The Lessons for Us of Biblical Geography

So, I'm a little short of time, so let's skip the hymn for today and go right into the sermon, which I hope you will enjoy here, as it covers something that can help in our Bible study. And also, these are lessons for us of biblical archaeology. I think I left my laser pointer. I will need this pointer just to give you information. Now, this isn't just about biblical geography. It's lessons, spiritual lessons, that we can learn from them. So here we have what is called the fertile crescent. If you go into history, they'll tell you about this civilization that sprung up, and it looks like a crescent. It goes in one point to the right, which is the area of Iraq and the city of Ur, from where Abraham was. And then it goes all the way across, and it ends up in Egypt. Now, what's important about this is, this is the land where Abraham had to travel. When God told him in Hebrews 11, let's go to Hebrews 11, and just realize the sacrifice that Abraham made at this time. Hebrews 11, verse 8, it says, By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to the place which he would receive as an inheritance, and he went out not knowing where he was going. So that wasn't a short little trip. You're talking about the area on this map here, which goes from Ur. Can you see the green? Not very well? Yeah, it's bouncing off the wall. This is an area of four, and he had to travel all the way up to this area which is called the green. Look at the green! Alright, alright. How's that? Okay, that's the ramp. That's the first trip. It was 700 miles. He went to this water. He went all the way up here to the ramp. Do you think they had transformations? No. Most quarks. All the way to this area. Better off using a pointer. Okay. And we need to be in front of the microphone. I know. Okay. Well, I'm not going to be able to get the microphone. But anyways, I'll just point out here, he went from Iran all the way to the Promised Land and then to Egypt up here.

And so basically you can split this trip into two parts. It tells us here in Hebrews 11. Keep a finger there in Genesis 11 and verse 28.

It says, this is the genealogy of Terah. Terah begot Abram, Neir, and Huron, and then Huron begot Lot. And it says here verse 29, then Abram and Neir took wives. The name of Abraham's wife was Sarai, and the name of Neir's wife, Milka, the daughter of Huron. It says, and Terah took his son Abram and his grandson Lot, the son of Huron, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, his son Abram's wife. And they went out with them from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to the land of Canaan. And they came to Huron and dwelt there. And then he died, talking about Terah. And then in verse 1 of Genesis 12, it says, So Abram departed as the Lord had spoken to him, and Lot went with him. And Abram was 75 years old when he departed from Huron. And so they had to come down all the way into the area of Israel, which was another 700 miles. They left everything behind. From archaeology, you find out that that area of Ur was one of the great cities of the world at that time. And the houses were very sophisticated. Some of them had indoor plumbing at that time, around 2000 B.C. And Abram had to leave all of that for God's promises, just as we many times have to leave behind many things. When God calls us, sometimes it means traveling to another place and being able to continue on this path toward the promised land, as he did.

Let's go back to Hebrews 11, just to retake here, in verse 9. It says, By faith he dwelt in the land of promise, as in a foreign country. That's the land of Canaan, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, that errs with him of the same promise. It wasn't easy to live in tents. When he had all of this modern city, like Ur, and it had straight streets and a lot of commerce, a lot of riches, he left all of that for a wandering life. He said, For he waited for the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God. He's looking for that coming kingdom. He saw that. God explained it to him. There's a coming kingdom. And next, what we go through here... Let's see if I can get that properly.

Better move it from where you have it, Mike. Yellow tape.

