Discovering Jesus in the Old Testament | Rev. Malcolm G. Smith

After His resurrection, on the road to Emmaus, the Lord showed two of His disciples that the whole Old Testament was about Him. “And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself” (Luke 24:27). This Sunday we will begin a series of sermons in which we attempt, with the help of the teachings for the New Church, to see what those disciples got to see. 

Readings: Numbers 24:15-17, Luke 24:13-32, Arcana Coelestia 5620:14, True Christian Religion 231

Minister: Rev. Malcolm G. Smith

Delivered June 28th, 2026 at the Bryn Athyn Cathedral in Bryn Athyn, PA.

The Bryn Athyn Church is a congregation of the General Church of the New Jerusalem, located in Bryn Athyn, PA. We are committed to helping each other draw closer to the Lord God Jesus Christ through lives of love and useful service, guided by the Old and New Testaments and the Heavenly Doctrine for the New Church (contained in the theological works of Emanuel Swedenborg). Please join us for worship on Sunday mornings; services and times can be found at brynathynchurch.org.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Good morning, and welcome to our family service. Our first lesson is taken from the Gospel of Luke. This is the very end, and it's a story of peep the Lord appearing to some of his disciples after he had died and risen again, and it takes a while for them to realize that it's him. And behold, two of them were traveling that same day to a village which is named Emmaus, which was sixty stadia or seven miles from Jerusalem. And they conversed with one another about all these things which had happened. And it came to pass as they conversed and were disputing, Jesus himself, drawing near, went with them, but their eyes were held back, so they did not know him. And he said to them, What words are these which you exchange with one another while you walk and are sad? And one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answering, said to him, Are you only a sojourner in Jerusalem, and have not known the things which have come to pass there in these days? And he said to them, What things? And they said to him, The things concerning Jesus of Nazareth, who was a man, a prophet, powerful in work and word before God and all the people, and how the chief priests and scribes and rulers delivered him up to the judgment of death and have crucified him. And we hope that it was he who is going to redeem Israel. But yet with all this, today brings the third day since these things were done. And he said to them, O thoughtless, and slow of heart to believe all the prophets have spoken, ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to have entered into his glory? And beginning from Moses and from all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself. And they drew near to the village where they were going, and he indicated that he would go farther, and they pressed him, saying, Stay with us, for it is toward evening, and the day has declined. And he came in to stay with them. And it came to pass, as he reclined with them, taking bread, he blessed it, and breaking, gave it to them. And their eyes were opened, and they knew him, and he became invisible to them. And they said to one another, Did not our heart burn within us while he spoke to us in the way, and while he opened the scriptures to us? Amen. Reading further from the teachings for the new church. First from our Canus Celestia, and then from true Christian religion. The things which have been written in the Old Testament word regarding the Lord are but few in the sense of the letter, whereas everything contained in the internal sense has to do with him, and it is from this that the word gets its holiness. Everything contained in the internal sense is what is meant in the statement that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms concerning him. Enlightenment comes only from the Lord, and to those who love truths because they are true, and make them their guide to a useful life. No others find enlightenment in the Word. Enlightenment comes only from the Lord, because the Word is from Him, and so He is in it. The Lord is loved when one lives in accordance with His divine truths, and so useful deeds are done by their guidance, as stated in this passage of John. On that day you will know that you are in me and I in you. He who has my commandments and keeps them loves me, and I shall love him, and I shall show myself to him, and come to him and make my dwelling with him. Amen. Here end our lessons from the Lord's Word. Blessed are those who hear the Word of God and keep it. Amen. So this is the first in a series of talks called Discovering Jesus in the Old Testament. And even if you only know a little bit about the Bible, you probably know that the stories about Jesus are in the New Testament, not in the Old Testament. So what are we talking about? Well, in the story we read from the Gospel of Luke in the New Testament, Jesus explained to two of his disciples that the Old Testament scriptures were all about him and what he went through. And it would have been so interesting and fascinating to walk with the Lord that day and get to hear him open the scriptures. Wouldn't that have been cool? We would never have looked at the Old Testament the same way again after that. Well, through what the Lord has revealed in the teachings for the new church, we are given a similar opportunity. We're taught that there is an internal sense in the literal stories of the Old and New Testaments. And the internal sense, it says, quote, everything down to each jot or the smallest tip of any