From Moses to Malachi to Me
June 7, 2026
Preached by Benjamin Vrbicek
Discussion Questions
What are some of your favorite Old Testament stories and why?
When you think about issues that are important to you, what are some of them? Has it ever been a struggle to keep that important issue from becoming too important? (For example, as a preacher, I could say that preaching is important to me. But it can be easy at times to drift into thinking that preaching is too important, if that makes sense.)
Can you rephrase the statement that the Old Testament is about Jesus in your own words? What does this mean? What does this not mean?
What is the solution that God has for us when our focus gets too narrowly attached to one important issue (or “mascot”)? How have you experienced this correction from the Lord? How did this happen in the passage? What emotional rollercoaster was involved for these disciples as it happened? How can you relate?
Scripture Reading
Luke 24:13-35
13 That very day two of them were going to a village named Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, 14 and they were talking with each other about all these things that had happened. 15 While they were talking and discussing together, Jesus himself drew near and went with them. 16 But their eyes were kept from recognizing him. 17 And he said to them, “What is this conversation that you are holding with each other as you walk?” And they stood still, looking sad. 18 Then one of them, named Cleopas, answered him, “Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?” 19 And he said to them, “What things?” And they said to him, “Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, a man who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, 20 and how our chief priests and rulers delivered him up to be condemned to death, and crucified him. 21 But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things happened. 22 Moreover, some women of our company amazed us. They were at the tomb early in the morning, 23 and when they did not find his body, they came back saying that they had even seen a vision of angels, who said that he was alive. 24 Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but him they did not see.” 25 And he said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! 26 Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” 27 And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.
28 So they drew near to the village to which they were going. He acted as if he were going farther, 29 but they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, for it is toward evening and the day is now far spent.” So he went in to stay with them. 30 When he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them. 31 And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. And he vanished from their sight. 32 They said to each other, “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?” 33 And they rose that same hour and returned to Jerusalem. And they found the eleven and those who were with them gathered together, 34 saying, “The Lord has risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon!” 35 Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he was known to them in the breaking of the bread.
We’ll do more work on the context after we pray, but for now I’ll just say this sermon is the beginning of our summer preaching series. In the series we’re partnering with two other churches, Midtown and Liberti, and we’ll be sharing pastors and preachers for the next seven weeks. Each week we’ll be looking at one story from the Old Testament and noting that—when understood rightly—how that story in the Old Testament is mainly about Jesus and how in this way it relates to us as well. The Old Testament is Christian Scripture because it tells the one story God is telling.
With more children in the sanctuary this summer, we’re collecting pictures on those half sheets of paper in the pews. This week, draw your favorite story from the Old Testament. Let’s pray.
“Dear Heavenly Father . . .”
In college my friends knew someone in the hospital, and so some of us went to visit. I wasn’t actually there because I didn’t know the person in the hospital, but they went there they found some people from church there too. And one of my friends, I’ll call him James, started talking to this older guy named Phil.
Quick context on James and Phill. James was what you might call a smooth talker, which is a nice way to say that he was a very good, very believable liar. He was super fun to be around, but you really didn’t know if you were ever going to get the truth. And for context, he probably went to church with us like three times in three years. Now, Phill just so happens to be the lead pastor of the church we went to. And this church has like a thousand people; it’s big.
So, at the hospital, my friend James and Phil start talking—“how do you know this person in the hospital?” sort of thing—and church comes up. And James starts talking about how he goes to a great church and all of that. Then James starts inviting Pastor Phil to church—which is cool… except he starts inviting Lead Pastor Phil to come to the church where Phil is the lead pastor. Pastor Phil, bless his heart, just lets James carry on. I don’t know why Phill did that. Maybe he looked around the room, knowing others would later tell James what a dumb thing he just did, and he thought the joke would be funnier that way. Or maybe Phil is just a humble guy and didn’t want to embarrass James. I don’t know why Phil didn’t just say, “It’s me.”
But here’s the question. Why didn’t Jesus just say, “It’s me!” Like right here at the start of Luke 24 why didn’t Jesus just say, “Guys, it’s me!” Did you notice that in the passage? I’ll read it. Look with me at vv. 13–19.
