Tag Archives: Nazareth

Let Him Shine, January 27, 2020

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Thanks for joining me today for “A Little Walk with God.” I’m your host Richard Agee.

Last night the lights went out. It was dark. I mean dark. I went to the front of the house to see if the whole neighborhood lost electricity or just us. By the time I reached the hall, I had realized it was a bad idea. I headed back to retrieve a flashlight from the nightstand before I stumbled over a chair or table or something left in a spot I didn’t expect. I couldn’t see anything with cloud cover and the darkness.

It made me wonder about people living before electric lights. Just two hundred years ago, candlelight would have been the extent of the illumination to lead me through my house last night. Have you ever traveled through a house by candlelight? It’s not much. Certainly, more than pure darkness, but not much.

Candles produce about thirteen lumens, less than a two and a half-watt small Christmas tree bulb. Can you imagine living with no more light than that? Picture yourself as the woman looking for the lost coin with just a candle. Or think of the fear of huddling in the darkness during one of those famous Texas thunderstorms with only your oil lamp to provide some relief from the dark and the howling wind that threaten to overtake you.

Our kids don’t know much about physical darkness today. Few have seen the beauty of the Milky Way with their eyes. Light pollution from most of our cities keeps us from observing that band of stars that populate our galaxy and stretches across the sky. The lights from towns mask the brilliance of the stars except on oceans or deserts. We don’t know darkness, so we don’t appreciate the light.

Now that you’ve given a little thought to life without electric lights. Now that you’ve spent a moment putting yourself back a couple of hundred or a couple of thousand years into the past looking into the darkness of the night that surrounds you wondering about the predators that might be lurking in the shadows. I’d like you to listen to the words Isaiah wrote concerning the coming savior of the world.

They come from the book by his name from chapter 9.

But there will be no more gloom for those who knew such hardship. In times past, God humbled the land of Zebulun and Naphtali; later, He will restore the honor and glory to the way of the sea, the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee, home of the nations.

The people who had been living in darkness

have seen a great light.

The light of life has shined on those who dwelt.

in the shadowy darkness of death.

And You, God, will make it happen. You bolstered the nation,

making it great again. You have saturated it with joy.

Everyone in it is full of delight in Your presence,

like the joy they experience at the harvest,

like the thrill of dividing up the spoils of war.

For as You did back in the day when Midian oppressed us,

You will shatter the yoke that burdens them,

You will lift the load that weighs them down,

You will break the rod of their oppressor.

About whom is Isaiah talking? The God-Man, Jesus. He sheds light on the darkness of our hearts. He opens our minds to what God intends us to be. He makes a way for us to enter into the presence of a holy God when we know we do not deserve to be there. Jesus, God wrapped in human flesh to show us how much he cares for us. He came to pay the price for our disobedience. He died for you and me so that we might live.

From an earthly point of view, he grew up in the most unlikely place, Galilee, and in one of the most unlikely villages in that region, Nazareth. No one would have thought the King of all kings would come from a place like that. He knew what it meant to grow up on the “other side of the tracks” in poverty and crime-ridden neighborhoods. Nathaniel understood Nazareth when he commented, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?”

But something did. Someone did. Jesus. The one who brings light to a dark world. His light is not that lumen candle the people of his day used to illuminate their darkened houses in a storm, but John described his glorified body in his Revelations as brighter than the sun. You can’t look at the sun for more than a few seconds without some serious pain; the light is so intense. That’s the light Jesus brings to our hearts.

The end of the first month of 2020 approaches fast. We’ve talked about the coming of God into our world and how we should listen to him, seek him, share him. We should also let him illuminate our lives in such a way that he can shine through us so that others see him in us. We should reflect his light in all we do. Today is a good day to start, don’t you think?

You can find me at richardagee.com. I also invite you to join us at San Antonio First Church of the Nazarene on West Avenue in San Antonio to hear more Bible-based teaching. You can find out more about my church at SAF.church. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, tell a friend. If you didn’t, send me an email and let me know how better to reach out to those around you. Until next week, may God richly bless you as you venture into His story each day.

The nightmare of missing kids – Episode 8-53, December 31, 2018

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A daily devotional walking through God’s word together using The Bible Reading Plan at http://www.bible-reading.com/bible-plan.html. Our website http://alittlewalkwithgod.com

Thanks for joining me today for “A Little Walk with God.” I’m your host Richard Agee.

When my firstborn was little, she never knew a stranger. She was cute as a button and would talk to anyone and everyone. My wife enjoyed shopping…except with her tagging along. It took her forever to run errands or get through a checkout line because people would stop and be polite telling her how cute she was. But then this little petite bundle would start and avalanche of questions and dialog that captivated whoever spoke to her. It would take her hours to get through the grocery store sometimes.

It’s important to understand that about my daughter to relate to the next part of the story. Because she would talk to anyone, anywhere, anytime, we were sometimes a little worried about her. As she was growing up in the 80’s, the news reporters first began to talk about the sex slave trade and their kidnapping of young children to fill their requirements for their perverted clientele.

