You Need to Encounter Jesus Through His Word
What if you could study the Bible with Jesus Himself? What book would you pick to study? All of it! Imagine sitting down, opening the Scriptures, and having the Author of the Word explain it to you. Every question you’ve ever had, every confusing passage, suddenly made crystal clear by the One who wrote it. Wouldn’t that be life-changing? If Jesus Himself walked you through the Bible, showing you how every verse, every prophecy, and every story points back to Him, it would be like seeing the Bible in high-definition for the first time.
Today, we’re diving into a passage where that exact thing happened. Two disciples, hearts broken and hopes dashed, encountered Jesus on the road to Emmaus. They didn’t know it was Him at first, but He began to walk them through the Scriptures, revealing how everything they’d ever read was all about Him. And here’s the best part—their encounter with Jesus on that road is the same way we encounter Jesus today. We may be 2,000 years removed from that moment, but Jesus still walks with us and still reveals Himself through His Word. The question is, are you willing to walk with Him?
We need to bring our doubts and disappointments to Jesus. (13-24)
Let’s set the scene. It’s the same day the women have reported the empty tomb, and these two disciples are on the road to Emmaus. They’re discussing everything that’s happened, and Luke tells us they are sad (17). They thought Jesus was the One who would redeem Israel, the promised Messiah, but all their hopes seem to have been nailed to that cross. It’s a moment of deep disappointment and confusion—one many of us can relate to.
As they walk, Jesus Himself joins them, but they don’t recognize Him. Luke says, “Their eyes were kept from recognizing him” (16). So, they don’t realize it’s Jesus they’re talking to. And they start to talk to Him about Himself. Notice the irony in verse 18 when Cleopas asks, “Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?” It’s almost like he’s saying, “Where have you been? Have you been hiding under a rock? …Or behind a stone…?” And yet, Jesus is the only one who truly knows what’s going on. He’s the only one who understands the full picture, and He’s about to use this moment to engage their hearts.
Notice his patience in engaging their doubts and disappointments. He doesn’t immediately reveal who He is. He could have said, “Be sad no longer! Indeed, it is I! Do not be sad, be glad!” He doesn’t do that. Instead, He asks them questions. He invites them to share their pain, their confusion, and their disappointment (19). In doing so, He shows that He cares about their experience and is willing to walk through it with them. For Jesus, it’s not just about giving answers. It’s about walking with them in their journey of doubt.
Why does that matter for us? Because sometimes, when we face disappointment, we expect Jesus to show up with immediate solutions. But more often, He meets us in the journey, asking us to bring our doubts and questions to Him. Jesus isn’t afraid of our confusion. He engages it. In fact, it’s through those honest moments that He begins to reveal Himself to us.
We see the disciples’ limited understanding and that their hopes that were dashed were actually false hopes when they explain how they “had hoped” Jesus was the one to redeem Israel (21). They believed in Jesus, but only up to the point where things made sense to them. What they didn’t realize is that Jesus had a much greater redemptive plan than just overthrowing Roman rule. He was conquering sin and death itself.
I heard this story about disappointment:
A five-year-old boy from Texas was told that the family would visit the Grand Canyon. They described it as much bigger than downtown Dallas. He could hardly wait to see it. When they finally got there, they asked him how it measured up to his expectations. With a little frown, he said, “I thought you said that it was a big cannon.” He was probably hoping to see them shoot it! When you’re hoping for the Grand Cannon, you can be let down even by something as spectacular as the Grand Canyon! (Told by Robert Pyne, Kindred Spirit, Winter, 1997).
If your expectations are wrong, you can even be disappointed by God. It’s not that God was somehow lacking. He is far more glorious and perfect than we could ever conceive. But often, because of our limited perspective, we feel as if He let us down. We thought that He would do something, but He didn’t do it. We thought that we were trusting in the promises of His Word, but they didn’t come true. We thought that we were praying in line with His will, but He didn’t answer. God didn’t come through as we had hoped. That’s where two weary travelers were at as they walked the seven miles from Jerusalem to Emmaus one Sunday. They had been hoping that Jesus was the promised Messiah who would redeem Israel (24:21). But their hopes had been dashed when the Jewish religious leaders suddenly succeeded in crucifying Jesus. They were going home, dejected and disappointed. They were still in shock. They didn’t understand why God had let them down.[1]
In your life, Jesus invites you to bring your dashed hopes and broken dreams to Him. When we do that, He doesn’t just give us answers—He walks with us, just as He did with those disciples on the road to Emmaus. And through that journey, He begins to open our eyes to see Him in ways we never expected.
