The world is passing away along with its desires

Today we traveled to Beth Shean and talked more about the Roman culture that began to infiltrate the Jewish world. Beth Shean is strategically positioned at the junction of the Jezreel valley and the Jordan river. One of the main elements that we talked through was how the Roman’s used entertainment to begin to turn the Jews hearts away from God. 2000 years later the strategy of the world remains the same. We read this passage on the bus as we left Beth Shean: “Do not love the world, or the things of the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world-the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and the pride of life- is not from the father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever (1 John 2:15-17). 

On Mount Carmel we read the account of Elijah defeating the prophets of Baal in 1 Kings 18. The passage declares the reality that Yawheh is the only true God. 

We finished our day at Caesarea Maritima. During Jesus’ time, Herod the Great had built the city to become one of the most strategic and powerful cities in the world. Herod had engineered a port city that enabled it to be the hub for global commerce. It was here that Paul stands on trial in Acts 24 and declares “I worship the God of our fathers, believing everything laid down by the law and written in the prophets, having a hope in God, which these men themselves accept, that there will be a resurrection of both the just and the unjust.” Caesarea, a hub for global commerce also became one of the hubs for the expansion of the gospel, uniquely positioned for the Great Commision.