Have you ever looked for something, searched all over, and there it was, right in front of you, right out in the open all along? That’s happened to a lot of us, I’m sure. Our eyes were open, but we weren’t really seeing what was right in front of us. It can cause problems when we don’t see what is right in front of us, and we aren’t paying attention. When we don’t see the snake in the grass because we aren’t paying attention, we can get bit. When we aren’t alert when driving we might not make it home alive. Sometimes when our mind and eyes refuse to see, we end up with spiritual blindness. That is the sort of condition that the disciples found themselves in our Scripture today. Let’s see what happened.
As our Scripture passage today opens it is the evening of the day of Resurrection. Earlier, Jesus had appeared to two disciples who were walking to their home in Emmaus. Now He came to appear to the eleven apostles. After hearing the testimony of the women who had gone to the grave and reported the message of the angels there, along with the testimony from the two from Emmaus just moments before, we might think that now when they were seeing Jesus Himself, they would now recognize Him, rejoice, and be at peace. However, as we read, they were terrified, thinking they were seeing a ghost (vs. 36-37). They were seeing Jesus, but they weren’t really seeing with faith. They needed to open their spiritual eyes.
Jesus then gave them some more reassurance. He didn’t harshly chastise them for their lack of faith. Instead, He asked why they were troubled, showed them the nail prints in His hands and feet (vs. 38-40). The disciples still had blinders on their eyes and minds, so Jesus went a step further. He asked for some food to eat in their presence, as they were possibly still believing that He was a ghost (vs. 41-43). Their eyes were seeing, but their mind was not believing. One characteristic of a ghost is that it is not solid. Jesus was solid, flesh and bones. Also ghosts don’t eat, yet Jesus ate some food with them. They needed to open their spiritual eyes and see the Lord Jesus standing right in front of them, eating some food.
When the disciples saw Jesus on the evening of His resurrection, they were troubled. They were distressed, agitated, and anxious. Being in that state robs us of the peace that we can have in the Savior. Having our spiritual eyes closed will lead to fear, doubts, discouragement, and despair, and will lead to having a lack of faith.
It took the disciples a little while, but they did come to believe what was right in front of their eyes. They knew that Jesus had been crucified, had died, and was buried. And now, just as He had told them earlier, He was risen from the dead and standing in front of them. They saw the nail prints that He showed them. This was evidence that it was really Him, and not someone who looked like Him. Those nail prints were also evidence of the love Jesus has given. We are engraved as scars on His hands (Isaiah 49:15-16).
Now that they were seeing and believing, Jesus opened their understanding so that they could more readily understand the Scriptures (vs. 44-45). We need God’s help, which comes through the Holy Spirit, to truly understand the Bible. That is why sometimes when we are talking to someone who is unsaved, and we quote a Bible verse or two to them, they just stare at us blankly. They can’t understand. Their eyes are physically open, but they can’t see, they are spiritually blind.
For us to see and understand Jesus in the Scriptures, we need our eyes opened. The two disciples on the road to Emmaus needed their eyes opened to see that it was Jesus. Here, too, the disciples' eyes needed to be opened to see that it was Jesus. One psalmist even prays that God opens his eyes when reading Scripture (Psalm 119:18). Without opened eyes, the Bible can seem like a legalistic code. With eyes opened, God can reveal Himself to us.
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