemblies of the great denominations. This is more or less exactly what they all do. Somebody comes forward and reads the statistics, and then they begin to reason together about those statistics, and they begin to consider the problems. They will probably end by setting up a commission to investigate the cause of their problems. We are experts on the problems and difficulties. We know all about communism. We know all about rationalism and this and that. We have reasoned together, and we make our comments. And the more we commune and reason and talk, the more depressed we become. Exactly like these men on the road to Emmaus.
But I think the ultimate explanation of these men is that they are so certain of the death of our Lord that they have forgotten all about the resurrection. They are looking so much at the fact that he was put to death and buried that they have become absolutely blind to everything else. Now this is a very extraordinary psychological condition, and I suggest to you that it is the condition of the church today. We are all looking so much at our problems and our difficulties that we have become blind to the solution. We are experts in our problems. Never has the church been so skilled in analyzing its difficulties. The books that come off the presses almost daily give expert analysis and diagnosis. But there is never any solution. We spend the whole time reasoning and communing and talking together concerning our difficulties, and this has a paralyzing effect. I shall never forget an incident that happened in my own ministry.
I remember preaching in my homeland of Wales one Sunday in the early 1930s. I was preaching in a country place at an afternoon and then an evening service. When I finished the service in the afternoon and had come down from the pulpit, two ministers came up to me. They had a request to make. They said, “We wonder whether you’ll do us a kindness.”
“If I can,” I said, “I’ll be happy to.”
“Well,” they said, “we think you can. There’s a tragic case. It’s the case of our local schoolmaster. He’s a very fine man, and he was one of the best church workers in the district. But he’s got into a very sad condition. He’s given up all his church work. He just manages to keep going in his school. But as for church life and activity, he’s become more or less useless.”
“What’s the matter with him?” I asked.
“Well,” they said, “he’s got into some kind of depressed condition. Complains of headaches and pains in his stomach and so on. Would you be good enough to see him?”
I promised I would. So after I had had my tea, this man, the schoolmaster, came to see me. I said to him, “You look depressed.” He was like the men on the road to Emmaus. One glance at this man told me all about him. I saw the typical face and attitude of a man who is depressed and discouraged. I said, “Now tell me, what’s the trouble?”
“Well,” he said, “I get these headaches. I’m never free from them. I wake up with one in the morning, and I can’t sleep too well either.” He added that he also suffered from gastric pains and so on.
“Tell me,” I said, “how long have you been like this?”
“Oh,” he said, “it’s been going on for years. As a matter of fact, it’s been going on since 1915.”
“I’m interested to hear this,” I said. “How did it begin?”
He said, “Well, when the war broke out in 1914, I volunteered very early on and went into the navy. Eventually I was transferred to a submarine, which was sent to the Mediterranean. Now the part of the navy I belonged to was involved in the Gallipoli Campaign. I was there in this submarine in the Mediterranean during that campaign. One afternoon we were engaged in action. We were submerged in the sea, and we were all engaged in our duties when suddenly there was a most terrible thud and our submarine shook. We’d been hit by a mine, and down we sank to the bottom of the Mediterranean. You know, since then I’ve never been the same man.”
“Well,” I said, “please tell me the rest of your story.”
“But,” he said, “there’s really nothing more to say. I’m just telling you that’s how I’ve been ever since that happened to me in the Mediterranean.”
“But, my dear friend,” I said, “I really would be interested to know the remainder of the story.”
“But I’ve told you the whole story.”
This went on for some considerable time. It was a part of my treatment. I said again, “Now I really would like to know the whole story. Start at the beginning again.” And he told me how he had volunteered, joined the navy, was posted to a submarine that went to the Mediterranean, and everything was all right until the afternoon they were engaged in the action, the sudden thud and the shaking. “Down we went to the bottom of the Mediterranean. And I have been like this ever since.”
Again I said, “Tell me the rest of the story.” And I took him over it step by step. We came to that dramatic afternoon—the thud, the shaking of the submarine.
“Down we went to the bottom of the Mediterranean.”
“Go on!” I said.
“There’s nothing more to be said.”
I said, “Are you still at the bottom of the Mediterranean?” You see, physically he was not, but mentally he was. He had remained at the bottom of the Mediterranean ever since. So I went on to say to him, “That’s your whole trouble. All your troubles are due to the fact that in your own mind you are still at the bottom of the Mediterranean. Why didn’t you tell me that somehow or another you came up to the surface, that someone on another ship saw you, got hold of you and got you on board his ship, that you were treated there and eventually brought back to England and put into a hospital?” Then I got all the facts out of him. I said, “Why didn’t you tell me all that? You stopped down at the bottom of the Mediterranean.”
