SPEAKER_00: The sermon text reading for today is Luke chapter 24, verses 13 to 27.
SPEAKER_00: You can find this passage in the Sanctuary Bible on page 1610.
SPEAKER_00: Please listen as I read God's word.
SPEAKER_00: That same day, two of them were going into a village called Emos, about seven miles from Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: They were talking with each other about everything that had happened.
SPEAKER_00: As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them, but they were kept from recognizing him.
SPEAKER_00: He asked them, What are you discussing together as you walk along?
SPEAKER_00: They stood still, their faces downcast.
SPEAKER_00: One of them, named Cleopus, asked, excuse me, asked him, Are you the only one visiting Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?
SPEAKER_00: What things, yes.
SPEAKER_00: About Jesus of Nazareth, they replied.
SPEAKER_00: The chief priests and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him.
SPEAKER_00: But we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel.
SPEAKER_00: And what is more, it is the third day since all this took place.
SPEAKER_00: In addition, some of our women amazed us.
SPEAKER_00: They went to the tomb early this morning, but didn't find his body.
SPEAKER_00: They came and told us that they had seen a vision of angels who said he was alive.
SPEAKER_00: Then some of our companions went to the tomb and found it just as women had said, but they did not see Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: He said to them, How foolish you are and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken.
SPEAKER_00: Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?
SPEAKER_00: And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the scriptures concerning himself.
SPEAKER_02: We get to drive through this, and uh you can look at it as a nuisance, which to be honest with you, I kind of do.
SPEAKER_02: And uh thankfully for me, I was here before it started snowing, so I didn't have to deal with it in the same way you guys did, but uh grateful to be with you here this morning.
SPEAKER_02: As we come uh to this passage today, I want to uh just briefly give you a quick financial update as we come to the last uh part of this fiscal year.
SPEAKER_02: Uh first is we had asked you for$25,000 uh to purchase new speakers uh and a new sound system uh since ours is on its last leg.
SPEAKER_02: And so we asked you to contribute$25,000 towards that over and above what you uh normally contribute.
SPEAKER_02: And as of this morning, we're about$700 short of that goal.
SPEAKER_02: So we're like we're like this close, okay?
SPEAKER_02: We're this close.
SPEAKER_02: And there's still like three days left in the year.
SPEAKER_02: So uh there's still time uh if you are thinking, still thinking or praying about how much God would have you contribute.
SPEAKER_02: There are offering envelopes that are in the seat back in front of you uh that say, be rich on them.
SPEAKER_02: You can take one of those and drop your donation in the offering box this morning, or you can also use the online giving platform as well.
SPEAKER_02: Uh but I think that uh given how much time we have left and given how close we are, I think that we are going to uh we're gonna make our goal this year.
SPEAKER_02: So uh thank you for that.
SPEAKER_02: Thank you to those of you who have already contributed.
SPEAKER_02: Uh as far as the general fund is concerned, we are set to finish the year well, which is another uh testament to uh God's grace through you all who give faithfully and generously to uh the work of ministry here.
SPEAKER_02: And uh today's the 28th, and the month ends on the 31st, so this is the last Sunday to give in person, if that is how you give.
SPEAKER_02: Uh if you also, if you want to send a check in the mail, you can do that as long as it's postmarked by the 31st.
SPEAKER_02: That will count as a tax-deductible donation for the year 2025.
SPEAKER_02: Uh so again, thank you to those of you who give faithfully and generously uh to the work that God is doing in and through our church community.
SPEAKER_02: Uh with that, let me ask you to join me in a word of prayer, and then we will look at our text this morning.
SPEAKER_02: God, this morning we ask that you would bring calm to our hearts as we think about what is in these verses.
SPEAKER_02: God, we ask that uh you would uh bring a sense of peace in our hearts that enables us to see clearly uh what's in these verses and to uh to be changed and transformed by you, Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: And so, God, we ask for your help now as we uh sit under the good teaching of your word.
SPEAKER_02: We ask that uh you would uh please meet each of us, provide each one of us what we need today.
SPEAKER_02: Uh we ask that you would help us as we come out of this Christmas season where uh some of us are just feeling tired from all the Christmas things, and uh some of us are leaving this year vowing never to do it like this again.
