One of the most moving experiences on my recent trip to the Levant was the stop at Mount Nebo in Jordan. Mt Nebo was the vantage point in the land of Moab, in modern-day Jordan, where God showed Moses the Promised Land, and then buried his body.

What struck me was how close Moses got to the Promised Land– right on the threshold– and how painful it must have been to not be allowed to set foot there, after 40 years of approaching. He died, having viewed the land of his dreams, knowing that God’s promise was being fulfilled, but also knowing that the honor of the entrance would go to Joshua, and not to him.

Jesus came of age in the town of Nazareth. He would have spent hours and hours outside, and imbibing the spectacular views of Israel from the local vantage point, now called Mount Precipice. After Jesus began to make a name for himself as a miracle worker and itinerant rabbi, he returned to his hometown. The reception he received was warm. At first. But then things got out of hand in an instant.

Luke 4:16 And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. …

So far so good. But by the end of his reading and application, we read…

4:28 When they heard these things, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath. 29 And they rose up and drove him out of the town and brought him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they could throw him down the cliff. 30 But passing through their midst, he went away.

One emotive place to visit in Israel is the site of this event. As best we can tell, the brow of the hill on which Nazareth was built is modern-day “Mount Precipice.” As its name implies, it is the perfect place to throw someone off if you wanted to kill them. But what I found to be a striking thought was that this was the view Jesus would have grown up seeing, largely unchanged today. He would be able to gaze over the part of Israel where the highways from foreign countries converged. He would be able to see Capernaum, where he would later make his home.

The Dead Sea is a must-see for obvious reasons. It is a very trippy sensation to sit in water, and then not sink. The Dead Sea is nearly 10x saltier than the oceans. One drop in your eye will or on an open blister will make the experience even more memorable. This spot is 1,412 ft (430m) below sea level, making it the lowest (and therefore hottest) place on Earth.

As the picture proves, I entered barefoot, which was not the wisest choice. There are shelves of sharp salt crystals before you get to the loamy, therapeutic mud, which sells for $15 a bag in the gift store.

The Dead Sea is employed as a landmark in the Bible several times. For example, Deuteronomy 3:17 “the Arabah also, with the Jordan [River] as the border, from Chinnereth [Sea of Galilee] as far as the Sea of the Arabah, the Salt Sea, under the slopes of Pisgah on the east.”

The sea is fed by the rainfall in the Sea of Galilee (which is not a sea, but a lake, as it is a freshwater body), which then feeds the Jordan River, which then dumps all that fresh water into the Dead Sea, at which point it becomes useless. Because of that perceived wastage of potable water in a region where people frequently suffer from drought conditions, much of the water of Galilee via the Jordan is now used to irrigate crops and supply water to populated areas.

This has resulted in an unprecedented shrinkage of the size of the Dead Sea. The water level is dropping at a rate of 3 feet per year, and the surface area has dropped by 33% since the 1960s when water from the Jordan River started to be diverted. The shores are retracting at a rate of a few feet per year, leaving salty swamps and dangerous sinkholes. There is no telling what effect the death of the Dead Sea will have on the ecology of the region. But for those who take a literal, futurist interpretation of eschatological texts, there is hope for the Dead Sea.

Qumran, a stone’s throw from the Dead Sea (tee-hee), is now famous for a gobsmacking archeological discovery in 1946. A local goatherd tossed a stone in one of the innumerable caves in the area, only to hear the unexpected sound of shattering pottery. As it turns out, these caves were used by a sect of Jews, the Essenes, to stash parchments in pottery jars that contained holy texts. Over the following ten years, 981 manuscripts (hand-written documents) were discovered, dating from as early as the 3^rd Century BC, known as the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Much of Israel is a parched, barren desert. But there are parts that are lush and fecund, producing tons of fruit, vegetables, nuts, legumes, and shady trees. What makes finding these green patches so remarkable is how suddenly they appear. One minute you are driving through a landscape so dry and dusty it looks like a planet from the Dune movies. And without notice, you turn a corner and see an oasis of lush vegetation and enchanting waterfalls.

Psalm 63:1 O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

The Jordan River is an indispensable stop on any tour of Israel. Sadly, today the river only runs at about 2% of its erstwhile capacity. As I stood on the banks of the piddly stream, I had to use my mind’s eye to see why Joshua needed to miraculously part the waters when Israel crossed into the Promised Land (Joshua 3).

Of course, this river is most famous as the location where Jesus was baptized by John (Matt 3:13-17). Visiting the likely area where it happened gives one a sense of how remote this location was and just how determined a person would have to be to satisfy their curiosity about John. We are told that people flocked to John from great distances to be baptized– Matthew 3: 5-6 Then Jerusalem and all Judea and all the region about the Jordan were going out to him, and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.

The significance of the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan—the very river Israel crossed to claim their kingdom, and the place the Spirit descended and the voice of God was heard audibly—makes this site a magnet for “tourist baptisms.” Any time you visit the river, you are likely to find people being baptized at designated spots that have platforms, changerooms, and that sell t-shirts declaring “I was baptized in the Jordan River.” (I’m not making that up).

