They Did Not Recognize Him, and the Thing That Burned Was the Text

He has read it and felt nothing, and he has drawn a conclusion from that.

The conclusion is not that the Bible is untrue. He believes it. The conclusion is about him: that other people have some receiver he was not issued, that reading works for them in a way it does not work for him, and that whatever is supposed to happen has never once happened.

He has evidence. Twenty-two years of it. He has read at various points with genuine effort and it has produced comprehension and nothing else, and comprehension he can get from a manual.

And the men who talk about the Bible in the way that most affects him are men who describe something happening while they read, and he does not have that, and he has never said so out loud to any of them.

There is a seven mile walk in Luke 24 where two men had the best Bible study in history and did not know it while it was going on.

They could not tell who it was

Here is the situation, in the King James Version:

And it came to pass, that, while they communed together and reasoned, Jesus himself drew near, and went with them. But their eyes were holden that they should not know him. (Luke 24:15-16)

Their eyes were holden that they should not know him.

That is not their failure. It is passive: something was done, and the effect was that recognition was withheld while the conversation happened.

So the two of them walk seven miles with Jesus, discussing the events of that week, and the entire time they are convinced they are talking to a stranger who is behind on the news.

You are not being kept out by a defect and you were never the one holding your own eyes. Luke 24:16 puts the not knowing in the passive voice, and it is the Holy Spirit rather than a sharper attention who governs when a thing becomes clear to a man.

What He did on the road

And then the teaching, and Luke describes its scope in one sentence.

And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself. (Luke 24:27)

Beginning at Moses and all the prophets. That is the whole Old Testament, walked through, by its subject.

And they did not know who was talking. That is the situation. The best possible exposition, given by the only person who could give it, received by two men who thought a stranger was making interesting points.

Whatever they were experiencing during those seven miles, it was not recognition. They would not have described it as an encounter. If you had stopped them at mile four and asked whether anything was happening to them, they would have said they were having a good conversation with a well informed man.

You are able to be under something without knowing it and you were never required to identify it while it was happening. Luke 24:27 has Him expound all the Scriptures to two men who did not know Him, and it is His Spirit who makes something real going on in a man before he can name it.

What they said afterward

The recognition happens later, at a table, over broken bread, and it is instantaneous and then He is gone. And then they say the sentence.

And they said one to another, Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the scriptures? (Luke 24:32)

Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way.

Read the tense. The burning was going on during the walk. Past tense, retroactive, recognized afterward.

They did not feel it as burning at the time. They felt it as a conversation. It became a burning when they looked back at it, and the looking back is what named it.

That is the whole answer to a man who has read for twenty-two years and felt nothing, and it is not a promise that he will start feeling things. It is a statement that the two things are not the same thing, and that the second one arrives late, and that the absence of it during is not evidence of absence.

You have had something happening that you were not able to name and you were never going to identify it in the moment. Luke 24:32 puts the burning in the past tense and locates it in a stretch the men experienced as an ordinary conversation, and it is the Holy Spirit who does the work that gets recognized only afterward.

Who opens the understanding

And then, ten verses on, Luke says who does the part a man cannot do for himself.

Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures. (Luke 24:45)

Then opened he their understanding. He is the subject. They are the object. It is not something they achieved by attention.

Which means the thing the man with twenty-two years has been trying to manufacture is on the list of what gets done to a person rather than by one.

And Jeremiah, who describes it from the inside when it has been going a long time:

Then I said, I will not make mention of him, nor speak any more in his name. But his word was in mine heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I was weary with forbearing, and I could not stay. (Jeremiah 20:9)

As a burning fire shut up in my bones. And note the setting: he says this while trying to quit. The burning is described by a man in the middle of deciding to stop.

And Hebrews on what the word does whether it is felt or not:

For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword. (Hebrews 4:12)

Quick in that verse means alive. The claim is about the word's own property, not about the reader's response to it.

You have a word described as alive on its own terms and you were never the thing that made it work. Hebrews 4:12 calls it quick and powerful and Luke 24:45 says He opened their understanding, and it is His Spirit rather than your receptivity who does the opening.