13 That very day two of them were going to a village named Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, 14 and they were talking with each other about all these things that had happened. 15 While they were talking and discussing together, Jesus himself drew near and went with them. 16 But their eyes were kept from recognizing him. 17 And he said to them, “What is this conversation that you are holding with each other as you walk?” And they stood still, looking sad.18 Then one of them, named Cleopas, answered him, “Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?” 19 And he said to them, “What things?”
They go on to tell this stranger the things about Jesus, of course. You see the humor and irony in it, right? The women go early to the tomb to find Jesus, some of the eleven go to find Jesus, everyone is now looking for Jesus, because this Jesus is such a big deal, and now we’re going to chide you, Mr. Stranger, for being so ignorant of how everyone in Jerusalem is talking about Jesus. Meanwhile, of course, they are talking to the very one who knows better than anyone about what things happened in Jerusalem.
Have you wondered why God delayed their recognition of Jesus? I don’t know why Lead Pastor Phil didn’t go, “It’s me.” But why don’t we have to guess why Jesus didn’t say, “It’s me.” I’ll give you the answer now, and then we’ll see it in the text and how it relates to us.
These disciples had shrunk the good news gospel story of Jesus into something too small. Just like them, we tend to shrink the Bible into something mainly about our mascots, rather than about Jesus, the one about whom every story is written. And when we shrink the gospel small, we miss so much of what God has for us. And that’s the answer of why Jesus delayed recognition. Jesus needs to open minds and hearts to the full size of the gospel and who it’s really about, so that when we do get it, when we do get him, we really do get all of him.
Let’s set the context for this story in Luke 24. If you have ever walked into a part of your house and thought gas might be coming from the stove, the furnace, or a pipe, you know it is a potentially dangerous and delicate situation. That last week of Jesus’s life, Jerusalem was like that, a house filled with gas. It starts on Palm Sunday. Palm Sunday gets its name because many followers of Jesus laid palm branches and their cloaks on the road to Jerusalem as Jesus rode into town on a donkey. I’ll read a section from Luke 19 about this.
37 As he was drawing near—already on the way down the Mount of Olives—the whole multitude of his disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen, 38 saying, “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” 39 And some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples.” 40 He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.” (Luke 19:37–40)
This scene is, of course, both wonderful and foreign to us. We call this Jesus’s Triumphal Entry, and here’s why: It was in a similar fashion that King Solomon began his kingship, riding on a donkey into the holy city (1 Kings 1:33). Consider also that there was a prophecy from the book of Zechariah that Israel’s king would come riding into Zion on a donkey, and the people were to rejoice and shout for joy (Zech. 9:9). Now, consider this too: Jerusalem typically had some 40,000 residents, but during the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which culminates in the celebration of Passover, the city swells perhaps six times its normal size (See, “Walk with Jesus During His Last Week on Earth,” Crossway, March 30, 2015). So, as Jesus comes into Jerusalem on a donkey during this festival, he’s coming to a crowd of some 240,000 people, with 200,000 of them being Jewish worshipers who have newly traveled to Jerusalem. And think about what they are there to celebrate. Think about what Passover celebrates: when God overthrew the oppression of Egypt. And how many of those 200,000 pilgrims for praying for God to do it again with Rome? Answer: almost all of them.
In short, King Jesus was coming into a house filled with gas: dangerous and delicate; the wrong spark would make the whole thing explode.
In our context, every four years on January 20, a new President takes office. Now, imagine what would have happened if, early in the morning, as crowds were already lining the streets, the runner-up in the presidential election—so not the winner—got into a black Suburban in an escort of other black Suburbans and had men in black suits with earpieces walk alongside the vehicles. Imagine the whole entourage with this not-President making their way down Pennsylvania Ave. and Constitution Ave. That would not just be some parade; it would be a statement that a rogue President was about to declare his or her own presidency. Which is a dangerous and delicate situation, just as is riding into a holy capital city while people shout, “Hail to the King.”
With all this in mind, go back to me to Luke 24, starting with Jesus’s question in v. 17.
17 … “What is this conversation that you are holding with each other as you walk?” And they stood still, looking sad. 18 Then one of them, named Cleopas, answered him, “Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?” 19 And he said to them, “What things?” And they said to him, “Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, a man who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, 20 and how our chief priests and rulers delivered him up to be condemned to death, and crucified him. 21 But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things happened. 22 Moreover, some women of our company amazed us. They were at the tomb early in the morning, 23 and when they did not find his body, they came back saying that they had even seen a vision of angels, who said that he was alive. 24 Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but him they did not see.”