SPEAKER_02: Um God, we ask that you would uh help us to be people who are reminded of the good news of your birth all throughout the year.
SPEAKER_02: Please don't let our focus on your birth this time of year be something that stays in this time of year.
SPEAKER_02: We ask that you would uh give us an awareness of the good news of your birth all throughout the year.
SPEAKER_02: And uh we just thank you for this time that we've had over these last number of weeks to uh to look into these things and to think about the incarnation in uh in very direct ways.
SPEAKER_02: So be with us now, we ask, uh give us everything we need here this morning.
SPEAKER_02: We ask all this in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_02: Amen.
SPEAKER_02: Uh today is the last day in the series that we have been in uh in Advent called Behold.
SPEAKER_02: And uh if you've been with us, you know that we have been uh trying to explore the life-shaping practice and the life-shaping power of fixing our eyes on Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: So we've just uh from the very beginning have just said that this is not a series that's aimed at like here's giving you all these things to do and to add to your to-do list this Christmas season.
SPEAKER_02: We've really set out uh with one simple objective, and that is to behold Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: We want to see him clearly, and the reason is because the things that we behold are going to change the way that we that we behave.
SPEAKER_02: And so we want to just uh spend time beholding him, and we've done that over the course of these last weeks.
SPEAKER_02: Uh we've we've been looking at these different aspects or facets of his identity, and so far we've seen that he's the one the prophets foretold.
SPEAKER_02: We've seen that he is the source of salvation, he is the servant of the Lord, he is the bringer of the new covenant, he is the one who makes all things new, and here this morning we finish together by looking at how he is the one who fulfills all of Scripture.
SPEAKER_02: He's the one who fulfills all of Scripture.
SPEAKER_02: So the first thing I want to do is I want to look at these verses that you just heard read and explore this uh really astonishing claim that Jesus makes, that everything in the whole Bible points to him.
SPEAKER_02: I want to explore this uh astonishing claim and then think with you for a moment about how do we how do we apply this?
SPEAKER_02: What do we do with this?
SPEAKER_02: So, first, let's just camp for a moment on uh this astonishing claim that Jesus makes here in these verses.
SPEAKER_02: So, as you heard the text read this morning, it begins with two of Jesus' disciples who are traveling by foot from the city of Jerusalem where they've just remembered the Passover, and uh they're on their way from Jerusalem to a place called Emmaus.
SPEAKER_02: And verse 13 begins uh with a time marker that says, now that same day.
SPEAKER_02: And when you read that, what that clues us into is that this journey that these disciples are taking took place on the day of the resurrection.
SPEAKER_02: So if you go back to the beginning of chapter 24, you see that Jesus has been raised from the dead, that the angels have appeared to the women who were at the tomb, and those women then go and they tell Jesus' other disciples, including these two, that Jesus has been raised from the dead.
SPEAKER_02: And it's on that very day, it's later in that same day, that these two disciples are traveling, have left Jerusalem, and are traveling on their way to the city called Emmaus.
SPEAKER_02: And as they are traveling, they are having uh a lively and spirited conversation about everything that they had experienced over these last few days.
SPEAKER_02: I want to just uh pause for a moment and just try and empathize.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe that's the right word, maybe it's not.
SPEAKER_02: Uh, I want to just try and uh put ourselves in the shoes of those people, of these two disciples in particular, and just remember what it was that they had experienced over these last uh 48, 72 hours.
SPEAKER_02: So there was this prophet named Jesus, and Jesus went around claiming that he was the Messiah or he was God's deliverer, he was the rescuer that God had promised to send in the Hebrew Bible.
SPEAKER_02: And a whole group of disciples, including these two, who were on the road to Emmaus, had become apprentices of Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: They had given their lives to him and sat under his teaching and they began to follow him.
SPEAKER_02: And so Jesus is collecting these disciples to him, he's claiming to be the Messiah, and then he's also doing things that are amazing.
SPEAKER_02: We see him, he's healing people.
SPEAKER_02: There's people who are blind, who are now able to see.
SPEAKER_02: There's people who have physical infirmities, whose bodies are not right, who are sick, who Jesus makes whole and reverses those things in their life.
SPEAKER_02: We see him healing people of sickness and disease and leprosy and even raising some people from the dead on occasion.
