God brought his people, Israel, into the desert, and in that harsh, difficult environment, he provided for them in amazing ways. Sometimes when you're in the desert like this, God's provision is sudden and surprising. I'm sitting in one of those riverbeds - wadis they call them - which flood occasionally. This one not very often but every once in a while, there's either enough rain here or it rains some distance away, and this wadi floods unexpectedly. Great surprise, and so God's provision like manna from the sky and water out of the rock caught his people completely by surprise as he provided dramatically for them.

Sometimes God's provision in the desert is already here. It's finding it. It's discovering it at exactly the moment you need it. It's in the plants and the animals and the phenomena you find here in the desert. Join us and see how God's provision for his people in the desert (the deserts of life; life's hard times) is illustrated in what's already present in the desert as God has created it. Come.

It was really fun this morning to be in this canyon with our Bedouin guides and watch their faces when one of these beautiful trees would show up as we passed by. It's called the Bedouin’s best friend. It's an acacia tree, mentioned frequently in the Bible. And since the desert is the place God brings people to train, to teach, to shape, you can be sure there's a lesson here too. 

The Bedouin call it their best friend because they use so many things of it and from it. The obvious one, shade. You felt the temperature change as you walked in here. It's amazing the difference in degrees in 20 feet from there to here. In fact, you'll notice the animal droppings often are as big as the shade, the circle of where the sheep-- honestly, the camels went and they went about as far as the shade goes. If a tree falls or breaks or a branch falls off, they use it for fire. It makes a very hot fire. It lasts a long time. So a good campfire under an acacia tree is a good thing. 

You'll notice the tree bleeds. If it's wounded, it gets this black substance that runs. It almost looks like liquid here, but it's really very thick and hard soon after it's exposed. The Bedouin take that black sap and they boil it. They use it for stomach troubles, which you can get occasionally in this place. They use it for issues on your skin (scratches, scrapes, rashes). So it has a healing. Somebody in the group said, "Sort of like Jesus." He's wounded, others are healed. I like that image. Though the Bible doesn't use that particular one, it's a beautiful picture. If you notice, it has very tiny leaves on it - just real small but enough to create this shade. Camels love those leaves.

And in spite of the thorns, you'll see a camel stand under a tree like this and sort of graze the lower ones. So it has that value. In season, it produces a pod. They look like this. You can see, there's one here on the branch. One kilo, my Bedouin friend told me, boiled will feed a camel for a week. So if you could pick up one kilo and soak it in water, that's enough food for a camel for a whole week. In other words, this is a tree with lots and lots of uses for lots of people. In fact, one of you said it this way this morning. This is one of the slowest-growing trees in the world, extremely hard wood. That tree has been here for hundreds of years. So in a sense, God created a tree here or caused a tree, knowing hundreds of years later, we were going to need some shade to stand in on a warm day. 

Now obviously, it wasn't just for us because people have been doing that for centuries. But I need you to see that the tree is extremely valuable for people today as it was for people in ancient time. 

A legitimate question would be, does this tree enter the biblical story? Or better, what's God's lesson for us here? First of all, this is the kind of wood the Ark of the Covenant was made from. So there's a very practical function in Israel's experience. There aren't a lot of them this big, but you can see on a tree this size, you could cut it down, make small timbers at least - small planks - that could be used for the frame of the tabernacle and the fence around the outside and then for the Ark of the Covenant itself. So there's lots of Jewish teaching out of the fact the acacia tree becomes the box - the container - in which the Word of God is and the cover on which the presence of God is. So an acacia tree, in a sense, growing for centuries out here in the wadis is God's preparation to contain his Word eventually. 

But there's another use of this tree, and it kind of catches people by surprise. We're in a riverbed. Dry as it is, this is a wadi. When it rains-- and it doesn't rain much here obviously-- but when it rains, these rocks kind of absorb the water, and so they flood. That's the definition of a wadi. It's a riverbed that's running with water during rainy season, during flood season. It can flood very dramatically. You'll always find these acacias along the edge of the stream beds that flood occasionally. You won't see them halfway up the cliff. Sometimes they'll be a few feet above, but they've got to get their roots and those roots will often come way down all the way out into the stream bed. They've got to get those roots out into that stream bed or they don't survive. 

