Why The Messiah Had To Suffer And What That Means For Us

A knock at the door can change everything. We follow the Emmaus road in Luke 24, where confusion meets clarity and two weary travelers discover why the Messiah had to suffer before glory. Along the way, we look squarely at sin, hear the promise of intercession, and let ancient prophecies do their steady work—moving from theory to trust as pierced hands come into view. This isn’t a foggy spirituality; it’s a faith with flesh and bones, where Jesus breaks bread, opens Scripture, and even eats fish to show He is truly alive.

We also talk about evidence and probability without losing sight of the heart. Zechariah and Micah point forward with surprising precision, and we consider Peter Stoner’s conservative math to illustrate just how improbable it would be for one person to fulfill even a small set of messianic prophecies by chance. But numbers alone don’t save; fellowship does. Recognition dawns at the table, and burning hearts become running feet as joy sends the disciples back to Jerusalem to share what they’ve seen.

From there, we get practical and personal. Grace forgives, yet holiness matters. When we try to live in sin, God’s loving discipline meets us, not to crush us but to call us home. The simple counsel stands: when conviction comes, run to God, not from Him. Revelation’s promise still stands for believers who have kept Jesus on the porch—open the door and dine with Him. If you’re hungry for assurance, longing for joy, or ready to move from hearsay to encounter, join us for this deep, warm, and challenging journey through Luke 24.

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Invitation And Theme: Answer The Knock

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You're listening to Here with our Pastor Teacher Ken Davis. Pastor Ken is the senior pastor Kim for the Chapel Southwest Metro. Please join us as we study the hospital first by first.

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Can I tell you something? If you will invite him in have dinner, then one day he will take you to have dinner at least. And that is a meal you do not want. I encourage you to RSPs.

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The Gospel of Luke is the third account in the Gospels of the Life and Teachings of our Savior. Jesus Christ. As believers, there are few studies that will benefit us more spiritually than studying the life and teachings of the Master. Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world, is knocking on the door of your heart. The question is, will you answer him? Pastor can exhort us today to not ignore the still small voice of the Lord. The Lord prompts you to do something. Do it and do it right away. And for some of us, that means accepting him for the very first time. Is that you today? Don't forget to stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Heed the Word, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. But for now, please open your Bibles to the Gospel of Luke

Transgressors And Christ’s Intercession

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chapter 24. So join Pastor Ken.

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And he was numbered with the transgressors, and he bared the sin of many and made intercession for the transgressors. Are you a transgressor? I am. I am. Have you sinned? Oh yes. So have I. We all have. The Bible tells us that he who says he is without sin is a liar. And there's no truth in him. I was talking with my brother-in-law once. He used to go to a very hyper-charismatic apostolic church long ago. And a preacher would get up there and he'd say, I want to praise the Lord that I haven't sinned in 20 years. My brother-in-law would lean over to his friend and says, There goes one. He just lied. And it's true. You see, we are all transgressors. And he died for transgressors. He makes intercession for transgressors. That means that when Satan is there accusing you, Jesus is making intercession for you. That means when Satan says, Yeah, but he did that, and she did this, and they did this other thing, and they're guilty, guilty, guilty. Jesus says, Yeah, they're guilty. But I paid for them. I took their punishment. So they are righteous in me. They're mine. Take your hands off.

Prophecies Foretold: Cut Off And Pierced

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Daniel 9, 26 said, After three score and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off. How much plainer can it be put than that? Messiah will be cut off. But not for himself. He was cut off for us. Zechariah 12, 9 said, It shall come to pass in that day that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem. And I will pour upon the house of David and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem the spirit of grace and of supplications. And they shall look upon me, whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness before him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn. Zechariah says just a few verses later in chapter 13, verse 6 One shall say unto him, What are these wounds in thine hands? Then he shall answer, those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends. You see, Zechariah's prophecies are yet to be fulfilled. Those are prophecies of the returning Messiah, who after he has been cut off, will one day come again to his people and destroy those nations that come against Israel. And they're gonna look at him and they're gonna say, What happened to your hands? And he's gonna tell them what happened to his hands. And they will receive him and they will be restored. Just as we receive him and are restored. You see, Messiah had to be cut off. Messiah had to suffer, Messiah had to die. They didn't understand it.

On The Road To Emmaus Explained

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And so he so beautifully explained it.

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Verse 28 of Luke 24.

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Then they drew near to the village where they were going, and he indicated that he would have gone on farther. You know, I think that's very true of our experience with Jesus as well. And that is, he is always willing to go farther in our relationship with him than we are. He is.

