God will always find a way to remind His people

Ronen, our tour guide, is our rabbi for the week – our teacher and explicator of the text (and the geography), and make clear he has.

Today he began our lessons within minutes of leaving the kibbutz in En Gev, starting with what exactly is a kibbutz. They began as a collective group attempting to resettle the land. Today they range from a full collective with everyone sharing in profits and work to just a village in the area where the original kibbutz was. It’s people attempting to morph and change to fit the needs of the time. Unlike the ultra Orthodox Jews that he briefly explained next – someone had asked if Jews were still taught the way they were taught in the synagogues of old, and Ronen explained that only the ultra Orthodox were. He also explained that this is a problem Israel is trying to solve because their children are not suited for life in a modern world, having no modern education.

Modern Israel’s education system is elite; they spend 27% of their nation’s budget on education, which is part of why they have the highest per capita advanced degrees in the world and why so many entrepreneurs, engineers, Nobel Prize winners, and other thinkers have their roots in Israel. Israel used to be a land primarily of farmers, but their number one industry is now high tech. Number 5 is tourism – 3 million tourists visit Israel each year, and we are 41 of them now on our way to Beth She’an.

Beth She’an is south of the Sea of Galilee on the King’s Highway in the Jordan Valley. This is where the East West road begins. It is the place where no mountains block our path between the King’s Highway to the east and the Via Mares on the Mediterranean. So why is a city here? Why not? Fertile land, fresh water, defensible, and a trade route. Here we dove deeper into the text in 1 Samuel 31 – Saul’s death and battle with the Philistines. We understood why they would have hung him on the city wall – it’s a message to all who were traveling this international crossroads.

Nineteen civilizations layer Tel Beth She’an, the last one destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BC. Not until 333 BC did Alexander the Macdeonian conquer the area and bring the Hellenistic culture to the land. He built next to the tel on the site we walked today. Fast forward to the Roman era, and the Romans built a beautiful city here in 66BC. One – the capital even – of ten collectively known as the Decapolis.

At Beth She’an, Ronen leaft us in the capable hands of Ronenus Maximus, a village boy who is traveling to the big city to bring us the story of what we are standing on today. We see the caldarium – a beautiful luxurious steam bath; the public latrines which were an incredible advance in personal hygiene and luxury at the time – running water, heated seats, something to clean yourself with; the theater that seated 7000 – a free place to see plays about Greek and Roman culture, their gods, politics, advertisements. Ronenus Maximus, or any villager coming to Scythopolis, would be overwhelmed and enticed. This was Rome’s agenda – bread and circus. And he is enticed just the way we are enticed by new philosophy – not by listening to the philosophers but by becoming immersed in the culture by focusing on something other than God and his story.

To do so is an oy vey!

Oy vey has been a theme throughout this trip. Every time the people of God turn a little bit away from God, it’s an oy. We are not too far off. God is still visible. But what happens as we continue with each oy? Each is just a little bit further and a little bit further until oy vey. We are so far from God that he engages course correction maneuvers.

I reflected on this as Paul Bernard read Phillipians 2:3-8 while we sat surrounded by the ruins of Roman opulence and aggrandizement. “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Jesus Christ is the ultimate course correction. Isn’t it amazing that the Roman empire is in ruins, the gods they worshiped no longer anything more than stories, and Jesus is still proclaimed? Every tongue has yet to confess, but we need to wait in God’s timing as the Israelites were instructed to do repeatedly throughout history. When we take matters into our own hands, trying to shoe horn what we think God wants from us into a cultural or political agenda rather than doing what God has asked… oy vey!

On our way to lunch in a beautiful pine grove reminding many of us of northern and coastal California, we passed through the valley of Jezreel – Jezre-el. “God plants seeds” Here is where God planted seeds. Maybe seeds that have not yet come to fruition? Here is where battle after battle has been fought and the biggest battle is yet to come. Here is where Tel Megiddo lies, or as some call it Har Megiddo. Armageddon. The final stage of the course correction.

Why have there been so many battles in this valley? We need to consider the location. Israel is the crossroads of the Middle East to the rest of the world, and this area is the crossroads of Israel. If you control Megiddo, you control the valley. If you control the valley of Jezreel, you control Israel. If you control Israel, you control the world.

People came here because of the fertile land, the water, and the trade routes. But they did not want to forget who they were. They wanted to tell the world, we are offshoots of the branch of David.” Nezer. Off shoot. Nezereth. Nazareth. We didn’t stop in Nazareth because it is mostly churches now; “nothing to see” that helps us understand the Biblical history of Israel. We did, however, have “bus lessons” about Luke 4:16-19. Jesus was quoting Isaiah here; he was clearly stating “I am the one that this prophecy is about. I am the Messiah.” He then went on to tell the people of his hometown, “But I’m not bringing the message to just you. I’m bringing it to everyone.” Here he confirms we are grafted into the house of David.

At Mt. Carmel, we reflected on the story of Elijah and the prophets of Ba’al. It was a quick trip as we were racing to beat the Shabbat clock and get in all our sites before they closed. Ronen reminded us this is not a “tour of inches but of regions.” Is this the exact spot where Elijah and the prophets battled? No, but close enough. Elijah asked the Jewish people – how long will you waver? In Hebrew, ‘how long will you pass over between the two” beliefs? He spoke of “Abraham, Isaac, and Israel” – the only time in the Bible where it is written this way, not “Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” Elijah was reminding the people, “Remember who you are. You are Israel.”

It’s something we should remember too. God will always find a way to remind His people –as Ahab and the people of Israel saw with their 3.5 years of drought and defeat of the prophets of Ba’al. Only after they proclaimed Yahweh is God did they hear the “sound of rushing rain” again.

From the top of the mountain, we could see the valley stretching out to the mountains and imagine how barren it would have been without rain and how amazing it is with water from God.

After Mt. Carmel, we rushed to Caesarea by the Sea built by Herod Agrippa in honor of Rome. Herod the megalomaniac wanted to show his power and prosperity, so how did he do that? He built the largest harbor in the world to bring goods from all over the world. How did he attract the goods? Tax free trade, cheap labor, deep water. How did he attract the cheap labor? Bread and circuses – a callback to what we learned in Beth She’an.

Herod was a megalomaniac concerned with showing how loyal he was to Rome and how incredible he was – again, a direct contrast, this time to Peter’s humble loyalty to Jesus and God. Herod’s vanity led to being struck down by an angel of the Lord to be eaten by worms and have all he built destroyed – buried for centuries until ruins are uncovered by archaeologists, while Peter’s humility led to being saved by an angel of the Lord and building Jesus’s church around the world.

Once again, we see God consistently reminding the world of who He is and what He can and will do should we stray from His teaching.