The Jeff Cavins Show (Your Catholic Bible Study Podcast) - Looking at Your Life Geographically

Episode Date: January 18, 2019

Take a journey with Jeff to the land of Israel and learn how the geography of this historic land teaches you about your spiritual life. Have you ever heard of the land of milk and honey? More than just a literal location, the land of milk and honey is a metaphor for two lifestyles of living. One is easy while the other is difficult. Learn how to use the geography of the Promised Land can help you in your walk with the Lord. For the complete shownotes, go to: ascensionpress.com/thejeffcavinsshow (https://media.ascensionpress.com/category/ascension-podcasts/the-jeff-cavins-show/)

You're listening to The Jeff Kaven Show, episode 99, looking at your life geographically. Hey, I'm Jeff Kavins. How do you simplify your life? How do you study the Bible? All the way from motorcycle trips to raising kids, we're going to talk about the faith and life in general. It's the Jeff Kavent Show. And Shalom, Shalom from Israel. Good to have you with us this week.

And I say us, because we have a whole lot of people in Israel. And we are on a pilgrimage in Galilee and now Jerusalem, the Bethlehem area. And when you're in Israel, you think Israel, you think about the land, and you get to walk right where Jesus walked and the disciples and the Blessed Mother. And it's just a wonderful time, wonderful retreat, where you get to really focus in on what God is doing in your life. and, I mean, it's always good to be in Jerusalem. This is my 54th trip to the Holy Land, and Emily and I, we go every year. We go every single year in January, and, in fact, next January, and then if you're listening to this, and you're not sure what next January means, I'm talking about 2020.

We got two trips in January, and you can find out about those on my website at jeffcavens.com. In fact, next June, Father Mike Schmitz and I are going to be taking a young adult trip. coming here to the Holy Land, and it's going to be a life-changing experience. Well, as long as I'm here in the Holy Land, I want to use the Holy Land to talk to you about a topic that, to be honest with you, I think is one of the most unique topics and one of the most unique shows I've ever had in terms of using the land to talk about your spiritual growth and where you are at in your walk with the Lord. A lot of people don't realize it, but the geography of Israel, and that is the cities, the towns, the mountains, the waters, all of it is used in the biblical drama from Genesis

to Revelation. And in fact, one man said that the geography of Israel is the fifth gospel. That's right. It's the fifth gospel. It tells a story in itself. And we're finding that out now on the trip, for example, going down to the Jordan River. in the wilderness of Judea, and literally having Mass right there where Jesus was baptized, where Joshua came across, where Elijah went up in that chariot. And it's all right there in one spot. And it's just so great to study the Bible using the geography. Well, I want to give you a geography lesson today. And where I'm going with this is, once we understand the lay of the land of Israel, you're going to understand a little bit more about your life and the

good times and the bad times and how you can live during the good times, which are sometimes difficult, and how you can live in the bad times or the difficult times of your life. And I'm going to give you a metaphor to see the Bible in the land of Israel in a whole new light. Now, if you have access to a map of Israel in the back of your Bible, great adventure Bible, you've got maps in the back of that. Most good Bibles will have maps in the back. And I'm going to ask you to refer to that as I'm talking. If you're in the car, when you get back, just take a look at a map. You'll get what I'm saying. And I'll try to convey the physical aspect of the land of Israel in a radio show. So first I want to talk a

little bit about the land that I'm going to be talking about, and it's the land we're in right now, and that is Israel. Israel is only 50 miles wide and about 150 miles long. It is called the Levant. It is a strip of land in the Middle East that connects the north to the south. It connects Europe and Asia. It connects it to the south down in Africa and Egypt. Now, because of the fact that this strip of land was the major trade route back in the Bible days, whoever controlled it would exert tremendous influence on the whole known world. And so you can see that the land of Israel is important geopolitically. It is the crossroads for many nations between Asia and Africa. And knowing this, it's no wonder that all three monotheistic religions, that is

