I attended a seminar once by the name of TERM. TERM is an acronym for The Emmaus Road Message. Many believers and non-believers for that matter, don’t know what the Emmaus Road is – or was.
After Jesus was crucified and resurrected, He appeared to three of His disciples, out for a mid-day stroll. Approaching them, He asked what they were up to, as they were in deep conversation about something that had them in a frenzy. They didn’t recognize Him and asked Him why He hadn’t heard what all the ruckus was about. “Haven’t you been around? Don’t you know what’s going on around here?” they may as well have said and in so many words- and did just that.
He asked them to explain, which they did. They told Him that their teacher, Christ himself, had been crucified and promised to show up afterward and they were trying to figure out what He had meant because as far as they knew, He hadn’t.
So, He took them, literally through storytelling, on a ‘trip’ and beginning with creation, told them the message of the Bible.
A similar story is told by Stephen in the book of Acts, when he is being questioned before the Sanhedrin. He recounts the history of the Bible, beginning with creation.
Why share the message of salvation in this way? Because to understand God’s Word, you have to start at the beginning. When you read a novel or an article, you don’t start in the middle. You start at the first sentence and read to the end. If you jump around, you have a bunch of pieces that you’ve now got to put together in some sort of order so that the story makes sense and if you get them out of order, there is confusion.
John Cross, Bible teacher and author of The Stranger On the Road to Emmaus, once said, “People can’t get excited about sharing something they don’t understand and you aren’t going to want to share God’s word if you don’t understand it.” I would one step further and say, you can’t understand it if you don’t know it. Understanding something involves learning about it, studying it, spending time in that area. When you get to know something really well, you begin to not only know it, but you understand it.
The Bible is a letter of love, a story of redemption. But it’s so much more. It is filled with stories of grace and tales of mercy. It sings of joy and whispers hope and overflows with forgiveness. But it’s all done in an organized way. If we just learn/study the New Testament, we fail to see not only see the significance that the Old Testament had/has with the New Testament, but also how it relates to life today. The flood, the tabernacle and all its adornments, the judges, Adam and Eve’s encounter with Satan – how do these stories relate to the stories of the New Testament and to us now? Most people don’t get the full picture. I know I didn’t for a very long time.
That’s why it’s important to start at the beginning and learn God’s story to us in a chronological way. The pieces will begin to fall into their proper place and when you’re finished, you have a picture that makes sense. A picture of God’s love for mankind.
A good resource for helping you go through God’s word and understanding it more fully is the book mentioned above entitled, The Stranger on the Road to Emmaus, written by John Cross. It is one of the best resources that I have happened across in helping believers, young and old alike, in understanding the message of God’s word. It is a great resource for small group studies, one on one studies, and also for those wanting a down-to-earth, easy-to-understand, not-in-your-face account of what the Bible is about.
Just how well do you understand the Bible? If your answer is ‘not well’, it’s never too late to start.
Check out the resources available by visiting this website for more information: GoodSeed USA.