letter has to do with the Lord. And so we're invited to see the Lord God Jesus Christ in his word, including in the Old Testament. So that's what we're going to attempt to do in this sermon series. For today, we're going to use that story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus to understand two major parts of what's involved in being able to see the Lord in the Old Testament. And then we'll go through two examples from the Old Testament to see if we can do this thing we're talking about. Now, the first thing we need to be able to discover the Lord in the Old Testament is for the Lord to open the scriptures for us. There are lots of things that can be right in front of us, and we don't see them unless someone points them out and says, Hey, it's right there. Oh, thanks. Now I can see it. And this is what the teachings for the New Church do all the time with the Old Testament, saying, The Lord is right there. He's also right there, and he's also there in all these different places, the teachings for the new church point out where the Lord is. And they don't just do that, they also give us so many cool details about what was going on for the Lord inside himself that are hidden, tucked in, their secrets of heaven, in the stories of the Old Testament. But to see those things, we need instruction. We need to learn some stuff from the Lord so that we can see what's right in front of us. Let's talk about a few techniques for doing this. One technique is just to read the teachings for the new church, particularly the book Arcana Celestia, has lots of useful stuff. The more we read that, the more we'll have a good sense of the kinds of things that are talking about the Lord, and we'll be able to see them. But there's also a simpler approach that can give you a rough sketch, not as much detail, but a general sense of what's going on in the story. And that is to say to yourself, whatever you're reading in the Old Testament, something like this happened to Jesus, or something like this happened inside of Jesus. And part of what we'll see as we go through is all these interesting details about the Lord and his experience. So for example, you could say to yourself, Joseph getting taken into slavery in Egypt, something like that happened to Jesus. And then you could think about, well, what was it? What happened to Jesus that was kind of like that? Or you might say, the children of Israel wandering in the wilderness for 40 years. Something like that happened to Jesus. Can you think of anything in the New Testament that sounds like that? Or you could say, the people getting taken away kept into captivity by the Babylonians. Something like that happened inside Jesus. What was it? What comes to mind? So these will just be guesses, unless you go and do research, which I encourage you to do, but they'll just be guesses. But guesses are okay with the Lord's word if you hold your conclusions gently, say, maybe I'm right, maybe I'm wrong, but if those guesses are helping you to see the Lord, helping you to love the Lord and love your neighbor, then you're in safe territory. And this leads us to the second part of what we need to be able to discover Jesus in the Old Testament. Because just having techniques and knowledge and having read a whole bunch is not enough in and of itself. The disciples on the road had a long conversation with the Lord, in which he opened the scriptures to them, taught them so many things, and they still didn't recognize him until something happened later on in the story. The second part that's necessary for us to discover Jesus in the Old Testament is that we need to be trying to do good. This is what our last lesson from the Teachings for the New Church was saying. Saying enlightenment. This is a fancy word for seeing things in our minds, having light from the Lord coming into our minds. Enlightenment comes only from the Lord, and to those who love truths because they are true, and make them their guide to a useful life. No others find enlightenment in the Word. As the Lord said in John, He who has my commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves me, and he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and show myself to him. We'll get to see the Lord if we're taking his truths and trying to live according to them. And this reality is shown to us in the story, in how when Jesus took bread and broke it and gave it to them, then they recognized him. Then their eyes were opened and they knew him. The teachings for the new church explain what this means. They say the meaning of this event was that the Lord comes into sight through good, but not through truth devoid of good, for bread means good that is done out of love. So actively choosing to receive goodness from the Lord and do something with it, like the disciples received that bread and took it into themselves, that's what makes us able to see God in the Old Testament. So, if we really want to see Jesus in the Old Testament, each of us will need to do our own individual work. And we can't do that for each other. We have to do it ourselves. Work on keeping the Lord's truths, loving those truths, trying to live them. So next, though, we can go through these examples from the Old Testament and see if we can picture what it might be like to live these things and how that might help us see the Lord. So in these examples, we're just gonna take two, and on the road to Emmaus, it says Jesus interpreted to them in all the scriptures, beginning from Moses and from all the prophets. So we're gonna take an example from Moses and from the prophets. And Moses can mean a bunch of different things