We encounter Jesus when we open the Scriptures with an open heart. (25-27)
After they share their false hope that was dashed, Jesus responds to them with a rebuke: “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken!” (25). Jesus is pointing out their failure to understand the Scriptures they’ve known for so long. Just because we have read the Word of God doesn’t mean we rightly understand the Word of God. When we approach God’s Word, we need to approach it with intellectual humility and an open heart. These disciples knew the words but missed the meaning.
Jesus then begins “with Moses and all the Prophets” to explain how the entire Old Testament points to Him (27). This is incredible. Jesus is essentially giving a master class on how all of the Bible finds its fulfillment in Him. And here’s the key—He doesn’t just point to isolated prophecies. He unfolds how the whole story of Scripture, from Genesis to Malachi, is about Him.
Jesus Himself shows us this: The Bible is one unified narrative that finds its center in Jesus Christ. As Sally Lloyd-Jones in the introduction to the Jesus Storybook Bible beautifully says, “Every story whispers His name.” Jesus shows them that the Messiah’s suffering, death, and resurrection weren’t accidents or defeats but necessary events that fulfill God’s redemptive plan. The disciples had read these Scriptures before, but they needed Jesus to open their hearts and minds to truly understand them. That’s why I pray every time after we read the text at the beginning of the sermon that the Holy Spirit would illuminate the text to our hearts and minds. Oh, would we experience the same thing these disciples did as they studied with Jesus. Even the rebukes!
Y’all, the way we encounter Jesus today is the same way those disciples did—through the Scriptures. But it’s not enough to just read the Bible. We have to approach it with an open heart, ready to see how every part of it is beneficial for us and every part of it points to Jesus. When we come to Scripture looking for Jesus, He meets us there.
With October 31 just being a few days ago, this makes me think of the Protestant Reformation. Martin Luther, and others like him, stood up and said something radical: that Sola Scriptura—Scripture alone—was enough for every believer to know God, to encounter Jesus, and to understand His purpose for their life. Luther believed that the Bible should be accessible to everyone, not hidden in a language they can’t understand or wrapped up in tradition but open to be read, understood, and lived out by ordinary people.
Look at what Jesus does here on the road to Emmaus. He doesn’t reveal Himself to the disciples in a flash of glory or some big supernatural event. How does He do it? He opens the Scriptures. It’s almost like Jesus is saying, “I want you to find Me, and the way you’re going to do that—the way you’re going to see Me for who I really am—is through the Word of God.” That’s why Sola Scriptura matters for us today. Because if we’re not encountering Jesus through His Word, we’re missing out on the primary way He reveals Himself to us. If you want to truly know Jesus and experience His presence, you need to engage with His Word, allowing Him to reveal Himself through it. Jesus still speaks today, and the primary way He does so is through the Bible. The question is, are we coming to it with open hearts, ready to encounter Him?
Jesus reveals Himself amidst Word-centered fellowship. (28-31)
As the disciples and Jesus approach the village of Emmaus, Jesus acts as if He’s going further, but they urge Him to stay with them, saying, “Stay with us, for it is toward evening and the day is now far spent” (29). Hospitality in the ancient Near East was a sacred duty, and the disciples extend this courtesy to Jesus, unaware that this simple act would become the setting for their eyes to be opened.
At the table, something extraordinary happens. Jesus takes the bread, blesses it, breaks it, gives it to them, and immediately, their eyes are opened (30). They recognize Him. It’s significant that their recognition doesn’t come through a grand revelation or a miraculous display but through the breaking of bread. An ordinary act that reveals the miraculously risen Jesus.
