Transcription of the Video: When Your Heart Cries Out

Would it surprise you to learn that the most dangerous thing in the desert, as far as its costing human lives, is not the heat or the lack of water or the scorpions that are here? But rather, the flood waters. Some of the difficult things in the deserts in the biblical story slowly came upon the people. The heat built up day after day after day until they were exhausted, the water slowly less and less until it ran out.

Some of the desert dangers come suddenly and dramatically, leading God's people to cry out in sudden terror and in need of dramatic deliverance. I think the same is true of the deserts that you and I find ourselves in, in our lives. Sometimes our difficulties, our struggles, our problems come little by little, and slowly over time, they wear away at us and we plead with God for relief and salvation. And he provides.

Sometimes our deserts come suddenly and unexpectedly and dramatically and we find ourselves in fear and terror, crying out for help. Join us as God teaches us through his ancient people in their desert, lessons that help us in ours. Come.

We've been hiking in this canyon (wadi in Arabic). It's a dry riverbed. Most of the year, it's like this, just dust and sand. But when you do get rain and believe it or not in this desert, there is a small amount of rain. Those mountains - in this case, granite - can't absorb the amount of water of falls, and so it collects slowly but surely to channel it all down until it gets down to one of these canyons and then comes thundering down this canyon with enormous power. It usually only lasts a few minutes, but it's pretty impressive. 

Now as it travels, of course, it carves and cuts the rock along the sides and it leaves behind this sandy deposit. And often when you come to a place where for whatever reason the water slows down, you find this sand here, sometimes even much finer than this. And here, you can see a widening, so where the water slowed down, it dropped the sand, then left it here. 

So in the biblical culture, when you say sand, you don't first of all think of the seashore. Though, the Bible talks about the sand of the seashore sometimes. Sand is a wadi product. It's in the bottom of these canyons. 

Jesus once, I think, drew on that image. He said there was a foolish man - nudnik in the language. They laugh when you say that word. It's somebody who's nice but foolish. There was a foolish man who built his house on the sand. Now think about that for a moment if Jesus meant by sand here. I think they chuckled. Who would build their house here? It's going to flood sooner or later. And if you say, "Well, how do you know he meant wadi sand," notice what he says.

"And the rains came down and the floods came up." So he's in a place where it floods. Of course, I think he's talking about a wadi. And they all chuckled and Jesus said, "Yeah, a foolish man would build his house on the sand." There's nothing wrong with sand. Any builder will tell you that it's nice to build on sand. The problem is where the sand is. But the wise person is the one who builds up on the rock where the rains come and they beat against it and the house stands firm.

Now if you think about it, that comes right out of their cultural images. Who is the foolish person? The one who builds on sand (the one who hears and doesn't do what he or she hears). Who is the wise person who builds on the rock? The one who hears and hears - does - what he commands). 

So when you walk in a wadi and you come across sand and you hear that scuffling under foot, you think to yourself, "Oh, that sound should remind me, 'Do you hear it?'" And you do it. There's a lesson, and the desert becomes a teacher. 

Now there's another one here that a Jewish teacher showed me. I'm not sure it's exactly in the Bible, but it's an interesting picture that comes out of it. Many times in the Bible, the concept of sand is used for a big number. "Abraham, you'll have descendants like the sand of the seashore." The army of the enemy was like the sand of the seashore in numbers. It's used both positively and negatively. But that reference to seashore raises an interesting additional picture. Because this isn't seashore sand. So most of the time, it's dusty and dry. But imagine-- let me get some from here a moment. Imagine some sand on the seashore. Think seashore right on the sea. Somebody, give me some water. 

Notice what happens to sand on the seashore. And if it's fine sand, even more so. It sticks together. So for a Jewish person, that sand of the seashore image isn't only a huge number. That's clear, because God says, "as numerous as". It's what the Bible says. Abraham may have had a hint that his descendants were going to be a community, a family, eventually, the body of Jesus, I think. And what is it that glues it together? The Living Water of God.

