Lk 24:25    He said to them, "How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken!

         

On the road to Emmaus, two disciples encounter the risen Jesus walking, and when he questions them they share about their confusion over the recent events in Jerusalem. If there is one thing that comes over in this verse it is Jesus' surprise over his failed expectation that they should have understood and believed the prophetic Scriptures about what had just happened. He describes them in two ways that puts them in a bad light.

 

First of all he calls them foolish. Now my dictionary describes a fool as one who is silly, a simpleton, and foolish is about being simple or silly. How silly you are, he says, if you don't understand what the prophetic scriptures said. Now most good Jews would have been taught in the local synagogue what the prophetic scriptures said, and Jesus expected them to realise when all the recent events occurred, that these were the fulfilment of those prophecies.

 

He goes on to call them slow of heart to believe, meaning he would have expected them to believe what they had read and it can only be their slow-wittedness that causes their lack of belief. Did they know the Scriptures but just hadn't ever seen them as applicable to present circumstances.

Now we may think this is hard on these two men, but it shows us that God expects us to take in what we read in the Scriptures, understand it and apply it to our lives. It is no excuse to say, “Oh, I found it difficult to understand.” It can only be the self-centred sin nature that hinders belief that flows from understanding. Think on this. If we read Scripture each day, do we ask, "What did this mean to the original readers?" and do we then go on to ask, "How does this apply to me in my present circumstances today?" For both those questions, wisdom suggests that the starting point is to ask the Lord for His help in understanding and His help with both questions. That at least, will start us off along the right path. All that is then required is obedience to what we have read and taken in.