Reading the Old Testament with Risen Eyes

Read Luke 24:13–35 before proceeding. Keep your Bible open throughout this session.

Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things written about himself in all the scriptures.
— Luke 24:27

Before we open Genesis, we open Luke.

The whole question of how to read the Old Testament has, on the afternoon of the first Easter, been answered by the One who wrote it. Two disciples on a road outside Jerusalem are joined by a stranger who turns out to be the risen Christ. They do not know it is him. They walk seven miles with him. And in that seven miles he gives them the hermeneutic that will govern Christian reading of the Old Testament for two thousand years. Beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.

So we begin where the church has always begun. We begin on the road to Emmaus, watching the Lord himself open the Scriptures.

On the Road

Now that very day two of them were on their way to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem. They were talking to each other about all the things that had happened. While they were talking and debating these things, Jesus himself approached and began to accompany them (but their eyes were kept from recognizing him).

Luke sets the scene with precision. That very day — the day of the resurrection, the first Easter. Two of them — disciples of Jesus, though not of the twelve. One is named in verse 18 as Cleopas; the other is unnamed, which has led tradition to wonder whether the second disciple was Cleopas’s wife or some other follower whose name has been left to silence. They were going to a village named Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem — a real walking distance, two hours or so at a good pace, perhaps longer for two men in deep conversation on a hard road. They are not running from anything. They are not on a mission. They are simply going home.

They were talking with each other about all these things that had happened. This is the natural conversation of disciples on the afternoon of Easter. Their teacher has been crucified three days before. Reports have come this morning that his tomb is empty and that women have seen visions of angels. They are processing. They are trying to make sense of what they have lived through. They are also, although they do not know it, modeling the activity of the Christian community in every age — talking together about what God has done.

While they were talking and discussing together, Jesus himself drew near and went with them. Luke states it as the simple fact it is. The risen Christ walks up beside two disciples on a road, and goes with them. There is no fanfare. There is no announcement. He simply joins them on the way.

But their eyes were kept from recognizing him. The Greek verb is in the passive voice — ekratounto, they were being held back. Their eyes were prevented from recognizing him. By whom? The text does not say. The grammatical passive in Scripture often signals the activity of God himself — what scholars sometimes call the divine passive. God is keeping them from recognizing Jesus. Not because God is being cruel to them. Because there is something he wants them to learn first. The Lord wants to walk seven miles with them in conversation about the Scriptures before they know who he is. The Lord is, in effect, hiding himself for the sake of a lesson.

There is a parable here for the very project we are about to undertake. A Christian who picks up the Old Testament has the risen Christ walking with him as he reads. The Lord is there in the words of Moses and the prophets, just as truly as he was there beside Cleopas on the Emmaus road. The question is whether the reader’s eyes will be opened to see him, or held back. Sometimes the eyes are held back for a season because there is something to learn first. Sometimes they are held back because the reader has not yet been taught what to look for. Sometimes they are held back by the reader’s own assumptions — by what he is sure the Old Testament must be saying, before he has actually listened to it. The Emmaus road is the road every Christian walks in the Old Testament. Christ is there. The reader does not always see him.

We Had Hoped

(but their eyes were kept from recognizing him). Then he said to them, “What are these matters you are discussing so intently as you walk along?” And they stood still, looking sad. Then one of them, named Cleopas, answered him, “Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who doesn’t know the things that have happened there in these days?”

What follows is one of the most remarkable conversations in the gospels. Jesus, the central figure of the events the disciples are discussing, asks them to tell him about himself. They do not know they are talking to him. So they tell him, in their own words, who Jesus was and what they had hoped.

Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, a man who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and rulers delivered him up to be condemned to death, and crucified him. This is the disciples’ summary. Jesus was a man. Jesus was a prophet. Jesus was mighty in deed and word. He was delivered up and crucified. All of this is accurate so far as it goes. The disciples have not gotten the facts wrong. They simply have the facts arranged in a way that does not yet see Christ.

Then comes the heartbreaking phrase. But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. We had hoped. The Greek is ēlpizomen — imperfect tense, the tense of a hope that lasted for a time and has now been broken. We had hoped. We do not hope anymore. The crucifixion has finished the hoping. The disciples are sad — and Luke names it twice, looking sad in verse 17 and sad implied throughout their account — because the man they had thought would redeem Israel has been killed, and dead men do not redeem anyone.