It was because this man was dammed up in his mind that he had suffered from this terrible depression during all those years. I am happy to be able to tell you that as the result of this explanation that man was perfectly restored. He resumed his duties in the church and within a year had applied for ordination in the Anglican Church in Wales.
Now I tell you this story simply in order to show you the condition of these men on the road to Emmaus. There they are: “We had thought . . . but, oh, what’s the use of thinking? They tried him and condemned him unjustly. They crucified him. He died, and they buried him. And he’s in the tomb.” They are so certain of this that they have become oblivious of everything else and blind to everything else. And I have a fear, my dear friends, that that is the trouble with so many of us. We are so aware of the problems, so immersed in them, that we have forgotten all of the glory that is around us and have seen nothing but the problems that lead to this increasing dejection. That is my analysis of these men on the road to Emmaus.
But let us go on and look at our Lord’s analysis of them. It is much more devastating. In verse 25 we read, “Then he said unto them”—when at last they give him a chance to say anything. They have been talking so much that for some time our Lord has not had an opportunity to open his mouth. He simply put the question, “What things?” (v. 19), and they poured it all out. “Jesus of Nazareth . . . the marvelous things he did . . . all our hopes . . . we thought he was the Messiah. But, ah . . .” and on and on and on. At last they finish the wretched, miserable story.
“Then he said unto them”—what?—“O fools . . .”
I say again that I have an awful feeling that is what our Lord is saying about us and to us today. “You fools!” What he means is that we are dullards, that we are simpletons, that we do not know how to think, that we allow ourselves to be governed by circumstances and accidents and change and the things that happen to us and the conditions in which we find ourselves. And instead of using our minds and our reason and our understanding and applying the truth we have received, we allow ourselves to end in this state of misery and dejection and discouragement. “What a terrible world this is!” Is that not true of us? Fools! Simpletons! Dullards!
This is said frequently in the New Testament. Writing in his first epistle to certain churches, to unknown people whose names we do not know, strangers scattered abroad in various countries who were having a horrible time and were enduring terrible persecution, the apostle Peter says—and it is one of the first things he tells them, “Gird up the loins of your mind” (1 Pet. 1:13).
The church must think. She must use her mind and her reason. The tragedy is that we constantly tend to fall back on other things in order somehow or another to relieve ourselves and to keep things going. We are sentimental. Sentimentality is very largely the trouble with the present church. We are very nice people, we members of the Christian church, but we are very foolish. And the first thing we must do is wake up and gird up the loins of our minds and think and understand the truth and begin to apply it to the situation in which we find ourselves, instead of giving way, instead of giving in, instead of just commiserating with one another. I am sometimes afraid that the church is dying of niceness. We are really good at praising one another, are we not, and saying that we are doing well. We have become a mutual admiration society, sympathizing and communing with one another, and thus being sentimental with one another. And the whole time the condition of the church degenerates from bad to worse. Fools! We must apply our understanding to the situation with which we are confronted. That is our Lord’s first word to these disciples. It is alarming. It is surprising. But, alas, it is true.
And then our Lord goes on to the second word: “O fools, and slow of heart.” Here again is a most interesting condition, not so much connected with the mind as with this other part of us. Surely we all know something about this. The word “heart” does not only mean the affections. It means, in a sense, one’s general condition. And I know of nothing that is more dangerous in the Christian life than this condition of being slow of heart. What does it mean? You have experienced it, haven’t you? There you are, seated in your home. You have been reading the newspaper; you are taking it in, and you are alive and alert. And then perhaps you take up a book, maybe a novel or a biography, and you are enjoying reading it. Then you suddenly feel an impulse to read the Scriptures. You have not read your Scriptures much lately, but this call arises within you. So you put down your book and pull out your Bible. You open it and begin to read a passage of Scripture, but immediately you feel tired. You yawn and realize that you have had a very heavy day. You think that really you are not in a fit condition to concentrate. Your mind wanders, and you cannot keep your attention on what you are reading. Then you try prayer. It is exactly the same. You cannot control your thoughts. You have nothing to say, or your imagination travels all over the world. A deadness, a lethargy, creeps over you. Have you not experienced this many times? That is what is meant by slowness of heart.
“O fools, and slow of heart.” The devil afflicts us with this spiritual lethargy. He seems to inject some kind of jaundice into us that paralyzes us and makes us dull. And we cannot rouse ourselves. We can be animated in conversation with others, but we suddenly become speechless when we are confronted by God. We can read other things, but not the Scripture. This is slowness of heart. The Devil, as it were, is causing this poison to circulate in our spiritual system. All our faculties are paralyzed. That is one of the troubles with depression. It affects the whole person. It affects the muscles, and people become physically weak. They cannot think clearly and cannot do anything properly. Slowness of heart. Now this is something we must be conscious of. It is not enough to say, “Well, I don’t feel like it now.” I should ask myself, “Why don’t I feel like it now?”