Judaism, Christianity, and Islam started in the Middle East, okay? Now, if you were God and you are going to choose a man who would affect the whole world with the message of redemption, where would you place him? Canaan, that's right, the land of Israel. And it is consistent with God's method of trial by ordeal that we see all the way back in the book of Genesis with Adam and Eve. God is going to place him in a place that is good, but there's going to be some trials, and they're going to have to totally depend upon the Lord if they're going to maintain this incredibly influential portion of land. And God always watched this land of Israel. Listen to what it says in Deuteronomy chapter 11 versus 10 and 12. All these scriptures will be in the show notes for you. The land you are entering to

take over is not like the land of Egypt from which you have come, where you planted. your seed and irrigated it by foot as in a vegetable garden. But the land you are crossing the Jordan to take possession of is a land of mountains and valleys that drinks rain from heaven. It is a land the Lord your God cares for. The eyes of the Lord your God are continually on it from the beginning of the year to its end. Now, let me give you a little bit of a description of this land. okay? This is a land that God's eyes are on constantly. Only 5% of the Bible takes place outside of this stage of Israel. In other words, 95% of the biblical drama takes place on this stage called Israel, from Dan in the north to Bersheba in the south. It is surrounded by one big sea,

the Mediterranean Sea, to the west, in the desert, the Sahara and the Arabian to the right. you've got three continents really coming together. You've got Europe, Asia, and Africa. And in total area, it's only about 10,000 square miles. I'll give you an idea of how big that is in the United States terms. The land of Israel, the land of Canaan, is about one-seventh the size of Missouri. That's pretty small, isn't it? One-seventh the size of Missouri, yet 95% of the biblical drama takes place on that slice of land, the size of Missouri, the seventh the size of Missouri, or one-third of the size of South Carolina. Not very big, is it? Its boundaries are in the north, Dan, to the southern edge of Bersheba, from the Mediterranean to a couple of miles east

of the Jordan River on the east. And the physical features of this land are the most unique of any land on the planet. You know, when I first came here to Israel, I was blown away by how diverse the geography is, the topography, the weather, just amazing, really amazing. God says something very, very important, and I'm going to refer to this many times as we move on. It's from Ezekiel chapter 20 in verse 6, and I'm reading from a different translation at the moment. It says, on that day I swore to them that I would bring them out of Egypt into a land I had searched out for them. A land flowing with milk and honey, the most beautiful of all lands. And I think it is. And that phrase, a land flowing with milk and honey, I want you to pay attention

to that, because that's going to be the metaphor that we're going to use, a land flowing with milk and honey. The variety of topography and climate in such a small place is literally staggering. Up in the north, we were up in the north earlier. Mount Herman is not. thousand feet above sea level, and less than 100 miles away is the dead sea in the south, the lowest place on earth. You can ski on Mount Herman in the morning and ride camels in the desert for lunch, literally. And you can sled on snow in Jerusalem and drive 15 miles away down to Jericho where it's 80 degrees. You can pick bananas off the trees down there, and you can return to Jerusalem for some more sledding, literally. Now in Jerusalem, you get over 30 inches of rain a year,

only 15 miles away, two inches a year. Israel is also located where the four ecological zones converge. So characteristics for each zone, such as swamps, deserts, tropics, snow, mountains, fertile valleys can be found on this stage. So you've got the four zones right there in Israel. You've got the tropical African zone. You've got the Mediterranean basin. You've got the European zone to the north, the Asian zone to the east. and this gives you unusual variety and combinations of animals and plants and birds.

It really is amazing. Now, when you look at this land 50 miles wide and 150 miles long, there's two rules to follow while looking at your map. High mountains, high topography is wet, low, dry. And the second is that the farther northwest you are, the more rain. And the farther southeast you go, the drier it is. Now, I want to share something with you here that is very, very powerful about a land flowing with milk and honey.

Because when God promised Abraham, a land flowing with milk and honey, he spoke to him in Iraq, and that is northeast of the Holy Land, northeast of Israel. And he told him that he had a land prepared for him, and he was going to bring himself and his family to that land. and that's why it's called the promised land. That's in Genesis chapter 12, verses 1 and 2 and 3. So this land is promised to Abraham and his descendants, and he describes it as a land flowing with milk and honey.

Now, milk and honey is a metaphor for two lifestyles of living, and you've been through them both, and I have two. One is easy, and the other is not so easy. It's difficult. It's difficult. So in Deuteronomy 34, verses 1 through 4, God says that Moses went up from the plains of Moab to Nebo and the Lord showed him all the land. And the stage which the biblical drama takes place on is divided up into what we can call left stage, honey, right stage, milk. And I want you to keep those in mind because you've experienced both of them. And I'm going to explain that. and then I'm going to explain how you can overcome and how you can be successful in both. Now, what I need you to do now is to use your imagination for a moment.

I want you to imagine a clock, and it's not going to be a digital clock, and it's not a clock like on your, you know, on your iPhone. The old-fashioned clock with the numbers, 12 on top, six on the bottom, right? Nine is on the west side, the left, and three is on the right. I want you to imagine that for a moment, that it's an old-time clock with numbers on it. Now, what we're going to do is we're going to place that clock over the land of Israel. Okay? So you're going to take the very middle of that clock, and you're going to place it on top of Jerusalem.