This is a particular kind of reading, and it is worth naming. The disciples have all the historical facts. They have a high opinion of Jesus. They have grief at his death. What they do not have is the gospel. They have not yet understood that the Messiah was supposed to suffer. They have not yet understood that the cross was the redemption rather than the end of the hope of redemption. They have not yet understood that the resurrection — which is in fact what the women have just reported — is the vindication of the cross, not its reversal.

What they have is a moralistic reading of the recent events. Jesus was a good man. The authorities killed him. We had hoped he was the redeemer; we now grieve. The pattern is one we will see repeatedly when we sit down with people who have read the Old Testament without ever being taught what to look for. The story is read as a series of events that happened to good people and bad people, with appropriate moral conclusions drawn. The story is read accurately at the surface. It is not read for Christ. It is not read for the gospel. It is read as a heartbreaking news item that the reader processes and moves on from.

But we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel. Not only this, but it is now the third day since these things happened. Furthermore, some women of our group amazed us. They were at the tomb early this morning, and when they did not find his body, they came back and said they had seen a vision of angels, who said he was alive. Then some of those who were with us went to the tomb, and found it just as the women had said, but they did not see him.”

The disciples even have the new information. They know it is the third day. They know the tomb is empty. They know that some of their group has seen visions of angels. They have the data of the resurrection. What they do not have is the categories to make sense of it. The resurrection has been reported to them, but they have not yet been taught how to read it. So they continue walking to Emmaus, sad, with the empty tomb in their conversation and no Christ in their hearts.

This is the state of the disciples just before the risen Christ teaches them. They have the facts. They have a high view of Jesus. They have all the relevant historical data, including the empty tomb. And they do not yet see. The teacher who would teach them to see is, at this moment, walking beside them in the form of an apparent stranger.

O Foolish Ones, and Slow of Heart

So he said to them, “You foolish people —how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken!

Jesus’s response is not gentle. O foolish ones. The Greek word is anoētoi — without understanding, mentally slow, dim. Slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken. He is not rebuking them for being grieved. He is rebuking them for not having understood what the prophets had been saying all along. The prophets had spoken. The prophets had said that the Christ would suffer and then enter into his glory. The disciples had read the prophets without seeing this. And so when the suffering came, they were not prepared for the glory.

Wasn’t it necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and enter into his glory?”

The verb is significant. Was it not necessary — edei, the same word used throughout Luke for divine necessity, for what must happen because God has determined it must happen. The suffering of Christ was not a tragedy that derailed the plan; the suffering of Christ was the plan. The Christ had to suffer. The Christ had to enter into glory. The order is suffering first, then glory. The disciples had been hoping for glory without suffering. They had read the prophets and missed the cross. And so when the cross came, they could not see it as part of the path to glory; they could only see it as the end of the path.

The rebuke is, in its way, gospel. The Lord is not saying: too bad, you missed it, your hope is over. He is saying: your hope is not over. You have been reading the Scriptures wrongly. The very passages you have been reading — the prophets you know — were telling you all along that the Messiah would have to suffer and then enter into glory. The cross does not contradict the Old Testament. The cross fulfills it.

This is the second of the four commitments we made at the start of the series, now spoken by Christ himself on the Emmaus road. Law and gospel run through the whole Bible. The prophets do not merely predict an unbroken triumph. The prophets announce a suffering Servant who will be wounded for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities, and on whom the chastisement of our peace will fall. The prophets had said it. Cleopas and his companion had read it. They had not understood it. They had read law without gospel and history without Christ. And their hearts were sad because the gospel they had not been taught to see was the only thing that could have made sense of what had happened.

Luther, who knew this passage well and preached on it more than once in his Church Postils, observed that the natural reading of the Old Testament is the reading of the unbelieving heart. The natural heart finds law in the Old Testament and tries to keep it. The natural heart finds heroes in the Old Testament and tries to emulate them. The natural heart finds tragedies in the Old Testament and shakes its head. What the natural heart does not find, until it is taught to, is the gospel of the suffering and glorified Messiah running through the whole of the Hebrew Scriptures. Cleopas and his companion are not bad disciples. They are normal disciples, doing what natural readers do. They need Christ to come alongside them and teach them how to read.

That is the situation of every Old Testament reader. We bring the natural heart to a Scripture whose substance the natural heart cannot see. We need Christ to walk alongside us and to teach us. We need our slow hearts opened to the gospel that has been on every page of the prophets all along.