SPEAKER_02: And so he's doing all these miraculous signs and wonders, and he's doing things like walking on water, which is a wild thing for him to do.
SPEAKER_02: He's walking on water, he's multiplying food for large crowds of people from just a few small loaves and fishes.
SPEAKER_02: So he's doing all these uh miraculous signs and wonders, and he's teaching the people.
SPEAKER_02: He's constantly, uh the disciples are sitting under his teaching, and he's constantly teaching the crowds of people who are gathered around him.
SPEAKER_02: And it says in all the gospels that his teaching was was with authority.
SPEAKER_02: It was with an authority that the other religious leaders simply didn't possess.
SPEAKER_02: And so you've got this guy, Jesus, who's claiming to be the Messiah, God's deliverer, and he's teaching with authority, and he's doing all these miraculous signs and healing people and driving out demons, and he's doing all of this stuff.
SPEAKER_02: And there was this group of disciples who really truly did believe that he was God's deliverer.
SPEAKER_02: They really did believe that he was the Messiah.
SPEAKER_02: But then to their shock, this man who claimed to be God's Messiah was crucified.
SPEAKER_02: He was executed by the Roman government at the behest of the religious leaders.
SPEAKER_02: And then to add insult to injury, now it's a few days later, and his body's gone missing.
SPEAKER_02: And yes, these women have come to the disciples and said, Hey, we we saw an angel, and the angel told us that he's alive, but you can tell from listening to what they say to Jesus on the road to Emmaus, they don't actually believe the women.
SPEAKER_02: When Jesus says, Hey, what are you guys talking about?
SPEAKER_02: It says their faces were downcast.
SPEAKER_02: Someone who's just heard and truly believes that the Messiah was executed and then rose again from the dead would not be downcast.
SPEAKER_02: And so they don't actually believe.
SPEAKER_02: They're trying to figure out like, what do we make of all this?
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, the women said that he rose from the dead, but then we went to the tomb and he wasn't there, so we can't verify that because he hasn't appeared to us.
SPEAKER_02: And this is the situation that they find themselves in is that they've given their lives to this man, and all their hopes have been dashed, and they're trying to make sense of what they have just experienced.
SPEAKER_02: And as they walk, they're having a conversation about these things.
SPEAKER_02: And it says in in our English translations, uh, the NIV, it says that they were talking and discussing these things.
SPEAKER_02: And I think that that is too uh too weak of a translation.
SPEAKER_02: Because this is a word that means to debate or to argue.
SPEAKER_02: These are emotionally charged kinds of speaking words that are used to describe what's happening here.
SPEAKER_02: And you you can imagine just putting yourself in their place and what they've experienced.
SPEAKER_02: You can understand what that emotions are running high right now.
SPEAKER_02: And you know from your own life experience that when your emotions are running high, it doesn't take much to just touch you and and you go over the edge.
SPEAKER_02: And so they're in this spirited, emotional conversation with one another, discussing what all this has happened, and into this conversation walks Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: And we're told that his identity was kept from them, and we don't know how long Jesus was there with them.
SPEAKER_02: He could have like just walked up, or he could have been walking with them for a few minutes here.
SPEAKER_02: Uh, but Jesus walks into the conversation and says, What are you guys talking about?
SPEAKER_02: And they their faces were downcast.
SPEAKER_02: And they this this question, I think, it touches a nerve in these in these disciples, and and they respond basically by saying, What are we talking about?
SPEAKER_02: Are you kidding me?
SPEAKER_02: Where have you been, man?
SPEAKER_02: Or as Luke records, are you the only one visiting Jerusalem who doesn't know these things that have happened in these days?
SPEAKER_02: To which Jesus responds by saying, What things?
SPEAKER_02: They went on to describe everything that they had experienced.
SPEAKER_02: We thought he was the Messiah, we gave our lives to him, he was killed by the Romans, his body's gone, we're not sure we believe the women.
SPEAKER_02: That's the story they tell about what they're talking about.
SPEAKER_02: And Jesus then rebuked them.
SPEAKER_02: Actually, pretty uh pretty harshly.
SPEAKER_02: He says, How foolish are you, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken.
SPEAKER_02: Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?
SPEAKER_02: So he rebukes them and he essentially says, Guys, the Messiah had to suffer.