Stoner’s Math On Messianic Prophecy

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The students carefully weighed all of the factors, discussed each prophecy at length, and examined the various circumstances which might indicate the men had conspired together to fulfill a particular prophecy. They made their estimates conservative enough so that there was finally a unanimous agreement even among the most skeptical of these 600 students. However, then Professor Stoner took their estimates and made them even more conservative. He also encouraged other skeptics or scientists to make their own estimates to see if his conclusions were more than fair. Finally, he submitted his figures for review to a committee of the American Scientific Affiliation. Upon examination, they verified that his calculations were dependable and accurate in regard to the scientific material presented. Peter Stoner Science Speaks, Chicago Moody Press, 1969. For example, concerning Micah 5-2, where it states that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem, Ephratha, Stoner and his students determined the average population of Bethlehem from the time of Micah to the present day. And they divided it by the average population of the earth during the same period, and they concluded that the chance of one man being born in Bethlehem was 1 in 2.8 times 10 to the fifth power, or rounded up, it was one in 300,000. After examining only eight different prophecies, they conservatively estimated that the chance of one man fulfilling all eight prophecies, and keep in mind there were a lot more than eight that were fulfilled. But keeping in mind that only eight prophecies, the probability of all of those prophecies being fulfilled in one man was ten to the seventeenth power. To illustrate how large a number, ten to the seventeenth power is, this is the illustration that was given. If you mark one of ten tickets and place all of the tickets in a hat and thoroughly stir them up and then ask a blindfolded man to draw one, his chances of getting the right ticket is one in ten, right? Suppose that we take that same man and we take ten to the 17th power silver dollars and lay them on the face of Texas. That's why I like this illustration. They will cover the entire state two feet deep in silver dollars. Now, mark one of these silver dollars and stir the whole mass thoroughly all over the state. Blindfold a man and tell him that he can travel as far as he wishes, but he missed, he must pick up one silver dollar and say that this is the right one. What chance would he have of getting that right? Just the same

Eyes Opened In The Breaking Of Bread

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chance that the prophets would have had of writing these eight prophecies and having them all come true in any one man from their day to the present time. Want to try your luck? The probability, the statistical probability of one man fulfilling all of these prophecies, I think it's fair to say, reaches the degree of impossibility. And yet it happened. We have documentary and eyewitness evidence to the fact that it happened. We have the evidence of the lives of all those present and all those who have been changed by Christ throughout all of history. We have that evidence that it happened as well. So let's join them again there in the little place where they stopped. Now it came to pass as he sat at the table with them that he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they knew him, and he vanished from their sight. And they said to one another, Did not our hearts burn within us while we talk while he talked with us on the road and while he opened the scriptures to us, it's as though they're saying, You know, I think I knew it was him all along, didn't you? Yeah, I think I knew it too. I just didn't know it. Yeah, right. Didn't our hearts burn within us? You know, I imagine their hearts probably did. Because when the Holy Spirit speaks, oh, our hearts long to listen. And he had opened up the scriptures to them, and he had shown them all of the all of the glorious truth that Christ would suffer for them. See, they were quick to believe the good things about the Messiah. They didn't want to believe the hard things about the Messiah. We as Christians often are eager to believe the good things.

Holiness, Sin, And Loving Discipline

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Yes, I'm forgiven, yay. But I'm also called to a life of holiness. I'm called to walk free from sin. And when I don't walk free from sin, there is a price to pay. Now that price is not the ultimate price, it's not my life. Jesus already paid that price, but there is a temporal result. Sin brings death, friends. And if we as Christians persist in walking in sin, I promise you there will be consequences. Pastor Chuck put it this way. He said, for the Christian to try to live a lifestyle of sin, one who's truly born again, to try to live a lifestyle of sin is almost impossible. Because if you do try to live a lifestyle of sin, one of three things will happen to you. You will either fail in your attempt to live according to that plan. Or, having succeeded in your attempt to live according to that plan, you will be miserable in your life.

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Or three, you'll get caught. Because God will not let you get away with it.

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I can promise you, as a child of God, if you persist in walking in sin, God will not let you get away with it. He will call you to account, he will discipline you because you're his child and he loves you. The Proverbs tell us that he who does not discipline his son hates him.

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And God doesn't hate you. He loves you.

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And when you sin, he will chasten you. So when that conviction comes, do not let it drive you from God. But let it drive you to God. Because that's the only place you'll find peace.

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It's the only place you'll find grace. It's the only place you'll find forgiveness.

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My pastor, Pastor Bill Quinn, used to tell a story about his grandmother. Whenever he would do something wrong, and if you knew Pastor Bill and how precocious a child he very likely was, you'd recognize the fact that that was probably fairly often. His grandma would tell him to go pick a switch. Any of you ever been told to go pick a switch? I think I was once. I think they outlawed switches sometime when I was a teenager. I don't know. So he was told to go pick a switch. And he knew that if he picked a little thin one, she'd get one that she wanted to pick, and he really didn't want that. So he'd pick a good switch and he'd come back to her and she'd get ready to use it on him. But you see, he figured something out somewhere along the way. Whenever she would get ready to start to use that switch on him, she he would just run in and he would grab a hold of her leg and he'd hug her and he wouldn't let go. You ever notice it's kind of hard to spank somebody who's hugging ya? Same thing's true of God.

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When you sin, run to him. That your chastisement may be light. Because

Run To God, Not From Him

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if you run from him, it will be severe. You don't want to pay that price. Until they broke bread with Jesus. That tells us something. To know him, we must have fellowship with him. John put it this way. In 1 John chapter 1, verses 1 through 4, that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and our hands have handled concerning the word of life.