Slowness of heart is a condition that must be dealt with. We must stir ourselves up. We must rouse ourselves: not only gird up the loins of our minds, but “stir up the gift of God, which is in [us]” (2 Tim. 1:6). Slowness of heart was the great disease of Timothy. The young man was always complaining to the apostle Paul about his difficulties and his problems. And that is what the apostle tells him: Stir up the gift of God, which is in you. Rake the fire! Wake up! Get rid of this dullness, this slowness, this lethargy. Shake it off. “Away, thou sloth and melancholy,” as Milton once put it.
So this is the second thing that our Lord says to these disciples. He is severe with them—of course he is. It is wrong that they should be in this condition. It is a disgrace and a scandal. It is a sin. It is a denial of our Lord and of all that is so true of him. So he deals with them with great severity. And it is this kind of severity that has generally preceded revival in the Christian church. Painful though it is, my friends, we must face it.
Then our Lord goes on to his next word, which is, of course, the really crucial issue: “O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken.” That is the emphasis: “all that the prophets have spoken.” This is very significant. Our Lord is referring here to Moses and the prophets, as he does again later that same day when he says to the entire assembled company of believers, “These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me” (Luke 24:44). The two men on the road to Emmaus are Jews. They have been brought up on their Jewish Scriptures; they are familiar with what the prophets have spoken. What is their trouble then? It is largely the very fact that they are Jews and, as Jews, believe certain things in the Scriptures.
Now the coming of the Messiah, the Deliverer, was the great hope of the Jews. This is taught way back in Genesis and throughout the entire Old Testament. It is taught by the great prophets in particular. It was this that thrilled the Jews, and they held on to it. Yes, but they had their own conception of what this Messiah would be like when he came. They tended to think of him as a great political deliverer and even a great military deliverer. Their idea of the kingdom of God was that it was external, material, a political, social kingdom. And their idea of the Messiah was that he would be a mighty personage commanding great armies, and he would lead them to victory. He would restore the Jews to the position they had once occupied in the days of the great King David. He was to come of the seed of David, and they were to be world conquerors. This was the essence of the teaching of the Torah as they saw it.
The followers of our Lord had believed that he was the Messiah. So when he was condemned and crucified in apparent utter weakness, and his dead body was taken down and put in a tomb, they were utterly bewildered, utterly disconsolate, utterly cast down. But this was because they had only believed certain things in their Scriptures. Like all the Jews, they had selected out of the Scriptures the things that suited them, the things that appealed to their national pride and national sentiment, the things that thrilled them, their idea of the Messiah. As our Lord pointed out to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, their whole trouble was due to the fact that they had not believed “all that the prophets have spoken,” for the prophets had made it perfectly plain and clear. “Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory?”(v. 26). The prophets had not only spoken about a great deliverer, but of one who was to be “brought as a lamb to the slaughter” (Isa. 53:7), of one who would cry out in agony, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Ps. 22:1). The prophets had spoken about the very things that had taken place, but these two disciples had not listened to them. They had only concentrated on what appealed to them and what pleased them, and it was because of this wrong and false attitude to the Scriptures that they were in a state of utter dejection.
On the road to Emmaus our Lord expostulates with the two men and reprimands them. He says in effect, “You do not even apply your minds to your Scriptures. You are thinking sentimentally and partially. Why do you not take your minds and use them on the very Scriptures of which you boast? And what of all that I taught you when I was with you? What of all that I said to you?” All this the disciples did not really grasp. They were so fascinated, for the time being perhaps, by his personality that they never really understood when he told them that he was going to be taken by cruel men and crucified and put to death and then rise again. He told them several times, but they never got hold of it; so when it happened, they were utterly confounded and cast down in dejection and despair. They failed to take in all that the Scriptures had written.
Is this failure not the real explanation of the state of the Christian church today? Somewhere around the 1930s a devastating movement began in Germany. It was a rationalism that led to so-called “higher criticism.” Higher criticism is man picking and choosing out of the Scriptures, believing what he likes and rejecting, or ignoring, the rest. It is man failing to submit himself completely and utterly to the whole of the Scriptures. And I believe this is one of the most urgent problems confronting us today. There are even evangelical people who no longer believe the first three chapters of the book of Genesis. They are not believing all the Scriptures. But until we come back to a belief in all the Scriptures we shall be in trouble because we are setting ourselves up as authorities, and we are not competent to deal with the problems that face us. If we pick and choose, and believe this and reject that, we will ultimately have no authority whatsoever. We are so anxious to please the modern scientists, the modern educated people, that we have lost our gospel.