Now be clear, the Bible doesn't say that. That's taking an image out of the Bible and thinking of an illustration. But that's how the desert teaches. It teaches who God is and who we are. 

So when I get here, I never want to quit. I always feel like one more corner, because there's got to be another God moment and a God lesson. And that's why as tough as this desert can be-- and it can be a lot tougher than it is today-- you don't want to leave. Because you always feel face to face, in the arms of God. So yeah, desert has a down side, a negative side. But it's also a very wonderful place to experience God. So how about we walk a bit, and maybe the desert will teach us again. Come.

The desert as God's teacher. We've been enjoying hiking in various deserts here around the Bible land, trying to be taught like God's ancient people were taught. We've come down into a wadi in the wilderness of Judea or the wilderness of Judah, as it's called in the Old Testament. 

A wadi-- that's Arabic; nahal in Hebrew-- a wadi is a riverbed that only has water in it during rainy season or during the rains. Most of the time, it's completely dry. Some of the flood often, and some of them flood occasionally. Now what happens is this. Notice up here, it doesn't rain here at all. I mean, almost zero. Look at the desert around you. But not that far, let's say 15/20 miles, you get to the height of the mountains of Judah where it rains. In fact, some places it rains a lot and in a short time.

That rainwater cannot be absorbed by the limestone mountains up there, slowly collects and collects and eventually comes to one of these canyons and comes thundering down here east toward the Dead Sea. And you can see in this canyon the effect of that water on these rocks. Look how it's polished. It's polished these stones almost to a shine. 

Now the thing about those floods is they're unexpected often. I mean, it can be a day like this. It doesn't rain here, and you hear a noise in the distance and it could easily be that all of a sudden, just in seconds after you hear it, you can get a mass of water coming down here. In fact, just a quarter of a mile this way, four climbers were killed here last spring. They were climbing on one of these walls. One of those floods came. They heard it. By the time they were able to get down, it was too late and they were destroyed in that flood water. So it's an enormous power that comes thundering down this way. You have to be really careful in the rainy season. So if you hear a loud noise in the next few minutes, climb.

Seriously though, you would want to be very careful. More people are killed by desert floods in the deserts of the Bible than all other causes put together, including thirst and heat and scorpions and whatever else you could think of. 

Since this exists in the Bible country, you would expect that God would use it as a teacher. And wadis almost always are found in the deserts all over this land. Let me give you a couple of examples. Here's from Psalm 126. "Restore our fortune, oh Lord," and my English says, "like streams in the Negev." Now the Negev is one of the deserts. And streams could be translated as flooded streams. 

So the idea was, "God, I'm in trouble. I'm not doing all that well. I'd like to have you restore my fortune suddenly with great power like a flood in the desert." That's an example of how God teaches.

Let me give you another one. It says, "If the Lord had not been on our side, the flood would have engulfed us, the torrent would have swept over us, the raging waters would have swept us away." So you have the image of the Psalmist down in a wadi - maybe David. He hears the sound and he knows, "Get out." He says, "That's what it's like. If God hadn't had been with us, a tragedy would have come all of a sudden."

There are two more that I see here. One, notice the flood leaves behind water. It's not very good-looking water in this desert. It's hot here. But water nevertheless. Now for the animals in the area, that's a real attraction in this desert. And you see the hoof prints of the ibex that have come down to drink the water all along the mud bank here in the bottom of this canyon. You can see they've been here not that long ago. 

So sheep and goats do the same thing. And they would drink from that water, which of course could be a huge risk. Because if they're down here when a flood comes, they're gone. So the Psalmist says, "He leads me by quiet waters." And there is an opinion - and I think a good one - that quiet waters means water that's not in the flooded wadi. It could be a spring somewhere; it could be a stream somewhere. This would not be considered quiet water according to that point of view. Because even though it's quiet, there's a huge risk here. And the point then of the Psalm would be, "You have to drink what the shepherd says to drink." A sheep can't tell the difference between this and water somewhere else that's completely safe. So if you start drinking this, it could cost you. So follow the shepherd.

