Israel Day 1 - Tel Gezer

Posted by Brandon

Hopefully, this will not be the only post I make about my trip to Israel. I am balancing full time work, 2 classes, a 2 year old boy, and a pregnant wife so I may be a little slow getting every day posted!

It was my first time to fly over the Atlantic and the first time I had ever spent a significant amount of time in an airplane. Around 4:30 p.m. Israel time, 15 hours after leaving Newark, we landed and immediatly boarded a bus that took us to our first hike.

Our first stop was just outside eastern Tel Aviv near a hill that overlooked the city. The weather was cloudy and the sun was on its way towards the horizon. After a short 30 minute hike, our trek over the hill revealed the ruins of an old city, Tel Gezer, an uninhabited ancient city that sat on the Via Maris. About 1.5 million people traveled the Via Maris per year in biblical times as it was a main trade route that ran through the middle of Israel. The Via Maris sits in the northern fringes of the Shephelah (the strip of land that runs north and south through the middle of Israel). In biblical times, the Shephelah region was the place where world views collided, so if you controlled the Shephelah and the Via Maris, you had incredible influence on the world.

This picture shows the main city gate which was built under the control of King Solomon. Gezer is a very old city, pre-Abraham! According to 1 Kings 11, Pharaoh captured Tel Gezer and gave it to Solomon as a dowry for is daughter.

So what is significant about this place? If you are like me, you may have read over this name in the bible without giving it much thought. Gezer is mentioned briefly in Joshua 16 where the text is laying out the details of the allotment of land given to Ephraim and Manasseh after the Israelites entered the Promised Land. God told the children of Israel to go into the land, be strong and courageous, and to drive out the Canaanites, Hittites, Hivites, Perizzites, Girgasites, Amorites, and Jebusites who occupied the land…many times, put them to death, all men, women, children, livestock, and burn their possessions. However, in Joshua 16:10, it says that they did not dislodge the Canaanites living in Gezer.

OK, is this a big deal? Well, it was the first example of “slippage” that we examined on our trip. God sets up parameters for us to live by, and we do OK, but we give a little here, a little there…slippage…a little more, a little bit more. After some time, am I standing within those parameters? Hear me out, we definitely have freedom and liberty in Christ, and I do not want to paint the picture of legalism in these few paragraphs. Unfortunately, the children of Israel did not take the city, they did not dislodge the Canaanites as God commanded. Remember, whoever controlled the Shephelah and the Via Maris, influenced on the world. How was the Israelites influence affected by their choice of not taking out the Canaanites here in Gezer? As you look at this story, think about how “slippage” in our lives affects our influence, on those who come after us?

So the sun was gone now, and we only had the light from nearby Tel Aviv that bounced off the heavy clouds above us. We made our way probably 200 yards back over a hill that sat between us and Tel Aviv and came upon a line of stones, really big stones that were set up by the Canaanites, but we don’t know a whole lot more than that about the stones.

What can we learn from these stones that apparently have no story, these “dead” stones? 100 years from now, 1000 years from now, are we going to be like these stones? Am I going to be just another branch in this family tree that my mother has worked so hard to trace out? Or, will people stop and say, “Because he walked with Christ, we are walking with Christ”. Am I making a point in my life to influence those who come after me and beside me? I want to make it a point to be a living stone, not a dead stone without a story.

We made our way back to our bus and drove about an hour up the road to our first hotel where we ate our fist meal in Israel…yes, they had hummus! One thing that I noticed, Israel has really nice paved roads!