How Jesus Taught the Bible

Investigating Jesus. That is the name of our six-week mini-series in the Gospel of Luke. My name's René, another one of the pastors here at Twin Lakes Church. Good morning! Well, I'm excited about wrapping this up, but a quick review for you. Six weeks ago, Valerie, who you just heard doing announcements here, she kicked off this series and she talked about how in this age of, you know, AI-generated fakes, a lot of us are asking the question, how do I even know what's true? And as she said, the stakes get even higher when you ask, how do I know Jesus is true? In other words, how do I know the stories about Jesus in the Bible are actually true, that they reflect a historical reality? And maybe you've resolved that for yourself. You're a person of faith, but for you, a version of this question now is how can I help others believe that Jesus is true, that Jesus is real for them.

Well, if you're asking any of these questions, the good news is even 2,000 years ago, people were asking these same exact questions, and that's why a man named Luke decided to investigate. Luke was a Greek. He was a Roman citizen. He was a physician, and he decided to write an account of what he carefully investigated from all kinds of eyewitnesses who had known Jesus, traveled with Jesus, heard Jesus speak, even seen Jesus after his resurrection. And he compiled these stories, put them in the right chronological order, and wrote about it. And what he wrote made it into our Bibles as the Gospel of Luke.

Now, I got to admit something. When I was younger and I heard that, oh, well, Luke was a physician, you know, back in the first century, and he investigated all these stories about Jesus, I thought, so what? Because doctors back in those days, it was like the Flintstones, right? They were superstitious, and they were practically witch doctors. And then I visited Pompeii. Pompeii, if you're not aware, was a Roman city in the first century when the New Testament was being written. And it was buried by a volcanic eruption from a volcano, Vesuvius, that was near what is now Naples, Italy. And it was almost perfectly preserved. And among the amazing things that archaeologists have discovered in Pompeii is a villa that they call the House of the Surgeon.

Now, why do they call it the House of the Surgeon? Because they found there all kinds of surgical implements that resemble very closely surgical implements that a surgeon would use today. There's scalpels and forceps and tweezers. And in fact, they just polished some of them up to get the rust off. And it looks astonishingly like instruments that you would find in a modern doctor's office today. And there's more. So archaeologists digging around in Pompeii since then have also discovered several doctors' offices. And they discovered that back in the first century, the doctors had specialties, just like they do today. There were surgeons. There were family practice doctors. There were ophthalmologists. There were first aid doctors. There were pharmacists.

In fact, they've even discovered, and you're going to think I'm making this up, but they discovered an urgent care walk-in clinic. This is true. This is totally true. But what cracked me up was it had stone waiting benches in the waiting room for people to wait to see the doctor. And bizarrely, they found fossilized copies of Highlights magazine right there in the waiting room. Even more bizarrely, it was the exact same issue in my doctor's office 20 centuries later. No, that part's not true. But the point I'm trying to make is being a physician in those days, they weren't just superstitious fools, right? These were men of this emerging field of science. They knew how to carefully investigate things.

And Luke kicks off his gospel by saying, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you. And what we've been doing the last six weeks is following Luke on this careful investigative journey to see the kinds of things that were unique about Jesus that he confirmed. And one of the biggest takeaways we hope you're getting from this series is that Jesus is, you could say, investigatable, right? The story of Jesus holds up to investigation. And maybe that's particularly relevant to you today personally. Because maybe you're sort of new to all this. And I love what I see happening at Twin Lakes Church right now. It's a wonderful season every single weekend. I meet new people.

And when I say new, some people, you know, have a church background. But many of the people that I'm meeting say, I don't have any church background. Or maybe I went on Christmas and Easter and like at a funeral or maybe when I was a kid. But I really don't know anything about this. And if that's you, welcome. There are now 500 more people attending here than there were two years ago. And many of them are people that are brand new to all this. And we want you to know that you are very, very welcome here. But you're coming into this with a lot of questions. And you're probably here because some of the questions about Jesus you've resolved. You've decided you're interested in discovering more about Jesus Christ.