Can you do it from there? Okay. It's better this way. Just go ahead and do it. So the first lesson is to appreciate the sacrifices of the travels of Abraham. What he had to go through, and you see here, the areas that I mentioned before, from Ur all the way to Haran, and the north, and then all the way to the land of Canaan. I read to you these scriptures that are there on the slide. Let's continue. Second lesson is to appreciate how hard it was not to fear or compromise with the nations that surrounded Israel, which were far more powerful and sophisticated. So here's Abraham. He doesn't even have a country of people. It's just him and his sons and the families that were accompanying him. And there was hostile groups of people. He had the area of Turkey with the Hittite Empire. They actually had to cross the Babylonian Empire going up to Haran, and then the Assyrian Empire. And then once he made it into Canaan, that was controlled by the Egyptians at that time. Abraham had to go to Egypt. So you can imagine how daunting that would be to want to start a people of God in the midst of these powerful nations that could just squash you like a fly. Notice in Deuteronomy 7, verses 1-10, God told him, I'm not choosing the most powerful nation to raise up, to be my nation. Deuteronomy 7, verse 1, it says, when the Lord your God brings you into the land which you go to possess and has cast out many nations before you, the Hittites. So the Hittites had a presence right there in Canaan. And Gilgishites, the Ammonites, Canaanites, and the Parasytes, and the Hivites, and Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than you. God didn't choose that. Just like he doesn't choose the people that are the mightiest of the earth to be called. Called people that are humble, ordinary, normal human beings. He says, and when the Lord your God delivers them over to you, you shall conquer them and utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them, nor show mercy to them. Nor shall you make marriages with them. You shall not give your daughter to their son, nor take their daughter for your son. For they will turn your sons away from following me to serve other gods. So the anger of the Lord will be aroused against you and destroy you subtly. But thus you shall deal with them. You shall destroy their altars and break down their sacred pillars and cut down their wooden images and burn their carved images with fire. For you are a holy people to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for himself, a special treasure above all the peoples on the face of the earth. The Lord did not set his love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any other people, for you were the least of all peoples. This is the way God works in humility, calling the smallest, the humblest people for this wonderful kingdom, just like he did Abraham. He didn't choose him because he was so powerful. He wasn't a king. He wasn't even a government official. He was more than anything else, just a traitor in commerce. But you see how God calls people.

And also Israel had to deal with the nations around them. So next slide will show you these are all the powerful nations. Also to the north you had the Assyrian Empire. You had the Edomites, the Moabites, the Ammonites, and the Philistines, which were mortal danger. We've covered that before, how they had come from the Minoan civilization, settled there with all their sophisticated technology. They controlled the iron production. They didn't allow Israel to use iron. So they had to have only bronze. The Philistines all had iron armaments. Again, God puts us in these countries and tells us you're going to live in them, but you're not going to follow their own religious practices. You're going to change your way of life and follow the biblical practices, the biblical feasts, the Sabbath, which this country, 99%, keep the first day of the week, which is the day of the sun. And so we see here how God is always, and through geography, we can learn so much about these lessons for us as well. Let's continue. Next slide. The third lesson we can learn is to appreciate the diversity of Israel.

It's only about 150 miles long by 80 miles wide. You can go from north to south of Israel in about three or four hours.

It's only about 80 miles wide. But, incredibly, most of the Bible happens there. This is where it all takes place. This is where Abraham set up camp. This is where the Israelites and today Israel is still there with all of these main cities. It's fulfilling prophecy.

Israel was not an easy land to till like Egypt was. Notice in Deuteronomy chapter 11.

In verse 10, Deuteronomy 11 verse 10.

It says, For the land which you go to possess is not like the land of Egypt from which you have come, where you sowed your seed and watered it by foot as a vegetable garden. Talk about Egypt. See, this geography in Egypt is that they basically depend on the Nile River, which is one of the largest rivers on earth. The Amazons are the largest and the Nile usually is classified as the second largest. Egypt was mostly a very desert-like area, but the Nile River that flowed from the south all the way up, it was a mighty river and it was so powerful that when the snows from the south and the mountains melted, it came down to the Nile River and the Nile River would overflow its banks and would cover the soil and would bring the rich silt of the earth upon the land of Egypt.

It's like getting a fertilizer every year upon it. And so they were able to have much agriculture and what they would do is they would have the Nile River was like a main pipeline of water. And so all they had to do is just dig ditches into their crops and the water could flow in and then when you had enough water, you just put your foot and stepped and made a little dike with your foot.

And when you wanted more water, you'd take your foot and remove it and it would just spread out. So God says, no, you're going to have to work for your bread. It's not going to be that easy like it was in Egypt. He said, but the land which you cross over to possess is a land of hills and valleys. Egypt didn't have that, which drinks water from the rain of heaven.

So where does this rain of heaven, let's talk about it, of course, that you have two seasons in the year when you had the showers. You had the spring showers and then you had the fall and showers. And so it was very important for the spring showers, that's called the early showers, to come because that's when the irrigation took place. If for some reason you didn't get that rain, the seeds wouldn't bloom. They would die. And then you had the late flowers, October, November, December. And that's what you did when you prepared the seeds and made sure that there was enough moisture.