When it doesn't flood (sometimes as much as 10 years or more I'm told), the tree will go dormant. And it'll stand here as if it's dead. Then suddenly years later, you get a flood and it'll come back to life, it will get a beautiful little flower on it, and then those pods as the fruit. For a season, it's very good. And wait next season to see if there's, again, a flood. 

Now in the opinion of the man that I believe is the world's greatest authority on biblical plants - his name is Noga Hareuveni - in his opinion, this is the tree of Jeremiah 17. Now that doesn't say anything to most of you because that's not a passage maybe we study a lot. Let me quote it to you. You'll recognize it from somewhere else. It goes like this. "Blessed is the man who does not look in the council of the wicked or stand in the path of sinners or sit in the seat of scoffers but his delight is in the Torah [we saw law] of the Lord. And on his Torah, he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water."

Stop a moment. I would guess there are not many of you here that would have ever seen this as the picture behind that Psalm. We've made it an oak tree next to the Mississippi. Now there's nothing wrong with that. In fact, I'm not going to try and prove to you that this is exactly the tree God meant in Psalm 1 and Jeremiah 17. What I want you to see is if I was living in the desert and read that Psalm, this is my picture. The only tree I know planted by streams of water is this one. And guess what? It bears its fruit in its season. In other words, from a desert point of view, this tree is a picture of someone deeply rooted into the water of these floods who then provides all kinds of things over years and years and years for entire communities of people - salve, medicine, camel food, wood for fire, even wood for the Ark of the Covenant. 

So it seems to me that one of the lessons God is teaching is that in the desert, we're called to be broom trees. Broom trees provide shade. So do these. But there's even a greater call as God's people. We must become acacia trees - trees that provide all kinds of things for the community in the desert where there isn't much, and this becomes God's way or sustaining just enough to continue. So are you a tree like this one? As people walk through their life's path, do they find you as a place to stop and feel the coolness of the shade for a few moments, to find the salve or the wood or the pods? That's the question.

I think that's a beautiful picture. How do you become that? Well, let's go back to the Psalm [1] instead of Jeremiah [17]. "The one who delights in the law of the Lord and meditates on his law, day and night, is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in its season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does will prosper." How do you get that promise? How do you become a tree planted by streams of water? The text tells us. He meditates on the Word of God day and night. 

I need to teach you a new word, and the sound of the word illustrates its meaning. Say hagah. Now let me tell you what it means. Hagah is the sound a lion makes after it’s made a kill and it growls as it tears into that kill because it hasn't eaten in a while. So if you want to say the word, to illustrate its meaning, you don't say hagah, you say hagah (like a growl). It sounds like its meaning. That's what a lion does. 

Now repeat these words after me. "As a lion growls, a great lion growls over its prey, and though a whole band of shepherds is called out against it, he is not frightened by their shouts." (Isaiah 31) The word growls in that passage in Hebrew is hagah. Now in Psalm 1 and Jeremiah 17, it says, "Blessed is the one who doesn't walk in the path of the wicked. But his delight is on God's Torah" - God's revelation -  "and on his Torah, he hagahs day and night." 

I love the idea of the quiet meditation alone in a corner. There's a place and time for that. That's a biblical command. But there's also the implication that the one who is like a tree planted by streams of water, the acacia person among you, is somebody who hagahs, who treats this book as if, "I'm hungry. And I'm going to get out of it every fiber and sinew it has. And I'm going to eat it, take it in and eat this book," as one of the prophets says.

And as it becomes a part of my very being, slowly but surely, God turns you into an acacia tree. But notice it's a slow-growing tree. This tree's done some serious hagahing for generations here. But you can't skip the hard work if you want to be the tree God calls you to be. 

The desert is an amazing place, because every turn, you meet God and he teaches you something else. I'm sure there's something around the next bend. Let's go see. come.