I love that two-word question from Jesus, “What things?” Oh, I think Jesus knew something about what happened: the Triumphal Entry, the overturning of the moneychangers’ tables in the temple courtyard, the Last Supper, the breaking of bread, the arrest, the flogging, the nails, the crucifixion, the wrath of God poured out on him for his punishment in our place and our forgiveness of sins, and then the empty tomb. Oh, I think he knew something about what things.
Jesus has a purpose for delaying their understanding, and it’s not to be sneaky. The key comes in v. 21. They say, “We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.”
This is what I meant by shrinking the gospel to a mascot of some team being really important to you. Probably some of you have some sports shirt logo of some team on right now, and if you don’t at church, you might throw on a t-shirt that has a logo or a mascot. These men wore a t-shirt with the redemption of Israel mascot on it.
Now, that’s not a bad mascot, as far as having hopes and longings go. But by the redemption of Israel, they meant something narrow. In Jerusalem, the cultural expectation began to focus on the Messiah primarily being a political revolutionary. Which is understandable, really. The Jewish people had undergone such a pounding over and over by Rome (and others), and they had already made so many compromises with Rome (and others) just to keep the peace. The people were tired. You’ve been tired. They hoped that someone would redeem Israel, and that was all they could think about. You’ve had hopes that become all you can think about. And so they took their little hope—which wasn’t necessarily wrong—but they lifted that hope or mascot up so high that they could hardly understand who the real Messiah was.
A few years ago, the gym where my wife had been working out changed their policy. I won’t name the gym, but the policy had been that childcare was included with a gym membership, which was a fee of only $23/month. Not too bad, especially when you consider that we had four children at the time. But while my wife stopped working out for a few months when we had our fifth child, the gym changed its policy so that each child in childcare would now cost an extra $9 per month. I can’t say for sure whether we were the reason that the policy changed or not, but I do know our membership went from $23/month to $68, and that was not going to work for us for a very basic gym (no pool or basketball court; just weights and cardio).
So, we went “gym shopping.” Any guesses what feature was crucial to us? Yep, “free childcare.” Forget about the weights or the pool or the spinning class or the locker room facilities or the personal trainers or the rock wall. We just want someone to watch our munchkins. I know that’s silly, but I hope you get my point. In Jesus’s day there was an extreme narrowing of expectations regarding the Messiah. They just wanted someone who would throw off Rome!
And this explains the delay in recognition. If Jesus shows up to these two disciples who think they are looking for him, but in reality are looking for a small version of him, and Jesus’s first words are, “Hey, it’s me! I’m alive!”, what happens next? They would have shouted, “Yeah, free childcare! Get rid of Rome.” That’s all they were thinking about.
Their hope in the Messiah as a defeater of Rome, their mascot version of the good news gospel, was too small. In love, Jesus would enlarge their hope from the Scriptures.
We might not have the same mascot, but we do the same shrinking all the time. We can start to believe that the sole reason the Messiah came to the earth was to make our life prosperous and free of pain. We need Jesus to help us find a spouse. Or when we need Jesus to fix the spouse we do have. Or we need Jesus to make us nicer or free us from addiction or to help us find a new job or a new house or to end abortion or end poverty or stop a war in Israel or stop war everywhere. There’s nothing wrong with these by themselves. Some of them are super important. There are even verses in the Bible about them. They are just not the center of the center of the story.
Over a dozen years ago, when I interviewed here at Community, we had all the normal stuff for a week, and then I preached, and then there was a long congregational meeting at church, like sixty or ninety minutes, where people asked me questions. “What do you think about this and that?” It seemed healthy enough. People wanted to know me, and that makes great sense.
Later that night, after it was all done, one of your leaders came up to me and said, “You know what that was like? It was like an hour of, ‘Hey, I’m really into this important thing; are you into it as well?’” It’s one thing to get to know a new pastor, but the sheer tonnage of questions, one after another, after another, gave the impression—at least to a few other leaders—that the questions weren’t really about getting to know me. It spoke to our common, deeper tendency to take some smaller part of Christian ministry and ask if it will be validated as the main thing.