SPEAKER_02: And the scriptures have been telling you all along that this is the case.
SPEAKER_02: Or to put it a little bit more pointedly, he's saying to them, You are not rejecting the message of the women who found the tomb empty.
SPEAKER_02: You are rejecting the message of the prophets, because they have been telling you all along that the Messiah had to suffer.
SPEAKER_02: So he rebukes them, and then listen to what happens in verse 27.
SPEAKER_02: Beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the scriptures concerning himself.
SPEAKER_02: So he rebukes them and then does a little Bible study.
SPEAKER_02: As they're walking along, he's telling them, he's going all the way back to the books of Moses, the Pentateuch, the Torah.
SPEAKER_02: He's going back and he's explaining and showing how everything that's in there, in all the scriptures, points to himself.
SPEAKER_02: He says something almost identical later in verse 44 of Luke 24, where he's with the other disciples, and he says to them, This is what I told you when I was still with you.
SPEAKER_02: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the Psalms.
SPEAKER_02: Now, the law of the prophets and the Psalms, those are the three main categories of literature that make up the Bible in Jesus' day.
SPEAKER_02: So when he says, the law, the prophets, and the psalms all point to me, what he's saying is, the whole Bible points to me.
SPEAKER_02: And remember that in Jesus' day, for Jesus and for his disciples, and for quite a while into the early church, the only Bible they had was the Hebrew Bible.
SPEAKER_02: They didn't have what we call the New Testament because it was in the process of being written at the time.
SPEAKER_02: And so what he's saying is, everything in the Hebrew Bible points to me.
SPEAKER_02: This is the astonishing claim that Jesus is making.
SPEAKER_02: Every single thing that's in the Hebrew Bible, the law and the prophets and the writings and the Psalms, everything is pointing forward to me.
SPEAKER_02: Everything is pointing towards me.
SPEAKER_02: And we could say this in a couple different ways.
SPEAKER_02: I think it's helpful to try and come at this in a variety of ways.
SPEAKER_02: Here's what he's saying.
SPEAKER_02: He's saying, he is the one to whom everything points.
SPEAKER_02: Everything points to him.
SPEAKER_02: He's saying everything in the Bible finds its true end in him, finds its fulfillment and its completion and its fruition in him.
SPEAKER_02: He's saying, he is the one who fulfills all of Scripture.
SPEAKER_02: This is an astonishing claim that Jesus makes.
SPEAKER_02: Everything in the Bible points forward to me.
SPEAKER_02: Everything in the Bible should lead you to me.
SPEAKER_02: Everything in all of Scripture points to Him.
SPEAKER_02: And while this is true, I think that this saying it like this, that He's the one who fulfills Scripture, is, at least in my mind, still a little bit abstract.
SPEAKER_02: And so I think there's uh we can say this in a way that's a little bit more specific.
SPEAKER_02: And so we can say it like this all of God's saving work is brought to completion in Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: All of it.
SPEAKER_02: Every single part of all the saving work that God has been doing throughout the Bible is brought to completion in Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: Now there's so many different ways, and I really wrestled as I was thinking about this in preparation.
SPEAKER_02: Like, how do you what are the things you point to and how Jesus fulfills all of it?
SPEAKER_02: There's so many different ways that you could spend a whole series looking at all of those different things.
SPEAKER_02: But if we could only say one thing about how Jesus fulfills the scriptures, and we only have time to say one thing, I think this is the baseline.
SPEAKER_02: This is the place we start.
SPEAKER_02: All of God's saving work, every bit of it is brought to completion and to its fruition in the person of Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: And we actually see this in Luke 24.
SPEAKER_02: We see this in Luke 24 if we continue reading just past what you heard read this morning.
SPEAKER_02: So Jesus gave these disciples of his on the road to Emmaus a Bible lesson, showed how all the scriptures point to him.
SPEAKER_02: And then we read in verse 28, it says, As they approached the village to which they were going, Jesus continued on as if he were going farther.
SPEAKER_02: But they urged him strongly, Stay with us, for it is nearly evening, and the day is almost over.
SPEAKER_02: So he went in to stay with them.
SPEAKER_02: When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it, and began to give it to them.
SPEAKER_02: Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight.
SPEAKER_02: They asked each other, Were not our hearts burning within us while we talked, while he talked with us on the road and opened the scriptures to us.
