Day 08 - City of David, Hezekiah's Tunnel, Pool of Siloam, Temple Mount, Rabbinic Tunnels, Gethsemane

Our first stop was in the City of David. Here we learned that God decided where to build the city and he didn’t pick a place that was “tall and handsome like Saul.” He picked something else. In Genesis 22 we learned that Abraham was asked by God to take his first born son to a place on Mt. Moria. They’re God made a covenant with Abraham.  Later, David concurred the land   by making an impossible ascent through Hezekiah’s tunnel. He then put the arc of the covenant in the place of the covenant. 

Some of us then got to traverse through Hezekiah’s Tunnel. This was a 20 minute walk through a very dark man-made ancient tunnel leading from the spring to the pool of Siloam. It’s in unbelievable feat to think they carved from two different side of the mountain and somehow met in the middle. The entire trek is through calf to thigh deep water and was such an amazing  experience. 

At the Pool of Siloam, Pastor Paul taught us the story from John 9 where Jesus heals the blind man. We saw in scripture the progression of the blind man from calling Jesus “just a man” in verse 11, to “a prophet” in verse 17, to finally, in verse 33, saying that he is from God. In just the corse of a few verses we saw the man’s faith grow. Until Jesus confronts him (and us) with spiritual blindness. Jesus then tells this man who he is and the man replies, “Lord, I believe.” 

We then traveled to the south wall and did the steps of ascent together reading the Psalms of ascent (120-134) as we climbed. This was really special and made the experience of reaching the wall of the Temple Mount so meaningful. Because teaching typically happened on the steps of the southern wall, we know Jesus would have taught in this very place. It felt surreal to walk where Jesus walked. 

Next we traveled through the tunnel under the city to the western wall. This is the closest the Jews can come to their holy place and we were there the day before the memorial day of the destruction of the temple. While in the cave under the wall we were taught the history of Temple Mount from the time of Solomon to present day. We then visited the wailing wall and saw the prayers pouring out of every crevice. We learned from Ronen that they clean the the prayers out periodically and bury them in a cemetery on the Mount of olives. 

We finished our day in the garden of Gethsemane. Here the youngest of our group (Caleb) and the oldest of our group (Greg) planted an olive tree on behalf of North Coast Church. Then Michal taught us about Jesus’ final moments in the garden when he began to understand what he would have to endure. We learned that it wasn’t just his death that saves us, he had to experience the wrath of God and that brought Jesus to a place of great distress. He had to know what he was facing in order to give his life for us. We ended with having communion together. Throughout this trip, we have grown into quite a family, and to be able to share the bread and the cup, and remember what Jesus did for us was really special.