So he says here, a land for which the Lord your God cares. The eyes of the Lord your God are always on it from the beginning of the year to the very end of the year. So God told Abraham he would bless his faith. And as a result, this was the land of God's people.

He gave these people his commandments to follow. And it shall be that if you earnestly obey my commandments, which I command you today to love the Lord your God and serve him with all your heart and with all your soul, then I will give you the rain for your land and its seasons, the early rain and the latter rain that you may gather in your grain, your new wine and your oil. And I will send grass to your fields for your livestock that you may eat and be filled.

Take heed to yourselves. Let your heart be deceived and you turn aside and serve other gods and worship them. Let the Lord's anger be roused against you. And he shut up the heavens so that there be no rain and the land yield no produce. And you perish quickly from the good land which the Lord is giving you. Therefore you shall lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul and bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be frontless between your eyes.

It means it's always the vision, the goal. You shall teach them to your children, speaking of them when you are in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down and when you rise up. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. So we see here again that God had made this land ready for the trials of obedience. And so usually God will put us in a place where we're going to have trials of obedience or disobedience.

And so wherever we are, there are going to be temptations. There are going to be all kinds of distractions. Just like Israel had the distractions of all those nations, of being fearful and not obeying God because they had all of these powerful nations around them. And of course you have Mount Hermon, which is at the very top here to the left. The highest mountain is where when the winter brings snow, Mount Hermon is about 8,000 feet high. And so from all that melting rain, snow comes to rain down the valley, the Jordan Valley. It fills the Lake of Galilee and then goes all the way down the Jordan River to the Dead Sea.

That's why it tells us in Psalm 133 verse 1. Let's go to Psalm 133 verse 1. It says, Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity. It is like the precious oil upon the head running down on the beard, the beard of Aaron running down on the edge of his garments.

It's like the dew of Hermon. This is Mount Hermon. Descending upon the mountains of Zion, for there the Lord commanded the blessing, life forevermore. So Mount Hermon was always a source of blessing for them. Now Israel's territory is tiny in comparison with the USA.

It's about a 20th of the size of California. Let's see the slide. That's the size of Israel. If you put it in the middle of the United States, just a little sliver. California wouldn't even make up one of the main counties there. Just a very small place. And yet, out of that small place is where the Bible is centered. This is where the promises of God, and this is where Jesus Christ is coming back to the earth, to Jerusalem.

So let's go to the fourth lesson we can learn from biblical geography. Appreciate the importance of the geography of Israel and the accounts dealing with Jesus. So when you read the Gospels, read the book of Acts, it's actually just basically centered from the lake of Galilee all the way down to where you see the Dead Sea there, just above the Dead Sea to the coast area on the mountains. That's where Jerusalem is. And so Jesus Christ went down from the area of Galilee every year, because Nazareth was close to Galilee. That's where he would go down to the area of Jerusalem. And people would go down, basically, down that Jordan Valley, which is where the Jordan River is, and be able to get to Jerusalem. Notice in the next slide, his preaching mostly revolved around the lake of Galilee. So if I can just move here for a second and show you where Nazareth is. You see, that's Nazareth. It just a little bit waves off. This is the area where he set up an area of Capernaum. If you notice in Nazareth, he wasn't born, or well, he was born in Bethlehem, but he grew up in Nazareth. And that was up on the top of a hill. It was just a small little place. Maybe a few hundred people lived there. But in front of them was this huge valley, one of the two great valleys, which is called Estrelon Valley, or Jezreel Valley. And of course, a lot of the commerce flowed through that area. And so again, you're isolated from the world. He wasn't in a powerful palace when he grew up. No, he was there, just a small village. His father worked in what ends up being more like a construction of buildings and also with wood. What we would call today one of these builders, contractors, types of people. He knew he had all the tools of the trade. He could cut wood and he could cut stone. But the point is that, again, God works always in a very small area. He put his son, who made the universe, in this little village. And Jesus Christ lived around that village until his ministry. And his preaching mostly revolved around the lake of Galilee. So let's see. We have that there. See the next slide.

These are all the crossings that take place during the Gospels. The lake of Galilee was 13 miles long by 8 miles wide, which is about two-thirds the size of Lake Tahoe. How many have been up to Lake Tahoe? A lot of people. Just think, just cut it off by a third. That's the size of the lake of Galilee.

