AdAgrA 2021: Hidden Treasure

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AdAgrA: Adventist Agriculture Association

Morning Devotionals

Darryl Hosford

Sodom

It's a beautiful morning, and what a beautiful time of prayer to lead off.

This morning I'd like to tell you about a place Very far from here.

In fact, it's on the other side of the world.

This place is also in your homes and it might be in your pocket.

This location affirms our belief in the Bible and it relates to gardening and the second coming of Jesus.

Father, I thank you for this beautiful morning.

And I pray that your message from the scripture can become plain, regardless of me as the presenter.

Teach us from your word, I pray this morning, in Jesus' name, amen.

How many of you, or have any of you, ever traveled to the Holy Land?

How many of you have had, of those of you who have visited the Holy Land, how many of you have visited the Kingdom of Jordan?

In 2019, I was scouting the internet for locations to film for the Light Unshackled series 2 And I came across a fascinating archaeology dig under the direction of Dr.

He's an archaeology professor at Trinity Southwest University.

But he's digging there in the Middle East.

What caught my eye was that this archeology professor had claimed that he had found and was excavating the ancient city of Sodom.

In the Bible, there are clues to the location of Sodom.

And I started studying it and I thought, he might be onto something.

Most of the clues come from the biblical story of Genesis chapter 13, where Abraham and Lot separate company.

When Abraham and Lot separated, they were near Bethel and Ai.

And from there, Lot looked toward the Valley of Sodom.

He chose that valley because it was green and fertile.

Collins said, you must be able to stand at Bethel and Ai and see the Valley of Sodom.

That precludes being able to see the area around the southern part of the Dead Sea.

It's much too far to be able to visualize.

The Bible says that from where Abraham and Lot were located, Lot traveled east, not south.

And the Valley of Sodom is called a fertile disk.

This is the same word that here in the south we would call the tortilla.

And it says the Kekar of the Jordan River is where Sodom was located.

If you look at a map, the only place that looks like a circle is that area in the delta of the Jordan River just before it enters the Dead Sea.

Collins started looking at any significant dig site representing a large city in the area just north of the Dead Sea.

Just imagine an archeologist opening the Bible and asking, well, where would this ancient city be located?

It's kind of a refreshing idea, especially in this day and time of higher criticism and disbelief in the Bible as anything representing truth.

Well, our filming team was headed into Amman, Jordan, so I looked up how far is that dig from Amman, Jordan, and it turned out to be only 45 minutes away.

As we drove toward the dig site, and you can look it up yourself, it's called Tell el-Hamam, we came to the rim of the mountains overlooking the Jordan Valley.

And there we stopped the car and looked down and you could see the entire circle that they're talking about and it was green.

Anytime you see something green in the Middle East you can be surprised.

If you look today on Google Earth You will see a green pocket right there as the River Jordan is flowing into the Dead Sea.

Take a look in Google Earth or your Bible Atlas sometime and take a look at the River Jordan as it flows into the Dead Sea.

You'll notice that on 1 side, on the Israeli side, is the ancient city of Jericho.

And if you go exactly opposite to the other side of that disk, that fertile area, that is where Tell el-Hammam is located.

And perhaps it's the ancient city of Sodom.

When we arrived at the dig site we had to climb up on what looked like a large mountain of boulders.

And as we got to the top, it came to our realization that this was not a mountain, it was a city that had been collapsed.

Some of the handles were visible, some parts of the side with glazing.

It was so abundant that they had gathered them together and lined the walkways with these pottery shards.

The mountain of stones, and I'm talking a literal mountain, was the walls and the buildings of this massive ancient city.

It was fascinating to look down into the dig area where they had dug into the rubble of the mountain and you could see the foundations of the buildings.

We were able to climb down into the excavation area and walked through the palace of the king of that city, perhaps the king of Sodom.

And we saw a distinct and uniform burn layer of char running through the entire excavated area.

There is an area of 6 inches to a foot thick of black charcoal, and you can see it as they've dug down, it's consistent all across the entire excavation area.

