Help for the Hungry SoulSample

A Sight of the Son

At this point in our time together, we have examined our hungry hearts and remembered together the necessary place of helplessness and humility before God. When it comes to loving the word, friends, we are desperate for change and for the one who alone can produce it. We long to increasingly become people who hunger for God and all he says. We want our appetites for him to grow! And so we are asking him for a miracle—a miracle of spiritual hunger that is cultivated through spiritual sight.

A sight of the Son.

This miracle is precisely what happened within two of Jesus’s disciples in Luke 24.

There we read that two people were traveling together from Jerusalem to Emmaus, recounting the recent events of Jesus’s torture, crucifixion, and death. While they were talking, Jesus drew near—but they didn’t recognize him. He asked them what they were talking about, and with surprised and sad faces, they questioned how he could not know. So they told him the whole story.

In response, Jesus said to them,

“O 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 his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself. (Luke 24:25–27)

In all the Scriptures. Jesus showed the disciples the wonder of his word to reveal everything necessary about himself. The whole Bible points to Jesus, for he is the point of the whole Bible.

Have you heard something like this before?

My guess is that you have, and that you most likely believe it. That’s wonderful. So in this chapter I want to move us toward a greater desire to encounter Jesus as we engage with Scripture. We’ll look at some principles for pursuing this end, as well as some temptations that might keep us from it.

He is the bread of life. In him, we are nourished, but without him, we wither.

And if we miss Jesus, we miss the whole point.

The Ultimate Point

So let’s start right there: What is the whole point of reading the Bible? Is it to learn? Grow? Obey? I once asked this question to a smattering of people, and the responses were mostly encouraging. Many said they read God’s word to know God. This is a great answer that reflects God’s heart for us: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” How do we do this? “And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart” (Deut. 6:4–6).

If we love the Lord, then we will take his words to heart.

We know this. We read and hear God’s words in order to know the one who speaks them. But perhaps the more probing question is this: How have you seen unbelief affect this pursuit? In other words, how have you been like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, surrounded by realities about Jesus while remaining unaffected in heart by Jesus?

We can sometimes forget that Jesus is a real, risen, and reigning person, not just a spiritual theory or historical figure. We can find it more natural to look at his work than seek after his heart.

The point of our Scripture intake, then, isn’t to complete a process, attain a proficiency, or fix our problems, but to meet an actual person—truly, to encounter the risen Christ. Only then, as we encounter Jesus, will our appetite for him grow.