From Jesus’s teaching on the road to Emmaus, we learn four important lessons for reading the Christmas story.
The opening chapters of Matthew and Luke introduce us to Jesus as the long-awaited Messiah, conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary. While the rest of the New Testament says little about His entry into the world, the nativity stories in these Gospels profoundly shape how we understand everything the Bible says about Him. Like a tsunami following an earthquake, the story of Jesus’s birth reverberates throughout all of Scripture.
The Christmas story bridges the Old and New Testaments. We cannot fully grasp what Matthew and Luke write about the baby in the manger without first understanding the overall plot of the Old Testament. We also need the Christmas story to make sense of what the rest of the New Testament says about Christ—the Word who became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14).
But how exactly are we to understand Jesus in the Old Testament? Skeptics and critics say Old Testament texts can’t possibly speak about Jesus because they were written hundreds of years or more before Jesus was born. But if we take Jesus at His word, we must recognize that all of the Old Testament points to Jesus.
In Luke 24:13-35, on the day He rose from the dead, Jesus taught two disciples on the road to Emmaus how to read Scripture. These disciples didn’t realize it at first, but they were learning from the One whom Scripture is all about. Starting with Moses and the prophets, Jesus explained how the entire Bible pointed to Him. What He taught them is sound advice for how we should approach the Christmas story that fulfills Old Testament promises.