in the Word, but one of the things it means is the five books of Moses. And so we'll start with Genesis 1, chapter 1, where it begins the books of Moses. This is very familiar, but maybe you haven't thought about it in terms of what it might mean about Jesus. It says, In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was without form and void, and darkness was on the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God brooded over the face of the waters, and God said, Let there be light, and there was light. Something like this happened to Jesus, or something like this happened inside Jesus. And perhaps what we can get here is in this creation story imagery is an image of the sheer amount of work that lay before the Lord at the beginning of his life. Darkness was on the face of the deep, the earth was without form and void, there was darkness everywhere. And it was Jesus' role to say, let there be light. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. Maybe that's some of what we get here. How might we love those truths and use them in our lives? A part of my might just be an increased sense of gratitude for the Lord coming and bringing light into this dark world, even though it was very dark. Maybe we can just love him a little bit more for doing that for such a long time. And maybe, more importantly, we can have a little bit more motivation to invite the Lord to let there be light in our darkness, in our formlessness, in our void. There's obviously lots more we could say about that, and I encourage you to look at it more for homework. Moving on to the prophets, there are a couple of different groupings of Old Testament books that are called the prophets. One grouping is called the major prophets, and the first of those is Isaiah. So let's look at Isaiah chapter 1, verse 1. It begins with this: the vision of Isaiah, the son of Amos, which he beheld concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah. Something like this happened to Jesus, or something like this happened inside of Jesus. And maybe your eyes glazed over because it's doing the Old Testament thing of listing a bunch of names and who were Uzziah and Amaz and Jotham and all those things. But those were kings of Judah, and most of them were bad kings of Judah. And we don't know what all of them mean in the internal sense, but we do know that it had something to do with what the Lord was dealing with. Maybe it's like when it says in the Gospels, Jesus was born in the days of Herod the king. There was something else ruling when Jesus came into the world that was a problem that needed to be dealt with. A few verses later in Isaiah 1, Jehovah tells the people through Isaiah that he's done with their empty animal sacrifices. He says, To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices to me, says Jehovah? I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed cattle. I do not delight in the blood of bulls or of lambs or goats. And this sounds a lot like what Jesus was often saying to the Pharisees and scribes. It's not about your external rituals. Those are fine, but it's about the internal stuff. And Isaiah goes on and says, Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean, put away the evil of your doings from before my eyes, cease to do evil, learn to do good. And it's interesting to imagine Jesus at some point in his childhood reading the book of Isaiah. And maybe that was part of what gave him and John the Baptist who came before him the clarity to say, no, this stuff is not what religion is meant to be about. It's meant to be about getting baptized and confessing our sins and coming back to the Lord. Maybe Isaiah was part of how the Lord learned that. Well, again, there's something about seeing that this message to the people all the way back in Isaiah's time and in the time when Jesus was on earth, and probably for hundreds of years and thousands of years into the future, is kind of the same because people are kind of the same, and we get off track in the sort of the same ways of thinking our rituals are what make us good and we're better than other people. And so seeing the Lord working with people thousands of years ago, hundreds of years ago, maybe there's something he needs to teach us today about this. Maybe he can help us to cease to do evil and learn to do good. So seeing that same goodness being offered to us, that same bread being broken in the Old Testament and the New Testament, hand it out to us, will we take that goodness and eat it? Will we cease to do evil and learn to do good? To wrap up, the Old Testament can be quite hard to understand, and it might seem irrelevant to today's world. And what's going on in today's world can also be quite hard to understand, but there's hope for a different experience in the approach that we talked about today. Before the Lord opened the scriptures to those disciples, they were confused. They didn't understand what had happened or why it had happened. They were discussing and disputing and getting nowhere. Have you been in those conversations? They thought they were, the Lord says, thoughtless and slow of heart to believe. And aren't we all thoughtless and slow of heart to believe? And they never would have thought that the Old Testament would give them answers to what they were dealing with. How could it? But the Lord helped them to discover something different, and he can help us too. Like the disciples, our hearts can burn within us as he opens the scriptures to us. And like those disciples, we can ultimately come to recognize our God, the Lord Jesus Christ, in the Old Testament, New Testament, and in our lives. Amen.