Like when people say that Jesus is a great role model. Jesus is a great teacher. You get it. You're intrigued by Jesus. But if you're honest, and sometimes you're a little awkward about admitting this, you don't know if you can be this honest. But when Christians tell you that Jesus was crucified for our sins and Jesus rose again from the dead? Well, you got questions about that. Here's what I want to tell you. Whether you got questions about that because you're new or you've still got questions about that and you've been coming to church your whole life, people 2,000 years ago who were intrigued by Jesus, they had questions about this too. And I'm not talking about the skeptics and the enemies of Jesus Christ. I'm talking about the disciples of Jesus Christ. They had questions about it. They did not understand this either.

So what we're going to look at today, and I'm so excited. I've been wanting to do this message for years now. We're going to look at how Jesus himself answered these questions. It's a great story. It's at the very end of the Gospel of Luke in Luke 24 starting in verse 13. And here's how the story unfolds. And I found an artist that I'm going to use his sketches to illustrate the message today. You might have heard of him. He's kind of an up-and-coming artist. Rembrandt. Rembrandt loved this story. In fact, he loved the story, I'm going to tell you, so much that he sketched it, he painted it, he drew it so many times because there's so much, not only drama and tension in the story, there's so much comedy in the story as you're about to see.

So the story opens and there's two people that are trudging out of Jerusalem about three days after Jesus has been killed. And they're depressed about the whole thing, of course, and because they've been followers of Jesus. And a third person walks up and starts to join them on their walk, but they're kept from recognizing him somehow, perhaps supernaturally. Maybe it's dark, maybe it's dusk, maybe he's wearing a cloak, but they don't recognize him at first. And he walks up. We know as the readers, it's Jesus. It's the risen Christ. And he comes up, and I love how the resurrected Christ is always so playful in his appearances. He says, so what are you talking about? And they say, oh, what happened in the last three days? Oh, what happened? And Luke says, they stood still. They stopped walking. Their faces downcast.

And one of them named Cleopas asked him, are you the only one visiting Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in the last few days? And it kind of like being so snarky to Jesus. By the way, Luke says Cleopas, this name. Why? I think Luke is sourcing his material. This is very characteristic of Luke's writing, where some of the other gospel writers might just say a centurion or a servant girl. Luke says Cleopas, Rhoda, Priscilla, Apollos. He gives their names. I think Luke is footnoting. He's saying, and here's a story that I heard when I interviewed Cleopas. The most ancient scholars, by the way, say that the person that Cleopas is walking with, even though she's not named here, was Cleopas' wife. That tradition goes all the way back to the second century. Why? Because in another part of the Gospels, John 19:27, she is mentioned. Cleopas' wife is mentioned specifically as being one of the people who stood at the foot of the cross watching Jesus die.

So you can imagine they're pretty discouraged as they trudge out of Jerusalem and then they start telling Jesus about Jesus. Well, there was this amazing guy, Jesus. We'd hoped he was the Messiah. He was a great prophet. He was a great teacher. We thought he was going to be our great political leader. But then they captured him and they tortured him and he suffered and they killed him. And then lately some of the women told us that his tomb is empty. We went to check it out. We didn't see anything. What's implied is it was a grave robbery. So it's all, it's just a catastrophe. And Jesus says, how foolish you are. Slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken. Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory? And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the scriptures concerning himself.

But they don't know it's him yet. Because he's talking about, look, it says the Messiah is going to suffer. It says the Messiah is going to have all these. And they just think he's some cool dude who knows the Bible really well. And so the story says they get to their house and they don't want him to stop so they invite him in for dinner and conversation. They sit down, he prays, he hands them the bread, and it's at this moment that the Bible says their eyes are opened, they recognize him, but it's you and bam, Jesus disappears just ninja smoke bomb or something. He just is gone. They run all the way back to Jerusalem, they burst into the room where the disciples are, you'll never believe what just happened to us on the road, and just then another ninja smoke bomb, the risen Jesus appears to them all in that room. Everybody screams they think he's a ghost.