There's another one here that I like. One of the issues is as this stream comes thundering down here, just feel the earth shake, the water would come 10/15/20/30 feet deep. It doesn't last long. It soon drains out. But while it's here, it's absolutely amazing. It leaves behind the top soil that it's carried from up in the mountains. And that top soil is kind of a thick, muddy clay. 

Listen to a couple of Psalms that talk of it. First of all, Psalm 69. "Save me, oh God, for the water comes up to my neck. I sink in the miry depths where there is no foothold." Or this one from Psalm 40. "He lifted me out of a slimy pit, out of the mud and mire. He set my feet on a rock and have me a firm place to stand."

So the idea is imagine you're a sheep or a goat. You come down here and you step off the bank into that unbelievably sticky mud. Now, I've stayed up high enough out of the water to where you can see how sticky that is. But picture a sheep stepping down here and slowly sinking right up to his belly. Then you hear the flood come. And the shepherd - and this happens - has to come here in a place like this. Shepherds will find their flocks and the goats will have drifted to the bottom. One's stuck here, grab them by the wool, literally lift them out, come out of that mud and set them up here on the rock where it's safe.

So the Psalmist says, "In my life, there was some kind of a tragedy coming." Picture it. "And here I am. I'm stuck up to my knees, up to my waist, and then I hear it." And here it comes and I can't get out. I'm stuck. So I cry out, "God! Pull me out of the mud and put me up on the rock," where you guys are. And that's the image. Maybe some of you have been there. 

Now imagine you have a child that walks away from God's path. And you look and you see the tragedy coming, and there's nothing you can do but cry out to God. You're stuck in that mud and here it comes. Or a disease that you face, and you feel like, "I can't change it. I can't fix it. We can't heal it. I can't get out." And the Psalmist uses that as his metaphor of saying, "When you're in the desert and you're in trouble, cry out." And he may come and lift you and put you up there and protect you. Again, that's that same image so much in the desert that God is always just enough. This is framed in a little bit different metaphor. 

So a wadi lesson. And every shepherd knows it. Every desert person knows it. And God says again, "Listen. No matter what in life, I'm your shepherd. I'll take care of you."

The desert is an amazing teacher. Those lessons that the Bible teaches that are set in the wadis, I think, are among my favorites of all the desert lessons. Maybe because for me at least, the hardest deserts I've had to face are those that came suddenly and unexpectedly, and the pain was there. I didn't see it coming. I could do nothing but cry out for help. 

But the wonderful thing is, God's people can cry out. Ze'akah is the Hebrew word. They did it in slavery in Egypt. When God hears a cry, he responds with dramatic deliverance. He always has. That's the lesson of the desert. 

It's poignant that the only cry God doesn't respond to is the one of Jesus on the cross. But because Jesus went to the cross to take my place and yours too, to carry our desert in a way, God didn't hear his cry, and he suffered and died on our behalf. But because he did, God hears our cries. So learn in your deserts. When those moments come, when the pain is overwhelming, cry out as you see that wadi flood come and expect God somehow to reach down and dramatically deliver. He did it for his Hebrews. He does it for his people today. 

Oh, do you remember Jesus said the one who builds his house on the sand, I think a wadi image. Do you remember who that was? It's the one who hears his words but doesn't put them into practice. The one who hears them and puts them into practice is the one who builds his house on the rock. So it's not enough for you and me to hear these desert lessons. That's good. But God wants us to put them into practice. So as you walk in your desert and I walk in mine, let's commit to hearing the words of the book and Jesus the teacher. Let's put them into practice, and God will provide. And our house will be built on the rock. And those are the words of the teacher.