If this was the ancient city of Sodom, you could touch the char that destroyed the city.

I scooped some of the char into the palm of my hand, and as I looked at it, I considered the life of lot.

Collins reports finding jars full of grain in this char layer where the jar and the grain contents had been heated to thousands of degrees Fahrenheit.

I've seen pictures from that jar and you can see distinct wheat berries, but they're pure charcoal.

And on the outside of these jars that have been heated to incredible temperatures is a glass, glossy layer that has formed.

It actually started to melt the pottery into a new kind of glass.

He's not suggesting it has anything to do with nuclear reactions, but the only other place we see this kind of glass is at ground 0 of a nuclear bomb.

That's the kind of temperature that it takes to have pottery turn into this kind of glass.

The buildings of this city all collapsed in 1 direction, and the contents of the room were smashed against the internal walls in that same direction.

We were able to see this as we visited the dig site.

So it's not just an earthquake, which is common in the area of the Middle East.

It's not just an earthquake, but something that flattened the entire city in 1 direction, as if there was a cosmic blast that leveled the city and toppled everything in 1 way.

Now I don't claim to know more about Tell el-Hammam than what I saw as a visitor for a few hours.

But for my devotional this morning, I'm going to talk about the idea of Sodom itself.

Whether I was there or not, I can't prove.

Whether that was the actual location, I'm not sure.

But we do know that spiritual Sodom is something we can gain lessons from today.

First, I think it interesting that archeology is more and more proving the truth of the Bible.

I believe that we can trust the Bible as God's inspired word.

Second, I want you to think about the location from the Bible's description of Sodom.

The Bible says that it was like the garden of the Lord.

This was a place in Abraham's time that was like the garden of Eden.

Those of you who have your Bible, let's open to Genesis chapter 13, verses 10 through 13.

It says, verse 10, "'And Lot lifted up his eyes, "'and behold the plain of Jordan, "'that it was well watered everywhere.

"'Before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, even as the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt as you come to Zoar.

Then Lot chose him the plain of Jordan, and Lot journeyed east and separated themselves 1 from the other.

Abraham dwelt in the land of Canaan, and Lot dwelt in the cities of the plain, pitched his tent toward Sodom.

But the men of Sodom were wicked and sinners before the Lord exceedingly." Here we read that Sodom was inhabited by people who were called wicked.

And there was a time before the flood that we have a similar description.

In Genesis 6 verse 5, and God saw the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every imagination of his thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

Alan Seiler

The Sabbath

OK, I'm going to leave my mask on this morning, at least for a bit, because I'm going to ask for a volunteer to help me out.

So just be ready, because I might pick on 1 of you.

Don't get nervous, but anyways, it'll be good.

So in our sabbatical class, we don't go over a quarterly or a pre-programmed way to do things.

We actually meet as a group once a week every Tuesday and say, okay, we actually kind of work up every week and come up with our custom classes because we're like, you know, we want to talk about things that are relevant, that are practical, and that we really find will resonate with our class members.

And sometimes that's not always easily found in a book.

It's definitely the harder path, but it's been a real blessing.

And a few months ago I was going to teach and I wanted to talk about some fundamental Adventist doctrines, but maybe in a way that we hadn't talked about them before.

And I wanted to ask kind of 3 basic questions in the study of any of these topics.

The next 1 was like, oh, why does it matter?

Because we say, oh, we believe in the, let's say, a particular viewpoint of the state of the dead.

And then, does it make a difference in my practical experience?

And does it make a difference in my own personal life?

And then, hopefully, by the end of that study, we would really come up and really have dug deep into any particular, you know, belief that we were studying at that point.

And so we decided to, I decided to go over the Sabbath, and I feel like it's really appropriate because obviously this is the Sabbath morning devotional.

So it's like, oh the Sabbath, I've heard about the Sabbath, you know, what different could I know about the Sabbath?

Maybe you already have had these thoughts, but I want to share kind of what we got from our study, and maybe it will make a practical difference for you.