And when they finally settle down, he starts to teach them too. He says to them, this is what I told you while I was still with you. Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the Psalms. So I got a question for you. Would you not have loved to have been in that room to hear what Jesus was teaching them? Luke doesn't specify the exact verses that Jesus went to. But I think we can make an educated guess based on two clues. First of all, how the disciples themselves, as they later wrote the New Testament, referred to the law of Moses, the prophets, and the Psalms. Jesus is talking about what the Jewish people call the Tanakh. These are the three divisions of the Hebrew Bible, what Christians call the Old Testament. These things were all written centuries before Christ. These were things that they would have studied in, you know, Sabbath school, in synagogue.

And then how they interpret those and use those later on in the New Testament, to me, tells me what Jesus told them about those things. Secondly, it says he specifically went to the law of Moses, but not only that, also the prophets, also the Psalms. So why don't we, this morning, just look at one or two examples from those three divisions to see how Jesus would answer the question. Are you telling me that Jesus, that the crucifixion was part of the plan? Why? Are you telling me that he really rose from the dead? And Jesus was like, yeah, let me show you how this was all part of an ancient story.

So let's start with the law of Moses. And then we'll go to the other divisions as well. One of the biggest events in the law of Moses was Passover, right? Exodus 12. You might know the story. The Israelites are slaves in Egypt. And Pharaoh is killing all the male Israelite babies. Moses says, let my people go. Pharaoh says, no. And so a plague hits all the firstborn males of Egypt, turning Pharaoh's own evil right back on himself. But God instructs the Israelites, if you take a lamb as your dinner that night and take the blood from that lamb and mark your doors, then the angel of death will pass over your house because they're covered by the blood of the lamb. And that's where we get the word Passover from. And Jewish people still celebrate this to this day every year.

But note, they're specifically told to mark their doors on the top and the two sides. The top and two sides. Top, two sides. What shape does that make? That's a cross. And Jesus came to be understood as the ultimate Passover lamb by Christians like one of the disciples. The Apostle Paul later writes in 1 Corinthians 5:7, Christ, our what? Passover lamb has been sacrificed for us. He shed his blood on the cross so the punishment of sin passes over us.

Here's another one from the Law of Moses, Yom Kippur. The Day of Atonement in Leviticus 16. This is still also commemorated every single year. What's remembered is that there would be a sacrifice to atone for sin. Back in those days, the people would gather. The priest would first bring in a bull as a sin offering and then two goats. And the sins of the people would be confessed over the goats. The priest would then slaughter one of the goats, that was the sacrificial goat, and the other, which was called the scapegoat, this is where we get that term from, would be sent away into the wilderness to help atone for sin.

Now, of course, that's not done anymore because there's no more temple that these offerings ceased 2,000 years ago. But back when they were still going on, the book of Hebrews in the New Testament, the Christians then talk about this day of atonement ritual, and it says, the law, the law of Moses, is only a shadow of the good things that are coming, not the reality themselves. It's impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. So by one sacrifice, Jesus has made perfect forever those who are being made holy. He, Jesus, is our atonement. There are no more animal sacrifices needed. Not ever, ever, ever again. Because you are cleansed. You are forgiven. The guilt of that sin that still haunts you in the middle of the night sometimes. No, it's been atoned for through the once-for-all sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross. Anybody else excited about that? Praise God.

So these are all these poetic foreshadowings in the law of Moses. And there's a lot more there. But let's go to the prophets, the next division Jesus taught them from. Somebody counted over 300 prophecies about the Messiah in the Hebrew Scriptures. And remember these are all written centuries before Jesus, but the most packed prophetic section is Isaiah 53 in the Bible. This is written about 600 years before Christ was born. It talks about how somebody is going to be sent from God, and then starting in verse 4, he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds, we are healed.