SPEAKER_02: Now we may read this and uh be really distracted by the inability of the disciples to recognize Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: I know, I, for one, I wonder.
SPEAKER_02: I'm like, I don't know.
SPEAKER_02: Why was Jesus' identity hidden from them?
SPEAKER_02: Why didn't God want Jesus uh to be recognized by these disciples as they're walking on the road?
SPEAKER_02: And maybe one day in new creation I can get the answer to that question.
SPEAKER_02: Uh but for today, uh we should just not allow ourselves to let uh the curiosity over those things distract us from this incredible and world changing thing that Jesus is doing here.
SPEAKER_02: To see what's going on here, we gotta put our finger in this passage and bookmark it and go back to Genesis chapter three.
SPEAKER_02: And as we do, uh, we read about the story of.
SPEAKER_02: Of how sin entered our world.
SPEAKER_02: See, Adam and Eve were in the garden, and there was a serpent who came and deceived them by casting doubt on the goodness of God's instruction.
SPEAKER_02: So the serpent said, You know, I know that God said, Don't eat of this tree because you're gonna die if you do, but that's listen, that's not gonna happen.
SPEAKER_02: Actually, God knows that if you eat of this, you're going to become like him.
SPEAKER_02: It's gonna unlock a part of you that has been suppressed with all these bad instructions, these limiting instructions that God has given you.
SPEAKER_02: So, what you need to do is you need to recognize that God is keeping something good from you.
SPEAKER_02: God is holding back on you, He's preventing you from having something that would lead to more flourishing in your life.
SPEAKER_02: And so we cast doubt on and directly contradicted the instruction that God had given to Adam and Eve.
SPEAKER_02: And of course, instead of trusting God's instruction, they did what was right in their own eyes.
SPEAKER_02: They followed the way of the serpent, and the poison of sin at that moment was unleashed into our world.
SPEAKER_02: And we've been living in and living with the consequences and the fallout of that decision ever since that day, both out there in the world as well as internally inside of each one of us.
SPEAKER_02: But at the end of Genesis 3, God made a promise, and the promise he made was that he would crush the head of the serpent.
SPEAKER_02: And from that moment on, from Genesis 3 onwards, the whole Bible is one unified story that tells us about God's plan to rescue people from their sin.
SPEAKER_02: It talks about God's plan to rescue people and to deliver them from the sin that has infected and affected their lives.
SPEAKER_02: All of God's work, and there's so much of it that we read about throughout the Bible, every single bit of it is brought to completion in the person of Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: So that promise that we see back in Genesis 3 to crush the head of the serpent and to make a way for people to be released from their sin, that is brought to completion in Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: And what we see in Luke chapter 24 is Jesus is undoing the curse.
SPEAKER_02: Now, if you were an average Jewish person in the first century world and you're reading this account that Luke has put together, some mental flags would be going up in your mind as you read about people eating food and having their eyes opened.
SPEAKER_02: If you're a Jewish person who's familiar with the Hebrew Bible and especially the scroll of Moses and Genesis, you're saying to yourself, people ate food and their eyes were opened.
SPEAKER_02: You know, I've heard this story before.
SPEAKER_02: I've seen this before, haven't I?
SPEAKER_02: And so when you read Genesis 3 and Luke 24 side by side, what you see is that in Genesis 3, the woman she took food and she gave it to her husband.
SPEAKER_02: They ate it and their eyes were opened.
SPEAKER_02: And then here in Luke chapter 24, Jesus took food, he gave it to his disciples, they ate it, and their eyes were opened.
SPEAKER_02: But this time, their eyes were not opened to guilt and shame and regret like it was for Adam and Eve.
SPEAKER_02: See, when their eyes were opened, they recognized that they were naked, and they began to feel shame and remorse and regret, and they hid from God, and they hid from one another, and they blamed one another.
SPEAKER_02: That's what the eyes being opened meant was that everything good in the world was unraveling.
SPEAKER_02: That's what happened when their eyes were opened.
SPEAKER_02: But then here in Luke 24, their eyes were opened, but not to guilt and not to shame and not to regret.
SPEAKER_02: Their eyes were opened to see Jesus as the crucified Savior.
SPEAKER_02: Notice, look at what they say right after their eyes were opened.
