Destined To Reign - Part 9 – Seeing Jesus In The Bible

Dear friends,



The day when Jesus rose from the dead, He ministered comfort to two disciples who were walking back from Jerusalem to a village called Emmaus (Luke 24: 13-35). When He drew near to them and walked with them, they were feeling sad and discouraged as they were conversed about the event that has transpired. The Bible says that their eyes were restrained from recognizing Him. Jesus asked them, “What kind of conversation that you have with one another as you walk and are sad?” The disciples began to narrate the events that had happened to Jesus, and how He was condemned to die and was crucified. From the way they spoke, you could tell that they did not believe that Jesus would be resurrected. They said that they were hoping that it was Jesus who was going to redeem Israel, and they were astonished that certain women who had gone to Jesus’ tomb told them that they could not find His body. When they finished, Jesus said: “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken!” These are the two indictments against the Body of Christ today. The first is that they are “foolish”, that is, we are suffering from ignorance and the lack of knowledge of and revelation from the Word of God. The second is that even when we do have the knowledge of the Word, we are “slow of heart to believe.” However, our Lord Jesus is so loving that He would not just tell them what their problem was without giving them the solution. Look at what Jesus did next in Luke 24: 27: “And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, He expounded (interpreted) to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.” He expounded to them all “the things concerning Himself” in every single book of the Old Testament, showing them of Himself in every page. What a tremendous time of Bible Study it must have been!



This tells us that every page in the Bible is about Jesus. Jesus is in the Old Testament concealed, and in the New Testament revealed. There are no insignificant details in the Bible and everything in it is there to point to Jesus. I can just imagine their excitement when Jesus began to unveil that He was the promised seed in the Garden of Eden who would crush Satan’s head. The, he would have moved on to share about how each of the five Levitical offerings depicted His one perfect work on the cross. He would have shared about the high priest and how even the high priest’s garment spoke of Himself as our perfect representative before God. Can you imagine that? Jesus would even have unveiled all the typologies embedded in the Old Testament stories. He would have told them how He was typified in Joseph’s character – how he was rejected by His own Jewish brother, but would become the bread of life to the Gentile world and would marry a Gentile bride (the church today). He would have told them that He was the true bread of life that was typified in the manna of heaven that the Israelites failed to appreciate and, thus, called it “worthless bread”. This is the bread that had kept the Israelites free from sickness and diseases for 40 years in the wilderness, in addition to providing the nutrition, energy and life for the Israelites for so long. Jesus said in John 6:48 “I am the bread of life. 49 Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. 50 This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. 51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” This is a wonderful Bible study.



Jesus Showed Us How To Study The Bible



I used to wonder why the Lord restrained the eyes of the two disciples from seeing that it was Him when He was first spoke to them. The answer is that Jesus did not want them to see Jesus as the risen Christ because Jesus wanted them to hear the Scripture first. Jesus did not want them to have faith because they saw Him. Jesus wanted them to have faith because the Scriptures talking about Him. And that’s the same privilege He is giving the church today. In expounding (interpreting) the Scriptures to the two disciples, Jesus showed us how we are to study the Bible. He does not want us to read the Bible to find out what to do and what not to do. He wants us to study the Bible to see Him and all the things in the Scriptures concerning Himself. When we start seeing Jesus in all the books of the Bible, studying the Word will be so exciting. Even reading the book of Leviticus, whose pages are usually left untouched will be more fun. When you begin to see Jesus in every page of the Bible, it all comes alive. We can go deep into the Word of God to search out all the hidden gems and truths about Jesus from Genesis to Revelation, including the maps. When we have fun in the Word, for when the person of Jesus comes forth in the Word, Bible study is no longer dry and academic, but alive and exciting, and we will love it!