We worried our super friendly daughter would just get into a lively conversation with one of those recruiters and be gone without a trace. That was our nightmare. So my wife solved our fear, she put a child harness on her and attached a leash. Suddenly, much of the fear disappeared because we knew she was no more than that six foot leash away and it would be very difficult for anyone to bother her without us knowing. All the buckles and fasteners were in the back, so she couldn’t undo them herself and there were enough of them that if anyone tried to tamper with them, we would feel the tugs and pulls before the last one could be undone. Our precious little girl could not escape without our knowing.

As she got older, though, and we began to trust her with the mantra of “stranger danger”, we lost the leash. She still talked to everyone she met, but for the most part, she stayed in eye contact with one of us wherever we went. But once in a while, she would get interested in something on a shelf or in another part of the store and suddenly you would look to the spot you though she should be and she wasn’t there.

If you’re a parent, you have probably known that feeling at one time or another. You heart drops, your pulse races, you can’t think properly, you don’t know where to start looking, you are a bit frantic for a moment. Where did you last see her? Did she say anything? Did you see anyone around her? Was there something she had her eyes on earlier? Where could she have gone? Who can I go to for help? God, please let her be alright!

Your brain becomes a jumbled mess for the next few minutes. Finally, you see her out of the corner of your eye. She’s fine. Like usual, she is absorbed in some toy or book or something that caught her eye and has no idea the emotional trauma she caused. She looks up with that cute little grin like nothing happened.

You on the other hand, don’t know whether to pick her up and hug her as tight as you can or put her in time-out until she turns 36.

Now let’s go back a couple thousand years to the story at the end of Luke chapter 2. Jesus is twelve. In his culture at that time, he has just had or is about to have his bar mitzvah, another milestone toward manhood in the Jewish community. His family came from Nazareth to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover. Some will probably look at Mary and Joseph and think, “what horrible parents, not realizing Jesus was missing for a whole day.”

But we have to go back and look at the culture of the day, again. Mary and Joseph traveled with their whole extended family to Jerusalem. That meant parents, brothers and sisters, cousins, nieces and nephews, in-laws and their relatives, everyone in the community that were headed to Jerusalem. The larger the group, the less likely they would run into bandits or have trouble with the Roman patrols. Traveling in large numbers was good.

I also expect they had everything in preparation the day before their departure. The group may have even departed at night to avoid the heat of the sun. I mention that tidbit based on my experience in the middle east as I watched everyone stop working in the middle of the day. From about noon until about three o’clock, work stops. That’s nap time for the people who live there. The heat is so oppressive you just can’t handle it. It is hard to even breathe outside because of the temperatures. So it wouldn’t surprise me if the entourage headed home in the dark.

In that case, Mary and Joseph, with no flashlights or streetlights, just a few oil lamps among the crowd, may have seen a boy about the same size and build as Jesus among all the kids racing around together and assumed he was with them. Then as the continued to travel through the day, assumed he was playing with his brothers and sisters and cousins as kids are apt to do. If they left in the dark, it’s pretty easy to understand how it could be a whole day before they missed him.

Even in my young teenage years, my parents didn’t worry about the kinds of evil we worry about today. My instructions in the morning when I headed out to play with my friends and travel around on our bikes was to make sure I was home before the streetlights came on.

Can you understand the changes that have happened in our culture over the centuries? My kids have their eyes on their kids or have a well known friend’s eyes on their kids at all times because of the evil in our world today. Carole and I were a little fearful to have our kids out of sight for more than a few hours when we we had a pretty good idea where they were. My parents didn’t worry about us until it was almost time to go to bed.

A century ago, kids may have slept over or spent the night in the woods and parents didn’t worry because they knew someone in the community was watching over them and would take care of them. It’s easy to think that twenty centuries ago, Mary and Joseph were doing just what good parents were expected to do and were pretty confident Jesus was okay.

We also might wonder why it took them three days to find him. Well, the first day was the journey back to Jerusalem. The second day was revisiting all the places they had been with that gaggle of relatives during the Passover celebration. The third day they found him when they retraced their path to the temple where they purchased their sacrifice and discovered their eldest son was confounding the teachers of the law.

I expect Jesus did an awful lot of what my daughter did as she was growing up. She asked a million questions a day. I have a feeling Jesus did, too. I think he thirsted for knowledge and asked more questions than Mary and Joseph and his local rabbi and the temple priest and… and anyone could answer except his real father, the creator of all things.

Interesting stories today, perhaps, but you might be asking how does all this come together and what’s the point? There are a couple, of course.

First, like the young Jesus and my daughter, be inquisitive. Ask questions. Never tire of learning more. Especially, about the One who is worthy of our worship, Jesus.

Second, like the young Jesus and my daughter, be friendly. Don’t be afraid to talk to other people. That’s how those endless questions will finally find answers. The teachers in the temple had better answers than the rabbis in Nazareth. With more experience and wisdom, more answers to life’s big questions come to mind. So don’t be afraid to talk to others when you want answers to big questions.

Third, although inquisitive and willing to talk with others to find answers to those big questions, try not to bring untoward angst to those responsible for your welfare. We don’t know how Joseph died, but if Jesus did these kinds of things often, he may have had a heart attack from the stress. Just kidding. We really don’t know. It’s okay to reduce the stress on your caregivers, though.

