In June I was able to accomplish a life-long dream to visit Israel. Having studied Scripture all my life and having taught and preached it so often, I wanted to see the land where so much of the stories in Scripture occurred. Our ministry, BMI, was able to take 74 people with us from countries including the USA, Canada, South Africa, Germany, Italy and Russia. What was particularly special for me was experiencing Israel with my wife and kids. It will take a long time to process all we saw and learned while we were there. I certainly encourage you to go some time if you have never been. Perhaps BMI will take another trip in the next year or two.
One day, we visited Masada, the fortress King Herod built to flee to in case his own people revolted against him. It is located 820 feet up, atop an imposing mountain overlooking the Dead Sea. He built two opulent palaces within its walls but historians have no evidence he ever visited it. During the revolt against Rome by Jewish zealots (66-73 AD), 999 zealots and their families sought refuge in Herod’s fortress. They lived there for four years until the Tenth Legion surrounded the mountain and began a four month siege. When the Romans succeeded in building an enormous rampart to overcome Masada’s walls, the defenders committed suicide rather than being enslaved by their captors. It is a sobering experience to see the place where men took the lives of their wives and children rather than surrender to the hated Romans. The zealots who began the war hoped to use violence to overthrow their rulers and to win liberty for their nation. Instead, the Romans crushed their revolt, leveled the temple, destroyed Jerusalem and scattered the Jewish people to the far corners of the earth. Rather than bringing freedom to their people, the zealots brought death to themselves and their families as well as to their nation for the next 2000 years.
Scripture indicates there was at least one zealot who opted for a different path: Simon called the Zealot (Luke 6:15). Simon apparently belonged to the passionate group that was prepared to pay any price to see changes made in their land. But rather than turning to the sword, Simon turned to Christ. Rather than doing battle with the Romans, he began to seek first the kingdom of God. Everyone invests their life into something. Simon chose to spend his in a way that impacted eternity.
Today, there are two ways to get up to Masada and back down. You can take the large cable cars (unavailable during the time of the Romans!) and you can walk. Having two twenty-something-year-old sons who wanted to walk down in the 100 degree heat, I let my male ego convince me to join them. Less than half way down I realized my terrible mistake! It was the driest, hottest, most grueling walk I can remember taking! Some brilliant entrepreneur set up an iced coffee stand at the bottom of that trail! I didn’t even ask the price. I just knew I had to have one . . .or three!
Walking down from Masada
From there we travelled to En Gedi in the Judean mountains near the Dead Sea. With the dry dust still clinging to my shoes from Masada, we hiked up the narrow trail to the ancient hideout of David and his mighty men. The heat was brutal. The trail was dry and dusty. Suddenly, we came upon a waterfall and a cool, clear pool of incredibly refreshing water. We leapt into the water and it was amazing the transformation that occurred in our spirits! It was in these dry, parched hills that David wrote: “O God, You are my God. Early will I seek You; my soul thirsts for You; my flesh longs for You in a dry and thirsty land where there is no water. So I have looked for You in the sanctuary, to see Your power and Your glory” (Psalm 63:1-2).
Refreshed at En Gedi
Unless you have walked in the blazing heat of the Judean hills you may not fully understand the depths of what David meant when he said his soul thirsted for God in a dry and thirsty land where there is no water. On that day, my understanding of thirst went to an entirely new level! But then it struck me, did my soul thirst for God as much as my mouth thirsted for water? Did I know how desperately my life needed a fresh encounter with Christ? Did I long to meet with God early in the morning to the same degree I sought after an iced coffee at Masada? I am ashamed to say I did not. Going to church each Sunday is not thirsting after God. Doing daily Bible readings is not being desperate for God. I remember every time we got off the tour bus in Israel, our guide urged us to bring water and to drink it. She assured us we would not know how thirsty our body really was. The reality is that we are desperate for God; we just don’t always realize it. My prayer for you and for me is that in these extremely dry and dusty spiritual days, you will recognize how much you need a fresh encounter with God and you will find your own spiritual En Gedi with God this summer so your soul is refreshed.
Posted by Richard Blackaby at 11:00 am