Anyone, it doesn't matter if you'll just raise your hand or I'll call on you.

So The analogy that I want to start with this morning is the idea of a cornerstone.

From a, okay, either of the learneds, it doesn't matter.

The main stone that's at the corner of a building that gives the support.

So let's corner, so a lot of obviously, you know, in the United States we build a lot out of wood, so obviously we don't do a ton of cornerstone.

This is more of a probably something like in Mexico or South America or other countries that do a lot more masonry work.

The idea is that it's the first stone laid in a foundation and that does 2 things.

So Isaac's going to be my cornerstone this morning.

Okay, so Isaac, what I want you to do is I want you to hold your hand out like this.

I want you to hold your hand out like this, like at a 90 degree angle, because you're in the corner, right?

So Isaac's here at the corner of the building and structure that's going to be built.

I have a 90 degree, well maybe a little more like this Isaac.

Okay 90 degrees this way so I know how this wall is going to line up and 90 degrees this way because I know how this wall is going to line up.

So it sets my orientation as far as north southwest.

Isaac, this is, I'm leaning up against Isaac here on this wall because, you know, so I don't fall over because then that wall comes and intersects on Isaac over here.

So it gives me a reference point for the building and it's also where the walls will intersect Each other and so the greatest pressure is on the corner and obviously since he's the bottom stone he bears the the weight of the entire structure and bears the weight of 2 intersecting walls, also giving orientation to the building.

Because if this wall here is 90, if this is 90 degrees off of this wall, then it will determine not necessarily where this wall comes in, but the reference point of these 2 walls to each other, because they have to intersect with the walls that Isaac's connecting with.

That's what I wanted you for, a visual there, right?

So I want us to think here, and I'll just read this again.

First, stone set in the construction of a masonry foundation, which all other stones will be set in reference to, thus determining the position of the entire structure.

So, number 1, a cornerstone is a reference point.

Number 2, a cornerstone bears the intersection of 2 walls, and a cornerstone bears the weight of the stones on top of it, since it's the foundation stone.

And I want to give you the analogy to think of the cornerstone, the Sabbath, as the cornerstone in many ways of life and of the Christian experience.

So, number 1, it gives us a reference point.

The Sabbath reminds us of the 3 fundamental questions of life, and that is, who am I, why am I here, and what's the purpose?

To be in a loving relationship with God and with others.

The purpose is to continually grow in a knowledge of God and in a relationship with Him and others?

And the Sabbath answers all 3 of those questions.

But the other important thing, and this is really what we delve down to in Sabbath school, is that it reminds us who is our creator and who is our sustainer.

Adam and Eve, they're created not on the first or second or third day, but on the last day of the week, right?

And so God comes to them and He's like, all this work's been done that they haven't had any part in, right?

And God comes to Adam and Eve and basically says, okay, let's rest, right?

You're to rest in the work that I've done for you.

So the Sabbath, the Sabbath is a commemoration of the work that God had done for them.

So the Sabbath isn't about what you do for God, it's about what God has done for you.

And this is really interesting because, and I'll just read these other things here, don't work is basically what he's saying, don't work because I have.

And I've thought it interesting because in many ways, the Sabbath is the only commandment of the 10 that specifically addresses what righteousness by faith is actually at, right?

Our job is to rest in the work that He has done.

So in keeping the Sabbath, where's the weight of the responsibility?

Or is basically God saying, no, it lies on me.

And the Sabbath is a weekly reminder of the rest that we are to rest in what God has done for us.

We're to enter into that rest, which it's interesting because people are like, Oh, Adventists, they keep the Sabbath.

It's very, you know, that's legalistic or whatnot.

And it's like, wait a minute, it's the only 1 in the 10 that actually is the most un-legalistic 1 because God's saying, enter into my rest, right?

So I just wanna go over this just to underscore this idea.

If you have your Bibles you can turn here.

If not, I'm going to read it out anyways.

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Morning Devotionals

Sodom

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