The desert has another lesson here for us. We haven't seen this kind of tree growing anywhere. We've been traveling out here all over the desert and really haven't seen it at all. It demands some cultivation, so you come across it when you come somewhere near where people live. It's called tamarisk. Now the tamarisk tree, again, demands some human cultivation, demands water. It demands some care, some protection. You've got to keep the goats and the camels away from it, because it's not the kind of tree that will grow out in those rugged conditions where we've seen the acacia tree and the broom tree. 

There's one thing about it that's unusual. It has a high salt content in its needles. As a result, it absorbs moisture out of the air. And I realize, you stand here today and you say, "What moisture in the air?" But the little bit of humidity that's in the air is picked up by these needles sort of like salt in a salt shaker in the summer time.

As a result, when it does get big enough to throw some shade, it's actually a cooler shade than another tree because the needles have some moisture on them. And that moisture in the air actually makes it feel cooler - at least that's what I'm told. 

The other characteristic of it is it's extremely slow growing. It takes I don't know what, but tens of years to get to this size. So you don't plant one of these for you. You won't live long enough to enjoy it. Your kids probably won't either. But if you want a nice shady place someday for your great-grandchildren, then you plant the tamarisk tree. And you nurture it for generations until finally it stands like this, and if a family wants to gather in the shade, they can.

In the book of Genesis, God has promised Abraham the Promised Land (Canaan). He doesn't own a square inch. He doesn't even have a place to bury his wife or himself to be buried. But God says to him again, "I'm going to give you this land. This is going to be yours." 

And in a remarkable passage, the Bible says, "And Abraham went to Beersheba," way north of here, right on the edge of the desert, just into that Negev Desert, "and he planted a tamarisk tree."(Genesis 21) 

Now think about the meaning of that act. He didn't own the land. He knew that tree would never shade him, and it probably wouldn't shade his son Isaac or his son Ishmael either. But he had the faith that someday, that land would belong to his family. So he acted by planting a tamarisk tree as if to say, "I believe you God. So I'm going to begin to create something that will bless my grandchildren and my great-grandchildren." I love that. It's such a strong idea if you understand the tamarisk tree.

Now the principle that I think this teaches me is how much of your life or mine is about me, doing what will bring me comfort or enjoyment or to gain something for me? And how much of what I do will bless people generations to come? Or ask it this way. Maybe this is how a rabbi would say it. "Did you plant a tamarisk tree today? Did you do anything today that will outlive you and bless others years, decades, centuries down the road?" I think it would surprise you to think about that. I think you would be surprised at how few things we do that are really designed to reach beyond us.

So the lesson of the desert, you are shade, you provide. But in this case, the desert says, "Do something today for God that will benefit people long after you're gone." 

"And Abraham went to Beersheba and planted a tamarisk tree." And so the desert speaks again. And I'm sure around the next bend, another lesson. Come.

Well we've come to the end of a pretty amazing day of God teaching us out of his text his incredible desert where that text was given. He's blessed us. Whatever we've looked for today, we've seemed to find - until the end of the day. And we got here. It's a disappointment to be honest, but how can we be disappointed with what God's given us? 

I really, though, want to share this with you as an end to all those lessons, because I think it has a personal challenge in it that I find really strong. So you're going to have to operate your imaginations just a bit to catch what this is about. The tree is called Tapuach Sdom, which means Sodom Apple. It also probably is the bush called araar. That's debated a bit but in my opinion Dr. Hareuveni, who I think is the leading scholar in the world (an Israeli man), clearly has argued, I think, that this is the araar. 

Now assuming that it is, let me tell you a little bit about it and then I'll show why I think that he is correct. This tree is very rare. We've been all day, several days in the desert in fact, and we haven't seen any until this one. This tree grows out in the middle of nowhere. And if you look around, you see what I mean by nowhere. I mean, there is nothing around here but a few rotem and a few acacias. Somehow, this tree is able to grow occasionally. They say the roots go down more than a couple of hundred feet and reach water. So it's not cultivated. It grows here on its own. Because of that, it can survive in extreme desert conditions. When it's green, it is the most stunning-- one of you said, who has seen it, one of you said it's forest green in color-- just absolutely beautiful huge leaves and a fruit the size of a small grapefruit growing on it. 