This moment points to the importance of fellowship among believers. Jesus chose a communal setting—a shared meal—to reveal Himself. Encountering Jesus isn’t just an individual experience but something that happens in community. The disciples invited Jesus to stay, and in that act of fellowship, they encountered Him. We, too, need to be intentional about inviting Jesus into the ordinary spaces of our lives and into our communities.
Encountering Jesus isn’t only an individual journey but something we’re meant to experience together. The Reformers knew this well. One of the key outcomes of the Reformation was a renewed emphasis on fellowship within the church—centering around God’s Word, discussing it together, and letting it transform entire communities.
Martin Luther once said, “To gather with God’s people in united adoration of the Father is as necessary to the Christian life as prayer.” The Reformers believed that gathering as a community to worship, study the Scriptures, and live out the faith together was essential. Think about the early Reformation church gatherings. Once the Word of God was given in a language the people could read for themselves, what did that lead to? Studying the Bible together. They no longer had big church buildings like the catholic church, but they had what mattered most, a community built on God’s Word. This is what we’re called to do, too. When we come together, we’re not just here to listen. We’re here to sharpen one another, to lift each other up, and to encounter Jesus in fellowship.
Hear what Spurgeon said:
“When Christians make their Lord the subject of discourse they may hope to be favored with his company....When two saints are talking together, Jesus is very likely to come and make the third one in the company. Talk of him, and you will soon talk with him.”
Let’s bring an expectancy when we gather, believing that Jesus is present in our fellowship. Just as the disciples’ eyes were opened at the table, God can open our eyes when we break bread together, pray together, and open His Word together. The same Jesus who revealed Himself in Emmaus is with us today, ready to show up when we come together as His people. Are we creating space for Him to move in our fellowship?
Our hearts will engage as we encounter Jesus through His Word. (32-35)
After Jesus vanishes from their sight, of all the things they could have said, the two disciples look at each other and say, “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?” (32). When did their transformation occur? It didn’t just occur when they saw Jesus physically. It started when He opened the Scriptures to them.
Hear what McArthur says:
“When the truth of Scripture becomes clear, the heart is set on fire for joy and for testimony. It was that blazing joy that prompted Henry Martyn to exclaim, “Now let me burn out for God”; David Brainerd to write in his diary, “Oh that I could be a flame of fire in the service of my God!”; and John Wesley to say of his conversion, “I felt my heart strangely warmed.”
When did their hearts burn? It was while Jesus was explaining the Scriptures. It wasn’t just the breaking of the bread that opened their eyes. It wasn’t just the walking with Jesus. It was the power of the Word at work in them. Again, it couldn’t be more clear: we encounter Jesus through His Word.
(We will have daily devotions the next three weeks to go with our new series “Running With Endurance.” I encourage you to dig into Scripture these next three weeks.)
Notice what happens next. The disciples, now filled with excitement and conviction, immediately get up and return to Jerusalem, a journey of about seven miles, to share what they’ve experienced (33). This passage we refer to as “The Road to Emmaus.” Why? Because they were going to Emmaus with dashed hopes, sad. What they do now is turn around and run back to Jerusalem, in fellowship with other believers over the joy of the resurrected Jesus encountered through God’s Word. What a contrast from the discouraged, downcast travelers they were just hours before! Their hearts were transformed by the Word of God! The Word, when encountered with an open heart, doesn’t leave us unchanged. It moves us to action. It gives us boldness.
We see it also with Martin Luther. Sola Scriptura wasn’t just theology for Luther—it was life and death. As he stood before the Diet of Worms, with powerful dignitaries gathered around, he said:
“Unless I am convinced by Scripture and plain reason - I do not accept the authority of the popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other - my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. God help me. Amen.”
We should come to God’s Word expecting an encounter with Jesus, expecting our hearts to burn as His Word comes alive. The same Spirit who ignited the hearts of those disciples is at work today, ready to reveal Christ through the pages of Scripture and move us to action.
And when our hearts are truly set on fire by His Word, it doesn’t stay contained. It compels us to share, just as the disciples did. It compels us to dig into it together. They didn’t keep their experience to themselves. They rushed back to tell others. Our encounters with Jesus through His Word should have that same impact—igniting us to share, testify, and spread the fire of the Gospel. Are you coming to Scripture with that expectation, ready for your heart to burn and your life to be changed?