Beginning with Moses and All the Prophets

Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things written about himself in all the scriptures.

This is the verse. This is the verse the Christian church has built its reading of the Old Testament on for twenty centuries. Beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself. Every word matters.

Beginning with Moses. Jesus does not begin with the obvious prophetic texts — Isaiah 53, Psalm 22, Zechariah 9. He begins with Moses, the very first books of the Hebrew Scriptures. He begins with Genesis. He begins with Exodus. He begins with the books that, on a superficial reading, might seem least obviously about him. He begins, in other words, where this very series begins. The Christ-centered reading of the Old Testament starts at the very beginning. Moses is not the long preamble before the real action. Moses is where the Christ-pointing Scripture begins.

And all the Prophets. He does not skip from Moses to a few favorite prophetic texts. He goes through the whole of the prophets — the former prophets and the latter prophets — all of them. The whole of the Hebrew canon is christological. There is no portion that is on a different topic.

He interpreted to them. The Greek verb is diermēneusen — interpreted, explained, opened up. Jesus does not simply quote passages at them. He interprets. He shows them how the Scriptures fit together. He shows them how the cross and the resurrection are not anomalies inside a Scripture that promised something else, but rather the substance toward which the whole Scripture had been pointing.

In all the Scriptures. Again, the whole — not a curated selection of messianic prooftexts, not a handful of obvious predictions, but all the Scriptures.

The things concerning himself. The Greek is ta peri heautou — the things concerning himself. This is what Jesus shows them in all the Scriptures. Not principles for living. Not types of leadership. Not lessons about courage or faithfulness. The things concerning himself. The reading is christological from start to finish.

This is the first commitment we made in the series introduction, and here it is in the mouth of the risen Christ himself. Christ is in the Old Testament. He is not merely predicted in scattered prophetic verses. He is the substance of the whole. From Moses through the prophets, all the Scriptures speak of him. The conviction that has driven Christian preaching of the Old Testament for two millennia begins here, on the road to Emmaus, in the mouth of the Lord who wrote the Scriptures and now opens them.

We do not know exactly what Jesus said on that walk. Luke does not record the content of the seven-mile sermon. The church has always wondered what we would give to hear it. But we can guess at the shape of it. We can guess that he began in Genesis with the seed of the woman who would crush the serpent’s head. We can guess that he spoke of Abraham offering Isaac on the mountain. We can guess that he opened the Passover lamb whose blood marked the doors. We can guess that he traced the priesthood, the tabernacle, the bronze serpent, the manna in the wilderness, the rock from which the water flowed. We can guess that he showed them David in his sufferings and David’s greater Son in his glory. We can guess that he opened the suffering Servant of Isaiah 53. We can guess that he showed them the pierced one of Zechariah 12 and the smitten shepherd of Zechariah 13. We can guess that he ended at Malachi, with the messenger preparing the way for the Lord who would come to his temple.

We do not know how he wove it together. But we know that whatever he said, it ended with the disciples saying to each other, after they recognized him at the table, Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures? Whatever Jesus said in those seven miles, the disciples knew, even before they recognized him, that it was unlike any teaching they had heard. The Scriptures, opened by Christ, set hearts on fire.

This is what we are about for the next several years, across four volumes. We are walking the road from Genesis through the Prophets, with the risen Christ at our side, watching him open the Scriptures and show us the things concerning himself. The seven-mile sermon is not lost. The substance of it is in the Scripture we are about to read. The Christ who preached it is the Christ who is still present in the text. The job of this study, and of every study of the Old Testament, is to walk that road with our eyes opened.

Known in the Breaking of Bread

So they approached the village where they were going. He acted as though he wanted to go farther, but they urged him, “Stay with us, because it is getting toward evening and the day is almost done.” So he went in to stay with them. When he had taken his place at the table with them, he took the bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. At this point their eyes were opened and they recognized him. Then he vanished out of their sight.

The teaching is over. The seven miles have been walked. They have arrived at Emmaus. And here Luke gives us one of the most moving scenes in the gospels. The disciples invite the still-unrecognized Christ to stay with them. He goes in. He sits at table with them. And he took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them. The four verbs are the eucharistic verbs — took, blessed, broke, gave. The risen Christ, in the home of two disciples in the village of Emmaus, breaks bread in the way he had broken bread on the night before he was betrayed, in the way that the church has broken bread ever since.