Finally, if you are listening to this podcast on the day of it’s release, tomorrow starts a new year. 2018 will be gone in just a few hours and there is nothing you can do to change it. But you can do something about 2019. Plan today to learn more about our Savior and let him make you more like him this year. Read. Study. Journal. Make notes in your Bible. Take personal inventory of who you are and how far he has brought you.

Thank you for listening. I pray you will have a blessed year ahead as you follow in his footsteps.

You can find me at richardagee.com. I also invite you to join us at San Antonio First Church of the Nazarene on West Avenue in San Antonio to hear more Bible based teaching. You can find out more about my church at SAF.church. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, tell a friend. If you didn’t, send me an email and let me know how better to reach out to those around you. Until next week, may God richly bless you as you venture into His story each day.

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It’s tough at home (Mark 6:4) July 27, 2016

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Today’s Bible reading plan:

Read it in a year – Psalms 87-89

see the whole year’s plan [here](http://www.bible-reading.com/bible-plan.pdf)

Today’s Devotional

Mark 6:4
Jesus (seeing this): A prophet can find honor anywhere except in his hometown, among his own people, and in his own household.

What do Jesus’ words mean for us today?

Do you really want to test your faith? Do you really want to know if what you’ve found in Christ is real and can stand up to the test of the world and the ridicule of those you ran around with as an enemy of God and His kingdom? Then live Christ in front of your family. Day in and day out live the life God wants you to live. Share what God puts on your mind. Do the tasks He calls you to do. Love the way He wants you to love within your family.

When you live your life in front of your family, they know if you are real. You can’t put on a façade in front of them, at least not very long. They know your past. They know your habits. They know the things you’ve started and quit. They know the resolutions you’ve made through the years and failed in keeping. They know the buttons to push to get you riled up and send your emotions flaring. Your family knows you better than anyone else.

When Jesus came back to His hometown to share the message that the kingdom of heaven was at hand, He shared it in the synagogue where He grew up as a boy. The rabbi and the elders in around the facility probably told Him and His brothers more than once that they needed to stop running on the property when they were growing up. The scribes sitting around the synagogue remembered Him sitting in their classes just learning the scriptures. Yes, He had an uncanning interest and skill in learning them, but Jesus was still just a kid in the class and played and sang and rough-housed with all the other boys. The scribes watched Him grow up around them.

The people of Nazareth watched Jesus in His father’s carpenter shop. He cut wood, hauled scraps, sanded rough planks, delivered finished products to customers. He learned His father’s trade and became a carpenter Himself. Somewhere along the line, Jesus’ father died and Jesus took up His father’s work to provide for the rest of the family. But everyone in the town knew Him. It was a small town and there were few secrets. They all even knew that Jesus was too old for Mary and Joseph to have been married when He was conceived.

Everyone knew everything about Jesus. So now, He was preaching in their synagogue. This illegitimate son of Mary and Joseph that grew up in their village. How could He talk to them about the scriptures? How could this carpenter school them in how God thinks we should live and act? What makes this laborer think He can challenge the teachings of the scribes and interpret the scriptures better than the rabbis who studied in Jerusalem?

It was tough for Jesus, the thirty-year-old man, the Son of God, to be heard in the town where His mother raised Him as a toddler, a teenager, and a young adult. Those older adults, those scribes and rabbis just couldn’t see past the teenager that grew up in their town. They couldn’t see the wisdom and knowledge Jesus gained over those last twenty years because they didn’t want to consider that He really was the Son of God. Why would God live in Nazareth? Surely He would live in Jerusalem and learn in the Temple if He were to come in the form of man, right? Jesus couldn’t be the Son of God. They watched Him grow up in their town. They knew nothing good came out of Nazareth…because they lived there.

Doesn’t say much for what their chamber of commerce put on their city advertisements, does it?

So what does that tell us about living for Him in our own homes? What do we learn from this short exchange in which Jesus declares that prophets receive honor everywhere except in their own hometown? I think He tells us we still need to witness to our lost family members, but expect them to question your faith. Don’t be surprised when they ridicule your newfound relationship with God. Don’t be surprised when they don’t believe you have been changed by the power of God’s Spirit living in you.

Like those living in Nazareth, family and close friends that have known you all your life, will always be the most skeptical of your changed life in Christ. They have seen you try those fad diets, New Year’s resolutions, organization trials, exercise programs, and all those other things that lasted a month or two before you fell into your old habits. They will think the same of your life in Christ. And even when the see the change over time, they will not recognize the change because they will test it over months and years to see if it sticks and by then they will put blinders on and forget the old you. Satan will put a veil over their eyes and try to hide the truth from them. It is hard to share the gospel with family. Not impossible, but hard.

What are we to do? Keep doing exactly what Jesus did. He still taught in the synagogue even though many didn’t listen. He still healed even though many didn’t come to Him. He performed a few miracles even though many didn’t believe and limited the usefulness of God living in their town. Jesus still did exactly what His Father asked Him to do. And that’s what Jesus expects us to do. Listen to Him and carry out His will, even in our families.

The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved.
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