The morning dawns clear and brisk as the salt sea breeze off the Mediterranean awakens us to our first full day in Israel.
We will be journeying along the coastal plain today, then around the end of Carmel to Haifa, across the western Jezreel valley, and up through Nazareth and Cana to our hotel on the shores of the Galilee. It will be a day spent thinking about people’s reactions. We have already had opportunity to think about reactions among our group. One has misplaced a passport and is forced to miss the flight–and the first day of the tour. It’s lovely to see the Christian grace with which she accepted the problem, a stark contrast to the attitudes evident among other travellers on the plane.
Another of our group will wait several days for her luggage (one of the joys of international travel). I overhear some of the ladies offering to share their own clothes with her. That’s what it means to belong to The Family.
Our first stop is Joppa, the seaport town of ancient Israel. It is noted in Scripture as the place where people–God’s people–reacted against fulfilling their commission to share the good news, especially with the Gentiles.
The Danites were given this land after the conquest and had the privilege of sharing the good news of the one true God with the sailors from scores of nations who would visit Israel to trade with her. The Danites, by and large, rejected this opportunity and–thinking they knew better than the Lord–moved to the extreme north, on the Syrian border. There they adopted the Gentiles’ gods, institutionalizing idolatry in Israel.
Joppa was the departure gate for Jonah as well who tried an early retirement from the Lord’s work rather than take God’s message to the Ninevites. And hundreds of years later, the son of another Jonah grappled with what it would mean to associate with that which was ceremonially unclean–Cornelius and his household. Thankfully, he went, and thus began the spread of the evangel to your door and to mine, sinners of the Gentiles though we were.
Further up the coast, at Caesarea-by-the-Sea, where Cornelius was stationed, we have a city noted for the reactions of its Gentile citizens to this gospel. Cornelius and his household gladly received the good news.
With others it was not so. Felix procrastinated: “When I have a convenient season, I will call for thee.” As far as we know, he never did. Festus mocked, with a curl of his lip: “Paul, you’re beside yourself. Much learning makes you mad!” Saddest of all, Agrippa was almost persuaded but not altogether.
And what was Paul’s reaction here when the Christians wept as they heard what it would cost Paul to take the gospel all the way to Caesar in Rome? “I am ready not only to be bound, but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus.”
Less than ten miles north of Caesarea looms Carmel (the vineyard of God), a range of hills forming the southern edge of the Jezreel Valley. Cascading down its northwest end, overlooking the Mediterranean, is Haifa. Here we visit a meeting hall in the German colony where we hear the deeply moving testimony of a Jew who grew up with a curried hatred of Jesus of Nazareth. While working at a hospital in South Africa, he met a woman on the staff whose life was so different, so other-worldly, that he asked her what made her like that. Her two-word answer rocked him to his foundations: “Jesus Christ,” she answered simply.
Surreptitiously, he procured a New Testament and began to read the account of his Messiah. “It took me seven months,” he adds with a warm smile, “but I fell in love with the Lord Jesus.”
Having been refreshed by the news of a healthy assembly of believers in this city, we make our way along the street to a falafel stand. To mixed reviews (mostly favorable), we sink our teeth into a Middle Eastern pita sandwich filled with chick-pea patties, salad, sauce, and spices. Then back to the bus for a view from the top of Carmel at the traditional site of Elijah’s Battle of the Gods. Is it the place? Never mind. It’s close enough. Here Baal’s prophets fought against the God of heaven and lost, and here the people fell on their faces, crying, “Jehovah is the El! The Lord He is the God!”
What a view! Every inch of the panorama reminds us of a Bible story. Far to the north along the coast is Sidon, home of the wicked Jezebel who, with her weak-willed husband, Ahab, had a palace just down to our right in the middle distance, the town that lent its name to the whole valley–Jezreel, God will sow. And of course God will also reap, in fact in this very valley, for the valley’s other name is Armageddon!
Straight across the valley we see the first of the Galilee Hills and on the most southerly crest the city of the Nazarene. Upper and Lower Nazareth today sprawl across the hillside. There is an Arab assembly there and another in a nearby town. Here at Nazareth the populace reacted violently to the suggestion by our Lord that the Gentiles had historically responded better than the Jews to God’s servants. He used the examples of Naaman and the Phoenician widow. He could have added Jonah and Himself–which was the point, no doubt. The people of His day cast Him out of the city, trying to stone Him. The Lord left the city and moved His residence to Capernaum on the northern shore of Tiberias.
Along the Carmel ridge to the south-southeast is the hilltop fortress of Megiddo, site of endless battles throughout history. Here it was that king Josiah, after all the good he had done, meddled with God, as Pharaoh Necho warned “from the mouth of God” (2 Chron. 35:22). Wounded in battle, he was DOA by the time his chariot reached Jerusalem.
Behind us in the Samaritan hills we see Dothan, the place where Joseph sought his brethren and began a journey that finally ended with his bones being brought back for burial by Israel’s wandering generation. Here too Elisha showed his servant the prancing steeds and angelic warriors that, as ministering spirits, care for the people of God.
As we leave Carmel and Jezreel, wending our way up through Nazareth on our way to Tiberias, we pass through the little dusty town of Cana. We remember that there our Lord began His miraculous ministry, manifesting His glory, “and His disciples believed on Him” (Jn. 2:11). We bow our hearts and do the same–a reaction befitting His people’s hearts.