Did You Ever Want To Call Down Fire From Heaven?

Today’s Reading – Luke 8 & 9

And when his disciples James and John saw this, they said, Lord, wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven, and consume them, even as Elias did? (Luke 9:54)

As I was writing the article this morning for the blog, and was all finished with it, the internet went down, and I lost all that I had written. I guarantee you that I wanted to call down fire on my computer when it happened. Oh well, let’s try again.

The context of the above verse is found in Luke 9:51 – 56. Jesus is traveling from Galilee to Jerusalem in order to attend the Feat of Tabernacles in the last year of His earthly ministry. It is getting close to the time of His crucifixion, and His ministry will now be primarily in Jerusalem rather than in Galilee. On the way, He wants to stop and rest overnight in Samaria. This was something that most Jews would not even consider, but you may remember that Jesus had a good history with the people of Samaria. Very early in His public ministry when Jesus was on His way to Galilee, He insisted on going through Samaria. It was there that He had the encounter with “the woman at the well” which ultimately lead to her salvation and a great revival in her village. Jesus spent a couple of days there ministering to the people of Samaria.

However, on this trip, the Samaritans are not too receptive to the idea of Jesus lodging with them. They seem to be offended because Jesus is just passing through them on His way to Jerusalem. The Samaritans and the Jews still despised each other, and the Samaritans did not believe that anybody had to go to Jerusalem to observe one of their rituals. If they weren’t going to be the primary focus of Jesus’ visit, then they would rather not have Him come at all. This did not sit tool well with the Jewish disciples of Jesus. They decided that these Samaritans should be done away with for “snubbing” the Lord, and they ask Jesus if they could call down fire from Heaven like Elijah did to the prophets of Baal. Jesus recognizes that these disciples were reacting “in the flesh” to the Samaritans, and rebukes them for their attitude. He tells them that by reacting in a fleshly manner to the Samaritans’ unkindness they were playing right into the hand of the Satan.

Did you ever want to call down fire from Heaven to destroy someone? Did you ever want to get even with someone for something they did to you? If you did, you must understand that those thoughts do not come from God’s Spirit, they originate in your “old man”, your carnal, sinful flesh. We all have an “old man” to contend with, and it does not matter how long you have been saved or how much you have grown in the Lord; the flesh will still be a problem. The apostle Paul recognized this plague within himself when he said, “for I know that in me, that is in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing”. He knew that his flesh was a real problem. We must recognize when our flesh is resurrecting itself. We must realize that the thoughts and feelings of lust, hatred, etc. from within us are not of God. And we must yield to the Spirit of God within us as He directs us to conform to the image of Christ. We are not to be in the business of destroying men’s lives, but bringing men closer to the Lord.