There's one person who took the punishment for us all. Why? Well, the next verse, because we all, like sheep, have gone astray. Each of us, each of us has turned to our own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. Who is this about if it's not about Jesus? But there's more. Look at verse 9. He was assigned a grave with the wicked and with the rich in his death. Jesus wasn't rich, but one of his followers, Joseph of Arimathea, who was rich, gave his own tomb for Jesus to be buried in. So this verse was fulfilled. He was assigned a grave with the rich in his death. But there's more. Verse 11, after he has suffered, after he was buried in his death in the rich man's grave, he will see the light of life and be satisfied. He's not going to stay dead.

I think the disciples heard Jesus teach this specific passage. Isaiah 53 in the upper room that day. Why do I think that? Well, because later, you know Luke wrote the gospel of Luke and then he had kind of a volume two in the Bible, the Acts of the Apostles. And in the Acts of the Apostles, he tells about how Philip, who was one of the disciples in the upper room that day, a little while later he runs into an Ethiopian man on his way out of Jerusalem. And the Ethiopian man is reading Isaiah 53, and Philip shows him how that is all about Jesus Christ. And that man becomes the first black African follower of Jesus, specifically because Philip knows how to interpret Isaiah 53.

So those are some examples from the Law of Moses, the Prophets. What about the Psalms? Now, how could the Psalms be predictive of the Messiah's suffering and death and resurrection? The Psalms are poetry. The Psalms are song lyrics. There's so much there, guys. But let's just go to one, Psalm 22. So this particular Psalm is written 1,000 years before Jesus Christ was even born. Yet it foretells in amazing detail how Jesus Christ would be crucified a millennium later, and it starts with Jesus' death cry, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? The exact words Jesus said on the cross. And by the way, I think he was directing people to this psalm when he said those words because, watch this. It says, all who see me mock me. They hurl insults, shaking their heads. He trusts in the Lord. They say, let the Lord rescue him, the exact words of the people who mocked Jesus while he hung on the cross.

And then it says in verse 16, they have pierced my hands and my feet. They nailed Jesus' hands and feet to the cross. So this is written 1,000 years before Jesus. Crucifixion as a means of torture and death had not even been invented yet. Isn't that strange? Then verse 18, they divide my clothes among them. They cast lots for my garment. But Jesus' robe, the soldiers, the Roman soldiers watching him, took the robe off and they gambled to see which one of them would get the robe. So here's a question for you. The scene described at the cross. When did this ever happen to anybody in the Old Testament, the Hebrew Scriptures? People look on and mock while somebody has his hands pierced, and they gamble for his clothes. This never happened to anybody in the Bible except Jesus, in precision a thousand years after this is written.

So Jesus is explaining all of this sort of thing. How do you think this blew the disciples' minds when he's going, look, all of this stuff that you guys have studied in synagogue, in Sabbath school your whole lives, do you see how there's all these hints and foreshadowings and prophecies that describe in detail what you all experienced in the last three days? And they start to connect the dots. You know what I think this felt like for them? I'm going to ask you a question. Raise your hand if you remember a fad from the 1990s. The Bible says that he opened their minds so that they could understand the scriptures, right? Here's what I think that moment looked like. He's showing them on all these dots. And in this moment in verse 45, they see how all these dots connect.

Do you remember those magic eye posters from the mall in the 1990s? Anybody remember these things? So if you don't remember these posters, they look like just these random featureless fields of dots. But if you stared at them and somehow kind of slightly unfocused and crossed your eyes and looked at them just right, you'd see a 3D image pop off the page. And I just want to say for anybody younger than 20 years old, before we had phones to stare at, we stared at these for hours at the mall. Very, very sad. And by the way, if you have not seen it yet, this one has a shark hidden inside which took me hours to see when I was looking for these on the internet. But my point is this. That magic eye poster moment when suddenly you see the image. There it is, right? That must have been what the disciples felt like when they looked at the Bible. An image pops out of all the static that connects the dots, and it's the image of Jesus.

