Fish Dinner – Devotions for 4-30-25
Luke 24:42 “They gave Him a piece of broiled fish, and He took it and ate before them.”
I grew up at a fishing resort in Minnesota. My parents bought it when I was a teenager, but before that we lived on the shore of a different lake. As a result, we all grew up fishing and eating fish. Today, I am about the only one of us kids who likes to eat fish. The rest got tired of eating fish when we were young. We ate a lot of fish.
I am sure the disciples ate a lot of fish also, after all, many of them were fishermen, catching and selling fish. Maybe they were like my siblings who had too much of it and didn’t like to eat any more. That happens. I once asked the owner of a pie baking shop which was her favorite, she replied that she stopped eating pie years ago. She grew tired of her own product.
In our text, Jesus had just appeared to His disciples. At first, they thought He was a ghost. And why shouldn’t they, they had just witnessed His death on the cross. How could He be alive again? So, their thoughts were not so far-fetched. The thought that He was just a spirit or ghost would become one of the heresies that would plague some churches for many years. That heresy is called Docetism. Those who taught that said that Jesus was not fully man, just God and that He only appeared as a man but was in reality a spirit.
The disciples knew about this heresy when they wrote the Gospels. Luke knew it as he had to deal with it in some of his travels with the Apostle Paul. John knew of it and fought against it in Ephesus where he served for many years as their pastor. That is why He writes, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” John 1:14. It was a common heresy during the time of the early church.
So, Luke writes of a seemingly innocent happening when Jesus appeared to His disciples. Luke tells us that when Jesus appeared before His disciples, He showed them the wounds in His hands and feet and told them to touch Him. Jesus tells them, “A spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” And after that Luke writes that the disciples “gave Jesus a piece of broiled fish. and He took it and ate it before them.”
That seems innocent and unimportant in the scriptures. Yeah, Jesus ate a piece of fish, so what. He did that before He died and now both Luke and John show that He ate fish after He rose from the dead. This was not just a simple unimportant detail. Jesus ate in front of His disciples because He knew that some people would try and deny that He was both God and man. Jesus had His followers touch Him and see His wounds, and eat, because He needed to give them evidence to prove that He was fully God and fully man. His miracles and His resurrection proved He was God and His body with its wounds and His eating food proved He was man.
Why is that important for us? For many reasons but one is to show us that He knows what we are going through. He understands us and the problems of our life. If He was only God, how could He understand our pain, suffering, loneliness or any other problem people face. But, because He was man, He does know our problems. He understands us and can help us in our struggles, whatever they may be.
What are you struggling with today? Know this, Jesus, because He was fully man, understands your situation and He cares. And because He was God, He can deal with any and every problem that has, or ever will come up in your life. What a blessing to have a savior who knows what it means to have problems and who can help us with ours.
Pastor Gary.
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