Luke 24 contains a very interesting episode occurring right after the resurrection. It is very interesting to think about it in light of you and me, living after the resurrection. We are supposed to be walking the walk. We are supposed to be walking with God and with Jesus Christ. That is what happened to these two men mere hours after the resurrection.
We will not go into it in great detail, but it is very interesting that Luke emphasizes the fact that there was movement taking place. You and I, reading this centuries later, are able to apply it to life itself, that is, that our life is not a static process. There is movement in our life from the point of birth to when we are called, to when we are converted, and then right on out to the time of our death.
That is when we stop walking. But from the time of our calling, God is with us. He is leading us and guiding us by His Spirit. He is convicting us of things that are going to be important for His spiritual creation - for our salvation. We repent. We are converted. God comes to live in us by means of His Spirit, and then we are really walking with Christ. We have Christ in us.
Now, are you walking with Him? Or are you not walking with Him? In this case in Luke 24, He was literally with them, walking right beside them. And, brethren, they did not recognize Him!
Were they blinded? You might think so, but I do not. I do not think they were because of what Jesus Himself said right in the context here. But what I want you to see, before we get to that, is that even somebody who had associated with Christ for a fairly long period of time, a good while, can fail to see. They did not expect to see. Remember? We see what we expect to see. We see what we want to see. We see what we are educated to see.
Unless we make the effort to be discerning, to consciously think about other aspects of what we are looking at, it is very likely that we will not see. We, brethren, have to consciously process the truths that we are receiving from God, as we are involved in the circumstances, as we walk with Christ. Or we might be walking with Christ, and He is there, but we do not see Him. This can happen if we do not identify the circumstances that we are going through in our lives with Him. The spiritual, not perceived, is overlooked!
That word in Greek means inconsiderate. They did not think! They did not consider. It means not reasoning right. It is very similar to the nabal of the Old Testament. O foolish ones. They were not properly applying their minds. It carries with it a moral reproach and describes one who does not govern his mind.
Brethren, they did not believe! Even though they had been taught, they did not believe the things that appeared in the Old Testament describing the Messiah and His resurrection. And so they did not see the Christ who was with them because they did not expect to see Him! Christ calls them fools. He not only calls them fools, which shows me that He expected them to be able to identify Him, He calls them slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken!
I think their hope was really nothing more than a wish. But I think it is significant that it does not say in their response as they talked to Him that they trusted Him. You see, they were not using their faith. They were not using their belief. There is a big difference between hoping and trusting. Trusting requires making choices and having patient endurance.
At the end of all of this, when they finally saw Jesus, when they perceived who it was that was with them, then everything that they experienced - including the crucifixion and resurrection - made sense. Do you get the point there? If you can see God working in your life, then everything will begin to come together. It may not come all at once like with these people with whom it was a flash of recognition. Everything came together, and they vividly saw the experiences that they had just gone through … . . .
