The Lord was wearied by the apostasy of the nation of Israel
and so allowed them to be taken into captivity in 722BC when Hoshea was
king. He had allowed himself to be a vassal
king of the Assyrians and yet acted treacherously in seeking an alliance with
the Egyptians who failed to come to his aid against the Assyrians. The Lord's complaint against Israel was quite
extensive and should not have been a surprise to them as He had sent prophets
to them on many occasions as a warning but they would not repent of their
wickedness. They chased after other
gods, worshiped them, practiced magic and other forms of attempting to gain wisdom
from sources other than Yahweh and ultimately these tribes make up what are
sometimes known as the "lost tribes" for they assimilated into the
nations and lost their connection with their God.
What an amazing thing to consider that the Lord was
returning to His people in bodily form. Crowds
had begun following Jesus and the press was so great that He got into a boat
and pushed out a bit from shore in order to gain some distance and speak to the
multitude. Peter was surely entranced by
Jesus' teaching but when the Lord commanded him concerning fishing Peter was a
bit put off as he, a fisherman, had fished all night and caught nothing and he
must have felt a bit of a fool to go out and let down his nets but soon enough
he was anything but a fool. His obedience
to Jesus' command literally netted him the biggest catch he had ever seen, one
he never imagined when he let down the nets.
Now, he was not only impressed by the teaching, he was overawed by this
miraculous sign as well. He knew Jesus
was something special and you can hear in his reaction a close similarity to
Isaiah's in the temple can't you? To be asked
to follow Jesus was something remarkable indeed.
I wonder why Peter felt that this was a situation that
called for bringing this woman Tabitha/Dorcas back from the dead? I wonder how she felt about that? There are certainly similarities in the lives
of the prophets like Elijah and Elisha and most assuredly in the life of Jesus in
raising the widow's son as well as Lazarus and the synagogue ruler's
daughter. When Peter met Jesus that day on
the lake and was so captivated by the miracle of the catch of fish was there
any possibility he could have conceived himself later commanding a woman to
rise from the dead? We have only to be
faithful and obedient and we will see things we could never imagine. Israel had everything given to it, it had
seen so many incredible things from the Lord and yet bowed down to golden
calves. Do we want to see the Lord do
such things in our day or have we lost our sense of expectation because we are
trusting in something else?
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