The Bible is a unity. We must take it all. It not only teaches us salvation, but it teaches us creation. It tells us how God made the world and how he is eventually going to restore the whole cosmos. If you begin to pick and choose from the Scriptures, you will soon end in a state of dejection. This is what the Christian church has been doing for so long, and it is not surprising that things are as they are. Here is our Lord telling these men, and I believe he is saying it to us today, that we must submit to the Scriptures completely, entirely, whether we understand them or not. Whether we can reconcile everything or not, we must submit to it. We must say that we believe this is the Word of God and we believe everything it says. It is history. It is an account of the creation and the fall. All these events that are presented as facts we must accept as facts; otherwise we shall soon be doubting the fact of Christ himself and even the very being of God. Here is our Lord’s own analysis. There is a unity in the Scripture that must never be broken. There is a wholeness and a completeness, and it is only as we submit to this that we can look to the real solution of our problems.
Now consider what happened next:
And they drew nigh unto the village, whither they went: and he made as though he would have gone further. But they constrained him, saying, Abide with us: for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent. And he went in to tarry with them. And it came to pass, as he sat at meat with them, he took bread, and blessed it, and brake, and gave to them. And their eyes were opened, and they knew him; and he vanished out of their sight. 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? And they rose up the same hour, and returned to Jerusalem, and found the eleven gathered together, and them that were with them, saying, The Lord is risen indeed, and hath appeared to Simon. And they told what things were done in the way, and how he was known of them in breaking of bread. (vv. 28–35)
What a transformation! Look at these two miserable men going down to Emmaus in their melancholic attitude, talking and reasoning and communing together—hopeless. Look at them going back. Look at them hurrying. Look at them rushing. Look at them addressing the others, filled with fire and enthusiasm and hope and glory and rejoicing. What has happened? The burning heart! And that is the question. How do you get the burning heart?
“Ah,” says someone, “you know, you’re really depressing us. The hearts of these men were burning because the Lord Jesus was with them and because they recognized him.”
Is that it? That is not what the record says. And this, to me, is a very glorious thing. What made the hearts of these men burn? Well, they tell you themselves. When they talk to each other after the Lord has gone, they say, “Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the scriptures?” That is the significant and wonderful fact. It was not after they recognized him, after their eyes were opened, that their hearts began to burn. Their hearts were burning when they still regarded him as a stranger. It was as he was opening the Scriptures when they were walking together on the way. Thank God for this. I have known many a person, and I have felt it myself many times, I am ashamed to admit, who has said, “If only I could have seen the Lord Jesus with my natural eyes as the people did who were alive in his day. Oh, how different I would be! If only I could have seen him, it would have made all the difference.” That is a very great fallacy. You do not need to have a vision. You do not need to see him with your natural eyes.
There is only one thing that is necessary for this burning heart, and it is this—that you look in the Scriptures. It was as our Lord opened the Scriptures, showing this amazing plan of God, this increasing revelation, that the men’s hearts were burning. He took them right back to Moses, we are told (v. 27). You do not even need your New Testament to get a burning heart! You can get it from the Old Testament if you know how to read it. What did our Lord do? He took them back to Genesis 3:15 and told them about the promise that the seed of the woman would bruise the serpent’s head. That was the first promise of the Deliverer, the Messiah, and already they began to feel better. Then he took them right through it all—the promise that was made to Noah, the promise that was made to Abraham. He took them all the way through and showed that even in the law of Moses, with the lamb, the burnt offerings, the sacrifices, they were all pointing forward. Yes, and there is a sacrifice. A death is involved. “Without shedding of blood is no remission [of sins]” (Heb. 9:22). And then on to the Psalms, and then the prophets, and all of them saying the same thing, all pointing to him. Yes, and not only, I say again, to him in his great power as the Deliverer but also as the Lamb led to the slaughter, as the burnt offering, as the sacrifice, as the one who was going to die that we might be forgiven. And then our Lord showed them from the Scriptures that he would rise again, conquering all his enemies, and would bring “life and immortality to light through the gospel” (2 Tim. 1:10). And it was as our Lord did that, explaining and expounding the Scriptures, that their hearts began to burn and their whole condition was transformed.
I ask no dream, no prophet ecstasies,
No sudden rending of the veil of clay.
No angel visitant, no opening skies;
But take the dimness of my soul away.
GEORGE CROLY
That is all we need. Do not look for phenomena. Do not look for strange, amazing, semimagical somethings. Go to the Scriptures.
