“Now behold two of them were traveling that same day to a village called Emmaus, which was seven miles from Jerusalem. And they talked together of all these things which had happened. So it was, while they conversed and reasoned that Jesus Himself drew near and went with them. But their eyes were restrained, so that they did not know Him…Then their eyes were opened and they knew Him; and He vanished from their sight.”                                     Luke 24:13-16, 31 NKJV

Here is a revealing picture of how Jesus works with anyone who “wants to know” Him. In the midst of the most important series of events in His life and ministry (his death, burial and resurrection), the Lord takes the time to take a seven mile walk with two of His “lower level” followers! Not only were these guys not among the twelve apostles, but consider the fact that Jesus was opening the scriptures to them at the exact same time that Peter was trying to make sense of the empty tomb!

In a seemingly unreasonable display of God’s own time management, the Lord appears to two “low priority” disciples while leaving the new leaders of His ministry in the dark! What’s more, the topic He addresses is the futility of human reason!! Scriptures like this do us good as Christians because they teach us how important it is to always think outside the box when it comes to understanding spiritual things. Notice how, when Jesus approached these men, he “restrained” their eyes, so they didn’t know Him. Often, when God really wants to teach us something, He blinds us to its outward appearance. Why? Because, even when we are directly dealing with the spiritual realm we are so easily distracted by the impulses of our carnal nature that we would be diverted from His deep inner meanings. It is important to make the connection here between “knowing” the Lord and “seeing” Him.

Jesus did not open their eyes until after He was finished revealing what He wanted them to know. Then He promptly vanished from their sight altogether!

The more you get to know the Lord the more you learn to put most reasoning and conversation regarding Him in a secondary position behind the intimacy of knowing Him. If we start there, all of our other knowledge will increase and we will find ourselves naturally excited and motivated to tell others about Jesus. It wasn’t until these two “little guys” reported what they had learned that Jesus appeared to the “big guys” (verse 36)!

In the last days, we will need the same firsthand knowledge of God and unity of the brethren to lead us as well!