All right? Now, imagine with me, if that clock is right on top of Jerusalem, that from 9 o'clock to 1 o'clock, that is honey. That's the northwest side of portion of Israel. Okay? From 9 to 1, that's the northwest. That's honey. And we're going to talk about that. That's honey. And that is the northwest portion of the land of Israel. Then from 3 o'clock to 7 o'clock, that's milk. And that is dry. And that is the southeast portion of the land of Israel. So we've divided the land into two sections, two stages. We've got nine to one, left stage, northwest. It is honey. And from three to seven, southeast, that's milk. Now, most of the biblical drama is centered in the farming areas on the edge of the

mountain, the mountainous desert. And the more fertile areas to the north and west were normally controlled by the enemies of the Israelites. So left stage, honey, up to the northwest, was typically occupied by the enemies of Israel. Now, let me give you, let me first of all give you a description of the milk, and that is the southeastern portion, from three to seven on your clock, if your clock is transposed over Jerusalem, from three to seven o'clock. It's the milk, and why do we call it the milk? Well, the milk is the milk of the herdsmen. And the herdsmen, that's the people that lived in that portion, the southeast. Now, let me describe the land for you. It's less than 10 inches of rain a year. The life is hard. The land? Unpredictable. It's silent, lonely,

exhausting. There's two deserts that join the Sahara to the south and Arabia to the east. It's unpredictable. An example, Abraham comes into the promised land to Shechem, and then he goes further south to Bersheba, and then what happens? What happens then? Seven famine years in Genesis 12, and he has to go down to Egypt, and later in Genesis 26, famine strikes again with Isaac in the southeast, the milk, the herdsman. It's unpredictable down there. God acts even in the famine. The prophet Jeremiah says over and over again that a famine is coming and God is sending it. Another thing about the right stage, which is milk, is that it's silent and lonely. But what draws people to the right stage? What draws people to that desert and that lonely, unpredictable place? Well, in the Bible, in that southeast portion, Elijah.

heard the still small voice of God in 1 Kings 19. It was in the desert that John the Baptist attracted a crowd to be baptized. Jesus had 40 days before starting his ministry and the milk side, the unpredictable, lonely, hard side. Paul had three years in the desert before he began his ministry. And what did 5,000 young Byzantines in the 5th century fill three canyons as hermits? What did they find there? They found a desert, and the desert became a city for them, a place to pray and to hear the voice of God. Also on the southeast, this milk, it's exhausting, extreme hot days and cold nights. I remember staying in the Sinai desert one year with some Bedouins, and it was so hot and dry during the day that we were drinking and drinking and drinking water. And at night, it got cold. And it really can play games with your mind. It's extreme hot days, cold nights.

They take their toll. It takes a woman about 10 years to make a tent on the southeast side. Very difficult, particularly for women in the southeast. And she's in charge of flocks and gathering food, cooking, moving everything. Otherwise, men do the rest. It's a joke. Nutrition was a problem in the southeast, the milk side. the farther southeast you go, less protein. More malnutrition. So you can see that the southeast,

the milk, the herders, that could be problematic. But let me ask you a question. Have you ever lived on the southeast? Have you ever lived on that portion of milk and honey? The milk side, southeast? Difficult. Life is exhausting, silent, lonely, unpredictable. Wow. I've had a couple periods in my life where it was like that. Well, I'm going to take a break. When I come back, I want to talk about honey. That's the northwest side. That's from 9 to 1 if your clock is right over Jerusalem.

I think you're going to like this side a little better. But there's some problems living on that side. I'm Jeff Kavens, and you're listening to The Jeff Kaven show. We'll be right back. Wouldn't it be nice to have a Bible that actually explains how to navigate it and make sense of it, a Bible that includes a detailed plan for how to read it with a page layout that's designed for study and personal devotion. Now for the first time ever, there is a Catholic Bible that does just that.

