Luke 24:27 - Concerning Christ

What if everything that you thought you knew about how to understand the Bible was actually keeping you from understanding its true center?

You see, our misunderstanding—which, by the way, was also the disciples' misunderstanding as they walked the road to Emmaus on the third day after Jesus was crucified, the very day on which Jesus was resurrected—is why we're going to spend our time in just one verse today. They did not believe that Jesus had risen, even after the women reported that Jesus was alive and Peter and John reported His body wasn’t in the tomb.

You see, we, like the disciples, often try to interpret the Scriptures through a lens of success, self, or sight instead of through the only true interpretive center that reveals its true meaning: Jesus Christ.

If we only see the Bible as a mirror reflecting ourselves, or as a picture preserving history alone, we miss the living Lord to whom the Scriptures bear witness.

Trying to read the Scriptures through any lens other than the person of Jesus is like trying to read an encoded message without the decoder ring. And if we do this, we see the Bible as either simply a collection of writings, a collection of unfulfilled promises, or merely a book full of moralistic tales told to keep us from ruining our lives.

But what if we could actually see them for what they truly are? What if our Bibles were a window through which we saw Jesus as far greater than we could ever have imagined?

He is the One in whom the Father has eternally purposed to unite all things, both in heaven and on earth. What if reading the Scriptures became a means by which God draws us into His eternal joy and into deeper union and communion with Christ?

Whether you manage people, projects, code, children, or a household; whether you build things or serve people, this passage will give you a lens to see Christ as the interpretive center of Scripture and the One in whom all reality actually finds its unity. This can help you read the Bible for all its worth.

This is the word of our Lord from Luke 24:27.

Luke 24:27 ESV

And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.

This verse shows us something profound...

The crucified and risen Christ is the interpretive center of Scripture

Jesus is not simply a decoder ring to help us understand the Scriptures. He Himself is the fulfillment of all that is written in them.

What do we see first in this verse? Moses wrote of Him, the Christ.

The apostle John confirms this in chapters 5 and 8 of his Gospel. There Jesus tells the Pharisees that Moses wrote of Him and that Abraham rejoiced to see His day.

And when we take even a cursory glance through the Scriptures, we begin to see Christ everywhere.

Genesis 1 together with John 1 reveals Jesus as the eternal Word through whom all things were created.

Genesis 3 reveals Jesus as the promised Seed who crushes the serpent.

Genesis 6-9 and 1 Peter show Jesus as the true Ark who saves His people from the floodwaters of judgment.

Genesis 22 points to Jesus as the true Lamb given by the Father as the substitute for us.

Genesis 28 and John 1 show Jesus as the true ladder reaching from heaven to earth.

The entire book of Exodus reveals Jesus as his people’s true Exodus, the lamb of God who frees his people from their sin and guilt, and the One who is the true tabernacle, God dwelling with His people.

Leviticus shows Jesus as the One who is holy and makes his people holy.

Numbers 21 and John 3 reveal Jesus as the one in whom we look upon in faith and live.

Deuteronomy shows Jesus as the true prophet who is greater than Moses.

But we also see that the Prophets—and even the Writings (Luke 24:44)—were concerning Christ.

The Prophets and the Writings testified beforehand to the Messiah's suffering, death, resurrection, and glory. This is found throughout the Psalms (2, 22, 110), in Daniel, all throughout Isaiah, especially 50-53, and even in Zechariah 12-13. But even books like Ruth show Jesus as the true Redeemer. Kings and Chronicles show us our need for him as our true King.

The reality is that the whole of Scripture bears witness to the Christ, promising and revealing that the Messiah must suffer, die, rise, and be glorified to draw us into his life forever.

Then, as we consider verses 26 and 27 together, we see that Jesus Himself interprets the Scriptures this way.

His life, His death, His resurrection, and His ascension were all necessary in order to fulfill God's redemptive purposes which must be fulfilled for God's redemptive purposes and for Christ to enter into His glory.

So when we look at this verse, at what Jesus says throughout his ministry, and when we look at the whole of Scripture—even the Epistles—we see that the crucified and risen Christ truly is the interpretive center of Scripture. And yet…

We often interpret Scripture through other centers

Have you ever read something that you thought you should understand, but you didn't? You felt like you needed some sort of decoder ring to understand it, but you were too embarrassed to admit it. So what did you do? You may have simply defaulted to an understanding that actually came from yourself.

This is exactly what happens when we lay aside Christ as the interpretive center and instead read the Scriptures through other centers like success, self, or sight.

Verses 19-21 reveal how we often use success as a center to interpret the Scriptures.

