The Lord Loves His Broken People

Today we saw the the Old Testament tell of Jericho (which is basically a place where city upon city has been built on top of each other for generations and formed a large hill). The site itself is a big hill that they have excavated to reveal some parts of the city. It is amazing how you can see right to the place where the Israelite camp would have been prior to the fall of Jericho, the people of the city would have been very aware of the Israelite army's approach (Joshua 2-6). But Joshua trusted the Lord, who promised him the he would give Jericho to them. It is fascinating that God chose to use Rahab to help his people. She was a prostitute in Jericho that hid the two Israelite spies so that the army could take the city. She then instructed them to go hide themselves in the hills for a few days to stay safe. The spies promised Rahab that her and her family would be safe and treated kindly when the Israelite army finally took control. After the 7 days of marching around the city, the walls finally fell and the Israelites rushed the city, killing everyone but keeping the promise made to Rahab. She stayed with the Israelites from then on. This is such an amazing example of how God uses the unexpected to do His work. He used this woman to protect His people and assured that she would become one of them in the end. Isn't this how God uses us? Before we even knew it and acknowledged God's work, He was preparing us and using us to bring about His will. There is never a moment where we are not guided by Him and not being used for His glory, whether we know it or not. He chooses to use His broken people to do incredible things. Rahabs life was changed forever because of how the Lord chose her to do His work. How are we being changed everyday?

Zacchaeus is another person drastically changed by God in Jericho, except this time, the Lord used Jesus to bring about the change (this would be in New Testament Jericho, where we had gone before Old testament Jericho and seen the remains of Herod's royal palace). Zacchaeus, a short man, climbed a sychamore tree so that he could see Jesus walking through Jericho. Then, for no explained reason, Jesus comes to the base of the tree and asks Zacchaeus to come down so that He could eat with him. This was unheard of because Zacchaeus was a tax collector, and was thus a sinner and declared unworthy to be in Jesus' prescence. This show of love towards Zacchaeus, dispite his position in the community, radically changes him, and his response is amazing. We see him immediately change his ways by giving half of everything He owned to the poor and paying back 4 times everything he had cheated from people. What a change! He is immediately a different person; he was once a theif and now he is a "son of Abraham" as Jesus declared (in Luke 19). And through this whole event, even as he was looking at Jesus from afar, God is using Zacchaeus. Zacchaeus had no idea that he was being used as an example of God's love that knows no boundaries and has no prejudices. He was likely one of the lowest people in that place at this time and yet he was chosen by God to show the people how radical love can change a person so drastically.

The place of Jericho is an amazing place to study how the Lord works in ways so opposite of how our world thinks. He is unique in all that He does and the results are unimaginable. Being in this place, knowing all the things that happened here, was awesome. We went to a few other sites too: an old crusader church that is now a mosque which overlooked Gibeon, the Michmash and Geba and the pass between where Jonathan moved his troops, the edge of the wilderness where Jesus would have wandered (which is a dessert, not the wilderness with dense forest like we would easily think), and Gezer. Overall, it was a good day studying the Benjamin area, even though it was brutally hot and exhausting.

Tomorrow we have a free day! I think we plan to explore the old city, do some shopping, and fianlly get some good authentic falafel!