Church, what if Rome did get overthrown? What if Jesus had started what they had hoped, a violent but quick revolution that put Israel back in charge? I guess Israel would have prospered for a time. And yet, sooner or later, her prosperity would fall away, as it always does.
This is what I mean by Jesus, in reminding us what the Old Testament is really about, gives us a gospel that’s bigger and better than we imagined. Look with me at vv. 25–27.
25 And he said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! 26 Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” 27 And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself. (vv. 25–27)
Notice he says it was “necessary” that the Christ should suffer. Suffering comes before glory. In their pain, they had picked the promises they liked and ignored the ones they didn’t. This walk that they were on from Jerusalem to a town called Emmaus was about seven miles, so it took them perhaps three hours. I don’t have three hours to talk with you, so I’ll resist reading the many, many Old Testament verses that teach about the sufferings of the Messiah and then his glory.
We can’t do that now, but this is some of what we hope to do in the sermon series. We hope that for the next seven weeks we’ll be able to go back together to read parts of the Christian Bible that we call the Old Testament and see how it mainly tells the story of the coming Messiah and what it means to know him and be loved by him and be caught up into his mission, not our own mission. And I would hope God might cause our hearts to burn in the same way it happened for these two on the road to Emmaus.
Notice as well Jesus’s repetition of the word “all.” He uses it three times. “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! . . . beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.” All, all, all. Let the sweep of that statement land on you. Think of the claim Jesus is making here. The whole Bible is about me, says Jesus.
If you used that paper in the pew to draw a picture of your favorite Old Testament story, or if you just thought of a story but didn’t draw a picture, well, that story is about Jesus, not mainly about our mascots. This is what Jesus is saying about the Old Testament. Those stories about Daniel are about Jesus. That story about Abraham or Ruth is about Jesus. That story in the garden about a snake and a serpent crusher is about Jesus. That story of kingship and a redeemer and a sacrificial system and prophets and holiness and the light of the world streaming one day to all nations of the earth is the story about Jesus.
Look with me at how the passage ends. I’ll read vv. 28–32.
28 So they drew near to the village to which they were going. He acted as if he were going farther, 29 but they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, for it is toward evening and the day is now far spent.” So he went in to stay with them. 30 When he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them. 31 And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. And he vanished from their sight. 32 They said to each other, “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?”
When I think of these disciples, I think of them as playing with model trains. They’re good trains. You can put little things on them, and the trains can pull them in a good direction. You can lay track in the right direction. You can control them. But the problem with model trains is that they’re not very big; they don’t carry enough freight.
Imagine what would happen if you were playing with your train set and you heard a rumble in the distance. And the rumble got louder and louder and louder. And you realize right next to you are real tracks, and a real train starts thundering by. You feel the wind hit you. You see the people on the train singing happy songs. You see soldiers singing songs about victory. You see all different kinds of people holding hands and facing the same direction, and they are feasting.
The train looks to be going just slow enough that you could grab on. So you reach out to try to grab the train, but it’s just out of reach. It’s out of reach because you’re still holding onto your model train set, and you don’t want to let go.
And then, all of a sudden, the conductor himself reaches out and grabs you by the collar as he races by and pulls you aboard his train. It’s 39 train cars long. All heading the same direction. His train is pulling all kinds of supplies; it’s pulling holiness; it’s pulling forgiveness, pulling justice, pulling along community and friendship and reconciliation.
The train includes the true redemption of Israel. But the true redemption of Israel makes room for people from every tribe and nation and language on earth. All of us fit on this train.
This is a description of what happened to these men, these two disciples, when God opened their hearts to see all of Jesus in all the Scriptures. And it’s a description of what it means for any of us, and all of us, to be caught up into the story of God and have our hearts burn with the largeness of glory of God in the person of Jesus. It’s not that the trains they were playing with were entirely wrong. Sometimes they are entirely wrong. But sometimes it’s just that they are too small.
When you get on the big train, you find that what was good and right and true about all the smaller trains gets accomplished anyway.
This is what happens when we understand the Old Testament, from Moses to Malachi, as about Jesus. When we get caught up in the story, you get caught up in something bigger and better than you could have ever imagined.
Next week, a pastor from Liberti church named Jordan will be here. He’ll start us in Genesis 12.
I’ll invite the music team forward. And then I’ll give some instructions about the Lord’s Supper. Let’s pray.
“Dear Heavenly Father. . .”