All those different stories in the Bible, they all connect, and they all coalesce into a coherent picture of Christ. You know, there's a saying that the Bible is one story that leads to Jesus. We didn't make up that saying. Jesus taught that saying. But here's the really cool thing. You're part of that story. The Bible's the story of God's intense love for human beings, including you. Isn't that beautiful? But here's the really important thing. Jesus is not just teaching these disciples that there's a few freaky prophecies that they missed that point to him. What he's saying is the whole story of the Bible points to him. He is the point of the Bible. The whole Bible is a whole story.

And when you say, I don't understand it, remember, we don't stop midway through a book and say, I didn't understand it. You read to the end of the book and then all the little clues start to drop into place and this is so important again on so many levels. Listen, I've said this before, but when our three kids were teenagers and they asked questions about the Bible like, you know, what about all the stories about Moses and Joshua, you know, killing their enemies and all that bloodshed? And what about David and the way he sometimes treated women? And what about this story? What about that weird story? And my wife Lori and I kept saying, listen, those are great questions. And we have some of those questions too. But remember the point. We're not, you know, Mosesians. We're not Joshuaians. We're not Davidians and branch Davidians, thank God. What we are is Christians.

We're not called to follow or emulate or trust in Moses or Joshua or David, but we are called to follow and emulate and trust in Jesus. He's the point of the Bible. He's the point that all the stories ultimately direct us to if for no other reason that look at how badly humans treat one another when they don't have Jesus. He's the point of the Bible. And by the way, he's also the point of church of what we do here. Thank God we're in a season of growth, but the goal is not to grow a bigger church. The goal is to grow a more Jesus-y church. And he's also the point for you as a Christian. The point is not for people to look at you and think, that guy sure is religious, or that person sure is a good debater. It's for them to think that you're somehow, you know, Jesus-y, gentle and humble in heart, unconditionally loving. The point is to be like Jesus.

So how do we get there? Well, let's do the four things that the disciples did. As you see the end of the story and the New Testament unfolding, very simple. First, trust in Jesus. All that we've looked at today says to me there's a superhuman power behind the Bible worthy of our trust. Second, be in God's word and look for Jesus on every page. You know, if God took so much care to fold in these beautiful foreshadowings pointing to Christ, read the book. And if you don't have a Bible, we give them away at the info desk. Take one with you today. And if you need a good study Bible, we have those at the bookstore that's in our lobby.

Third, get in a group, a study group. Groups are strengthening. And if you've never done this before, every fall we do sermon-based small group series. Next week we start our eight-week series in the book of Daniel. We call it Courage in Chaos. You can sign up at tlc.org/smallgroups. If you've never done this before, it's kind of like a book club. You know, in a book club, you all decide on what book you're going to read. You read a chapter a week. You get together. You talk about the book. And also it's a good excuse to, you know, have dessert together or have a meal together, get to know one another. That's what a Bible study is kind of like. Only like in this case, you'll be reading a chapter of the book of Daniel in the Bible every week. And then you get together to discuss.

Maybe that still sounds intimidating because you're like, I've never done a Bible study before. I don't know what to say. So I wrote the discussion questions for each week ahead of time so that you can read them all in advance and kind of prepare your, think about your answers so nobody ambushes you. And you can get those also at tlc.org/smallgroups. And this all kicks off next weekend. I hope you're able to join. I'm really excited about this series. So trust Jesus. Look for Jesus in his word. Study about Jesus in a group. And finally, do life as Jesus taught. Do life as Jesus taught. And you see the disciples joyfully start to do this in volume two of what Luke writes about in the book of Acts.

You know, we started with the question, how do I know that Jesus is true? And how can I help others believe Jesus is true? And we've been talking about proof in scripture today, which is pretty compelling to me. But we need to remember that Jesus also said that ultimately the best way to bring credibility to belief in Jesus for other people is for me to do what Jesus teaches us to do. Right? Jesus himself taught that. He said, this is how they'll know you are my followers, by your love for one another. Right? See, most people, even if they don't know a lot about the Bible or a lot about Jesus, they know that Jesus said things like the things we've seen him see in this mini-series in the book of Luke. Things like, blessed are the poor. Love your enemies. Be generous to the poor. Do not neglect justice and the love of God.