Notice how the disciples say, “We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel." Like the disciples, we often see our desire for glory, success, and victory apart from suffering as the most important thing. When this happens, we begin to interpret Scripture through this center instead of through God's suffering Servant, the Messiah. We reject anything that doesn't fit our expectations of an upside-down kingdom, where glory comes through suffering and victory comes through the cross.

The beginning of verse 21, shows how self can easily become the interpretive center.

The disciples said to Jesus, “We had hoped..." A victorious Christ was their desire, their expectation. Like them, we often judge Scripture by ourselves and our desires rather than allowing Scripture to judge us. We allow our hopes, our expectations, our dreams, and our desires to determine what we believe, rather than allowing God's Word to reshape our hopes and teach us what the true purpose of history, this world, the universe, and the whole cosmos really is.

Finally, verse 24 points us to how we use sight as our interpretive center.

Here we read that those who went to the tomb found it just as the women had said, but they did not see Jesus. When Peter and John reported that the tomb was empty, these disciples still did not believe that Jesus had risen. Like them, we often walk by sight rather than by faith. We allow what seems reasonable to us, what appears visible to us, or even what we can empirically demonstrate, to govern our reading of Scripture.

Now, empirical evidence isn’t bad, it certainly gives us valuable observations about God's creation, but observations alone cannot interpret reality apart from the God who created it. When we allow what we can see to become our interpretive center, rather than Christ Himself, we end up allowing the world around us to govern our understanding of God's Word. And when we do this, we miss the entire point of Scripture.

More than that, we miss communion with the One in whom all things hold together…

Jesus, who is the interpretive center of the Scriptures, fulfills all they proclaim in himself

As we think about Jesus and the decoder ring, we should see that this illustration is not big enough. Jesus isn't simply some mapping of letters to numbers that helps us understand a hidden message in the Bible. He is God's plan for the fullness of time. He is God's plan to unite all things, whether in heaven or on earth, in Himself.

Jesus isn't merely the key to understanding Scripture. He is the Creator, the Sustainer, and the Goal of all things.

But you might be asking, “Why are all the Scriptures about Jesus?"

Though Luke helps us understand that all the Scriptures are about Jesus, it is the apostle Paul, whom Luke traveled with extensively, who explains why this must be true.

When we compare Luke 24:27 with Ephesians 1:7–10, we notice that our redemption through Christ's blood is for the ultimate purpose of uniting us, as well as all things, to Christ.

Christ's work of uniting all things in Himself is the very center of reality. You see, when Jesus revealed to the disciples the things in Scripture concerning Himself, He wasn't simply explaining isolated predictions about His death and resurrection from random books of the Bible. He was showing them how the whole of Scripture finds its fulfillment in Him. He is the unifying center of all reality. And all of this is to the praise of God's glorious grace.

Jesus redeemed us through His blood so that we might be united to Him along with all things. We could not be united to Him because we were dead in our trespasses and sins. We were separated from God. We were children of disobedience and children of wrath.

But Jesus Christ, through His death upon the cross, resolved that separation. He took upon Himself the justice that we deserved so that, in Christ, we would no longer experience God's wrath but instead experience His presence, His love, and His life being placed into his family.

Then, when we compare Luke 24:27 with Colossians 1:15–20, we see that our reconciliation to Christ through His cross and resurrection is also the center of reality.

Colossians tells us that Christ is to be preeminent—to have first place in all things.

Why? Because all things were created through Him and for Him. In Him all things hold together.

Then, through His death on the cross and His resurrection, Christ accomplished the reconciliation of all things to Himself, bringing heaven and earth into His peace and into His fullness.

Union with Christ—the Firstborn from the dead—draws us into the reality of His person and His work. And that brings glory to God.

You see, Scripture is not just the story of our redemption. It is the story of Christ fulfilling the Father's eternal purpose to unite all things in Himself.

All things originated through Christ. All things are sustained by Christ. And all things will ultimately be united in Christ. This was God's eternal plan—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And all of this is to the praise of his glorious grace

Then, if we look again at Luke 24:26–27 together with verse 44, we see that Christ fulfilled everything the Scriptures proclaimed about Himself.

Since Christ is the unifying center of all reality—the One who is to have first place in everything—the whole of Scripture is about this very thing. Ultimately, it is not about you and me, per se. It is about our cosmic Christ.

He told us beforehand what His purpose was. He came into our world. He lived. He died. He rose again. He ascended into glory. And He fulfilled every promise and every purpose of God by uniting all things in Himself.

So we don't simply read the Scriptures to get a nice story or merely to discover how not to go to hell. We read the Scriptures to worship our glorious God and Father through Jesus Christ as He is revealed to us by the Holy Spirit.

If you only get one thing from this sermon, get this: if the Father's eternal purpose is to unite all things in Christ, and if all things were created through Him, for Him, and hold together in Him, then it should not surprise us that the whole of Scripture also finds its unity in Him—the One who holds all things together. Therefore, we should see Christ Himself—His very person—as the interpretive center not only of Scripture, but of all reality.

