As the two disciples walked with Jesus on the road to Emmaus, Jesus opened the Scriptures to them. He explained how everything written in the law, the prophets and the psalms was about Himself. Luke 24:44-45 tells us that 04 all about jesusJesus can open our minds to understand the Scriptures. It says, “These are my (Jesus’) words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures…” Jesus is the key to understanding the entire corpus of the Old Testament and the New Testament. It’s all about Him!

Arnold Fruchtenbaum says, “From the most ancient sources to modern rabbis, Jewish teachers have always divided the Scriptures into three sections: The Law, The Prophets and The Writings. We see here (particularly in verse 44) that Jesus does the same. The Writings are sometimes referred to only as “the Psalms,” Psalms being the first book in the Writings. Jesus systematically covers all Scripture, revealing to His disciples all things concerning Himself.” The interesting thing in Jesus’ comment is that he opened their minds to the scriptures and then opened their minds to understand them as they refer to Himself as the Messiah. Jesus didn’t start with the Gospels in explaining Himself, but with the Old Testament. It all pointed to Him.

Nancy Guthrie really explains the significance of this for us. She says that Jesus “…didn’t use Old Testament characters or situations as examples to instruct the two disciples on how to live the life of faith, which is how many of us have always heard the Old Testament taught.” I must say that this is also the way I’ve taught it a lot. I’m not sure it still shouldn’t be taught that way at times but to do so is to miss the central message. She goes on, “It is doubtful that he (Jesus) turned to the story of Noah and began teaching them that they needed to obey God even when it meant going against the crowd. More likely he turned to the story of Noah, the one whose name means rest, and said, ‘Hide yourself in me like Noah and his family hid themselves inside the ark and were saved from the judgment.’ He didn’t turn to the story of Abraham offering Isaac and tell these disciples that they needed to be willing to give up what is most precious to them for their God. Instead, perhaps he said something like, ‘See how this father was willing to offer up his only son as a sacrifice? Can you see that this is what my Father did when I was lifted up on the cross.’?” Nancy concludes her discussion by pointing specifically to the book of Genesis and says, “Jesus didn’t work his way through Genesis to point out what we must do for God, but to help us to see clearly what God has done for us through Christ.” We always try to make the scriptures about us, when in fact their all about Jesus!