These people tend to fall into two groups. Either they are non-Christians who are being dunked by a tour guide as a kind of reenactment photo-op, complete with giggling and splashing and selfie-sticks, or they are believers who have already been baptized upon conversion (like the Bible says to) but are getting re-baptized. Some get rebaptized as a sign of their recommitment, or renewed desire to obey. Others are doing it just to get the t-shirt, to say they were baptized in the same water as Jesus (which is not how rivers work anyway), or for some other touristy reason.

I really wish they wouldn’t.

The Ascent of Adummim is a road that goes down from Jerusalem to Jericho. Does that route sound familiar?

Luke 10:30 Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead.”

Anyone hearing the parable of the Good Samaritan from the lips of Jesus would be familiar with this infamous route. It included a stretch of desolation in the Judean wilderness known as the Ascent of Adummim. The 15-mile journey, at a steady pace without breaks, would take 7 hours, but likely longer due to the typical blazing temperatures and grueling elevation gain of 3,400 ft.

In Israel, there are many dubious sites that tour guides confidently tout as the certain location where some or other biblical event transpired. Regrettably, the number of authentic sites is relatively few and far between. That is why when we find one that corresponds with the biblical account perfectly, I feel way more comfortable saying, “This place is where this event happened.” One such site is Hezekiah’s Tunnel.

Second Kings 20:20 mentions a noteworthy accomplishment of Hezekiah’s reign… “The rest of the deeds of Hezekiah and all his might and how he made the pool and the conduit and brought water into the city, are they not written in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah?”

And 2 Chronicles 32:30 says “This same Hezekiah closed the upper outlet of the waters of Gihon and directed them down to the west side of the city of David. And Hezekiah prospered in all his works.”

In anticipation of a looming Assyrian invasion and inevitable siege of Jerusalem, Hezekiah made timely preparations to channel water from a freshwater spring that was outside the city walls, into Jerusalem so that the population would have unlimited water supply during the siege. An aqueduct or canal was obviously too vulnerable to be useful, so a subterranean tunnel needed to be cut through the hard rock. It was a clever tactic, but it was no easy task. The Gihon Spring was located over 1,000 ft outside the fortified walls. And with the time pressure, King Hezekiah commissioned the effort to begin simultaneously from both sides. Two crews would tunnel toward each other and meet in the middle.

This produced a comically crooked S-shaped tunnel whose two entrances approached each other at mismatched trajectories and at differing depths. Through much of the tunnel, the roof is so low one needs to hunch over, while at other places the roof is so high you could float a skinny sailboat without lowering the mast. The final tunnel was 1,750 feet long (530m), which was 40% longer than it needed to have been. One archeologist, R. A. S. Macalister, uncharitably called it “a pathetically helpless piece of engineering.”

For most of the year 2000, I lived in Israel. I worked at Kibbutz Galon as a garbage man for $1 a day, and then at Moshav Yad Hashmona as a dishwasher, waiter, and assistant chef. And the question on your mind is probably: “But why?”

The answer is easier to understand if you have visited the Holy Land. There is something very special about living, working, shopping, hiking, and traveling in places that we have heard of for years, growing up in church reading God’s Word. One of my favorite phrases to casually use was: “See you later, I’m just going up to Jerusalem to get groceries.” Jerusalem is perched on Mt Zion, surrounded by valleys, so every approach ends up being “going up.” I loved to contemplate how for thousands of years, Israelites, including Jesus himself, would “go up to Jerusalem” for various workaday reasons, singing the Psalms of Ascent as they went, and now I was part of that.

The biblical account did not happen a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. It transpired on a particular slice of real estate, between certain mountains and valleys, on plateaus and highways that still exist today, and often are still called by the names our spiritual forefathers used.

In his peculiar short story, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, F. Scott Fitzgerald supplies a disturbingly fresh look at maturity and social development. What is so curious about Benjamin, is that he is born old, and with the passing of time, becomes young. The novella is a fascinating take on how people mature, love, and grow up, and the ironic infantile state of the infirm elderly.

Sometimes in the church, we encounter the curious case of the well-churched immature believer. Often we find that when a person is a baby believer, freshly saved from their sins, their formerly lackluster life suddenly morphs into an Incredible Hulk of untamed enthusiasm. They evangelize zealously, pray constantly, read their Bible devotedly, and enjoy serving in the church.

But sadly, it is not uncommon to witness that this verve is but a fleeting sugar rush of novelty. The preciousness of salvation begins to grow commonplace, church becomes a routine, Bible reading a chore, and prayer incidental. Sermons they used to relish are now a bland plate of brussel sprouts. As the years grind on, they dutifully trudge through the motions of spirituality, but the light flickered out years ago.

I have met folks in the church who would say they have been saved for decades, but are petty, grumbling, selfish, and pessimistic. They are spiritually grumpy old men.

How about you? Have you grown immature with age? Have you let the furnace of passion from your conversion grow cold? Or have you steadily grown in your knowledge, wisdom, and most importantly application of God’s word?

If not, here are three actions to take to pursue spiritual growth…