Day 11: God’s Word is a Fire

Much like Jesus’s life prepared Him for his final descent into Jerusalem, today was our final preparation day before Jerusalem. We visited Bethsaida on the journey. This was the small town that Jesus called five disciples from: Peter, Andrew, James, John, and Phillip. RVL made the point that these five guys were nobodies from a small town, but they and six other guys changed the world.

Bethsaida was built (probably unknowingly) on the remains of Geshur. Absalom fled from David after he killed his half-brother Amnon and lived in Geshur for three years. Geshur was a prominent city of Ba’al worship during Biblical times, and probably had a mix of worshiping God and Ba’al together. The people of the day wanted to hedge their bets on both gods just in case. People haven’t changed much.

Outside of Bethsaida, RVL took us to a nahala (“field of inheritance”). He told the parable of the sower and four soils. God is the sower, His Word is the seed, and the listener is the soil. He describes four types of soil (a common learning parable style):

 “A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured them. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and immediately they sprang up, since they had no depth of soil, but when the sun rose they were scorched. And since they had no root, they withered away. Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and produced grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty." – Matthew 13:3-8

Immediately thereafter, Jesus says, “He who has ears, let him hear” meaning if you are listening to this, do what I say. We often wonder why our lives don’t change. Why do we struggle with the same immaturity and selfishness year after year?

“Is not my word like fire, declares the Lord, and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces?” – Jeremiah 23:29

RVL became animated about how we don’t take God’s word seriously and that is the cause of soil being wrong. If we immersed ourselves in God’s word, we would find that God’s fire would burn the thistles (cares of this world) and his word would break the rocks (addictions to sin).

He then led us out into the field to remove large rocks from the field by hand for 30 minutes. RVL is all about object lessons, so we have become prepared to do whatever he asks, but this was a new level of painful. Sifting through vicious thistles to pick up large rocks and move them to the side of the field was a new experience for me. About half our group – including me – drew blood during this experience.

We learned the problem of thistles and rocks in our soil! And we learned the value of having a community that would assist us in keeping our soil healthy and fertile for God’s seeds to grow. “For thus says the Lord to the men of Judah and Jerusalem: “Break up your fallow ground, and sow not among thorns. Circumcise yourselves to the Lord; remove the foreskin of your hearts … lest my wrath go forth like fire, and burn with none to quench it, because of the evil of your deeds.” – Jeremiah 4:3-4

Jesus grew up in Nazareth (“shoot-ville”), named because the people believed the Messiah would be a Nazarene (shoot of the lineage of Jesse & David). We visited a nahala and threshing floor in Nazareth and discussed the story of Boaz and Ruth and how Boaz redeemed Ruth. We discussed Jesus’s disciples “threshing” wheat with their hands on the Shabbat and how frustrated that made the Pharisees.

RVL has been continually going back to the concept of pikuach nefesh (“save a life”), which Jesus weaves into “love your neighbor” and upholds this law above all other laws. Many religious groups of the day put other laws above this one – like idolatry or Shabbat – but Jesus was setting the ranking of laws with pikuach nefesh as a priority for us to follow.

We went into a rock quarry near Nazareth, which Joseph and Jesus probably worked in. Then we went to the location that many of those rocks were sent to: Herod Antipas’s Palace at Sepphoris (“little bird” on a hill). It is ironic that Jesus’s early working experience was on Herod’s Palace, given that Herod would later play a role in sentencing Him to death.

Sepphoris would have been Jesus’s local city, so His family probably spent a great deal of time there. It was a Roman-style city with Hellenistic culture as the dominant theme. Jesus would have become acquainted with Greek and Roman ideas and pop culture, as we see him use a number of Hellenistic ideas in His teaching. Jesus describes the synagogue teachers as hypocrites (“actors”) who are seeking the praise of men and not God (Matthew 6).

In Matthew 11, Jesus quotes two Aesop’s fables to the crowd. RVL discussed the second fable called “The Fisherman and his Flute” in which the fisherman plays a song for the fish in the hopes that they will gladly dance into his net, but they do not. Jesus weaved this imagery into how He had tried to reach the people.

Jesus said: “But to what shall I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to their playmates, ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn.’” – Matthew 11:16-17

After a discussion with the Pharisees, Jesus gives this lament from “The Trojan Women” a play by Euripides: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those sent to her! How often I have longed to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were unwilling.” – Luke 13:34

So often we miss Jesus trying to engage people where they are with their life experience. Paul does the same thing, where He tries to reach people within their culture. Neither Jesus nor Paul sacrifices the truth or God’s holiness, but they are willing to go to tremendous lengths to be inclusive. In many ways, the inclusion of Gentiles was what (practically) cost Jesus His life. May I be willing to be so inclusive.