The Heart-Burning Teacher

The short scripture we’re gonna look at today is an insight to so many things because a lot of times when I read the Gospels, I go, oh, man, how cool would it be to walk with Jesus, to fellowship with Jesus, to just look Jesus in the eye and say, hey, what about this? Hey, what about this? Hey, here’s what’s going on, and Him being right there, and Emmaus gives us an insight to how it is with us and how we relate to Jesus today. It’s so much closer to how life can be for us as we are on our walk. Will you stand as you are able? After they kept blubbering on about how bad the day was, I mean, it had to be a rough weekend, Jesus asked them questions, talked to them, and he finally opened his mouth and said this, and he said to them, oh, foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken.

Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into glory? And beginning with Moses and the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself. Then they went on and they kept walking, and finally they invited Jesus to come in, they ate together, and then they recognized Jesus, and in 32 it says this, 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? The word of God for the people of God, thanks be to God, amen. You may be seated.

Their hearts burned within them. Now, if you’re going to be a Christian, if you’re really going to be a follower of Jesus Christ, and you’re really going to take this seriously, and you’re really going to walk with Jesus, and you’re going to give Jesus the chance to talk, then there’s something I need to make you aware of. And that’s what we’re going to talk about today.

You have the potential for heartburn if you hang out with Jesus too much. Now, some of the stomach conditions of heartburn are, some of the stomach conditions, symptoms are chest pain, heartburn, sickness or nausea, loss of appetite, unexpected weight loss. The heartburn that we have with Jesus is a little bit different, but it is something that we are a part of when we are a part of a relationship with Jesus.

Proverbs 23, 17 says, don’t allow the actions of evil men to cause you to burn with anger. Instead, burn with unrelenting passion as you worship God in holy awe. That proverb tells us that there are different ways in which our hearts can burn.

They can burn for anger, they can burn for passion, and they can burn for passion for the Lord our God. Which one of those do you think I’m going to try to convince you to do today? May 24, 1738, yesterday, was the anniversary of what we call the Aldersgate Experience that changed Methodism forever. John Wesley went to a meeting in a room, an upper room on Aldersgate Street, and he didn’t really want to go, but his brother Charles talked him into it because it was so powerful.

And he was reading, they were reading Martin Luther’s notes to the preface for the Book of Romans. Martin Luther’s commentary. That sounds pretty dry, but it changed everything.

Martin Luther’s words, when he heard them read, Wesley says this, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. As a follower of Jesus Christ, I pray that you feel your heart strangely warmed in the presence of God. I pray that you feel that presence and you know that it’s God doing the work inside of you, that is changing you from within, that is drawing you into God’s presence.

Now the warming that John Wesley talks about sounds a little, doesn’t sound too extreme, maybe it’s that English way of saying it was a warming, it wasn’t a strange, but it warmed my heart. It warmed it. And another way you could almost say it is it melted his heart.

He goes on to say, how could I, even I, be forgiven that he was given the assurance of his forgiveness of sin. And later in his notes, the next couple of days, he said, I don’t even think I was a Christian before this point. Can you believe an ordained elder in the church would not be, would not consider themselves a Christian? But when Wesley’s heart was strangely warmed, it changed everything.

Now in Esther, at the very beginning of Esther when it says, the Queen Vashti refused to come at the King’s command delivered by the eunuchs, at this the King became enraged and his anger burned within him. I mean that was the end for her, the rest of the chapter is all about finding him a new wife. You’ve got to be aware of what the burning or the warming of your heart is, that that anger does not lead to what God has in store for you.

I mean, there’s a lot of anger that happens between churches here. There’s a lot of anger going on in Nigeria that’s leading to things that aren’t of God. I mean, you pretty much got to think if God is telling you to shut someone up by being violent to them, that it’s the wrong kind of warning.

I mean, protection and safety, those kind of things are different, but the anger that burns within us, Paul says we have to be careful of that. In fact, don’t let the sun go down on that because it can become more bitter and bitter and bitter. In the scripture that Dana read this morning, I love these words from Jeremiah.

He says, If I say, I will not mention him or speak any more in his name, there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary of holding it in and I cannot. Here he doesn’t just say my heart is strangely warmed. It said it’s a burning fire that cannot resist God’s call.