In many places, there is an under-emphasis on Jesus Christ, and an over-emphasis on all sorts of doctrines and principles that can be extracted from the Word. I am not saying that churches should not be using the Word to teach on financial principles, keys to wisdom, leadership, and so on, What I am saying is that churches must be careful not to consider Jesus as “worthless bread”, as the Israelites did to the manna from heaven in the wilderness, by relegating Him to the periphery of their teaching. Anybody who does not focus on Jesus Christ and His finished work on the cross has neither the wisdom of God nor the power of God, because the Bible says that “Christ crucified” is the wisdom of God and the power of God (1 Corinthians 1: 23 -24). He is the true bread from heaven and only He satisfies! The devil is afraid of any church that preaches Jesus on the cross because he knows when people know how God sent His only begotten Son to die on the cross for them, they will see that they have a merciful God who loves them unconditionally. They will know the Truth and the Truth will set them free.



Our Hearts Burn Within Us



Jesus’ solution for those who are “foolish” and “slow of heart to believe” is for them to study the Bible to see more of Jesus. At the end of the journey to Emmaus, the two disciples said to one another, “Did not our heart burn within us while He talked with us on the road, and while He opened the Scriptures to us?” (Luke 24: 32). When Jesus is unveiled in the Scriptures, our hearts will burn within us. In fact the root of the word “Emmaus” in Hebrew means “warm bath” or “warm springs”. When Jesus expounded on the Scriptures, their hearts experienced “warm baths” and were comforted. Similarly, when you are sitting under anointed ministries that unveil Jesus in the Scriptures, not only your heart be bathed in the warmth of His love, but even your physical body will be healed and restored! There are medicinal qualities and healing virtues in seeing Jesus in the Scriptures, as His words are truly “life to those find them, and health to all their flesh. (Proverbs 4: 22)”



The Bible also says that Emmaus is seven miles from Jerusalem. This means that the disciples studied the Bible with Jesus for several hours. The Bible also says that as soon as they realized that it was Jesus talking to them, they “rose up that very hour and returned to Jerusalem”. This means that the disciples walked 14 miles that day. I believe that something supernatural must have happened to their bodies. They got filled with so much life that they could walk 14 miles that day. When you are under the anointed teaching of the Scriptures about Jesus, your body responds, life comes, and profound and boundless energy flows. No wonder David says, “Give me life through Your Word” (Psalm 119: 25).



The Ministry of A New Covenant Preacher



This is the true ministry of any new covenant preacher – he seeks to unveil Jesus to you and qualify you by the blood of Jesus. He does not come to unveil your faults or bring your sins to remembrance to disqualify you from entering God’s presence and enjoying His blessings. Unfortunately, instead of seeing Jesus, many Christians fall into the trap of thinking that God looks at them based on who they are and what they have done. The moment you think like that, you have come under law. You see, the law, with its focus on your doing or not doing, makes you self-conscious. You may not even realize that the moment you focus on yourself and your performance, you have just placed yourself under the law. The moment you feel condemned for not doing more, for not doing better, or for not doing anything at all, you have placed yourself under the law. Instead of looking toward what Jesus has done, you are looking at what you have done.



It Is All About Seeing Jesus



The law is all about your looking at yourself. The new covenant of grace is all about seeing Jesus. The Pharisees committed to large portions of the Word of God to memory and yet they could not see the Word of God in the flesh standing before them. We should not be interested in just accumulating Bible knowledge. We should be opening the Scriptures to see more of Jesus. Some people think if they knew Hebrew and Greek, they would understand the Bible better. Well, the Pharisees knew Hebrew and that did nothing for them. What we need is for the Holy Spirit to unveil to us revelations and hidden gems about Jesus and His finished work.



Beloved, it is about seeing Jesus, because from Him comes every supply and provision. We have to look to Him for the Word. We have to look to Him for directions. We have to look to Him all the time. Remember, as long as Peter kept his eyes on Jesus, he could walk on water. But once he looked away from Jesus and looked instead at the storm, the challenges, and the stressful circumstance, he started to sink.



Once people look away from Jesus, they will stop attending church and start looking to themselves and their own resources to make things happen. They start to think:”I need more time. I have to work harder. I have to put in more overtime work and work on Sundays as well”. Why don’t you enjoy your Sundays in church with your family and trust the Lord to see you through? God can accomplish much more in you through the anointed preaching of Jesus than what you can accomplish through your own strength and your working overtime. Let’s come together to see more of Jesus!



Amen!



Dedo Suwanda


PS. The above message is taken from the book "Destined To Reign" by Joseph Prince