And their eyes were opened. The same passive voice as in verse 16 — they were opened, by the same hand that had kept them closed earlier. The recognition comes. The face of the stranger is suddenly the face of the Lord. The disciples see.

And they recognized him. And he vanished from their sight. He vanishes. The recognition is enough. They have seen him; he need not stay in his recognizable form.

Luther’s reading of this scene is one of the gems of Reformation preaching on Luke 24. The risen Christ is known in the breaking of the bread. He is not known in the abstract teaching alone, though the teaching opened the way. He is known where his Word and his presence come together in a sacramental act. The teaching on the road taught the disciples how to read; the breaking of the bread gave the disciples what they had been taught to see. The two go together. The Scripture opens up to Christ; Christ is known in the means he has given for being known.

Lutherans have understood this scene with peculiar warmth. Our worship is built around it. Word and Sacrament. The Scriptures opened to Christ, and Christ given in bread and wine. The two cannot be separated. The Lord who walked the seven miles is the Lord who sat at the table. The Lord who interpreted the Scriptures is the Lord who broke the bread.

For our purposes, opening the Old Testament, the lesson is even more direct. The disciples walked seven miles with the risen Christ before they recognized him. They were not unbelievers; they were sad believers, walking sadly. The Lord himself drew near to them, opened the Scriptures to them, taught them the gospel that was already there in the text, and led them to the table where he was made known. This is the pattern of Christian Scripture reading. The Lord draws near. The Scriptures are opened. The heart burns. And in worship, in the means of grace, the Lord is known to be present as he had been present in the text all along.

They said to each other, “Didn’t our hearts burn within us while he was speaking with us on the road, while he was explaining the scriptures to us?” So they got up that very hour and returned to Jerusalem. They found the eleven and those with them gathered together

The chapter ends with proclamation. The disciples cannot keep what they have seen. They get up, that same hour, and walk the seven miles back to Jerusalem in the dark, to tell the eleven that the Lord has risen indeed. Christ opened in the Scriptures produces Christ proclaimed to the world. This is what the church has been doing for two thousand years. It is what we are about to do.

Four Commitments, Spoken by the Lord

The series introduction stated four commitments for how we will read the Old Testament. The Emmaus road grounds every one of them in the practice of the risen Lord himself.

Christ is in the Old Testament. Jesus opens all the Scriptures — Moses and all the prophets — and shows the disciples the things concerning himself. Not predictions scattered across a Scripture that is otherwise about other topics. The things concerning himself, throughout the whole. This is the apostolic conviction, but it begins in the mouth of Christ. To read the Old Testament for Christ is not a later church invention. It is what Christ himself does.

Law and gospel run through the whole Bible. Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory? The prophets had said it. The disciples had read it. They had not understood it. The Scriptures contain the law that exposes our sin and the gospel that announces a suffering Savior. The Lord on the Emmaus road did not preach moral lessons from the prophets. He preached the gospel of a Christ who was bound to suffer and bound to be glorified, and who in the suffering had won the redemption his disciples had thought was lost. Where the gospel is missed in the Old Testament, hearts go sad. Where the gospel is opened in the Old Testament, hearts burn.

The Old Testament narratives are history. Notice how Cleopas tells the story to Jesus. Concerning Jesus of Nazareth — a real man, in a real place. Our chief priests and rulers delivered him up to be condemned to death, and crucified him — a real series of events, in a real city, in real time. It is now the third day since these things happened — a real calendar. Some women of our company went to the tomb early in the morning — real women, doing a real thing. Cleopas treats the events as history. Jesus does not say to him, yes, but in their deeper spiritual meaning these events did not really happen. Jesus engages with the history as history, and shows him that Christ is in the history. The historical reading and the christological reading do not compete. They are the same reading.

Typology with guardrails. Jesus opens the Scriptures and shows the things concerning himself. Whatever he said in those seven miles, it was not a flight from the text into fanciful allegory. The disciples did not say afterward, did not our hearts burn within us while he gave us a series of clever spiritual interpretations. They said while he opened to us the Scriptures. What he showed them was, in some real way, in the text. The types and shadows that pointed to Christ pointed to him because they were really designed by God to point to him. This is what typology is. It is real correspondence, not arbitrary association. The risen Christ on the Emmaus road is the original practitioner of disciplined christological reading, and the model for ours.

The four commitments are not our inventions. They are what we are doing because Christ has done it first. We walk the Emmaus road. We let the Lord open the Scriptures. We watch for him in Moses and the prophets. We mean to come to the table at the end with our hearts burning.