Now, warming is one way in which we can hear God’s call, but we hear from Jeremiah that it is orally that he heard God’s voice too. So when we hear God orally, I think of Aaron who spoke all the words that the Lord had spoken in Moses and did the signs and the sight of people. Now, who did God speak to? Moses.

And who did Moses speak to? So did Aaron speak the words of Moses or the words of God? And who did Aaron speak to? The people. So the people got to hear the word of God through the prophets. And when I pray about hearing God’s word orally, I say directly or indirectly.

Because sometimes there are some things that we just cannot hear from God. If you happen to have this condition called stubbornness, you might not hear so well. So sometimes it takes others.

One of the best ways we have is through our Hope Builders groups to speak life to one another, to speak what the Holy Spirit is saying through us to one another. And I love hearing other perspectives and other people saying that. And it is a blessing when we meet to have those conversations.

The orally can come directly from God, but it can come indirectly from a godly person. Does that make sense? For Cleopas and the other disciples, they heard it directly from Jesus. But we won’t really dwell on this because next week is the end of our series.

But as soon as they get done, they go back and they tell all the disciples with excitement what Jesus did and what Jesus said and what their time was like with Jesus. So they spoke a word of God, a prophetic word, on their experience with that. What’s really cool about all this is that Jesus said, the time will come where you don’t necessarily just teach one another, but you will learn directly from the Holy Spirit.

In the book of John, he says, But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. He will teach you all things. We’re getting really close to what happened here on Emmaus.

It says Jesus taught them directly all the things in the scripture concerning him. Remember, he started the conversation by saying, Oh foolish ones, low of heart, difficult to want to believe. Maybe that’s why we don’t want to give Jesus the chance to talk.

Because he would think some of the things we worry about, some of the things we focus on, some of the things that we think are so important in this life, in this world, he would say that’s foolish. That’s so small compared to what I have to say if you want to listen. That is so small compared to what God’s plan for your life is, what God’s plan is for the Messiah, that he would die and he would descend to the dead and he would rise again.

The Holy Spirit will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. Just like Jesus was reminding them a lot of what he was saying when he opened up the scriptures. Now when Jesus is talking to them from the scriptures, that’s all Old Testament.

That’s all the law and the prophets and all those things in there that people want to neglect today that speak so much about Jesus. There are types and shadows and prophecies all over that Old Testament that are so powerfully Holy Spirit led that can change everything in our lives. So besides the warming, the orally, like the conversation they had on the road, the remembrance of Jesus reminding them of this, there’s also demonstration that God talks to us with.

Paul said, and I was with you in weakness and in fear with much trembling and my speech and my message were not plausible words of wisdom but in demonstration of the spirit and of power so that your faith might not rest on the wisdom of men but on the power of God. Do you hear those words? I mean, does your faith depend on what other people say? Does your faith depend on what you read on social media? What impacts your faith? Does it lean on directly from God? On the power of the Holy Spirit, on demonstration of God’s power in your life, on demonstration that God is going to be with you no matter what you are facing. Now, way back in the early, well, in the mid-2000s when I was in seminary, I saw these things in Scripture, the warming, the orally, the remembrance, the demonstration and I’ve talked about them with every church I’ve been in because I want you to experience what Cleopas and the other disciples experienced here.

I want you to hear God speaking to you, even today. We were in a small group working through these things and I talked about demonstration being signs, miracles, wonders. And someone in that group said, well, what about visions and dreams? So we included visions and signs, miracles, wonders, visions and dreams.

Anything that is a demonstration of God’s power, anything that is beyond human capacity alone is a demonstration of God’s power. Basically, anytime God shows up, it’s a demonstration of God’s power. Now, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’ve left one big thing out so far.

Let’s look through these words again and see if you can tell. Warming, orally, remembrance, demonstration. Is there anything else I might have left out on how we can hear God talking to us? Word, the word.

All those are important. I mean, to tell you the truth, how do I hear from God? One is prayer and one is through the word. But sometimes when you are praying up and you read the word and the Holy Spirit is working with you and you’re not just reading the scripture because you feel obligated to read the scripture, you’re not just reading it because you want to know the information there, you’re reading it because you want to hear what God is saying.

God is saying to the people back then and what God is saying to us today. And when you hear the word, God speaks mildly. Old Testament, New Testament.

