OL,
Introduction:
Just the mention the word,
“geography,” to most students brings back memories of something about as
interesting as watching paint dry.
A.
Whether
we realize it or not, all of us really are interested in the subject:
1.
How
many of us enjoy the “geography” of the mountains or that wonderful bass lake
or the shores of the ocean?
B.
I
have “geographic” memories of my childhood traveling in 17 states and out of
the
1.
Really,
I don’t remember much except what my parents told me or showed me with pictures
that were taken:
a. …Being
held by my dad and mom in front of the giant redwoods or our old car driving
through the opening in one of them.
2.
But
one thing I do remember was my Dad’s love for the mountains…He would rather be
there than anywhere else.
B.
In
the mid-‘60’s, Sue and I took a group of teens on a VBS trip to
C.
And lest you think that our part of the country doesn’t have any
interesting geographical formations, just travel out toward Amarillo and visit
Palo Duro Canyon, or hit the road for the hill
country or head for the Davis mountains or to the piney woods of East Texas.
Á But God’s geography in the Bible is a fascinating
study also:
A.
It is one of the wonderful proofs of the Bible’s accuracy.
1.
When the Bible says a direction is “Up” it may indicate either the
direction or the nature of the terrain.
And it’s always correct!
B.
There are some great lessons of faith connected with Bible geography:
1. I
have talked with a number of folks who have visited the
1.
Moses reminded
a. “And now, Israel, what does the Lord your
God require of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to
love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your
soul, and to keep the commandments and statutes of the Lord, which I am
commanding you today for your good?” (Deuteronomy 10:10-12).
C.
Think about Caleb’s request for the hill country where the giants lived
for his possession in Joshua 14:10-12
D.
And God’s challenge to Abraham to offer Issac
on Mt. Moriah and Joel’s reminder of God’s judgment
in the valley of Decision in Joel 3:14, Multitudes,
multitudes in the valley of decision! For the day of the Lord is near in the
valley of decision.”
k One of the great Biblical descriptions of life and it’s
happiness and sorrow is hills and valleys.
A.
The mountain or the hilltop is often equated with success or emotional
high while the valley is the place of pain, suffering, affliction, depression
or loss.
B.
Great Bible characters had their time in both places:
1.
God brought Abraham to the
top of an emotional mountain when he told him about his descendents being as
numerous as the stars of the heaven and then brought him into a feeling of the
ominous when he made his covenant with him, “As
the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abram. And behold, dreadful and
great darkness fell upon him. Then the
Lord said to Abram, ‘Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in
a land that is not theirs, and they will be servants there, and they will be
afflicted for 400 years,”
(Genesis
2.
David experienced the
exhilaration of being anointed as Saul’s successor only to later find himself hiding from Saul in a dark cave.
3.
Elijah saw the magnificent power
of the Lord in his triumph over the prophets of Baal on
4.
Isaiah said, “I have labored to no purpose; I have spent
my strength in vain and for nothing.” (Isaiah 49:4)
5.
Jeremiah added his voice from he
valley when he said, “I have heard many
whispering, ‘Terror on every side!
Report him!’ All my friends are waiting
for me to slip, saying,
‘Perhaps he will be deceived; then we will prevail over him and take our
revenge on him,’” (Jeremiah
6. You
can almost sense the anxiety in the message of John the Baptist after his powerful preaching in the desert, but
now languishing in prison for preaching the truth to a sinful monarch, “Are you the one who is to come or shall we look
for another?” (Matthew 11:3).
7. Think
about Paul the great preacher and apostle who had
witnessed so many victories over the devil, writing to the Corinthians, “We do not want you to be ignorant,
brothers, of the afflictions we experienced in
à Why does God permit the valleys?
Why can’t life just be a continual mountaintop experience?
A.
JOSEPH NEWTON: “We cannot tell what will happen to us in the strange medley of life.
But we can decide what happens in
us---how we take it, what we do with it---and that is what really counts in the
end. How to take the raw stuff of life
and make it a thing of worth and beauty---that is the test of living.”
B.
These may not be all the answers but let me share these with you:
1.
Spiritual maturity comes
by passing thorough the valley:
a. James 1:2-4. “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds,
for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect,
that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.” Romans 5:3,4. “…we
rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering
produces endurance, and endurance
produces character, and character produces hope…”
2.
Trust in God grows in the
valley:
a.
Remember when we read a moment ago about Paul’s description of despair
even for his life? Well, that’s not the
whole story. He said he knew the reason
why the trials came:
1)
“…this was to make us rely
not on ourselves but on God…” (2 Cor
1:9).
b.
Paul reminded Timothy of this: 2 Tim. 1:10-12. “Christ Jesus…abolished death and brought life and immortality to light
through the gospel, for which I was appointed a preacher and apostle and a
teacher, which is why I suffer as I do. But I am not ashamed, for I know whom I
have believed, and I am convinced that he is able to guard until that Day what
has been entrusted to me.”
3.
We learn to help others as
they are in the valley since we have been there:
a.
Psalm 84:5, 6. “.”Blessed
are those whose strength is in you (Lord), in whose heart are the highways of
1)
The
before one came to
2)
Baca is translated in the JB
as “The weeper’s valley,” because tombs of the dead were found there.
3)
Still another renders it “The
thirsty valley” because it was a very arid district. One way or the other, notice the play on
words:
a) When one’s heart is set on going to God,
even in the thirsty places we find sustenance and in the valley of death we
find strength!!
b. Do
you remember the conversation between the woman and Jesus at Jacob’s well in
1) She
had been living with spiritual thirst in the moral valley of death!
a) John 4:10, 13. “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give
me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living
water… Everyone who drinks of this water (Jacob’s well) will be thirsty again,
but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty
forever. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water
welling up to eternal life.”
c. And
what will those who have found their strength in the Lord do for others who
face the valley?
1)
2 Corinthians 1:3,4. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of
mercies and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so
that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the
comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.”
Ä
When Ella Wheeler Wilcox was traveling between
A.
One ship went East and another West in the same wind. She late penned these famous words:
“One ship
drives east and another drives west,
With the
selfsame winds that blow.
‘Tis the set of the sails and not the gales,
which tells us the way to go.
Like the
winds of the sea are the ways of fate,
As we voyage
along through life:
Tis the set of the soul that
decides the goal,
And not the calm or strife.”