From Mount Nebo to the Dead Sea

I'm sitting in th lobby of the Holiday Inn at the Dead Sea recapping in my mind the events of yesterday and today. The comments from the group are things like, "It keeps getting better every day." It's true. Today is dream-like. We are being treated like royalty by the hotel staff here. It feels a bit luxuriant. I'm not used to being treated like this. I'll come back to that later. Let's go to yesterday.

We left Petra in the morning and drove along The King's Highway, which was a very important ancient Middle Eastern trade route that started in Egypt and stretched eastward and then to the north. The Roman Emperor Trajan rebuilt the road and named it Via Traiana Nova. The road has been very important for Christians because along the highway are some key biblical sites such as Mount Nebo and Bethany across the Jordan, two sites we visited.

Mount Nebo was the mountain where God took Moses to view the vast panorama of the Promised Land in Deuteronomy 34.

1 Then Moses went up from the plains of Moab to Mount Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, which is opposite Jericho. And the LORD showed him all the land, Gilead as far as Dan, 2 all Naphtali, the land of Ephraim and Manasseh, all the land of Judah as far as the western sea, 3 the Negeb, and the Plain, that is, the Valley of Jericho the city of palm trees, as far as Zoar. 4 And the LORD said to him, "This is the land of which I swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, 'I will give it to your offspring.' I have let you see it with your eyes, but you shall not go over there." (Deuteronomy 34:1-4)

From the top of Nebo you can see what Moses would have seen. You have to  wonder what was going through his mind as he looked upon the land God had promised to his forefathers knowing that he would not go with the people he led out of Egypt. I would imagine he thought back to all the ways God showed himself to be sovereign. There was a cosmic showdown between Yahweh, the one true God who created the heavens and the earth, and the gods of Egypt. Over and over again Yahweh proved himself omnipotent. I would imagine that Moses' mind wandered through the many happenings, the very long forty years of wandering in the wilderness and seeing God provide along the way. We saw some of that wilderness. It is nothing like what one would imagine. Much of the area is a rocky mountainous wasteland with very little in the way of vegetation. I would imagine that Moses had a bag of emotions, but more than anything, I think his heart would have been full of thanksgiving that God gave him the privilege of being a part of redemptive history. Moses died on top of Nebo. Whoever wrote the end of Deuteronomy said that God buried him and nobody knows where.

From Nebo we continued along the King's Highway to Bethany Beyond the Jordan, the location on the Jordan River where Jesus was baptized by his cousin, John the Baptizer (John 1:28; Matthew 3:13-17). There is nothing spectacular about this site. It is pretty innocuous really. The river is not raging or swift. It's not wide, although, it likely was much wider back in the day. It could be a small river anywhere. But it was here that Jesus, our Lord and Saviour was baptized by his cousin, John. Jesus humbled himself. Can you imagine? Jesus humbled himself. Jesus, who participated with the Father and the Spirit in the creation of everthing that exists humbled himself and allowed his cousin to baptize him.

The relationship between John and Jesus was an interesting one. Not only did Jesus humble himself before John, but John humbled himself before Jesus. Remember in John 3 when some of John's disciples heard that Jesus' disciples had been baptizing more disciples than they had, they complained to John and John said, "Don't worry about it. This has to be. My time is done. I did my job" (my paraphrase). And then he said, "He must increase, but I must decrease" (John 3:30). Those words are amazing. Their relationship was very unusual in that neither John, nor Jesus ever tried to have the upper hand at anytime. They knew their places and neither felt any need to establish themselves. That is how our relationships should be. We do not need to claw and grasp and try to establish ourselves above others. Jesus said if we try to exalt ourselves we will be humbled and if we humble ourselves he will exalt us. Let's leave exaltation to the one who is exalted above all others.

After we left the Jordan River we made our way to the Dead Sea. We were privileged to be upgraded from the hotel we had originally booked to the Holiday Inn on the Dead Sea. It is truly phenomenal. We are being treated like royalty and have done nothing to deserve it. When we entered the hotel we were greeted by the staff with some juice. They gave us our room keys, and stickers to put on our luggage, which the porters would bring up to our rooms. After getting settled we made our way to the dining room and commenced digging in to the amazing plethora of foods. If I hadn't vowed to myself to take it easy in the food department I would have felt sick at the end, but I restrained myself.

I was dead tired and actually fell asleep a couple times while I was processing my photos so I decided to hit the hay early. I was dead to the world before 9:00. At 1:30 I was awake again so processed some more photos, and a couple hours later was tired enough to sleep. Thankfully we had all day today to relax at the Dead Sea. This is very unusual and was a gracious gift from Christian Journeys because of some scheduling difficulties. 

We had a late brunch and then went down to the water, rubbed mud all over our bodies and then floated in the sea. It's quite the unusual feeling. It's so relaxing because every muscle in your body is relaxed. You don't have to put any effort into floating. It actually takes more energy to not float. If you are tense and try to keep yourself afloat you do yourself no favours. The best thing you can do is submit to the water and give in to whatever mineral makeup that gives the body the ability to be naturally buoyant. I feel another sermon coming on. That is what we need to do with the Lord. It's so easy to struggle with our circumstances and fight and claw and feel anxious. That actually only makes things worse.

4 Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice.
5 Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand;
6 do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. (Philippians 4:4-6)

Early tomorrow morning we leave for Israel. We have wake up calls for 5:45. We leave the hotel and 7:00. We will meet the other half of our group, about twenty more, at the airport and then do a short visit at Jaffa before heading to our hotel. More tomorrow.

Shalom,

Pastor Jeff