“Ah,” you say, “but it was the Lord Jesus Christ who expounded the Scriptures to the two disciples. And if he only did that with me, I believe that my heart would be burning. But he doesn’t come to us like this now.”
Wait a minute, my friend. Do not fall into the same mistake as Thomas. Poor Thomas, when he was told of the resurrection, said in essence, “I won’t believe it. I don’t believe it. I can’t believe it. It’s impossible.” His actual words were, “Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe” (John 20:25). Do you remember what our Lord said to him? “Thomas,” he said, “because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed” (John 20:29). Our Lord’s literal, physical presence is not necessary. He has sent another, the Comforter. He has sent the Holy Spirit, and he is the teacher. He is the expounder. He is the one who brings back to our remembrance all that was taught by the Lord himself and explains it and makes it clear. This is the secret of every saint who has ever lived. They have not seen the Lord, but they are able to say with the writer of the hymn:
Jesus, these eyes have never seen,
That radiant form of thine;
The veil of sense hangs dark between
Thy blessed face and mine.
But he was able to go on:
I see thee not, I hear thee not,
Yet art thou oft with me;
And earth hath ne’er so dear a spot,
As where I meet with thee.
RAY PALMER
The Lord has promised to manifest himself to his people. He has promised to make himself known to them. And they can meet with him, and they are ravished, and their hearts begin to burn as they do so. The Spirit mediates. He was sent to do this. And this, as I said at the beginning, has been the secret of every individual whom God has used in the long history of the church, and it has been the secret of the church as a whole in periods of revival and reformation.
Let me give you a notable, well-known example. It all turns on how to get rid of a dull, sad, slow heart and get a burning heart. See it in the case of John Wesley, a brilliant, erudite man, religious, moral, and zealous. Over two hundred years ago he gave up a wonderful post in the University of Oxford and crossed the Atlantic with all its hazards to preach to the poor natives in Savannah, Georgia. Yet he was a miserable man, a miserable failure, and he said that as he tried to preach to those poor natives, he felt he needed to be converted himself. Then he went back, in the same condition, to England and was a failure and would have died a failure but for one thing. You do not think of him as a failure. You think of him as a flaming evangelist. What made the difference? He has told us himself. The story is well-known.
On the evening of May 24, 1738, John Wesley went to a little meeting in Aldersgate Street in London. He went feeling utterly dejected, absolutely cast down. He felt that he was useless. He was doubting everything. It was a very small meeting, and there was not even a preacher. But a man read out of the preface of Luther’s commentary on the epistle to the Romans. He was not even reading the commentary itself but simply the preface! So there was this little man reading, and John Wesley said that as he was listening, suddenly his heart was “strangely warmed.” He said, “My heart began to burn within me. I knew that my sins, even my sins, were forgiven.” The cold iceberg of a heart began to melt, and the fire came in, and the man became a flaming evangelist.
John the Baptist prophesied that when our Lord came he would baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire. Where is the fire, my friends? The Spirit descended on the day of Pentecost, “[in] cloven tongues like as of fire” (Acts 2:3), the fire of God, the fire of Mount Carmel, the fire that gives energy and power to a preacher and to a people in their prayer and their witnessing, in everything; the fire that burns away the dross and the refuse and produces the pure gold of a sanctified person.
The burning heart is the one great need and necessity of every one of us. Do you have it? If you have not, realize why you have not. You are a fool! You are not giving your time to this. You are spending your time with your television or your radio or your newspaper. Give time to the Scriptures. Bring your mind at its best. Discipline it. Read the Scriptures. Start in Genesis and go all the way through. But never read without praying for the Spirit to enlighten your eyes and to open them and to give you understanding. Ask for this blessed unction and anointing that alone can enable you to find Christ. Look for him, the living Christ, the resurrected Christ. Look for him everywhere in the Scriptures. We must not spend most of our time in analysis of the problems. Shame on us! Let us stop looking at our problems. Let us search for him in the Scriptures and find him and look at him and bask in the sunshine of his face until our cold hearts begin to burn. Then we will scarcely be able to contain ourselves in the joy and in the ecstasy that we shall experience.
May God have mercy upon us and give us this burning heart.
O Lord our God, we again come into your holy presence and humble ourselves before you. Lord God, awaken us out of our intellectual laziness and lethargy, our slowness and dullness of heart and of spirit. O God, awaken us and arouse us, and warm our hearts by the flame of your Holy Spirit. Make of us a people who know that we belong to a risen and a victorious Lord who shall reign from pole to pole and conquer his every enemy. Hear us, O Lord, for his blessed name’s sake. Amen.