And there were many biblical incidents that took place in this area. Let's just look real quick. I know it's kind of a small letter here. But in the south you have Gadara, which is where the Gadarenes came from. That's where the swines were cast down. And toward the north you have Christ's headquarters in Capernaum. Then you have this Bethsaida, which is where many of the disciples of Christ, Peter and James, were close by as well. So all of the people were there, so it was from that area. So here we have the irony that you find in geography. First of all, Abraham is taken to this place, which he's promised as an inheritance, but he has to wait because it's much bigger than just the size of land. He has to have faith. He died according to the faith. And it tells us in Hebrews 11, let's go to Hebrews 11, that all of these died without receiving the promises. Notice in verse 13, Hebrews 11, These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, were assured of them, embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For those who say such things declare plainly that they seek a homeland. Well, ours is the kingdom of God, and Christ established his church here. This is what we're waiting for, that coming kingdom. And truly, if they had called to mind that country from which they had come out, they would have had opportunity to return, but now they desire a better. That is a heavenly country. Now, it means that a country that Christ is going to bring from heaven. It's not heaven where you're going to possess it, but Christ is going to bring it. It's not some land that right now is being used by human beings, because Christ is going to come down and establish his heavenly kingdom here on the earth. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them. That city is at New Jerusalem eventually that will come down.

And then we have Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Word, who came down and where he put him? in Nazareth, this little town, and had him grow up. And he didn't have any privileges. He lived in a small home. They had to work for a living very hard. So again, God knows if we're in the right church, it's not going to be a rich church, where we're just overflowing with money and power and great cathedrals and everything. No, it's a modest place because God works with modest people, and God is always showing his humility by this. And so Christ had all of these different incidents around this lake, which make up most of the gospels. That took place there. And finally, we go to the epistles, which the epistles of Paul, and the sixth lesson is to appreciate the accuracy of the four trips of Paul that encompass, you know, most of this area of the world.

So we have here, if you can see the white, first of all, traces. That's the first missionary trip that the apostle Paul did. It just went from Antioch to the island of Cyprus, and then went up a little bit to where the Turkey is, and then returned. The second trip, you can see here, is the one where it started in Jerusalem. And this one is the one in green. He went all the way up north to Antioch, and then across the southern part of Turkey, and then went into Greece. His third trip was similar, blue, and then the fourth trip was the red. That's when he was arrested, and he appealed to Caesar. And so this, and the red, is the final trip he made, which ended up in Rome. He was shipwrecked off of Malta. Do you know that we have a Maltese member here? Who is our Maltese member? That's right. See, he's part of the biblical. He's been there where Paul grew up, and not grew up, but he lived there for a while. And that's where he was treated pretty well by the Maltese people. And then he went all the way up to Rome. Now, the final lesson, which I'm mentioning here, has to do with the life of William Ramsey. Because learning biblical archaeology, or angiography, helped in the conversion of this British professor and archaeologist, Sir William Ramsey. He lived from 1850 all the way to 1939. Just as World War II was starting, he was an Oxford professor. And so this is what he was an atheist professor from Oxford. And he set out to prove Luke's account contained many errors and myths. He made it his life's work, because his parents were also atheists. I'm going to go down to this part of the Middle East, and I'm just going to show how Luke's account in the Gospel of Luke and in the Book of Acts. Because I'm an archaeologist. I studied all about Greek and Roman culture. I know everything about maps involved. And I will show that Luke was not accurate, that this is just a myth. Well, he spent 20 years following all the areas that Luke had described, and admitted defeat and surprised the world by becoming a Christian. He wrote a classic book on Paul called St. Paul the Traveler and the Roman Citizen.

Let's go to the last slide. As Ramsey wrote, and believe me, I've read many parts of what he has written. It's just incredible what he just said how many times everything was confirmed until he had to throw in the towel. He had to give up because he realized this is what he said about Luke. Luke is a historian of the first rank. Not merely are his statements of fact trustworthy. He is possessed of the true historic sense. In other words, just the facts, please. In short, this author should be placed along with the very greatest of historians. He's an inspiration to me, and that's why I love biblical geography and biblical archaeology, because it's important for our faith and knowledge.