You see it in a distance and you think to yourself in this desert, "I can't believe there's anything like this out here." You get up close and those fruit hang - just a whole lot of them. You pick it off and it feels like it's absolutely full of juice. But when you break it open, you get a [pop] sound. It's empty. It's literally empty. There's just air inside and a little white milky substance that comes out of the skin, which they say is poisonous. So it basically has very little use, and in spite of how beautiful it looks-- operate your imaginations now-- in spite of how beautiful it looks, really there's nothing in it but death. 

Now I think that that's the object of Jeremiah's teaching in his book. He starts out his teaching, he's going to talk about two trees. He starts out by saying, "Cursed is the one who trusts in man." (Jeremiah 17). The word cursed comes from exactly the same root as the word araar. Hence, knowing how Jeremiah works, it seems very likely, especially since it's almost certain that this is the araar tree, that he is doing a play on the word curse and this tree. 

He says it this way (Jeremiah 17), "Cursed is the one who depends on man, who trusts in flesh for his strength. He will be like an araar in the desert. He will not see prosperity when it comes. He will dwell in the parched places of the desert in a salt land where no one lives."

In other words, his image is this is the picture, when it's beautiful and green, of the person who's trying to make it on their own. They're trusting in their own strength, their own brains, their own looks, their own talents, their own accomplishment, their own drive. You fill in whatever you'd like, but they're trusting in themselves. They may end up looking absolutely stunningly beautiful, if you can imagine that. From the outside, they look rich and green and luscious and absolutely wonderful. But Jeremiah's point is if they've done it in their own strength, if it's just about that person or about me, if you were to break them open, there would be nothing inside but death. 

Then he says, "But blessed is the one who's like a tree planted by streams of water." We've looked at the acacia all day, and I think that's also a strong reason why these two trees are compared. They grow in the same places, not one in the desert and one in the lush, green land. 

So God's final lesson would be quite simple. As you walk through this desert and discover that God is shade - sometimes directly, sometimes for one another - that God is an acacia tree. God desires us to be acacia trees. All the lessons, all of them talk about total dependence on God for everything. "Trust me. You can't see around the corner. Trust me. I'll be there."

I like to stand here last because this stands as a strong symbol-- and maybe the deadness of this tree isn't all bad at this point-- a strong symbol of what happens if I try and do it in my own strength. It may look good to you. But in the long run, it's nothing but death. I pray you would be a broom tree, an acacia tree, and not an araar. 

So God taught us today. I feel closer to him, I feel he spoke to us through this amazing book as it sat in trees and plants and places. The bottom line, "Will you depend on me always and for everything? If you will, you will be like a tree planted by water." May your desert be richly blessed because of your total trust in God. Come. It's time to go.

It was fascinating for our group to watch the Bedouin who were with us in the desert. Their delight and interest and even pride in a single shrub or tree or bush. There aren't many of them, but they knew where they were and they were pleased and proud to show them to us. They understand that God has made provision in the desert. You just need to know how to recognize it and to find it. That's true of our deserts too, don't you think?

Another thought struck me. For an acacia tree or a broom tree to provide in the desert, it has to grow in the desert. It doesn't do any good if it isn't here. It helps me to picture why Jesus became one of us. He came down from heaven, born to a young woman, and lived in the deserts of our lives, experienced the same hurt and suffering we do - the betrayal of a friend, the physical suffering of hunger and thirst, the brutal beatings he took, even death itself. He joined us like an acacia tree in our desert. And I pray that as you experience the acacia tree, that was Jesus and it's delightful shade that you would be an acacia tree to others. And in that marvelous exchange, know the presence of God in your desert.

Última modificación: jueves, 27 de agosto de 2020, 13:06