Time again for us to take time to look at the details of this segment. This segment answers some of the questions that needed to be asked when we started the segment we have just finished. We gain insights into a number of aspects of the story and how these two are reacting to it. Notice in this opening phase Jesus merely asks questions and doesn’t give much information. He wants to find out where these two are at. It made me smile. He is like a Deeper Bible teacher. Not that He is modelling Himself on Deeper Bible but that Deeper Bible is modelling itself on Jesus and the Jewish way of teaching. ASK QUESTIONS! Hence it is important for you to ask questions. Jesus gives nothing away. It is ironic isn’t it? Here stands (or walks) the one they are talking about. He is indeed the topic of their conversation but He doesn’t give anything away cheaply. He finds out first what they know and what they think about it. Bear in mind He has walked with them for a while and said nothing. In this part of the action Jesus doesn’t have a major part. If this were a play, Jesus part would be very minor.
“What are you discussing so intently as you walk along?”
“What things?”
Luke 24:17, 19
Let me take you back to a statement from John.
“All right,” Jesus replied. “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”
“What!” they exclaimed. “It has taken forty-six years to build this Temple, and You can rebuild it in three days?”
But when Jesus said “this temple,” He meant His own body. After He was raised from the dead, His disciples remembered He had said this, and they believed both the Scriptures and what Jesus had said. Because of the miraculous signs Jesus did in Jerusalem at the Passover celebration, many began to trust in Him. But Jesus didn’t trust them, because He knew human nature. (Or – didn’t entrust himself to them) No one needed to tell Him what mankind is really like.
There was a man named Nicodemus, a Jewish religious leader who was a Pharisee.
John 2:19-31
I have deliberately combined a part of John 2 with the beginning of John 3. Why? Because it is obvious Nicodemus is an example or a case study of the fact Jesus doesn’t need anyone to tell Him what was in man because He knew man. Yes the man has been changed to “mankind” to make the general point, but the power of the statement is Jesus knows us through and through. Just like His encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well. He knew all the details of her past. She ran to the village and said. “Come and see a man who told me everything I ever did!” Do you think this is any different for these two men, Cleopas and his friend?
Jesus’ interaction with people is fascinating. Here is the One of whom they are talking and He blurts out nothing. He lets them excitedly tell Him what they think happened when all the time He could interrupt them and tell them exactly what happened. But He does none of that. He lets them tell it as they see it. Many things become clear on the other side of the Resurrection.
I will now leave you with your questions and let you ponder them. I know that is what Jesus would do, so I will do the same. Are you aware that when you are left with your questions and no one gives you a pat answer or a canned explanation, that your question becomes sharper and clearer? Your desire to know is heightened and the quality of the ultimate answer is deepened. I will now let you ponder on that too. I have told you before in the Gems about Pak Suryadi’s question that hung in the air for 20 years as he pondered the depth of what he wanted to know. No simple explanation satisfied him. No canned commentary filled the void of what he wanted to know. He kept pursuing the answer because he knew that it must be deeper than the simplistic answers that were given to him. Now that is the true search for Truth. Go do it.
Never apologise for asking questions constantly. It is what children do to learn. The depth of the questions determines the depth of the answers you gain.
Ian Vail
Never apologise for your passion or your tears. It’s the real “you” emerging.
Ian Vail
It’s easy to impress people with a few well chosen truths, but ultimately it keeps them from deeper Truth.
Ian Vail
Men: It’s easy to impress a bunch of women. Try to impress one until death do you part!
Rick Godwin
No matter how busy people are, they are never too busy to stop and talk about how busy they are.
Anon
A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way and shows the way.
John Maxwell
I don’t know how to act my age. I’ve never been this age before.
Ian Vail