Now, you might agree with me that Jesus is the center of all cosmic reality because the Bible says so. But you might still be wondering, “What is the point of my existence then? If everything is about Christ, what does that have to do with my life this Wednesday?"

The answer is that Jesus' resurrection provides the way by which we receive…

The Spirit who not only reveals Christ as the interpretive center, but is drawing us deeper into union with him

The Holy Spirit doesn't simply hand us a decoder ring and say, "Now you can understand facts about Jesus. Now you know how important He is. Now align yourself with God's eternal purpose." No. He draws us deeper into Christ's joy. He draws us deeper into our union with Christ and into God's purpose for all things.

Yes, we learn facts about who Jesus is. Yes, we understand how important He is. Yes, we align ourselves with God's eternal purpose. But even more than that, we are drawn into the depth and reality of our union with Christ and the joy that comes from belonging to Him and participating in God's purpose of uniting all things in Christ.

In fact, the Spirit uses Colossians 1:16–18 to open our eyes to see Christ as the Creator, Sustainer, Head of the Church, and the One who is to have first place in all things.

Because the Spirit reveals this to us, we don't simply interpret Scripture through Christ. We interpret all reality through Christ.

We don't read the Scriptures because that's simply what good Christians are supposed to do. We delight in the fact that, when we read them, we get to see, glorify, delight in, and behold Jesus’ beauty and wonder. The Spirit opens our eyes to see Him.

The Spirit also uses Ephesians 1:10 to open our eyes to God's purpose of uniting all things in Christ.

Because of this, we don't read our Bibles and conclude that some passages are unimportant or unrelated to Christ. Instead, we recognize that every part of Scripture bears witness to Him because God's purpose is to unite all things in Christ.

And so, whether a passage exposes our sin and our need for redemption, shows how the promised Seed was preserved, records God's faithfulness to Israel, or points forward through prophecy,  every part of Scripture bears witness to Christ because every part belongs within God's purpose of uniting all things in Him.

So we don't simply think we've found Christ because we happen to see the name "Jesus," "Immanuel," or another divine title in a passage. Instead, we ask, “How does this passage fit into God's purpose of uniting all things in Christ?"

Finally, when we consider Ephesians 1:3–14 together with John 15:1–5, the Spirit shows us the importance of our union and communion with Christ.

Because the Spirit of adoption lives within us—given to us by the risen Christ—He shows us the reality of who we are. And because we are  God's children in union with Christ, we read Scripture not simply as a duty or another item on a checklist. Rather, we read it as those privileged to abide more deeply in fellowship and communion with God through the Scriptures.

We read the Scriptures to know God, to enjoy His presence, and to delight in Christ.

Remember this: The key to reality and the fullness of our joy is not a ring with letters mapped to numbers. It is a Person. The eternal Son of God and the Son of Man has united us to Himself so that we might be united to God in Him.

And this changes everything on a Wednesday morning.

When you're tempted to interpret your life through success, through yourself, or merely through what you can see, instead, the Spirit can enable you to interpret everything through Christ.

Your sufferings can be interpreted through Christ…they draw you deeper into Him.

The beauty of a crisp morning or the shade of a hot summer day can be interpreted through Christ…that crisp morning or that welcomed shade exists because Christ holds all things together.

You can interpret every bit of reality through Christ. Then you will walk in the joy of knowing that you belong to Him, that He is yours, and that you are co-heirs with Him forevermore. That can give you a spring in your step when you are asking, “Can I make it through another difficult day?"

I want you to remember this: we don't simply read the Scriptures to discover how not to go to hell. We read the Scriptures to worship our glorious God and Father through Jesus Christ as the Spirit reveals the cosmic Christ who rescued us through the cross, who holds all thing together, and who will one day return to judge the living and the dead. On that day, all things will be united in Him according to God's infinitely wise and glorious plan.

So my question for you today is this: Are you united to Christ? Will you spend eternity in the joy of being united with Him, together with all things in heaven and on earth?

If not, there is only one thing to do. Ask God to open your eyes. Come to Christ in faith. Be buried with Him in His death. Be raised with Him in His resurrection. And live in the joy of being found in Christ—not only now, but forevermore.

Jesus Christ is the crucified and risen Lord through whom all things were created, are sustained, and will ultimately be united. Through His blood He has redeemed us. He has united us to Himself. He has adopted us as the Father's children. And He has opened the Scriptures to reveal His glory. Because of this, let us desire to know Him, worship Him, enjoy Him, and glorify Him as the interpretive center not only of Scripture, but of all reality—to the glory of God the Father through the Holy Spirit.