SPEAKER_02: And they say in verse 32 or 31, their eyes were opened, they recognized him.
SPEAKER_02: Then verse 32, they asked each other, Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the scriptures to us.
SPEAKER_02: So these two disciples, their eyes were opened, they were finally opened to see Jesus, and it was at that moment that they finally understood what was happening inside of them while Jesus showed them on the road how everything points to him.
SPEAKER_02: Their eyes were opened, their hearts burned within them as they heard Jesus himself telling them how all of God's saving plans have come to fruition through him, who is the crucified Messiah.
SPEAKER_02: So what's happening here in Luke 24, as their eyes are being opened, this is an instance where Genesis 3 is being reversed.
SPEAKER_02: In Genesis 3, the curse came into the world by people's eyes being opened, and in Jesus, the curse is reversed and undone by people's eyes being opened to see Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: He's opening people's eyes to see him as the crucified Messiah.
SPEAKER_02: He's opening their eyes so that they can see all of God's saving work, all the things that God has been doing throughout all of the Bible are leading forward to this moment of completion in Him.
SPEAKER_02: And when people see Jesus, when they see Him as the crucified Savior, it's at that moment that their eyes are opened and the curse is undone.
SPEAKER_02: The curse is reversed.
SPEAKER_02: That's what we see Jesus doing here.
SPEAKER_02: All of God's saving work is brought to completion in him.
SPEAKER_02: And if this is true, that all of it is brought to completion in him, how do we how do we respond to this?
SPEAKER_02: What do we do?
SPEAKER_02: Number one, trust Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: The good news is that through Jesus' death and resurrection, God has made a way for you to be rescued from the power of your sin.
SPEAKER_02: So many of you here today, I know because I've talked with you about it, have experienced this.
SPEAKER_02: Have experienced his grace and his mercy and his forgiveness and his compassion and his kindness for you, and you were made alive in Christ and have been living a new life ever since then, and God has been changing you slowly over time.
SPEAKER_02: So many of us have experienced this for ourselves, and there may be some of you here today who have not yet experienced this for yourself.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe you haven't acknowledged the reality of the power of sin in your life, that you are spiritually dead, trapped under the weight of sin, unless God intervenes in your life.
SPEAKER_02: But the good news for all of us who are here today is that you can know him.
SPEAKER_02: You can know him.
SPEAKER_02: He is the one.
SPEAKER_02: All the saving plans of God come to fruition in him.
SPEAKER_02: And we can know him.
SPEAKER_02: So number one, we trust Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: And number two, this is gonna like break your brain.
SPEAKER_02: Read the Bible.
SPEAKER_02: What?
SPEAKER_02: Trust Jesus and read the Bible.
SPEAKER_02: And in all seriousness, I say that because in reading the Bible, there is a lifetime of discovering Jesus as the one to whom everything points.
SPEAKER_02: Okay, can I just tell you, I don't care how long you live, you will never exhaust the Bible's ability to surprise you with new insights about Jesus and how He is the one to whom everything points.
SPEAKER_02: Chad's giving me a thumbs up.
SPEAKER_02: You will never exhaust the Bible's ability to surprise you with that.
SPEAKER_02: Right?
SPEAKER_02: There's a lifetime of discovering Jesus in the pages of the Bible.
SPEAKER_02: And uh the Bible Project, a resource we use regularly here at Elmwood, uh, says this in a really helpful way.
SPEAKER_02: They talk about the Bible as Jewish meditation literature, which is so helpful because uh meditation literature is designed to be thought over and chewed on, and you you you meditate on it.
SPEAKER_02: So you don't just like read the Bible once and say, got it.
SPEAKER_02: What's next?
SPEAKER_02: No, you read the Bible, and half the time you're like, I have no idea what that says.
SPEAKER_02: And then you spend the rest of your life reading it over and over and over again, and as you read it over and over again, there's layers, there's complexity, and there's connections, and there's hyperlinks, and there's all these things that are available to us as we spend time reading the Bible.
SPEAKER_02: And it's I think it's so important that we that we uh as we talk about reading the Bible, that we remember why we're doing it in the first place, okay?
SPEAKER_02: We read our Bibles to see Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: We read our Bibles to behold Him.