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The life was manifested, and we have seen and bear witness and declare to you three things there. We have seen it, we've borne witness of it, we've testified of it, and we've declared it to you that eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us, that which we have seen and heard, we declare to you. John is saying, listen, I am not making this up. I'm not coming up with some wild, fantastic idea that I think sounds good. I'm not trying to sell you anything. You can't sign up for Amway here. I'm telling you the truth. I'm telling you the truth because I saw him. I'm telling you the truth because I heard him. And he told me, he commanded me that I am to declare this to you.

Fellowship That Fills Joy

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He was real. He was living, he walked among us. I touched him. That which we have seen and heard, we declare to you. Why?

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That you also may have fellowship with us. And truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ.

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And these things we write to you, that your joy may be full.

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These things we write to you that your joy may be full. They were sad as they walked along that road to Emmaus. But when they had broken bread and had fellowship with Jesus and they recognized him for who he was, what happened? Their hearts were filled with joy. In fact, they just spent all this time walking about eight miles, seven or eight miles from Jerusalem to Emmaus. Immediately after this, what do they do? They jump up and they run back, don't they? They're like, man, we gotta tell these guys. I don't care what we had to do here, it doesn't matter anymore. You know, when you meet Jesus, nothing that you thought you were going out there to do really matters anymore. All that matters is Jesus, what he's done for you, and how you want to tell everybody else about it.

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Amen. Amen. And they said to one another, verse 32 Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked with us?

Back To Jerusalem: The Risen Proof

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On the road, and while he opened the scriptures to us, verse 33, so they rose up that very hour and returned to Jerusalem, and found the eleven and those who were with them gathered together, saying, The Lord is risen indeed and has appeared to Simon. So they get back to Jerusalem, and what do they find? They find all of their brethren, all of the disciples, saying, Hey, guess what? He really did raise from the dead. And they're like, Yeah, we know. And so they told them all of the things that had transpired. Now, as they said these things, Jesus himself stood in the midst of them and said to them, Peace to you. But they were terrified and frightened, and supposed that they had seen a spirit, and he said to them, Why are you troubled? And why do doubts arise in your hearts?

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Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Handle me and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones, as you see, I have. When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet.

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And while they still did not believe for joy, different kind, they they didn't believe for joy now, and they marveled, he said to them, Have you any food here? Because you remember when he left Emmaus, he was just about to have dinner. But they recognized him and he disappeared, so he hadn't had anything to eat, and obviously he wanted some and wanted them to know that he was real.

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So they gave him a piece of broiled fish and some honeycomb. And he took it and ate in their presence. In Revelation, we read, Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If any of you will open unto me, then I will underhand, and I will dine with him, and he with

Flesh And Bones: Jesus Eats Fish

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me. God, Almighty. The Creator of heaven and earth.

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Jesus, the Messiah, the Christ, the Son of God, who died for your sins, and who rose from the dead.

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He wants to have dinner with you. He wants to have dinner with you. He says, I stand at the door and I knock. And so he knocks. Anyway. And he knocks. Anyway. And he knocks. Anyway, it's for you to open that door and to invite him into your life. And to have fellowship with you.

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You might say, oh, I'm a Christian. Yeah, I invited him into my heart a long time ago. Can I tell you that that verse about standing at the door and knocking was written to Christians? It was written to one of the churches in Revelation. Because so many of us in our Christian experience do not have fellowship with God. We keep him outside waiting on the front porch saying, Yes, Lord, stay there. I might need fire insurance. There could be a fire at any moment. I'd love to have you help me carry my things out. But don't really come inside. Don't really make yourself at home because there's stuff in here that you really don't want to see, Lord. He's knocking. I tell you something. If you will invite him in to have dinner at your house, then one day he will take you to have dinner at his house.

Behold, I Stand At The Door And Knock

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And that is a meal you do not want to miss. I encourage you to RSVP as well.

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For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks, it will be opened. That's chapter 11, verse 10 of the book we are currently studying here on Heed the Word, Luke. Luke's gospel account of the life of Jesus is an invaluable study that we know God will use in your life. We do thank you for joining us today. This has been another edition of Heed the Word with our pastor and teacher, Ken Davis. As you likely heard at the beginning of today's program, this message is available free of charge on our website. Simply log on to www.heedtheword.org. That's heedtheword.org. Once you're there, select the Listen Online page. There you'll find the Heed the Word Media Player. For your convenience, today's message is available in MP3 podcast and mobile formats. By far, the best way to stay current with all the latest teachings from Pastor Ken is to subscribe to the Heed the Word Podcast. So log on to HeatheWord.org and continue studying with us today. If today's message has ministered to you and you live in the Burleson, Texas area, or will be passing through, we'd like to invite you to join us for worship. We meet each Sunday morning at 10.30 a.m. and Wednesday evenings at 7 p.m. You can log on to HeTheWord.org for driving directions and more information. So please stop by and visit us. Well, that's all the time we have for today. We encourage you to join us next time as Pastor Ken continues teaching through the Gospel of Luke on the next edition of Heathew.