Most people know that Jesus said this stuff or this kind of stuff. So for most skeptics today, I've heard it said that the biggest reason they're skeptical about Christianity is not that they don't want to follow Jesus, it's that they don't see us following Jesus. They see Christians not acting like that. So the best way to bring credibility to belief in Jesus is for us to do what people know that Jesus teaches and that's what we, that's what the goal is here at Twin Lakes Church is for people to see Jesus here. And that's what we hope to do with everything we do. That is what's behind the Hope Center. If you don't know, you've seen it, you know, under construction. What this is, is a place where we want to show that we prioritize feeding the poor and helping addicts recover and helping people who are grieving and so on. It is a home for our community outreach ministries.

And by the way, a quick construction update, pretty cool. This last week, the foundation was poured. It was amazing. So there were 34 cement trucks, 34 cement trucks that just in a parade came out. And it's pretty neat because you can see that the floor plan of the Hope Center start to take shape. But that's what the Hope Center is about, right? Living life as Jesus taught us. So on a big scale, the church can do that, but also on an individual scale. That's what TLC Connect is about. Val talked a lot about this already, but just briefly, you can see there in your handout all the different ways that you can serve here at Twin Lakes Church in that brochure. And you might say, well, I don't know what I can do. If you can do simple car repairs, we've got a ministry for that. Simple home repairs. If you can cook meals. If you can visit the sick. If you can go and visit people in the hospital. If you can help the unhoused, host a small group. There's so many options.

Let me just highlight one, because I thought this was a cool story. So the other day, one of our volunteers in our driving angels group, that's what we call people who just are willing to drive people when they need a ride, and they don't have a car or they don't have a driver's license. A lot of these people are senior citizens who have their license taken away, but they need to get to doctor's appointments. So we have driving angels who are like, well, I don't know what I can do. I like to drive, so I'll give people rides. So our driving angels do this volunteer for free, and this driving angel picked up a woman to take her to her doctor's appointment. And then he said to her, listen, do you mind if on my way back to your apartment I just do some errands for about an hour? I've got to pick up some groceries, got to go to the post office. She said, I don't mind at all.

So he's driving along doing his errands, and he's looking over here at her, and she's just got the biggest grin on her face. And he said thanks for, you know, being so patient with me. She said patient? I'm loving this. He said, why are you loving this? And she said, you don't understand for the last two years my whole life has been either my apartment or the doctor's office. I haven't seen Safeway in years. And so now you know what he does? He just picks her up to do his errands and she just sits there with him. So you can connect. I know that you can find a place that you're going to have joy. Remember, Jesus is the point. Not for you to go, oh, I hope everybody sees how servant-oriented I am. You want them to just see the Jesus in you because Jesus is the answer, right?

Life is so full of noise right now, so much static like one of those posters. But if you keep your eyes on Jesus and if you keep following Jesus, you know what you see? And take it from me, you start to see that Jesus is always there. He's always there with you through all of the things even that seem like chaos. He's always at work around you. And you also start to see that the answer to every question, how can I find peace? How can I lead people well? How can I parent well? How am I going to make it through this diagnosis? How can I stay sober? Who's going to comfort me in my darkest hour? Who can I follow when so many of my leaders seem to be disappointing me? The answer is always the same. It's Jesus.

And let's focus on Jesus as we close together right now. Would you pray with me? Lord Jesus, thank you so much for coming from heaven to earth to save us. And thank you for always dropping little hints everywhere about your plan, including all through the Bible and a lot of other places too. So help our eyes to be open to see these things, these little direction signs that you're offering to us in our lives. And I pray that you would help us to orient our lives in the direction that these signs are pointing to you, Jesus. And help us to trust you every day as our Lord and as our Savior, in whose name we pray. Amen.