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Pick up your copy at ascensionpress.com. Hey, welcome back. We're talking from Israel about the land of Israel, a land flowing with milk and honey. And we've been using this as a metaphor. By the way, I didn't make that up. There's several scholars in Israel who use the land flowing with milk and honey as a metaphor war for two types of situations. Unpredictable, lonely, and exhausting in the milk side to the southeast of the land, and then northwest is honey. And it's the honey of the dates. It's not bees,

but honey of the dates. And the key is Isaiah when he says that the land of milk and honey is a land of milk after the Assyrians come through in Isaiah 7. Deuteronomy chapter 20 talks about the laws of biblical warfare. And it mentions, you shall not uproot their trees or salt their fields. And after the Assyrians come through, they destroy the ecological base for farmland. So it becomes impossible for farming. But the northwest is the place to farm. So we've got left stage, right stage is milk, southeast, right, three to seven on the clock, unpredictable, hard, and so forth. That's right stage, rather. Left stage is honey. It's the northwest part of the land, and they get 20 to 40 inches of rain a year. That's quite a contrast to the milk side,

couple inches. They get 20 to 40 inches of rain a year. Up in the northwest, there's a valley called the Hula Valley, and they get 18 to 20 cuttings of alfalfa a year. That's a cutting every three weeks. You only get three or four in the United States. I mean, this is rich up in the northwest, right? Here's some other descriptors for the northwest, the honeyside, where you have the honey from the date farmers, the date trees. It's predictable. It's predictable. Rainfall's predictable. Weather's pretty predictable. You can grow your crops and you have a pretty good idea of what's going to happen, you know. It's noisy and busy as opposed to the right stage, the milk stage, which is silent and lonely. This is noisy and busy. Big cities are all on the

left stage. So it's noisy and busy, but another, another descriptor for the northwest side of the honey is that it's easy. The farmers are there. They have, they, they grow their crops. It's easy. So on left stage, honey, from nine to one, you have a class distinction, landowners, and slaves. The right stage, they're all the same. It's kind of egalitarian. It's kind of same, you know, they're all kind of equal. There's water in the biblical drama, and that water is always a factor. In the left stage, there is more rainfall, as I said, 20 to 40 inches. Right stage, a couple of inches. When Solomon controlled left stage, he built Geyser, Megidu, and Khazor, Heizor, to store grain from the Philistines. But there's a hitch to living in the big city. There's a

hitch to living in a place where things are just so easy. The hitch is that the major highway from Europe up north down to Egypt and Africa runs right through, left stage. The highway, the main source of transportation, and if you have the main source of transportation and you are owning it, you have an influence to the whole world. That highway is called the Via Maris, the way of the sea. It's the super highway. It's not in the southeast milk. It's in the honey side, the northwest, from Damascus, up in Syria, down through the valley of Jesreal over to the coast of Cessaria and down the coast to Egypt. You own that land. You've got influence. No wonder God called Abraham to come and live in this land, huh?

The good avenues of communication bring in many cultural influences from the outside. Isaiah calls the Galilee, which is on this road, the Galilee of the Gentiles. Urbanization often results in religion being less important in a noisy and busy life. Doesn't that sound like the United States and some ways? I mean, we have such an influence in the world, but religion oftentimes takes second place. Another major highway today is the internet. Those that control the internet, control culture, and they have an influence on you, your children, everybody in your neighborhood and your work at church. And so if you're going to live on left stage and you're going to occupy where that highway is, there's only one way to survive. And that is you have to totally, totally

depend upon the Lord. My friend, that's a word from God, I believe, for all of us, is that if we're going to live in this modern times with the power of the internet and cable television and technology and trade and everything else, we have to depend upon the Lord or we're going to be absorbed by our culture. And that's what happened to Israel over and over. That's what happened. So we have left stage, easy, good life. Right stage, harder, more difficult. Which would you choose? I know which I'd choose. I'd like to say that I could live in the Northwest and the honey where it's easy and predictable. I really would. I really would. There's always been a struggle between the left and right stages in the Bible. The right stage, people are called the

Ites, theites, Gergishites, right? Jebiasites. Theites try to penetrate into left stage. It's interesting that in Isaiah 9, it speaks of the tribe of Naftali, which is right in the middle of this left-right stage battle. And Isaiah says that in the future, Naftali will have a message of peace, and this is where Jesus spent the majority of his ministry was right there in the Sea of Galilee right smack in the middle of left stage, right stage, right at the point where we see that division. Now, the problem would be that Israel would try to possess left stage, where it's cool, predictable, rich, and when they did, they got more than they bargained for. The Israelites would look to the Phoenicians in the north and see the prosperity that they had,

and then they would be tempted to get mixed up with Bail and other gods. And so the biblical drama is really a left-stage, right-stage battle. And that is the case in your life, too. It's a left-stage, right-stage battle. It's a battle between having a lot and knowing how to live in it and then going through rough times and lonely times and desert experiences and knowing how to deal with it. When looking at a tell, which is a mountain that is one city, it's one city, but one culture

takes it over after another after another and builds upon and builds upon, and you got this mound. That tell tells, pardon the pun, a lot. A lot about how different cultures wanted that land, and yet they were taken out themselves. In the approximate 1800 years from Abraham to Jesus, Israel only controlled left stage for about 150 years. That's right, because it was too hard. The good life was too hard to live in and serve God. This is a cautionary tale, my friend. As we come into the new year, this is a cautionary tale. during Joshua and judges Israel roamed on the edge of the desert. It wasn't until they had a strong leader, David and Solomon, that Israel penetrated into left stage in a substantive way. So left stage was normally