It’s like talking. Even when I read the Old Testament, I feel the presence of Jesus specifically in that. And I see how Jesus, it kind of rocked my world when I was having a conversation with a Messianic Jewish pastor.

That might sound like an oxymoron, but those are Jews who practice Judaism, but they believe the Messiah has come and that the Messiah is Yeshua. And that Yeshua is the one who is anointed by God to save them. He is the Son of God.

He is one of the Trinity. And he said, if Jesus is the word and all things that were created through him were created by him and through him, then the Old Testament was spoken to those prophets by the word, by Jesus. And it’s been an amazing thing when I, I remember one time it was like, I was on the, I was driving in the car.

Did you ever notice that driving in a car can be good prayer time? As long as you pray with your eyes open, it’s good prayer time. Pray with your eyes closed, you might meet Jesus a little quicker than you meant to. But I was praying and I was driving and I was here in Johnson County and I remember so clearly that in my prayer, in my struggle, in my wanting to hear something from God, the words of Isaiah, Old Testament, came to remembrance in my mind.

And the words were spoken very clearly and I had no doubt that it was Jesus telling me those words. When the Holy Spirit speaks to us, it’s the word of God. But no, that it’s Jesus speaking directly to us like the Ode to Emmaus.

This is the transition. Next week we’ll finish this series and it’s on Communion Sunday, so we’re gonna talk about, guess what the sermon’s on next week? Communion, it doesn’t always work out like that, but it’s gonna be one of the most awesome communion sermons we could have because of the word. And then it’s Pentecost.

So with Pentecost, we see the power of the Holy Spirit. We’ll have a few parts just on Pentecost. But Emmaus, the walk to Emmaus is a transition of walking face to face with Jesus and being with Jesus like the disciples were too.

Walking with him and they were walking with this dude who called him foolish and explained everything about the Messiah more clearly than all but one other person had ever explained to him. And they finally realized it was Jesus. Now the truth is that’s one of the ways we can know that in prayer or in our reading or in our understanding that it is from God.

Just as Jesus opened the scriptures to them, if it is from God, Jesus will open the scriptures to us. He won’t say, skip that part. That’s weird.

He won’t say, oh, this part doesn’t fit today. Let’s just move on. He says, here’s what it is.

Here’s where I fit into this. Here’s how we can do amazing things for God. So I pray that God gives you a burning or a strange warning.

I pray every day that God speaks to me through that strange warning because I have discovered over the years that every time I have a strange warning or a burning in my heart, it’s not always the Holy Spirit trying to get me to do what God wants me to do. Sometimes it’s my own feelings and sometimes churches lean more on feelings than they do on the power of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes it’s a revengeful burning or it’s a hateful burning or it’s an angry burning or it’s a burning that says, I want to be nice, so I’m going to twist the word of God.

But sometimes that burning aligns perfectly where God the Father, the Holy Spirit speaking through us, through the Father and the Son speaking through the Holy Spirit and the word of God all align. And in that alignment, we have this direct connection to the throne of God. We have a seat before the throne of God to hear the word of God, not just from other people, not just on the radio, not just on the TV, not just on the internet, but directly from the voice of God.

And then that warming or that burning in our heart turns in a burning to serve and do what God has called us to do. That’s what we build our life on. That’s what we can see in the Bible that is true for us.

That God will teach us directly. The Holy Spirit will be our teacher and the words concerning the prophets, the law and Jesus will come through directly. Let’s pray.

Almighty God, thank you so much for this walk to Emmaus. Thank you that on the road, you let them talk, you let them vent, but then you spoke. And you taught them where the Bible talks about you.

You taught them the prophecies of the Bible so they can understand who you are better. And we thank you, God, that’s not just for them, but that you teach us, that you guide us, that you open up your word to us, that your Holy Spirit gives us direct access to hearing from you, whether it’s a warming or a burning in our heart, whether it’s orally, whether it’s friends who hear from you and speak your word, whether it’s remembrance of something that you said or something that someone might have said to us when we were even a child and it comes back to our mind, whether it’s demonstration of your power, or whether it’s just opening up your word and hearing you speak to us. Help us to always seek your face, to listen to you, to open to you, to recognize your voice and to know that you are ready and waiting for us to hear your words.

In Jesus’ name, Amen.