SPEAKER_02: We read our Bibles to commune with Him and to experience relationship with Him.
SPEAKER_02: Now, certainly there's things that we want to know and we want to understand, and you know, we maybe it's helpful for you to have it as a thing that you can check off of a list every single day.
SPEAKER_02: For those of you who are list people, and that's helpful, wonderful.
SPEAKER_02: But reading the Bible is not just a thing that we check off our list, it's not just for intellectual information.
SPEAKER_02: We read the Bible because in the pages of Scripture we get to meet and encounter and be changed by Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: So the whole point of looking to Scripture and reading the Bible is abiding in Him.
SPEAKER_02: It's knowing Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: And I'll just say, it's really hard to behold Jesus with a closed Bible.
SPEAKER_02: Like it's really hard to behold him if we're the kind of people that rarely ever crack open the pages of our Bible and just read what it says.
SPEAKER_02: And I'll just tell you, there's uh there's actually research that shows this.
SPEAKER_02: I can't remember if it's Lifeway or if it's Barna, did research, and what they uh what they discovered was that Bible reading is the keystone spiritual practice.
SPEAKER_02: Meaning, Bible reading is the one spiritual practice that affects all of the other ones.
SPEAKER_02: And what that means is that if you are the kind of person who reads your Bible, that is the number one indicator that you are practicing other spiritual practices and uh you know rhythms in your life and you're growing in your faith.
SPEAKER_02: It's not the same with prayer, it's not the same with solitude, it's not the same with any of those.
SPEAKER_02: Bible reading is the key indicator of if you're if you're doing that, you're going to be in all likelihood a growing, maturing follower of Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: If you're not doing it, you're not going to be practicing any other spiritual rhythms.
SPEAKER_02: That's just the reality of it.
SPEAKER_02: And again, we read the Bible because we want to encounter Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: And we should be the kind of people who read our Bibles not because we want to, but because we get to encounter Jesus in the pages of the Bible.
SPEAKER_02: And so I want to just encourage you as we uh close today, if you don't already have a rhythm in your life of reading scripture, we're coming up on a new year, which is the time I don't typically do this, but this is the time when a lot of people make resolutions or make, you know, decisions to change their habits.
SPEAKER_02: This is a great time uh to look ahead to the next year and say, you know, I've not done this very well over the past however long.
SPEAKER_02: I want to change that.
SPEAKER_02: And make this the year that you have an actual rhythm of reading scripture in your life.
SPEAKER_02: And let me just give you this word of encouragement.
SPEAKER_02: Uh, don't look at this as a year-long thing.
SPEAKER_02: Because if you're like, I'm gonna do this thing for a year, you're not.
SPEAKER_02: Say, I'm gonna do this thing for like a week or for a month.
SPEAKER_02: And I'm gonna stack those weeks and stack those days and stack those months.
SPEAKER_02: If you approach it, if you're like me, you're like, I'm gonna do this every day of my life for the rest of my life.
SPEAKER_02: And then you just feel discouraged when three months later you're like, I'm bored of this.
SPEAKER_02: Or this doesn't work for me, and now I feel bad for giving it up.
SPEAKER_02: So don't do this as like a this is gonna be my whole year thing.
SPEAKER_02: Do it as a like, I'm gonna spend each week experimenting on what it looks like for me to be a person who reads Scripture to encounter Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: And over time figure out what that looks like.
SPEAKER_02: But we should be those kind of people because when we read the Bible, we get to encounter Jesus, and that's the whole point.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus is the one to whom the entire Hebrew Bible points, all of God's saving work is brought to its completion and its fulfillment in Him.
SPEAKER_02: And so that's why we trust Him, that's why we read our Bibles, because we want to know Him.
SPEAKER_02: We get to come to the communion table today as we do each week, and as we do so, we are reminded of the surprising way that God made good on all these promises that He made.
SPEAKER_02: He promised that He would rescue us from our sin, and He made good on those promises by sending His Son, who is both our crucified and risen Savior.
SPEAKER_02: Everything in the whole Bible points to him.
SPEAKER_02: So it only makes sense that as we spend time looking at Jesus in the scriptures, that we also come and we receive him at the communion table today.
SPEAKER_02: So let me invite you to take just a few moments for silence and confession, and then we will come and uh remember Christ at the table.