Phoenician and Philistine. Of the 353 cities mentioned in the Old Testament, only 40 are on left stage. Those 40 are big cosmopolitan cities. But the bottom line is, and this is what I'd like to kind of draw this to a close with you is that we are faced with two lifestyles with the land of milk and honey. Again, milk is to the southeast, and what is it? It is difficult, right? It is difficult. It is unpredictable, silent, lonely. It's exhausting. That's the milk side, the southeast, from three to seven. and then up in the northwest that's the honey the honey of the date farmers and that is predictable life is easy it's busy and noisy they both have their their pluses and their minuses but the the question i have for you coming from israel today is how do you live in the abundant times how do you handle that

without your heart, being taken away by idols and by the things of this world rather than serving and worshiping and praising God. And how do you deal with the really desert experiences and the lonely times in your life? And those times that there just wasn't a lot of abundance. How do you do it? This is what I was getting to, the whole show. Paul, Paul, the apostle Paul, figured it out. And here it is. Are you ready? And I'll put this in the show notes for you. He said it in Philippians 4 verses 10 through 13. Let me give it to you right here. This is the key to living in an abundance and living in a silent, eerie, lonely place. Paul says to the Philippians, I rejoice in the Lord. greatly that now at length, you have revived your concern for me. You were indeed concerned for me, but you had no opportunity. Not that I complain of want. Kind of sounds like the milk, doesn't it? Not that I complain of want, for I have learned in whatever state I am, that's milk and honey, to be content. Let me say that again.

that I complain of want, for I have learned in whatever state I am to be content. I know how to be abased milk. And I know how to abound honey in any and all circumstances. I have learned the secret of facing plenty, honey, and hunger, milk. Abundance, honey, and want milk. I'm I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. My friend, that is the key. Do you find yourself with abundance in your life right now? Don't glide. Don't just slide through.

Lean on the Lord. Look to the Lord. The secret. A lot of people would say, oh, there's no secret to living in abundance. Yes, there is, because abundance can bring you down. abundance can cost you your soul. Believe me, there's a secret to living in abundance. And there's a secret to living in unpredictable, lonely, harsh environments. That secret is the same for both, and that secret is, I can do all things in Christ, through Christ who strengthens me. So that's the key

is keeping your eyes on the Lord. But a lot of people think, I never thought of it that way, that when things are going so well, I need to keep my eyes on the Lord. Yeah, praise God, they're going well for you. But now's the time to prepare for the milk that may be coming down the road. One of the reasons people are overwhelmed by reading the Bible is that they mentally cannot follow. They cannot follow the story. And I hope that this little metaphor of the land flowing with milk and honey can help you understand. And when you look at the map, you might even want to draw a big clock around, make a copy of your map, draw a big clock around Jerusalem. The center is the center of the clock is Jerusalem. And remember, nine to one is honey. That's the northwest,

three to seven, southeast, that's milk. And then think about your own life and where you're at right now. and then look to the Lord and learn from Paul that you can do all things through Christ who strengthens you. Well, from Israel, I'm going to probably have another show, but boy, it's good to talk to you, and I hope you can come with me over here sometime and take part and share in the abundance of all that you can learn over here. It really is amazing, and I'll have all those trips on my website, jeffcavens.com. In fact, we'll put that in the show notes for you.

Pray for our pilgrims. We're going to pray for you from the Holy Land. And if you want to get a hold of me, my email address is the Jeff Kaven Show at ascensionpress.com from Israel. Let me pray for you. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, amen. Lord, I thank you today for my brothers and sisters. And we lift them up to you, Lord. All of us that are on this pilgrimage, we lift up our friends listening and ask you to help them in the struggles of life. whether they're living in the honey side and all things are going well or the milk side and things are not going so well in their life and might be tough and hard and difficult. Lord, I pray that my friends will discover the secret to living on either side, and that is you, O Lord. You really

are the focus. And with you, we can get through anything and we can be victorious if we walk in your footsteps. Give us your mind, give us your heart, Lord, to face milk and honey. In Jesus' name, amen. Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Shalom, shalom, from Israel.