Gathering the Threads

Luke 24:13–35 is the gospel’s own introduction to how the Old Testament is to be read. Two disciples, on the afternoon of the resurrection, walking sadly toward Emmaus, are joined by the risen Christ. Their eyes are kept from recognizing him. He hears their account of the recent events — accurate so far as it goes, and yet missing what mattered most — and rebukes them for being slow of heart to believe all that the prophets had spoken. He then opens the Scriptures to them, beginning with Moses and going through all the prophets, showing them the things concerning himself. They reach the village; they urge him to stay; he goes in. At the table, he takes the bread and blesses it and breaks it, and their eyes are opened, and they recognize him, and he vanishes from their sight. They return to Jerusalem that same hour, proclaiming that the Lord has risen indeed.

The passage gives us the pattern. The Old Testament is to be read with Christ at its center, as Christ himself read it. The reading must include law and gospel — the necessity of the Christ’s suffering and his glory. The reading must take the historical events as the historical events they are presented as, with Christ found in the history, not behind it. And the reading must trace the real correspondences — what we will call typology — by which the substance of the Old Testament has always been Christ.

The series we are beginning takes this lesson as its operating principle. The introduction laid out four commitments; this session has watched the risen Christ practice them. What he did on the Emmaus road is what we mean to do across four volumes. We will go through Moses — Genesis, in this volume — and on into the Psalms and Isaiah and the Twelve, watching for the things concerning Christ. We will distinguish law from gospel as we go. We will respect the historicity of the narratives. We will use typology with guardrails. And we will pray for what Cleopas and his companion received: hearts burning as the Scriptures are opened, and the Lord made known to us in the means he has given.

For Discussion

The following questions are for group discussion or personal reflection.

Their eyes were kept from recognizing him. What does it mean, in your own experience of reading the Old Testament, to have the risen Christ present in the text but your eyes held back from seeing him? What sorts of things keep the eyes of a reader from seeing Christ in the Old Testament?
The disciples had all the historical facts about Jesus, and even the report of the empty tomb, and they were still sad. What does this say about the difference between knowing facts about Christ and knowing Christ in the gospel?
Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory? Why is the suffering of Christ necessary, and not just the glory? What happens to the gospel when the cross is forgotten or downplayed?
Beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself. What would it look like, in practice, for you to read the Old Testament this way? What books or passages of the Old Testament do you find hardest to read this way, and why?
The disciples recognized the risen Lord in the breaking of the bread. How does this scene shape the way you think about Word and Sacrament in the Christian life? Why does the church need both?
The series introduction stated four commitments for our reading of the Old Testament — that Christ is in it, that law and gospel run through it, that its narratives are history, and that we will use typology with guardrails. Which of these four commitments is most new or most unfamiliar to you? Which is most challenging? Where do you most want your own reading of the Old Testament to grow over the course of this study?

Looking Ahead

Session 2 turns from the question of how to read the Old Testament to the question of what kind of book Genesis is. Genesis is the foundation — the soil in which every promise that follows is planted. Every major theme of the rest of the Bible is seeded somewhere in Genesis. Before we open chapter one, we want to take a session to feel the shape of the whole book: its structure (the toledot formula that runs through it from beginning to end), its authorship (Moses, in the Christian and Jewish tradition), its place in the canon, and what it means to read it as history rather than as ancient myth or moral allegory.

Before next session, read Genesis 1:1–2:3 (the first creation account) once carefully and prayerfully, and also scan the chapter headings of all fifty chapters of Genesis in your Bible. The scan is not for reading; it is for feeling the shape of the whole — the primeval history of chapters 1–11, the Abraham cycle, the Isaac and Jacob cycle, and the Joseph narrative — so that the structural overview in Session 2 has somewhere familiar to land.

Closing Prayer

Lord Jesus Christ, the One who drew near to two disciples on the road to Emmaus and opened the Scriptures to them — draw near to us as we open Your Word. Where we have been slow of heart to believe what the prophets have spoken, give us understanding. Where we have read the Old Testament and missed You, open our eyes. Where we have been sad in our reading, give us hearts that burn. Beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, open to us the things concerning Yourself. Make Yourself known to us in the breaking of the bread, and in the reading of these holy Scriptures, and in the gathering of Your people around Your Word. Send us out, as You sent the disciples that same hour from Emmaus, to tell others that the Lord has risen indeed. To You, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen.