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John 6:54-57, John 21:15-17

A Fishery at Tabgha

Filed Under: Devotions by Chuck
June 13, 2013

Jesus identified himself as the bread of heaven. In a very controversial passage, that often led opponents of Christianity to accuse believers of cannibalism, Jesus said, “…Whoever feeds on my flesh 13 fishand drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me” (John 6:54-57).

John 21:6-10 records the events in which Jesus feeds the apostles a fish breakfast. The fisherman hadn’t caught anything all night, but when Jesus instructs them to cast their nets on the other side of the boat, they haul in a net load of fish. When they reach the shore Peter brings some of the fish to Jesus, and they enjoy the meal together. Jesus feeds the apostles. He then challenges Peter to feed His sheep (John 21:15-17). A very early church tradition places this Post-resurrection appearance of our Lord at Tabgha. Tabgha comes from a word that means “seven springs.” It is the winter fishing ground for fishermen from Capernaum. During the winter months its seven warm springs attract a specific kind of fish (musht or Tilapia), commonly called “St. Peter’s fish.”

We will visit the church at Tabgha and enjoy a fish lunch together at “Peter’s fishery.” A fish is the oldest Christian symbol. The Greek word for fish, ichthus, is an acrostic for the Greek words that translate to —Jesus Christ Son of God Savior. The fish symbol is pervasive in Christian art and literature from its earliest days. The symbol is seen on mosaics in Christian churches, on frescoes, on a wall painting in the catacombs of Rome, on glasses, cups, sarcophagi, monuments in all parts of the Roman world. It’s still used today and it is not unusual to find it on automobiles as decals or bumper stickers. The Fish that Jesus fed to his disciples is symbolic of Himself. His call to His disciples to feed others is a call to offer the world the “bread of life” – Jesus! Taste, and see if it isn’t good!

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Acts 10:1-15

Good News at Caesarea

Filed Under: Devotions by Chuck
May 30, 2013

On our last tour in 2011, in route to our hotel in Caesarea we had a brief stop at the aqueduct that Herod built where we waded in the Mediterranean Sea. How Refreshing. I’m hoping we get to do the same thing this year. This 28 aquaductsCaesarea needs to be distinguished from several others so it’s also been known as Caesarea-on-the-Sea (Maritima), Caesarea Sebaste, Caesarea of Palestine, and Caesarea of Judea. There is a well preserved amphitheater here that could very well have been the place where Paul presented a defense of himself and his preaching to Felix, Festus and even Herod himself.

Herod’s kingdom lacked a deep water port that could accommodate the larger Roman cargo vessels so he had engineers expand an ancient Phoenician port into a large harbor facility. This was an unprecedented effort. As a modern trading port it turned Caesarea into a major commerce center, but also a center for a plethora of vile religious expressions. In one of the warehouses, excavators discovered a Mithraeum—a place imitating a cave where the god Mithras was worshiped in secret ceremonies—complete with an altar and a medallion depicting Mithras slaying a bull. A temple to Roma and Augustus stood high on a raised platform east of the harbor. Although there was a Jewish community here, it was thoroughly a Hellenistic- Roman city with a large garrison of Roman soldiers.

One of the more interesting biblical accounts related to this site is found in Acts 10:1-15. It begins, “At Caesarea there was a man named Cornelius, a centurion of what was known as the Italian Cohort.” The story proceeds to tell us that God sent an Angel to him to send for a man staying with Simon the Tanner in Joppa. Cornelius sends two soldiers to get Peter. In the meantime, God is preparing Peter for the arrival of these filthy pagans. On a rooftop in Joppa, Peter became hungry and in a dream, a sheet descends filled with vile, disgusting creatures forbidden by the law to consume. Only the vile, disgusting pagans would eat such things. God tells Peter to eat! But, no, Peter won’t defile himself. But after three times, God commands Peter not to call “unclean” that which He has declared “clean” (Acts 10:15). Peter realizes that the dream is not referring to the vile creatures forbidden as food by the law, but is referring to those who eat them, i.e., the pagans. Peter goes to Cornelius’ house and preaches the gospel. Peter may have planted a Church here. I’m guessing, but the early Church Fathers, Origen and Eusebius, were profoundly influenced by Peter’s teachings. They taught and wrote from their residence in Caesarea. No pagan, not even those soaked in Mithraism or any other vile practice is beyond the reach of Jesus. That’s the good news for you and me!

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Matthew 5:18

Israel or Bust!

Filed Under: Devotions by Chuck
May 29, 2013

37 of us will leave for Israel on June 12th. Our route will take us from Omaha to Charlotte to Philadelphia to Tel Aviv. When we land at Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv, we’ll make our way up the Highway by the Sea (The Via Maris) 24 orthodox jewsto the Dan Caesarea Hotel for the night. We’ll pass by Bene Berak, one of the more interesting suburbs of Tel Aviv. It’s the only large city (150,000) whose inhabitants are mainly ultra-Orthodox Jews. It’s a small area with a large population and is one of the poorest cities. Its birthrate is one of the highest in the Country as well. Its name is mentioned only once in the Bible, in Joshua 19:45, as being one of the cities given by Joshua to the tribe of Dan. Thus, it’s a very ancient site. Since the establishment of Israel as a state, many of the “Grand Rabbis” moved their courts to Bene Barak. The city’s religious character gives it a special charm. It has no modish fashion shops, yuppie coffee houses, or posh restaurants, but it has an extraordinary simplicity, modesty and uniqueness. It sounds like an exceptionally large Amish community.

In Bene Berak there are many Yeshivas, Institutes for learning Sacred Jewish Texts. There are a number of “schools of interpretation” in the community, one of which is the school associated with Rabbi Akiba who lived between 50 and 150 AD. He’s been a towering figure in the history of Jewish interpretation. Christian Scholars attribute an entire hermeneutical system to him. We owe a great debt to him with respect to the preservation of the Old Testament. After the destruction of the temple in AD 70, Jews focused more than ever on the study of Scripture. A school arose that focused on the smallest details of the Hebrew manuscripts, and enforced a strict adherence by the scribes to the approved texts. It was Akiba who became the principal spokesman of this concern for textual minutiae. For him the sanctity of Scripture meant that each letter, syllable, and word of the Torah was important. Even the tittle was the inspiration for a multiplicity of interpretative rules. The “Tittle” is not a letter, but a part of a letter that often is the only thing that distinguishes it from another letter.

Many more modern scholars suggest that Akiba is responsible for establishing one standard text from which all other Hebrew texts were copied. I’m not certain the evidence supports all that, but it’s undeniable that the focus on the details of Old Testament Texts that he maintained greatly contributed to the standardization and stabilization of the Old Testament that we hold in our hands today. Jesus, Himself, said, “For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled” (Matthew 5:18).

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Genesis 28:17

An Awesome Place

Filed Under: Devotions by Chuck
May 28, 2013

We usually choose a theme verse for our trip to Israel and this time we’ve chosen the words of Jacob that are recorded in Genesis 28:17. You might remember the story of Jacob. He ran away from home because he had deceived 28 awesome placehis father and brother. He cheated Esau out of his inheritance and fled in fear for his life. On his way north to Haran, he passed through the Promised Land. In a dream, God appeared to him and said, “I am Yahweh, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your offspring the land that you are now sleeping on. … All the peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring.” When Jacob woke, he said, “Surely the LORD is in this place, and I did not know it…What an awesome place this is! This is none other than the house of God. This is the gate of heaven.” It became the city of Bethel. It means “The house of God.”

A common phrase used in the Bible to refer to the entire Promised Land is “…from Dan to Beersheba.” The prosperity, beauty and productivity of this land reached its peak under the leadership of Solomon, David’s son. 1 Kings 4:25 give us this testimony about this land. It says, “Judah and Israel dwelt safely, every man under his vine and fig tree, from Dan to Beersheba, all of Solomon’s days.”

We will see the land from Dan to Beersheba. We’ll visit Caesarea on the sea where Paul defended himself before Felix and Festus. We’ll stand on Mt. Carmel where Elijah slain the prophets of Baal. We’ll look out over the plains of Megiddo where the battle of Armageddon will take place. We’ll stand in Peter’s house in Capernaum where Jesus centered his ministry to Galilee. We’ll pray on the Mount of Olives among thousand year old olive trees. We’ll stand in the upper room where Jesus and his disciples shared their last meal together. We’ll pray at the Western Wall of the temple. We’ll walk the path, Via Dolorosa, where Jesus carried his cross to Calvary. From the Garden tomb, we’ll see the place of the skull called “Golgotha.” From Dan to Beersheba, this is indeed an awesome place!

Chuck
For all the archives of past daily devotions: www.chucklarsen.com

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1 Corinthians 1:24, 2:7-8, John 1:14

Ultimate Wisdom

Filed Under: Devotions by Chuck
May 27, 2013

All the wisdom in the world has been summed up for us in a person. His name is Jesus! Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1:24, “Christ is the mighty power of God and the wonderful wisdom of God.” John tells us that no 27 gods wisdomone has ever seen God at any time but that He took on a body of flesh (we call that the incarnation), and pitched his tent with us. The literally rendering of the phrase is “pitched his tent” or “tabernacled” with us. The presence of God was manifested in the tabernacle during the wilderness wanderings which was housed in a temporary, and movable, facility. We call those facilities tents. The Bedouins still live in tents today. We’ll see them next month along the roads when we travel from the northern areas of Israel to the southern ones around the Dead Sea. The tents serve as houses for the Bedouin families. Having seen the tents in Israel, I’ve been very receptive to the writer’s attempt to make John 1:14 come alive for us in the translation that says, “And the Word became flesh and moved into our neighborhood.” He was indeed “God with us.”

Horatius Bonar said, “All that is in God, all that can come forth out of God is contained in Christ. He is the full representative of the invisible and incomprehensible Jehovah. He is the brightness of Jehovah’s glory and the express image of his person. In the works of creation God has displayed portions of his wisdom, but in Christ he put forth the whole of it, so it can be said of Christ, he is the wisdom of God. Thus, the knowledge of Christ not only transcends all other knowledge, but includes them all; the study of this embodiment of all that is in God is not only superior to but embraces all other studies.”

In 1 Corinthians, Paul focuses his lesson by contrasting the wisdom of the world with the wisdom of God. He contrasts the rulers of this world, and their wisdom, with Jesus as God’s wisdom. He says that if the rulers of this world would have “…known the wisdom of God, they would not have crucified the lord of Glory” (1 Corinthians 2:7-8). John Piper summarizes this by saying, “the rulers who put Jesus to death are probably the most vivid example of the fact that you can measure a person’s true wisdom by whether they recognize Jesus as the Lord of glory…You can tell whether a person’s mind is dominated by the wisdom of the world or the wisdom of God by whether he acknowledges the crucified Christ to be not a criminal but the Lord of glory.”

In the Fall I’m hoping to begin a new series on Jesus. If it’s true, that the entire corpus of God’s wisdom is embodied in Christ, I can’t think of a better subject to study. I’m thinking about calling it “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus!” I’m going to argue that absolutely everything from the creation of the world in Genesis to the creation of the New World at the end of Revelation can only be understood through the knowledge of Jesus Christ, the full incarnation of God and God’s wisdom.

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Proverbs 3:5-6, Matthew 7:24

Which Way?

Filed Under: Devotions by Chuck
May 24, 2013

Wisdom isn’t a collection of facts! Wisdom isn’t even an accumulation of days, months and years. Wisdom involves not just comprehension but behavior. Actually, our comprehension of things and methods and 24 gods waypractices can often be contradictory to each other and what is really the truth. No, it’s not the depth of comprehension or understanding that’s truly the important thing about wisdom. It’s the diligence by which the truths we perceive and understand are applied to our lives.

When I was being trained in the Navy on how to scrub a deck (and I did it a lot!), and how to paint a bulkhead (that’s a wall), or clean a head (that’s a bathroom), and how to do just about everything else on ship, I was often told there are three ways of doing things; the right way, the wrong way and the Navy way. One Master Chief, who was the Master-at-Arms on board the USS WALLER (DD-466), told me he only cared about the Navy way. Don’t confuse me with a discussion of what’s right and wrong. We’re going to do it the Navy way! The ways he promoted, he would argue, were tried and true. He didn’t care what we thought or what we’d like, or what we’ve learned in the world. The only acceptable way to do anything, understand it or not, was the Navy way! The interesting thing about this huge, black, Master Chief from Detroit, was that he was always right. We hated that about him. But as we faced many a difficulties on our trip across the Atlantic, many of his ways, proved of great value. We learned to avoid many an unpleasant experience by listening to him and obeying. His instructions saved the life of a young torpedo man’s mate during a storm in the North Atlantic.

This isn’t the place for a bunch of sea stories, so I’ll skip right to the point. If the Master Chief knew what he was talking about how much more does God. Solomon says, “Do what I say and you will live. Be as careful to follow my teaching as you are to protect your eyes” (Proverbs 7:2). Jesus says, “Everyone who hears my words and obeys them is like a wise man who built his house on the rock” (Matthew 7:24). And Jesus’ brother, James, warns us all “Be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves” (James 1:22). Another most profound piece of wisdom comes from Proverbs 3:5-6. Everyone should memorize this passage. It says, “Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.” According to man’s understanding there’s a right way and a wrong way. But it’s always the wisest choice to do it God’s way!

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James 1:5, Proverbs 2:1-5

Ask For It!

Filed Under: Devotions by Chuck
May 23, 2013

God’s wisdom for living a healthy, happy and wholesome life is available to all of us. I’m not just referring to the contents of the Scriptures even though that’s a significant part of it. I’m referring to God’s promise to do 23 askfor us what he did for Solomon. He asked for wisdom and got it. The he promises his son and us in Proverbs 2:1-5, “My son, if you receive my words and treasure up my commandments with you, making your ear attentive to wisdom and inclining your heart to understanding; yes, if you call out for insight and raise your voice for understanding, if you seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasures, then you will understand the fear of the LORD and find the knowledge of God.” The desire for wisdom must be the highest priority in our lives. Further, James (the wisdom writer of the New Testament) makes a similar promise. In James 1:5, he says, “if any of you needs wisdom, you should ask God for it. He is generous and enjoys giving to all people, so he will give you wisdom.”

One write identified four truths about God that should encourage us to ask God for the wisdom we need. He writes, “First, God is a giving God. Giving to those who ask from him is natural for God. Second, God gives generously to all. He has no favorite recipients of his gifts, but gives to all classes, races, and types of people. Third, God gave without finding fault. God does not give in such a way as to humiliate us. He does not chastise us for our failures or hold our unworthiness against us. He is always ready to add new blessings to old ones without finding fault in us for our many shortcomings. Finally, God promises to answer those who come seeking wisdom.”

Max Lucado wrote, “Thomas came with doubts. Did Christ turn him away? Moses had his reservations. Did God tell him to go home? Job had his struggles. Did God avoid him? Paul had his hard times. Did God abandon him? No. God never turns away the sincere heart. Tough questions don’t stump God. He invites our probing. Mark it down. God never turns away the honest seeker. Go to God with your questions. You may not find all the answers, but in finding God, you know the One who does.” Jesus’ promise is very comprehensive as well. He says, “And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you” (Luke 11:9).

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Ecclesiastes 7:23, Proverbs 1:7

Out Of Reach

Filed Under: Devotions by Chuck
May 22, 2013

When the wisest man in the world reflects on the nature of wisdom in his book “Ecclesiastes” he makes several profound observations. Putting them in my own words they are things like “it takes wisdom to want 22 out of reachwisdom,” or “it takes wisdom to search for wisdom,” but ultimately no matter how much you desire, or how hard you search, man’s abilities are extremely limited. He writes in Ecclesiastes 7:23, “All this I have tested by wisdom. I said, ‘I will be wise,’ but it was far from me.” Many writers have observed that Solomon wrote the Song of Solomon as a young man in love for the first time. He wrote the book of Proverbs in middle age as he reflected and searched for true wisdom for living life. He wrote Ecclesiastes at the end of his life searching for deeper meaning to it all. Thus, the wiser he become, the more he realized how much he didn’t understand. Isn’t this true with all of us as we grow older?

Solomon admitted that the deeper wisdom was far from him. It was totally out of his reach. Commenting on this verse, Smith says, “When he sought to comprehend the grand scheme of the universe and God’s government thereof he was seeking to reach out to the unattainable. Practical rules of life he had mastered; but essential, absolute wisdom was beyond mortal grasp. Man’s knowledge and capacity for knowledge are limited.” It appears to me that Solomon has finally grasped the wisdom of Job who says in Job 11:7, “Can you find out the deep things of God? Can you find out the limit of the Almighty?” The framework of these questions demands a negative answer. Another translation of this passage says, “Can man, by searching, find God?” The expected answer is “of course not!” Smith goes on to make two observations, “First, the final answers to the great questions of life are ‘far off,’ i.e., either in the remote past, even the great past beyond creation; or in the unattainable heavens beyond. One would have to have been present before the world began to see how all the elements which make up experience in this world relate to one another. Second, even when that wisdom seems to be within his grasp he finds it to be …utterly mysterious and beyond the grasp of the mind of man. Man is helpless before the infinite greatness of the universe.”

Thus, even the wisest man in the world got wiser as he got older. We all say things that are true in our youth that we ignore as we live our day to day lives. Even though Solomon knew and expressed the truth that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 1:7), the experiences of life increasingly pressed this truth into his very being. The limits of our wisdom and the vastness of God’s greatness, direct us to live by faith rather than by sight.

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